Innocent in Death Read online

  “Get it, then. Take it away. Take it away and leave me alone.”

  They searched. They went over every inch of the bedroom, the playroom. They turned out drawers, emptied the closet, searched among the toys, the art supplies.

  “Maybe she hid it in another part of the house,” Peabody suggested.

  “Or has it with her. Either way, we’ll get it. The fact that it exists has some weight. We need to interview the aunt, and get some eyes on the kid right away. If she’s got it, I don’t want her mother shifting her feet, and getting word to the kid we’re looking for it. Let’s—hell.”

  She broke off to pull out her communicator. “Dallas.”

  “Lieutenant, report to my office. Immediately.”

  “Sir, I’m at this moment in the process of gathering evidence I believe will lead to an arrest on the Foster and Williams investigations.”

  “I want you in my office, Lieutenant Dallas, before you take any further steps. Is that clear?”

  “Sir, it’s clear. I’m on my way. Fuck,” she added after she’d ended the transmission. She glanced at her wrist unit, calculated. “Museum tour. Met. Get there, shadow the suspect.”

  “But Dallas, the commander ordered—”

  “Me. He didn’t say anything about you. I want you to locate the suspect and keep her under surveillance. Keep me apprised. Don’t let her make you, Peabody.”

  “Well, Jesus, she’s ten. I think I can shadow a tweener without being made.”

  “This tweener is the prime suspect in two homicides, and very possibly guilty of fratricide as well. You’re not shadowing a kid, Peabody, and don’t forget it.”

  She dumped Peabody at the elegant entrance of the Metropolitan Museum, then headed downtown. As she drove, she contacted one Quella Harmon in Taos, New Mexico.

  Even as Peabody climbed the long sweep of steps, she wondered how the hell she was supposed to find one kid and her Irish au pair in the vast cathedral to art.

  And as she wondered, Cora bundled Rayleen into a cab on Eighty-first Street.

  “But Mom’s supposed to meet us, and take me to lunch.”

  “Well, she’s rung me up, hasn’t she, and said she needs you home straightaway. So home we go, Ray darling.”

  Rayleen gave a windy sigh, and clutched her pretty pink fur purse.

  Both Mira and Whitney were waiting for her, and both looked grim.

  “Sit down, Lieutenant.”

  With no choice, Eve sat.

  “Your partner?”

  “She’s in the field, sir.”

  Whitney’s lips tightened. “I considered it understood I wanted both of you here, and neither of you in the field at this time.”

  “I apologize for the misunderstanding, Commander.”

  “Don’t bullshit me, Dallas, I’m not in the mood. I’ve read your report, and it’s my opinion that you’re putting this investigation, and this department, in a very tenuous position.”

  “I disagree, respectfully. Sir.”

  “You’re pursuing an avenue that is fraught with land mines, and pursuing it without any solid physical evidence, any solid facts.”

  “Again, sir, I disagree. The suspect—”

  “The child,” he corrected.

  “The suspect is a minor. That doesn’t preclude her from being capable of murder. Children have been known to kill, and to kill with malice. With intent, even with glee.”

  Whitney laid the palms of his hands on his desk. “This girl is the daughter of one of the city’s most prominent defense attorneys. She is well educated, she is the product of a privileged home, and even according to your own report has never been involved in any crime, much less one of violence. Has never been treated for any emotional or mental instability. Dr. Mira?”

  “Children do commit violent acts,” Mira began. “And while there are certainly cases where a child of this age, even younger, has killed, such cases usually involve other children. Such cases are most generally preceded by smaller acts of violence. On pets, for instance. Rayleen Straffo’s profile doesn’t indicate any predilection for violence.”

  Eve had expected barriers to be erected, but it didn’t stop the frustration. “So because her father’s rich and she aces it in school and doesn’t kick little puppies, I should step back from what I know.”

  “What do you know?” Whitney interrupted. “You know that this girl attended a school where two teachers were murdered. So did over a hundred other children. You know that her mother had admitted to having a brief affair with the second victim.”

