Festive in Death (26 page)

“Dallas.” McNab came in, passed her a disc. “Got it copied. You can see the vic come to the door. You can’t see who let her in. You’ll see for yourself, but to my eye she looked upset, worried. Rushed in, talking fast.”

“No audio?”

“No, no audio.”

Her eyes on Catiana, Eve slipped the disc into her pocket.

If you knew something,
anything
why did you come here? Why didn’t you come to me?

But it was too late for that question, she thought.

The burly SUV proved a good choice since McNab and Peabody needed to pile in. Eve ignored McNab as he played with controls and options in the back while she worked on her PPC.

Catiana had parents—divorced, mother remarried, living in Brooklyn. Father also remarried, living in Phoenix, Arizona. One sibling, a sister, married, two children, in New Rochelle.

She’d need to go to Brooklyn, do the notification. But that misery would come after she’d checked on Quigley. She needed to . . . Was that chocolate she smelled?

She shifted around in her seat, narrowed her eyes at Peabody. “What’s that on your upper lip, Detective?”

Hastily Peabody swiped at it. “Ah, um. A little whipped cream. It’s hot chocolate. It’s
real
hot chocolate. I couldn’t help it. McNab did it.”

Unabashed, McNab grinned at her. “Mini AutoChef back here has
a full beverage menu. Peabody’s been jonesing for hot chocolate. Want some?”

Yes, Eve thought, but said: “No.”

“Iced squared accessories back here,” he said to Roarke. “The total.”

“We do what we can,” Roarke responded.

“You got your entertainment with vid, straight screen, tunes, books, full D and C capabilities, mapping—solo, duet, or full vehicle modes. Then there’s—”

“He probably knows what’s loaded in this thing,” Eve interrupted.

“Add in the eats and drinks, we could motor to Utah.”

“Next time we plan to go to Utah, I’ll let you know. Meanwhile, we’re a little preoccupied here with murder.”

“Yeah, about that. Got the security disc from the crime scene on here.” His green eyes shifted from hers down to the screen while he took a contented glug of his own hot chocolate. “We might be able to enhance and analyze the shadow of whoever opened the door for the vic. It’s a long shot, but you gotta try it. Lipreading program’s running on the vic. We’ve got a better chance at that, but her face angles away from the cam, and she puts her hand over her mouth once so it’s going to be jumpy.”

Sometimes, Eve thought, she forgot he wasn’t an idiot. “Good. Stay on it. Here’s the play,” she said to Peabody. “We talk to Quigley, if possible, get the details. Odds are slim she’d try to protect Copley at this point, but if she tries, we could run the nine-one-one call for her, push it. DB, spouse in the hospital, no break-in, a fleet of lawyers isn’t going to loosen the noose.”

She glanced at McNab. “If we get lucky with the shadow ID, all the better. Confirm Copley opened the door to the vic, it throws out
his claim of being upstairs when this went down. In addition, we tie him into Ziegler—that’ll take more, but we’re going to do it. With Quigley’s statement, we can let him sweat. The victim’s mother lives in Brooklyn. We have to go, notify her.”

“Man, two days—less—before Christmas. It’s always hard, but this is just harder.”

“She has a husband and a stepson living at home, another daughter in New York. That’ll help some. The vic may have talked to her about Ziegler, about Copley. We have to get whatever we can. We’ll need to talk to the Schuberts again, asap, and I want to check in at the morgue, give an official COD, get Morris’s—I’ve already requested him—take on her.”

“That’s a long time sweating,” Peabody said as Roarke worked through the parking garage at the hospital. “A long time for him to come up with a story, for the lawyers to shine it up.”

“It’s not going to shine, not when his wife tells us he attacked her. Not when she gives us a statement from her hospital bed. I get in the box with him, he’s going to break. I’m going to break him.”

She would damn well break him, Eve thought as they piled out, walked to the hospital’s main entrance.

“Lipreading doesn’t give us much, Dallas.” McNab held up his PPC. “It has her saying:
Need to talk
. Break.
Come in
. Break.
I remembered
. And that’s it. Vic moved into the house, out of range.”

“The shadow?”

“Working it, but hell, Dallas, there isn’t much there.”

