Black Notice - Cornwell Patricia (книги онлайн без регистрации txt) 📗

"You know we can get DNA off a beer bottle, right?" Marino was saying to her. "We can get it off a cigarette butt, right? Hell,.ve can get it off a damn pizza crust."

Anderson was slumped on the couch and didn't seem to have much fight left in her.

"It's got nothing to do With…" she started to reply.

"Salem menthol butts in the kitchen trash," he continued his interrogation. `,`Believe that's what you smoke? And yeah. It does have to do with it, Anderson. Because I believe you was.here last night not long before Bray was murdered. And I also believe she didn't struggle, maybe even knew the person who beat the shit out уf her back in the bedroom."

Marino didn't believe for a nanosecond that Anderson had murdered Bray.

"What happened?" he asked. "She tease you until you couldn't take it no more?"

I thought of the sexy satin blouse and lacy lingerie Bray had been wearing.

"She eat a little pizza with you and tell you to go on home like you was nothing to her? She dis you for the last time last night?" Marino asked.

Anderson silently stared down at her motionless hands. She kept licking her lips, trying not to cry.

"I mean, it would be understandable. All of us can only take so much, isn't that right, Doc? Like when someone's fucking around with your career, just as an example. But we'll get to that part a little later."

He leaned forward in his antique chair, big hands on his big knees until Anderson's bloodshot eyes lifted and met his.

"You got any idea how much trouble you're in?" he said to her.

Her hand shook as she pushed back her hair.

"I was here early last night." She spoke in a flat, depressed voice. "I dropped by and we ordered pizza."

"This a habit of yours?" Marino asked. "To drop by? Were you invited?"

"I would come over here. Sometimes I dropped by," she said.

"Sometimes you dropped by unannounced. That's what you're saying."

She nodded, wetting her lips again.

"Did you do that last night?"

Anderson had to think. I could see yet one more lie condensing like a cloud in her eyes. Marino leaned back in his chair.

"Damn, this is uncomfortable." He rolled his shoulders. "Like sitting in a tomb. I think it might be a good idea to tell the truth, don't you? 'Cause guess what? I'm going to find out one way or other, and you lie to me, I'll bust your chops so bad you'll eat cockroaches in prison. Don't think we don't know about you and that goddamn rental car sitting out there."

"There's nothing unusual about a detective having a rental car." She fumbled and knew it.

"Sure as hell is if it's following people everywhere," he retorted, and now it was my time to speak.

"You parked it in front of my secretary's apartment," I said. "Or at least somebody in that car did. I've been followed. Rose was followed:'

Anderson didn't speak.

"I don't suppose your e-mail address would happen to be M-A-Y F-L-R." I spelled it out for her.

She blew on her hands to warm them.

"That's right. I forgot," Marino said. "You was born in May. The tenth, in Bristol, Tennessee. I can tell you your Social Security number, address, too, if you want."

"I know all about Chuck," I said to her.

Now she was getting very nervous and scared.

"Fact is," Marino stepped in, "we got of Chuckie-boy on tape stealing prescription drugs from the morgue. You know that?"

She took a deep breath. We really didn't have that on tape yet.

"A lot of money. Enough for him and you and even Brayto have pretty good lives."

"He stole them, not me," Anderson spoke up. "And it wasn't my idea."

"You used to work in vice," Marino replied. "You know where to unload shit like that. I just bet you were the mastermind of the whole fucking thing because as much as I don't like Chuck, he wasn't a drug dealer before you appeared on the scene."

"You were following Rose, following me, to intimidate us," I said.

"My jurisdiction is the city;" she said. "I cruise all over the place. Doesn't mean I have some motive in mind if I'm behind you."

Marino got up and made a rude noise to voice his disgust.

"Come on," he said to her. "Why don't we just go on back to Bray's bedroom. Since you're such a good detec-tive, maybe you can look at the blood and brains everywhere and tell me what you think happened. Since you weren't following no one and the drug dealing wasn't your fault, may as well get back to work and help me out here, Detective Anderson."

Her face got pale. Terror leapt through her eyes like scattering deer.

"What?" Marino sat next to her on the couch. "You got a problem with that? That mean you don't want to go to the morgue and watch the autopsy, either? Not eager to do yourjob?"

He shrugged and got up again, pacing, shaking his head.

"I tell you, it's not for weak stomachs, that's for sure. Her face looks like hamburger…"

"Stop it!" `And her breasts are chewed up so bad…"

Anderson's eyes filled with tears and she covered her face in her hands.

"Like somebody wasn't getting their desires satisfied and just exploded in this sexual rage. A real lust-hate thing. And doing that to someone's face is usually pretty personal: ' "Stop it!" Anderson screamed.

Marino got quiet, staring at her in a studious way as if she were a math problem written on a chalkboard.

"Detective Anderson," I said. "What was Deputy Chief Bray wearing when you came over last night?"

"A light green blouse. Sort of satiny," her voice trembled and caught. "Black corduroys."

"Shoes and socks?"

"Ankle boots. Black. And black socks."

"Jewelry?"

"A ring and a watch."

"What about underwear, a bra?"

She looked at me and her nose was running and she talked as if she had a cold.

"It's important I know these things," I said.

"It's true about Chuck;" she said instead. "But it wasn't my idea. It was hers."

"Bray's?" I followed where she was going.

"She took me out of vice and put me in homicide. She wanted you a million miles out of the way," she said to Marino. "She's been making money off of pills and I don't. know what all else for a long time, and she took a lot of pills, too, and she wanted you gone."

She returned her attention to me and wiped her nose уn the back of her hand. I dug in my satchel and handed her tissues.

"She wanted you gone, too," she said.

"'That's been rather obvious," I replied, and it didn't seem possible that this person we were talking about was the mauled remains I had examined moments earlier just rooms away in the back of this house."I know she had on a bra," Anderson then said. "She used to always wear things. Open neck or top buttons undone. And she would lean over so you could see down her shirt. She did it all the time, even at work, because she liked the reaction she got"

"What reaction?" Marino asked.

"Well, people definitely reacted. And skirts with slits that looked normal unless you were sitting in her office with her and she'd cross her legs in certain ways… I told her she shouldn't dress like that."

"What reaction?" Marino asked again.

"I told her all the time she shouldn't dress that way."

"Takes a lot of nerve for a lowly detective to tell a deputy chief how to dress."

"I didn't think officers should see her like that, look at her like that."

"Made you a little jealous, maybe?"

She didn't answer.

"And I bet she knew it made you jealous, made you really squirm, just fucking miserable and mad, right? Bray got off on it. She's the type who would. Wind you up and then take your battery out so what you want don't go nowhere."

"She had on a black -bra," Anderson said to me. "It had lace around the top. I don't know what else she had on."

"She used the hell out of you, didn't she?" Marino said. "Made you her drug mule, gofer, little Cinderella on the hearth. What else she ask you to do?"