Witness in Death (In Death 10) - Page 60
“I don’t know!”
“Sir. Dallas. Hey.”
Eve opened her eyes, stared into Peabody’s wide ones. “What? What is it?”
“You’re really pale. Dallas, you look a little sick. Maybe we should swing by a health center after all.”
“I’m all right.” Her hands fisted hard until she felt herself steady again. “I’m okay. Just need some air.” She ordered the window down, started the car.
And pushed the helpless young girl back into the darkest corner of her mind.
*** CHAPTER TEN ***
Needs must when the devil drives. I can’t remember who said that, but I don’t suppose it’s important. Whoever it was is long dead now. As Linus Quim is dead now.
Needs must. My needs must. But who was the devil in this coupling? Foolish, greedy Quim or myself?
Perhaps that’s not important either, for it’s done. There can be no going back, no staging events to another outcome. I can only hope events were staged convincingly enough to satisfy those sharp eyes of Lieutenant Dallas.
She is an exacting audience and, I fear, the most severe of critics.
Yes, with her in the house, I fear. My performance must be perfection in every way. Every line, every gesture, every nuance. Or her view will no doubt ruin me.
• • •
Motive and opportunity, Eve thought as she walked to her own front door. Too many people had both. Richard Draco would be memorialized the next day, and she had no doubt there would be a lavish display of grief, passionate and emotional eulogies, copious tears.
And it would all be just another show.
He’d helped seduce Areena Mansfield into drugs and put a smear on her rise to stardom.
He’d stood in the spotlight Michael Proctor desperately wanted for his own.
He’d humiliated and used Carly Landsdowne in a very public fashion.
He’d been a splinter under the well-manicured fingernail of Kenneth Stiles.
He’d considered Eliza Rothchild too old and unattractive to bother with.
There had been others, so many others it was impossible to count, who had reason to wish Richard Draco ill.
But whoever had acted on it, planned and executed the murder, had enough cool, enough will to have lured a greedy theater tech into a hangman’s noose.
She wasn’t looking for brutality or rage but for cold blood and a clear mind. Those qualities in a killer were much more difficult to root out.
She wasn’t moving forward, she thought with frustration. Every step she took simply pushed her further into the artifice of a world she found mildly annoying.
What kind of people spent their lives dressing up and playing make-believe?
Children. It struck her as she closed her hand around the doorknob. On some level, wasn’t she looking for a very clever, very angry child?
She gave a half laugh. Great. What she knew about children wouldn’t fill the pinhole made by a laser drill.
She flung open the front door, intending to throw herself into a blisteringly hot shower, then back into work.
The music pierced her ears, rattled her teeth. She all but felt her eyes jiggle in her head. It was a screech of sound, punctuated by a blast of noise, layered with braying waves of chaos.
It was Mavis.
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