“Play it out,” she told him.

She crossed the colorful lobby with its busy food court, passed a group of kids in school uniforms singing carols in front of a big tree, and arrowed in on a security guard.

“NYPSD.” She held up her badge. “Here’s what I need you to do,
and fast. I need the floor, the room, and the doctor in charge of Quigley, Natasha, brought in earlier this evening via ambulance, with severe head trauma.”

“I’m not supposed to access patient information without my supervisor’s authorization.”

“Right now, I’m your supervisor. Quigley, Natasha. Now. If she dies before I get to her, I’m coming back for you.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

He scrambled off.

“I hate that ‘ma’am’ thing, but okay.”

“Between McNab and me,” Roarke commented, “we could have hacked that data for you in about the same amount of time.”

“Would’ve been fun, too,” McNab said wistfully.

“Next time.” Eve met the security guard halfway.

“She’s on six. I meant to say they’ll bring her to six. She’s still in surgery. Dr. Campo’s in charge.”

“Good. Thanks.”

She zipped straight for the elevators. “Still in surgery, damn it. It’s not likely we’re going to be able to interview her anytime soon,” she said as the got on. “We’ll push on the nursing staff to give us a more detailed update, go from there.”

The sixth-floor elevator opened into yet another lobby—smaller, but all spruced up for the holidays. It held a waiting area, Vending, and a scattering of people sitting anxiously in miserable-looking chairs.

The woman at the desk beamed a bright smile that dimmed when Eve badged her. “I need data on Quigley, Natasha. A Dr. Campo’s operating on her.”

“The Patient Privacy Act—”

“Is trumped.” Eve slapped her badge on the counter. “Quigley is
the victim of an assault. I have a suspect in custody who killed another woman and attempted to kill Quigley. I need her status, and I need it now.”

“I need to check your identification, and the identifications of those with you. Once verified, I can pass you through to the nursing station. The head nurse, Janis Vick, would be able to give you the information available to her.”

“Do it.”

While she did, Roarke wandered over to Vending. He knew the preferences, and offered Peabody and McNab fizzies, handed Eve a Pepsi.

Before she could crack it open, the woman at the desk shifted back. “You’re verified. Straight through the double doors.”

They buzzed, clicked, slowly swung open.

More decorations, brighter lights, and the sound of rubber soles padding on tile. Eve smelled hospital, a scent that always hit the center of her gut. Sickness, antiseptics, heavy cleaners—and a metallic underpinning she thought of as fear.

She moved to the wide semicircle of counter where some of the staff—all wearing a variation of a bright-colored tunic she supposed was meant to be cheerful—worked on ’links or comps.

“Janis Vick.”

A woman on a comp held up a finger. She had brutally short stone-gray hair with a snaking blue streak. Rising, she came around the counter.

“Lieutenant Dallas? You want the status of Natasha Quigley. She’s still in surgery.”

“That much I know.”

“I can tell you there were some complications. Her BP dropped, and at one point her heart stopped. Dr. Campo found a second,
smaller bleed. They were able to stabilize the patient while Dr. Campo closed the bleeds. While the patient has been downgraded to critical, the head surgical nurse reports the patient is, as I said, stabilized at this time.”

“How much longer will she be in there?”

“I can’t tell you that, but from what I can gather, the surgery should be done within the hour. From there, the patient will be monitored in Recovery. It could be two hours, or several hours, before she’s able to talk to you.”

“What are her chances? You’re not head nurse on the surgical floor for nothing,” Eve pushed when Vick hesitated. “You have a gauge.”

“I can tell you, the patient’s lucky. Dr. Campo, in my opinion, is the best neurosurgeon we have. With her performing the surgery, I’d give the patient strong odds. If you give me your contact information, I can see you’re notified when she’s in Recovery.”

The best she’d get, Eve determined. They couldn’t wait hours to move on the rest.

“You want to start on Copley,” Peabody said as they rode down to the lobby again. “I can do the notification. I can handle it,” she added when Eve glanced at her. “You can be working on Copley while we—McNab and me—head to Brooklyn, take care of that.”

