The In Death Collection Books 6-10 - J. D. Robb [122]
Peabody looked over Eve’s shoulder to where Summerset stood, hands at his sides, watching Roarke from the far end of the tank. “What are you going to do?”
“My job. You do yours. I want this scene secured and a sweep team ordered. Do you have a field kit with you?”
“I don’t have a detective kit, just my street and scene bag.”
“I’ll use that.” She took the bag Peabody offered. “Get started,” she ordered, then signaled the emergency medical team that rushed in. “Inside the tank. Drowning victim, no pulse. CPR in progress for approximately ten minutes.”
She turned away, knowing there was nothing more she could do there. Water squelched in her boots, dripped from her hair and face as she walked over to Summerset. Because her leather jacket weighed on her like a stone, she stripped it off and slammed it on the table.
“Goddamn it, Summerset, you’re under arrest. Suspicion of attempted murder. You have the right to—”
“He was alive when I got here. I’m almost sure he was alive.” His voice sounded thin and thoughtful. Eve recognized the symptoms of shock in it, and in his glassy eyes. “I thought I saw him move.”
“You’d be smart to wait until I’ve told you your rights and obligations before you make any statement.” She lowered her voice. “You’d be real smart to say nothing, not a fucking thing, until Roarke rounds you up his fancy lawyers. Now be smart and shut up.”
But he refused the lawyers. When Eve walked into the interview room where he was being guarded by a uniform, Summerset sat stiffly and continued to stare straight ahead.
“I won’t need you,” she told the guard. She came around the table and sat when the guard left the room. She’d taken time to change into dry clothes, warm up her system with coffee; and she had checked with the medical team that had brought the man identified as Patrick Murray back to life, and the doctors who were fighting to keep him that way.
“It’s still attempted murder,” she said conversationally. “They brought Murray back from the dead, but he’s in a coma, and if he makes it he may be brain damaged.”
“Murray?”
“Patrick Murray, another Dublin boy.”
“I don’t remember a Patrick Murray.” His bony fingers moved through his disordered hair. His eyes looked blindly around the room. “I would—I would like some water.”
“Sure, fine.” She rose to fill a pitcher. “Why aren’t you letting Roarke set up the lawyers?”
“This isn’t his doing. And I have nothing to hide.”
“You’re an idiot.” She slammed the pitcher in front of him. “You don’t know how bad it can be once I turn the recorder on and start on you. You were at the scene of an attempted murder, caught by the primary investigator climbing out—”
“In,” he snapped. Her tone had torn away the mists that kept closing in on his mind. “I was going into the tank.”
“You’re going to have to prove that. I’m the first one you’re going to have to convince.” She raked both hands through her hair in a gesture of fatigue and frustration that made Summerset frown. Her eyes, he noted, were reddened from the water, and deeply shadowed.
“I can’t hold back with you this time,” she warned him.
“I expect nothing from you.”
“Good. Then we start even. Engage recorder. Interview with subject Summerset, Lawrence Charles, in the matter of the attempted murder of Patrick Murray on this date. Interview conducted by primary, Dallas, Lieutenant Eve. Commence oh eight fifteen. Subject has been Mirandized and has waived counsel and representation at this time. Is that correct?”
“That is correct.”
“What were you doing in the Mermaid Club at six-thirty in the morning?”
“I received a transmission at about six-fifteen. The caller didn’t identify himself. He told me to go there, immediately and alone.”
“And you always go to sex clubs when some anonymous guy calls you up at dawn and tells you to?”
Summerset sent her a withering look, which cheered her