Delusion in Death (3 page)

“They did this to each other. From what I can see at this point, they attacked and killed each other.”

“That’s my take. Some sort of poison, hallucinogenic, some fucking new rage drug. In the drinks? The bar food? In the ventilation system? There’s over eighty dead, Morris, and a handful who survived—so far—in the hospital.”

“They used what was handy—broken glass, forks, knives, furniture, their own hands.”

“There are more downstairs—bathroom area—and back in the kitchen, so it wasn’t confined to this space. But I’ve got nothing to indicate anyone got out, no signs of violence outside.”

“Consider it a blessing. I’ll have a team transport bodies as I examine them here, and we’ll rush the tox screens.”

“I’ll be in when I finish here, after I talk to any survivors.”

“We all have a long night ahead of us.”

“And the media’s going to be all over it. I’m going to request a Code Blue, but I don’t think a media block’s going to stop leaks, not on this. Let’s get some answers.”

She pushed to her feet.

Too many people, she thought. Too many dead, and too many cops working in one space. She could trust the team she’d pulled in, but still, so many hands made it too easy for one to make a mistake.

She saw Feeney, EDD captain, former partner, his wiry ginger hair an explosion over his hangdog face, huddled with Roarke. They’d find whatever could be found.

She started down the steps just as McNab—EDD ace and the love of Peabody’s life, started up. His bright blue pants, heavy with silverstudded pockets, stood in harsh contrast to the horror. He might’ve
had a half a million shiny rings riding along his ear, but his pretty face was hard, and all cop.

“I’ve got something.” He held out a ’link, held sealed bags of others in his other hand. “Vic down in the ladies’ room, Trueheart did the ID. Wendy McMahon, age twenty-three.”

“She used her ’link.”

“Yeah. At seventeen-thirty-two, she tagged her sister, started off telling her about some guy she met upstairs—Chip—all giddy and happy for the first thirty seconds. Then she says how she’s getting a damn headache, and by seventeen-thirty-three, she’s bitching at the sister, calling her a whore. The sister cuts her off, but she keeps bitching. It’s crazy talk, Dallas, and when another woman comes in screaming, you can hear them going at each other, you can see bits of them fighting when this McMahon drops the ’link. I don’t see the second woman down there, so either she killed McMahon and moved on, or got away. The ’link shut off after thirty seconds of no transmission—that’s usual.”

Twelve minutes, she thought. Twelve minutes from the first sign of trouble to Vic One’s TOD.

“I want that and any others like it back at Central.”

“I’ve got a couple more. We should be able to put them together for you so you don’t have to view them on the individual ’links. It won’t take long to do it, and it’ll save time. I’ve got a lot of them to check out first.”

“Keep hunting.”

Eve stepped over the body at the base of the stairs, saw he’d been ID’d and tagged. Trueheart continued to work the area. She imagined Baxter had given him the assignment so the young officer had less misery to pack into his psyche.

Back upstairs, she moved to Roarke. “Stick with EDD.”

“We’re finding some snatches on ’links.”

“McNab reported. I’ll be at Central after I talk to survivors. The team can finish here, for now. We’re closing you down, Roarke, for the foreseeable.”

“Understood.”

“Peabody,” she called out. “With me. The rest of you ID and log every body, every ’link, every weapon, any and all of the DBs’ personal items. Baxter, see to it I have a list of all vics on my desk asap. We’ll be making notifications tonight. I want the security discs from the door. Jenkinson, widen the canvass, four-block perimeter. Morris, have all the vics’ clothing sent to the lab and request Harpo on the fibers. All food and drink needs to be transported to the lab, and marked possible biohazard.”

She paused a moment, scanned. Yes, she could trust every one of them. “Full team briefing at Central.” She checked the time, calculated. “Twenty-two-thirty. I’m requesting Code Blue, so no chatter. Consider yourselves on this case until I say different.”

She gave Roarke one last glance before she walked out—into cooling air, and the blessed roar of the city.

“The hospital,” she told Peabody. “Let’s see if any of the survivors can talk to us. You drive.”

She slid into the passenger seat, took a breath. Then drew out her communicator and contacted her commander.

2

She hated hospitals, always had. Even knowing the paranoia stretched back to waking in one in Dallas as a child, beaten, raped, broken, didn’t solve the problem. For her, hospitals, health centers, clinics, even mobile urgent care outfits all smelled the same. The smell was pain with underlying fear.