Eve cracked the soft drink tube, considered it. “It’ll save time. I’ll take the first pass at him while you notify next of kin. If I don’t crack him, first pass, we’ll try for Quigley again, take him on together. You need to get the mother, and have her pull in the sister so you can work her. Get them to tell you anything, I mean anything, the vic might have said about Ziegler, about Copley, Quigley. Get a sense of the connections. Everything plays now.”

“I know.”

“Do you want transpo?”

“Be nice,” Peabody said, then sighed. “But the subway’s probably quicker.”

“Contact me once you have it done,” Eve ordered, and parted ways. “I don’t like dumping the notification on her. She’ll carry it longer than I would.”

“I doubt that,” Roarke said. “You carry them all.”

Claiming otherwise would be a lie, she admitted, and why bother. “I’ll waste my time saying this again, but you could go home.”

“It’s never less than entertaining, watching you interrogate a suspect.”

“Whatever floats.” She pulled out her ’link as he drove, contacted Mira. “Sorry to disturb you at home,” she began, “but you said you were interested in observing when I had Copley in the box.”

After making arrangements with Mira she contacted Central to make certain Copley was where she wanted him.

“Interview B,” she said when Roarke drove into Central’s garage. “Reo’s heading in. He used his one contact for his lawyer. Didn’t use it to check on his wife. The lawyer’s with him, making lawyerly noises.”

“One expects no less.”

Eve eyed the elevator with distrust, but got on. “The last time I was on this, Drunk Santa let loose a nuclear fart while showing me his grimy little dick.”

“You lead such a colorful life.”

“I’m pretty sure he puked right after I got off, because I heard they had to shut down this car for two hours.” She sniffed cautiously. “You can still sort of smell the detox.”

“We can hope this ride proves less eventful.”

As it did, she peeled off straight to her office. “I’m going to put a
file together—DB, the first-on-scene’s record of Quigley, the scene itself, the nine-one-one.”

“And Ziegler?”

“Second file. I may hold that back, depending. He doesn’t know his wife’s status, and I can use that. His lawyer can’t access it—Patient Privacy Act—so they don’t know I haven’t interviewed her.”

“You’ll lie.”

“Fortunately, I can lie my ass off.” She checked the time. “He’s had a good long sweat, the lawyer’s told him to keep it zipped, but he won’t.”

“He’s . . . excitable.” Roarke looked over at her. “You’ll use that.”

“Damn straight. He doesn’t know what the hell’s going on regarding Quigley. He’ll have a story though, and he’ll want to tell it.”

“And lawyer or not, you’ll make sure he does.”

“That’s the plan.” She picked up the files. “If you get bored in Observation, I’ll find you. If you want to go home, just go.”

He put his hands on her shoulders, kissed her. “I’ll be here.”

Armed with her files, she walked to Interview B, and went in.

“Dallas, Lieutenant Eve, entering Interview with Copley, John Jake, regarding case files H-28901 and H-28902. Mr. Copley has exercised his right to legal representation.”

“Edie McAllister with Silbert, Crosby, and McAllister, representing Mr. Copley.”

“So noted.”

“As Mr. Copley’s legal counsel I demand his immediate release.” She clipped the words out, all confident, outraged lawyer. “He’s been held here for nearly three hours. He’s been prevented from accompanying his injured wife to the hospital. He’s been prevented from contacting the hospital to learn his wife’s condition. This extreme hardship is—”

“You are aware evidence strongly indicates Mr. Copley is responsible for his wife’s injuries?”

“That’s a
lie!
” Copley banged his fist on the table, rattling the chains that secured him.

“JJ.” The lawyer, a swirly-haired blonde in potent red, laid a hand on his. “You have no tangible evidence, and, in fact, have Mr. Copley’s own account that he found his wife unconscious.
We
strongly believe, and evidence will show, that Catiana Dubois assaulted Ms. Quigley, was killed during the struggle.”

“If you’re thinking of that as your opening statement at the trial, it’s not going to get you far. Catiana Dubois came to your residence—your own security disc clearly shows this, and shows she was upset at this time. You let her in, you argued. You’ve got an impressive temper, Copley, which I can testify to personally. You pushed her. She fell, striking her head on the edge of the marble hearth in your living area.”