‘I . . .’ His face went waxy now. ‘I think I’m going to be—’
Before he could finish, Eve whipped his head down between his knees. ‘Breathe. Just breathe. Let’s have that brandy, Roarke.’ She held out a hand, and he was there with a snifter.
‘Pull it together, Carter.’ Roarke eased him back onto the cushions. ‘Take a swallow of this.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘For Christ’s sake, stop sirring me to death.’
Color came back into Carter’s cheeks, either from the brandy or from embarrassment. He nodded, swallowed, let out a breath. ‘I’m sorry. I thought I was okay. I came right up. I didn’t know if I should - I didn’t know what else to do.’ He spread a hand over his face like a kid at a horror video. He hitched in a breath and said it quickly. ‘It’s Drew, Drew Mathias, my roomie. He’s dead.’
Air exploded out of his lungs, then shuddered back in. He took another deep gulp of brandy and choked on it.
Roarke’s eyes went flat. He pulled together a picture of Mathias: young, eager, red hair and freckles, an electronics expert with a specialty in autotronics. ‘Where, Carter? How did it happen?’
‘I thought I should tell you right away.’ Now there were two high bruising red flags riding on Carter’s pasty cheeks. ‘I came right up to tell you - and your wife.
I thought since she’s - she’s the police, she could do something.’
‘You need a cop, Carter?’ Eve took the snifter out of his unsteady hand. ‘Why do you need a cop?’
‘I think - he must have - he killed himself, Lieutenant. He was hanging there, just hanging there from the ceiling light in the living room. And his face . . . Oh God. Oh Jesus.’
Eve left Carter to bury his own face in his hands and turned to Roarke. ‘Who’s got authority on site for something like this?’
‘We’ve got standard security, most of it automated.’ Accepting, he inclined his head. ‘I’d say it’s you, Lieutenant.’
‘Okay, see if you can put together a field kit for me. I need a recorder - audio and video - some Seal It, evidence bags, tweezers, a couple of small brushes.’
She hissed out a breath as she dragged a hand through her hair. He wasn’t going to have the equipment lying around that would pinpoint body temperature and time of death. There would be no scanner, no sweepers, none of the standard chemicals for forensics she carried habitually to crime scenes.
They’d have to wing it.
‘There’s a doctor, right? Call him. He’ll have to stand in as the ME. I’ll get dressed.’
Most of the techs made use of the completed wings of the hotel for living quarters. Carter and Mathias had apparently hit it off well enough to share a spacious two-bedroom suite during their shift on the station. As they rode down to the tenth floor, Eve handed Roarke the palm recorder.
‘You can run this, right?’
He lifted a brow. One of his companies had manufactured it. ‘I think I can manage.’
‘Fine.’ She offered a weak smile. ‘You’re deputized. You hanging in, Carter?’
‘Yeah.’ But he walked out of the elevator into the hallway on ten like a drunk trying to pass a competency test. He had to wipe his sweaty hand twice on his slacks to get a clear reading on the palm screen. When the door slid open, he stepped back. ‘I’d just as soon not go in again.’
‘Stay here,’ she told him. ‘I may need you.’
She stepped inside. The lights were blinding bright, up to full power. Music blared out of the wall unit: hard, clashing rock with a screeching vocalist that reminded Eve of her friend Mavis. The floor was tiled in a Caribbean blue and offered the illusion of walking on water.
Along the north and south walls, banks of computers were set up. Workstations, she assumed, cluttered with all manner of electronic boards, microchips, and tools.
She saw clothes heaped on the sofa, VR goggles lying on the coffee table with three tubes of Asian beer - two of them flattened and already rolled for the recycler - and a bowl of spiced pretzels.
And she saw Drew Mathias’s naked body swaying gently from a makeshift noose of sheets hitched to the glittering tier of a blue glass chandelier.
‘Ah, hell.’ She sighed it out. ‘What is he, Roarke, twenty?’
‘Not much more than.’ Roarke’s mouth thinned as he studied Mathias’s boyish face. It was purple now, the eyes bulging, the mouth frozen into a hideous, gaping grin. Some vicious whim of death had left him smiling.