Down the Rabbit Hole

“Home? But—”

“There’s nothing you can do here.” Harsh as it was, it was true. “You called me for a reason, now trust me to take care of your friends.”

“I do.” Clinging to Charles’s hand, Louise rose. “I trust you’ll find out who’s responsible for what happened here. You need to trust me. What you see here is a cover.”

She rode down with them, arranged for a black-and-white to drive them home.

Then she ducked under the barricade. As she approached the body, Peabody pushed her way through the crowd of gawkers.

“Sorry, Dallas. Twenty-minute delay on the subway.” Peabody pulled her pink and green hat—with bounding pom-pom—farther over her dark flip of hair as she studied what was left of Darlene Fitzwilliams. “Wow. Long drop.”

“Fifty-second floor.”

“Really long.”

“I gave her a cursory look when I came on scene, so I’ll finish her. I’ve already done the one upstairs—her brother. Multiple stab wounds, heart area. Big pair of scissors. Talk to the doorman again, see if he wavers in his statement. He says he talked to the sister here, let her go up to see her brother. Some ten minutes later, she came down, the hard way. Security—along with Charles and Louise—”

Peabody’s head swiveled back. “Charles and Louise?”

“They were coming to visit the brother—old family friends of Louise’s. He was dead when they went in.”

“Oh man.” Peabody’s dark eyes reflected sympathy. “Are they still here?”

“I just sent them home. This one has a fiancé I need to contact who’s apparently waiting for her. She’s going to be really late for dinner.”

“I’ll say.” Peabody tipped her head back, looked up. “Murder/suicide.”

“It sure as hell looks like it. Louise gauges that as impossible. Talk to the doorman, any other wits you can find. We treat it as undetermined until otherwise.”

Opening her field kit, she knelt beside the shattered body, and put aside what it sure as hell looked like.





CHAPTER THREE




Eve officially identified the body, determined time of death—within two minutes of the first victim. Cause of death was brutally apparent, but the ME would determine if there were other injuries, injuries incurred before flesh and bone met concrete.

No sign of struggle, no break-in, she thought. If the doorman stuck to his story, he’d opened the door for Marcus approximately two hours before his death.

No one except the sister had come calling.

The apartment security showed only the sister at the door, only she going inside.

Sitting back on her heels, Eve played it through.

Sister, depressed, unable to cope with parents’ sudden death, friction with brother. Arguments, including one that day. Suffers a breakdown, goes to brother’s apartment, stabs him, crosses over to the terrace doors—leaving a bloody handprint—walks out, climbs up, jumps off.

She could see it, just that clearly. And she could hear Louise’s voice telling her it wasn’t possible.

“Okay, Louise.”

Who else had motive? A lot of money and power at stake. The murder weapon. Determine if the scissors belonged to the sister, the brother, or who else. Tox report. Maybe, despite Louise’s belief, the sister leaned on illegals to get her through.

Who else had access to the penthouse?

“Bag her,” she ordered the waiting morgue attendants, and started to rise when she saw something in a pool of blood.

“Hold it.” She pulled out tweezers and lifted bits of shattered plastic, and what she recognized as a mini lens, in pieces.

Just why would Darlene Fitzwilliams have worn a recorder? Eve wondered as she sealed the bloody pieces into evidence.