Eve lived with the intense dislike, and the fact that her job so often took her into medical facilities one way or the other.

She imagined an urban ER never hit the notes of pleasant, but considered it a sure bet tonight might be a little worse than usual as the doctors and medicals had been slammed with ten violently injured people at once.

She moved through the moans and misery, the glazed, exhausted eyes, the stench of fever sweat and sickness to grab a nurse. The smiley faces covering the uniform top grinned in direct opposition to the woman’s grim snarl.

“You need to stay in chairs. We’ll get to you as soon as we can.”

Eve held up her badge. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a bone-skinny man trembling for a fix slide out of his chair and jitter his way to the door.

“You had ten injured brought in about ninety minutes ago. I need to see them, talk to them.”

“Wait,” the nurse ordered, and stalked away with her shirt grinning dozens of weirdly perky grins.

Moments later Eve faced a man nearly as skinny as the departed junkie. He wore a lab coat and a look of profound fatigue.

“Doctor Tribido.” His faint musical lilt didn’t offset the fatigue.

“Lieutenant Dallas, Detective Peabody. I need to see my vics.”

“Ten came in. One was DOA, two died of their injuries. We got three in surgery now, another in pre-op, and one in a coma.”

“Where are the other two?”

“Holding in Exam Three and Four.”

“I’ll start with them.”

“This way. Exam Three’s a broken tibia, three broken fingers, a concussion, facial injuries, multiple stab wounds, which the MTs treated on site. Most of the stab wounds were minor, considering. She’s one of the lucky ones.”

“Do you have a name?”

“CiCi Way. She’s fairly lucid, was able to give us her name, her address, the date, but not how she was injured. We haven’t gotten any details on this, Lieutenant. What the hell happened?”

“That’s what I’m going to find out.”

She moved through the double swinging doors with him where a nurse checked one of the IVs plugged into CiCi Way.

The woman on the table kept her eyes closed. Probably couldn’t
open the left in any case, Eve thought. Not with that vicious swelling. They’d coated her face with gel and patches of Nu Skin so it shone like an oiled mask.

It only made her look more victimized.

Thin casting encased her right arm and hand. Angry scratches and freshly treated wounds showed above her sadly floral hospital gown and along her unbroken arm.

Tribido signaled the nurse as he stepped toward his patient. “CiCi? It’s Dr. Tribido. Do you remember me?”

“I …” Her right eye slitted open, tracked nervously back and forth under its purpled lid. “Yes. I think. Hospital? I’m in the hospital.”

“That’s right, and you’re doing fine.”

“Macie? Is Macie here?”

“I’m going to check on that.” His voice, edged with exhaustion, managed to convey a soft, steady gentleness. “There’s a police officer here to talk to you. Are you okay with that?”

“Police? The police? Because of the accident? The police came, or maybe I dreamed it. The policeman said I was going to be okay.”

“That’s right. You’re going to be okay. I’ll be right outside if you need me.”

“Macie.” Her voice pitched up, sounded strangled. “Is Macie going to be okay? And, and Travis. And—I can’t remember.”

“It’s all right. You just take it easy.” Tribido turned to Eve, spoke quietly. “She’s asked for Macie every time she’s come around. And she’s mentioned Travis and sometimes someone called Bren. She came out screaming a couple times. We’ve got her on a mild sedative for the pain, and to keep her as calm as possible. She’s lucid, as I said, but she’s spotty on everything that happened after she went in that bar. She’d feel better if we could locate this Macie.”

No, Eve thought, she doubted the woman would feel better knowing Macie Snyder was on her way to the morgue. “We’ll take it easy on her” was all Eve said.

She stepped to one side of the elevated table. “I’m Lieutenant Dallas, and this is my partner Detective Peabody. What happened to you, CiCi?”

“I got hurt.”

“I know. Who hurt you?”

That single eye began its fearful tracking. “I don’t know. You have to find Macie.”

“She’s your friend,” Peabody said in her soothing way.

“Yeah. We work together at Stuben-Barnes. And we hang.”

“You went to On the Rocks with Macie,” Eve asked, “after work?”

“Um.” Her good eye wheeled again, then focused on Eve. “Yes. That’s right. We work together, and we hang. Me and Macie. She’s going out with Travis. They’re tight. Macie thinks she might move in with him.”

“So you and Macie went to have a drink after work. Hang.”