  Eve got to her feet; she couldn’t handle this sitting down. “I know that the suspect found the first victim, that she had opportunity in both cases, I know that she had the means. I’ve spoken with her aunt, and have learned that the suspect had access to castor beans, and was showed how the oil was made from them. I know that she did, in fact, have a diary that she removed from the penthouse before the search, giving same to a friend to hold until yesterday.”

  Whitney inclined his head. “You have this diary?”

  “I don’t. I believe the suspect has hidden or destroyed it, or is currently keeping it on her person. She removed it because it would incriminate her.”

  “Eve, a great many young girls keep diaries, and consider them sacred and private,” Mira began.

  “She’s not a young girl in anything other than years. I’ve looked at her. I know what she is. You don’t want to look,” she said, whipping back to Whitney. “People don’t want to look at a child, at the innocence of the face and form, and see evil. But that’s what’s in her.”

  “Your opinion, however passionate, isn’t evidence.”

  “If she were ten years older, five years older, you wouldn’t question my opinion. If you can’t trust my instincts and intellect and my skill, let me factor in more data. I killed at eight.”

  “We’re aware of that, Eve,” Mira said gently.

  “And you think I look at her and see myself? That this is some sort of transference?”

  “I know when we spoke at the early stages of this investigation you were troubled. You were upset and very stressed over a personal matter.”

  “Which has nothing to do with this. It may have distracted me, and that’s on me. But it doesn’t apply to my conclusions in this case. You’re not letting me do the job because of this bull.”

  “Careful, Lieutenant,” Whitney warned.

  She was done being careful. “That’s what she’s counting on. That we’ll all be so fucking careful. That we won’t look at her because she’s a nice little girl from a nice family. She killed two people inside of a week. And she’s got me beat, because she killed at seven. Not her father, but her two-year-old brother.”

  Whitney’s eyes narrowed. “You included the information on Trevor Straffo in your earlier reports, and the investigator’s report, the ME’s report, which both concluded accidental death.”

  “They were both wrong. I’ve spoken with Allika Straffo.”

  While Eve fought to make her case and Peabody sat in the Met’s security office scanning the screens for Rayleen, Allika sent Cora away again.

  “It’s your half-day off.”

  “But you don’t look well, missus. I’m happy to stay. I’ll make you some tea.”

  “No. No. It’s just a headache. Rayleen and I will be fine. We’ll be fine. We’ll…we’ll just have some lunch here, then go ahead to the salon.”

  “I’ll put lunch together for you then, and—”

  “We’ll manage, Cora. Go meet your friends.”

  “If you’re sure then. You can ring me back anytime. I’m not doing anything special.”

  “Enjoy yourself. Don’t worry about us.” Allika nearly cracked before she could get Cora out the door. Then she leaned back against it. “Rayleen,” she murmured. “Rayleen.”

  “What’s the matter, Mommy?” Rayleen’s eyes were sharp as lasers. “Why can’t we go to lunch at Zoology? I love seeing the animals.”

  “We ca
n’t. We have to leave. We’re going to take a trip. A trip.”

  “Really.” Now Rayleen brightened. “Where? Where are we going? Will there be a pool?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t think.” How could she think? “We have to go.”

  “You’re not even dressed.”

  “I’m not dressed?” Allika looked down, studying her robe as if she’d never seen it before.

  “Are you sick again? I hate when you’re sick. When’s Daddy coming home?” she asked, already losing interest in her mother. “When are we leaving?”

  “He’s not coming. Just you and me. It’s best. That’s best. We have to pack. They didn’t find it, but they’ll come back again.”

  “Find what?” Now Rayleen’s attention swung back and zeroed in. “Who’ll come back?”

  “They looked.” Allika’s gaze shifted up. “But they didn’t find it. What should I do? What’s best for you?”

  Without a word, Rayleen turned away to walk upstairs. She stood at the doorway of her room, saw that her things were moved. And she understood perfectly.

