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"No point in lying to protect the Bransons. He's dead, and she's gone. Who gave you the photographs of J. C., Lisbeth? Who gave them to you and told you that he was cheating on you?"
"I saw the pictures. I saw them with my own eyes. He was with that blond bitch."
"Who gave them to you?"
"Clarissa." She blinked once, twice, and tears started to stream. "She brought them to me, and she was crying. She said how sorry she was, how sorry. She begged me not to tell anyone she'd given them to me."
"How did she get them?"
"I never asked. I just looked at them, and I went crazy. She told me it had been going on for months, and she couldn't pretend not to know any longer. She couldn't stand to see me hurt and J. C. ruin his life over some cheap lay. She knew how jealous I was, she knew. When I got to his house, he denied it. He told me I was crazy, there wasn't any blonde. But I'd seen! And the next thing I knew, I was picking up that drill. Oh my God, oh my God. J. C."
She collapsed into the chair, wailing.
"Get her a tranq, Peabody." Eve's voice held no sympathy. "We'll have a car come by and pick her up. When she's pulled it together, McNab can take a statement."
• • •
"I know we're pressed for time." Peabody jumped in the car again. "But I feel like I'm three steps behind."
"Branson's connected to Cassandra. Clarissa's connected to Branson, Zeke's connected to Clarissa. We're led to believe that both the Branson brothers meet with untimely and violent ends within a week of each other. Meanwhile, the accounts are stripped. Zeke's brought in from clear across the country to work at the Branson house, and within a couple of days, he's tangled with Branson over Clarissa and supposedly killed him. But Clarissa, out of her fear and concern for Zeke, loses the body.
"That's the part that hung me up all along, but a guy tells you he kills another guy, you generally go with it. Still we've got no body, and there's nothing on the droid playback to indicate he was instructed to weigh it down. The search team's sensors don't pick another up, it doesn't bob up and float, but we know it got tossed in the river."
"Droids don't float, and the sensors are looking for flesh, blood, and bone."
"See, you're catching up. Now, we connect those dots. Zeke killed himself a droid. We have Lisbeth's statement that there were never any beatings, no rapes, and odds are she'd have known if there were. Through J. C., if not on her own. We have the coincidence that Zeke just happened to be in the right place at the right time to hear beatings and rapes, then Clarissa turns to him for help. She's already scoped him; she knows the kind of man he is, and very likely made the subtle kind of play for him he wouldn't see as a come-on."
"He doesn't understand women," Peabody murmured. "He's practically still a kid."
"He wouldn't understand this one if he'd hit the century mark. She trolled for him and reeled him in. She and Branson got rid of the brother, which leads me to believe he wasn't involved in Cassandra. He was weight, so they ditched him. I'm primary on the case, and they don't want me looking too hard, having just the kind of talk with Lisbeth I just finished having, so they tag me on the bombings. Blowing up the city's going to pull my attention away from a plea bargain I know I can't change."
"Whoever had pulled J. C. Branson's homicide would have been tagged? They moved to you because of that?" Peabody considered. "That was their big mistake."
"That was excellent sucking up, Peabody. Smooth, subtle."
"I've been practicing."
"The politics are more smoke—pull the attention away, waste our time. It's the money they're after and the sheer delight in destroying."
"But they have money."
"More's better, especially if you grew up on the run, hiding out, maybe scraping for the good life. What do you want to bet Clarissa Branson spent her formative years in Apollo?"
"That's a big leap, Lieutenant."
"'We are loyal,'" Eve quoted as she zipped through the security gate to the parking area under Roarke's midtown offices.
Peabody gawked a little when they moved into the private elevator, but before she could comment, Eve's 'link beeped.
"Lieutenant Dallas? Captain Sully, Boston PD. The patrols just reported in from the Rowan address. Monica Rowan has been the victim of what appears to be a bungled B and E. She's dead."
"Damn it. I'll need a full report on that, priority level, Captain."
"I'll get you as much as I can as quick as I can. Sorry we can't be of more help."
"So am I," Eve murmured as she ended the call. "Goddamn it, I should've put a wall around her."
"How could you know?"