“I think so. Yes. Me and Macie, for a drink. It’s a nice bar, and they have a mag happy hour. I like the nachos especially. You have to use a fork because they’re so …”

Her voice shook, and something like terror gleamed in her eye. “It’s close to work. Is Macie okay?”

“It’s nice to have a friend to hang with,” Peabody commented.

“She’s fun. Macie. Sometimes we go shopping on our day off.”

“But tonight you went for a drink at On the Rocks,” Eve prompted.

“Travis met us there, with his friend. It was kind of a blind date for me.”

“Can you give us Macie’s and Travis’s last names?”

“Oh. Oh. I didn’t think. You need to have their whole names to
find them. Macie Snyder and Travis Greenspan. I have pictures on my ’link! I can show you pictures. I don’t know where my ’link is.”

“Don’t worry about that right now. So the four of you hung for a while, had a couple drinks.”

“A second round. Bren’s really cute. Bren!” Her eye widened then closed, and a single thin tear leaked out of the corner. “I remember now. Brendon Wang. He works with Travis, and Travis and Macie were kind of setting us up. I can’t see him very well in my head now.” She gave Eve a weary, pitiful look. “I’m sorry. My head hurts. I feel sick.” She closed her eye again.

Eve leaned in. “CiCi, look at me. Look at me now. What are you afraid of?”

“I don’t know. I’m hurt.”

“Who hurt you?”

“I don’t know! Did we go for dinner?” Her fingers tried to pluck at the sheets, twist them. “We were going for dinner. Macie wanted Nino’s, but … Did we go for dinner?”

“No. You were in the bar.”

“I don’t want to be in the bar. I want to be home.”

“What happened in the bar?”

“It doesn’t make sense.”

“It doesn’t have to.” Peabody again, soothing, soothing, even taking CiCi’s good hand in hers. “Tell us what you think happened, and that’ll help. We’re here to help you.”

“She’s a monster. There’s blood running out of her eyes, and her teeth are sharp.”

“Who’s a monster?”

“It looks like Macie, but she’s not a monster. It’s all mixed up.”

“What did the monster do?”

“She stabbed Travis in the face. She picked up Macie’s fork and
stabbed him in the eye—oh God, oh God. And she screamed, and everything was crazy. I had glass in my hand, sharp, sharp, and I stabbed and stabbed, and she screamed and beat at me. It hurts! I have to hurt
her
, and the other one, all the other ones, but I’m on the floor and my arm! And everyone’s screaming and there’s blood everywhere. Then I woke up, and somebody was taking me somewhere. Here. An ambulance. I don’t know.”

Tears streamed out of her eyes. “I don’t know. I think I killed somebody, but it doesn’t make sense. Please find Macie. She’s really smart. She’ll know what happened.”

“Let’s try this. What were you doing right before you saw the monster?”

“There aren’t any monsters, not really. Right?”

Oh
, Eve thought,
more than you can count. More than you can name
.

“Don’t worry. Just try to remember before. You and Macie and Travis and Bren. You had a table at the bar?”

“A table. Yeah. We got a table. It was close to the bar. I mean the bar in the bar.”

“Okay, that’s good. You all had drinks? It’s happy hour. What did you order to drink?”

“Ah, I had a house white. It’s pretty good. Macie got a Pink Passion. The guys got beers. And we got jumbo nachos to share. But I was afraid to eat them—much—because they’re messy. I didn’t want to spill because of the blind date.”

“That’s good. You were having fun, relaxing after work. You had a drink together. Then what?”

“Um. Oh. Okay. We were talking, and we were going to get another round of drinks. Ah, we—me and Macie, we went to the girls’ room. There wasn’t a big line, so that was good. And we talked
about going for dinner, and how I could ask Bren up to my place if he walked me home.”

The fingers on the sheet moved faster, faster, keeping time with her accelerating breaths. “I wasn’t sure about doing that, but Macie was, and she got, well, a little bit bitchy about it. It’s not like her to get bitchy. But she said she was getting a headache. And went back up. Her head must’ve hurt because she kind of shoved this guy out of her way. I think it was a guy. He’d bumped into her on the way down to the girls’ room.”

“The same guy?” Eve prompted.

“I think. I don’t know. I got scared when she shoved him, really shoved him. Everything was too loud, too bright, and she was being so mean. And then we sat back down, and I thought I would see if I had a blocker, but she and Travis started yelling at each other. They hardly ever fight, and they never yell, and my head hurt, too. They were yelling, and my head hurt, and Bren looked mad. Mean. I don’t know. Then it all went crazy.”