  She’d imagined something like this. In fact, she’d written what she could do, might need to do, in her diary the night before. Even as she walked down the hall to her parents’ room, her only genuine emotion was a quiet fury that her things had been gone through again, moved around, left untidy.

  She liked her things exact. She expected her personal space to be respected.

  She went into her mother’s drawers where the medications were hidden. As if anyone could actually hide something from her. They were so stupid, really. She slipped the bottle of sleeping pills into her purse along with her diary, then moved to the sitting area and programmed herbal tea.

  Her mother favored ginseng. She programmed it sweet, though her mother rarely took much sweetener.

  Then she dissolved a killing dose of sleeping pills into the sweet, fragrant tea.

  It was all simple, really, and she’d thought about doing this before. Considered it. They would think her mother had self-terminated, out of guilt and despair. They’d think her mother had killed Mr. Foster, Mr. Williams, then hadn’t been able to live with it.

  She knew her mother had had sex with Mr. Williams. She’d confessed it the night before the police had come to search. Rayleen was good at hearing things adults didn’t want her to hear. Her mother and father had talked and talked, and her mother had cried like a baby. Disgusting.

  And her father had forgiven her mother. It had been a mistake, he said. They’d start fresh.

  That had been disgusting, too—just like the sounds they’d made when they had sex after. If anyone lied to her the way her mother had to her father, she’d have made them pay. And pay and pay.

  Actually, that’s what she was doing now, she decided as she set the oversized teacup on a tray. Mommy had to be punished for being bad. And by punishing her, it would all be tidied up again.

  Then it would just be her and Daddy. She’d really be his one and only with Mommy gone.

  She’d have to put her diary in the recycler now, and that made her mad. All because of that mean, nosy Lieutenant Dallas. One day she’d find a way to make her pay for that.

  But for now, it was better to get rid of it.

  Daddy would buy her a brand-new one.

  “Rayleen.” Allika came to the doorway. “What are you doing?”

  “I think you should rest, Mommy. Look, I made you tea. Ginseng because you like it best. I’m going to take good care of you.”

  Allika looked at the cup on the tray, on the bed. Everything inside her went weak. “Rayleen.”

  “You’re tired and you have a headache.” Rayleen folded down the duvet, the sheets, plumped the pillows. “I’m going to make it all better. I’m going to sit with you while you rest. We girls have to take care of each other, don’t we?”

  Rayleen turned with a bright, bright smile.

  And maybe it was best, Allika thought as she moved like a sleepwalker to the bed. Maybe it was the only way. She let Rayleen smooth out the sheets, let her place the tray, even lift the cup.

  “I love you,” Allika said.

  “I love you, Mommy. Now drink your tea, and everything will be better.”

  With her eyes on her daughter’s, Allika drank.

  20

  WHITNEY LISTENED, AND HE ABSORBED. HIS HANDS, which had been very still throughout his questioning of his lieutenant, began to tap fingers on the edge of his desk. “The mother suspects her daughter caused the boy to fall.”

  “The mother knows her daughter caused the boy to fall,” Eve insisted. “She may have convinced herself, or tried to convince herself, it was an accident. Tried to patch her life back together, suffering from periodic bouts of depression and anxiety. In her gut she knows exactly what I know. It was no accident.”

  “No one witnessed the fall.” But Whitney’s face was stony, his eyes dark and deep.

  “Dr. Mira, in your opinion, given the scenario, is it natural for a girl to step over or around her younger brother’s dead body, while her parents are hysterical, to play with a toy?”

  “That’s a broad question. The child may have been in shock or denial.”

  “She was wearing the slippers. Ones she had to go downstairs to get, before she woke her parents.”

  “Yes.”

  “According to the investigator’s report on the death of Straffo, he died just after four A.M. on the morning of December twenty-fifth,” Eve continued. “Statements given by both parents claim they were up, setting up the gifts, filling the stockings until about two-thirty. At which time, they had a glass of wine, then went upstairs, checking on both children before they retired, at around three. Rayleen woke them at five.”

  For a moment Mira thought of the times she and Dennis had been up until the early hours of Christmas morning, putting everything together while their children slept. And how they’d snatched a few hours of exhausted sleep before the kids woke and rushed into the bedroom.

  “It would be possible that the girl snuck down between the times her parents went to bed and her brother got up. But the slippers are an oddity,” Mira agreed. “I agree, it seems strange for a child of that age to sneak down, put on slippers, then go back to bed for nearly two hours.”

  “Because she didn’t,” Eve said flatly. “She got up—and I’ll guarantee she had an alarm set for it because she’s a planner—fitting your profile—she likes her schedules. She got up, went into her brother’s room. She got him up, told him to be very quiet. When they got to the top of the stairs—which, according to the investigators’ reports, was at the opposite end of the second floor from the master bedroom—she pushed him.”

  That little body flying out, tumbling, tumbling. Breaking.

  “Then she walked down, checked to make sure she’d done a good job of it, before she went in to see what goodies she was getting from Santa. And what sort of things she would enjoy that would have been for her brother.”

  She saw the horror of the picture she was painting play across Mira’s face. “She put the slippers on. She likes things with her name on them. That was a little mistake,” Eve added. “Like mentioning the diary to me. But she couldn’t resist. She probably played awhile. Her parents weren’t going to notice if she’d moved something a little, and she wouldn’t have resisted. It was all hers now.

  “Then she went back up. I wonder if she even noticed her brother’s body at that point. He was no longer an issue.”

  She shifted her gaze to Whitney, noted that his hands had gone still again, and that his face showed nothing. Nothing at all. “She might have tried to go back to sleep for a little while, but it was too hard. All those toys downstairs, and nobody to share them with anymore. So she woke up her parents so she could get back to what she wanted to do.”

  “What you’re describing…” Mira began.

  “Is a sociopath. And that’s exactly what she is. A sociopath with homicidal tendencies, a very keen intellect, and a big-ass c
hunk of narcissism. That’s why she kept the diary. It’s her only way of bragging about what she can do, and get away with doing.”

  “We need the diary.”

  “Yes, sir.” She nodded at Whitney.

  “Why Foster and Williams?”

  “Foster, I don’t know, unless it was for the hell of it. I don’t know,” she said again, “because she doesn’t strike me as a for-the-hell-of-it type. Williams was a very handy and unexpected goat. That’s on me, too. I pushed at him, and she saw the opportunity not only to kill again—because I think this time she got a taste for it—but to hand me a suspect. Either in him or in Mosebly. I wouldn’t doubt she knew something had gone on between them.”

  “Even with the diary, even if it gives chapter and verse, it may be difficult to prove she did this on her own, or at all. Her father will, no doubt, block every step you take from here.”

  “I’ll handle Straffo, sir, and I’ll get Rayleen to confess.”

  “How?” Mira wondered.

  “I’ll make her want to tell me.” Her communicator signaled. “With permission, Commander?” At his nod, she pulled it out of her pocket. “Dallas.”

  “Sir, she left the museum minutes before I got here. I’ve been going over the place with the security cameras, and just now asked them to do a playback of the hour before I arrived. I tagged her. The nanny got a ’link call, then they exited the building on the Eighty-first Street side almost as I was coming in on Fifth.”

  “Her mother. Damn it. Head back to the Straffo apartment. I’m on my way.”

  “I’ll come with you. I may be useful,” Mira insisted.

  “Yes, you may.” Whitney got to his feet. “Lieutenant, I want to know the minute you locate…the suspect. I want to know if and when you find this diary.”

  “Yes, sir. You’re going to have to keep up,” she said to Mira, then moved fast.

  Cora’s conscience pricked her until she got off the subway heading downtown, crossed over, and took the uptown train. It was too early to meet her friends for the vid matinee they’d planned on. And she didn’t really need to browse the shops where she’d just spend money she’d be better off keeping.