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Vendetta in Death

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“Kindness isn’t a job, Eve, it’s a choice.” - Eloise Callahan, Vendetta in Death[1]

Plot Summary[]

Lieutenant Eve Dallas must keep the predator from becoming the prey in Vendetta in Death, the newest thriller from the #1 New York Times bestselling author J.D. Robb.

She calls herself Lady Justice. And once she has chosen a man as her target, she turns herself into a tall blonde or a curvaceous redhead, makes herself as alluring and seductive as possible to them. Once they are in her grasp, they are powerless.

The first victim is wealthy businessman Nigel McEnroy. His company’s human resources department has already paid out settlements to a couple of his young victims—but they don’t know that his crimes go far beyond workplace harassment. Lady Justice knows. And in one shocking night of brutality, she makes him pay a much steeper price.

Now Eve Dallas and her husband, Roarke, are combing through the evidence of McEnroy’s secret life. His compulsive need to record his misdeeds provides them with a wide range of suspects, but the true identity of Lady Justice remains elusive. It’s a challenging case, made even more difficult by McEnroy’s widow, who reacts to the investigation with fury, denial, and threats. Meanwhile, Lady Justice’s criminal crusade is escalating rapidly, and if Eve can’t stop this vigilante, there’s no telling how much blood may be spilled…

Spoiler warning!
This article contains plot details about an upcoming episode.

Timeline[]

Story Date: April 11-14, 2061[2]

Day 1 – April 11, 2061[]

Chapter 1[]

  • “He needed killing. She’d researched, studied, planned the who, when, how, and why for more than a year, and had chosen Nigel B. McEnroy to be the first.” The CEO of Perfect Placement was scrupulous and ethical in business, but a lying, cheating adulterer and a serial rapist in his private life. He liked redheads with large breasts, and often tipped date-rape drugs into his chosen prey’s drink to ensure cooperation. He also roofied a potential candidate for a position that he gave to a male anyway. She takes a final look at herself in the mirror, with her bold red wig, dyed green eyes, temporary fake boobs, and careful makeup. She has Wilford, her droid, drive her to a club called This Place while her grandmother sleeps, aided by a sleep soother in her brandy. April 11, 2061 is the day that marked the rise of Lady Justice.
  • Nigel was on the prowl at This Place, with his wife and daughters away for spring break and a full week on his own. “Lady Justice” bumps him and, speaking French, picks him up. He buys her a drink, which she doctors after dropping her purse so he is bent over retrieving it. He starts feeling light-headed, but finishes his drink and then leaves with her.

Day 2 – April 12, 2061[]

Chapter 1 (Continued)[]

  • He woke with his head banging and throat burning dry, naked with hands cuffed over his head to a chain hanging from the ceiling. He slowly remembers the Frenchwoman and realizes he’s been drugged and kidnapped. He sees Lady Justice in a silver mask and costume with the letters LJ emblazoned on her black leather breastplate. He asks what she wants and she tells him “my many moments of pleasure” before tapping an electric prod an inch above his penis and declaring herself to be Lady Justice: “Nigel B. McEnroy, this is your time of reckoning.”
  • She works him over, saying the names of his victims and shocking him each time. After a while she revived him and started again. He begged and cursed, claiming he never hurt anyone and he loves his wife but needs more, and yes, he drugged women, but not always, and yes, he used his position to intimidate and pressure women who wanted work into sex, but he has needs. She shatters his cheekbone and tells him “Justice will be served,” castrating him to finish up.
  • His naked body was left in front of his apartment building with a poem signed “Lady Justice” and minus the genitalia. A neighbor, Tisha Feinstein, found him when she came back from a bachelorette party. Her fiancé, Clipper Vance, called it in. Neither of them knew McEnroy, but they’d only lived in the building for two and a half months. Lieutenant Eve Dallas and her partner, Detective Delia Peabody, don’t get any other info from the wits, and proceed to the vic’s apartment.

Chapter 2[]

  • The house droid tells them Mrs. McEnroy and the children are out of town on holiday and not expected back for five more days, and Mr. McEnroy hasn’t returned from an engagement. Eve tells him Mr. McEnroy won’t be returning from his engagement since he’s on his way to the morgue. The droid provides details of the clothing McEnroy was wearing when he left and contact information for the rest of the family, who are in Tahiti as of two days ago. Peabody confirms the clothing and departure time on the security feed.
  • The master bedroom has an all-directional vid camera on a tripod in the center of the room and the sheets are freshly laundered, which the droid confirms is done daily when Mr. McEnroy is alone in residence, and twice weekly otherwise. Peabody starts checking the closet while Eve notifies Mrs. McEnroy. The daughters’ tutor, Frances Early, is traveling with them, and after Geena McEnroy breaks into tears, assures Eve they will come back immediately and Geena will have steadied up by then, “for the girls.”
  • There’s nothing else of note in the bedroom, and Eve hits the home office, where everything is locked and/or passcoded. She uses a tool from Roarke to bypass the lock in the closet, which contains memo cubes, discs, a case for the camera, and a locked cabinet. Eve uses lock picks to open it, revealing the motherlode of sex toys: padded cuffs, vibrators, oils and lotions, cock rings, nipple clamps, ticklers, silk cords, blindfolds, condoms, Stay Up, feathers, and gels. Also present are bottles labeled Rohypnol, Rabbit, and Whore – travel vials for when he goes clubbing.
  • She and Peabody leave McNab and the sweepers to the electronics and cleanup and visit McEnroy’s admin, Lance Po. He and his husband, Westley Schupp, are huge fans of the Icove book, the vid, and Eve and Roarke in general, so they think their friend is punking them until he opens the door. When Eve tells them there were indications that the murderer was female or represents females Mr. McEnroy may have “misused” Po and Wes exchange knowing looks.

Chapter 3[]

  • Eve asks them why that’s not surprising to them and Wes says McEnroy came off like a player and Lance knows he hit on a couple of lower-level staff, one of whom complained to HR and then was gone. He thinks she was paid off and Sylvia Brant, who runs the place, reamed McEnroy out over it about a year ago, after which he stopped fishing in the company pool. Po also said McEnroy came in a lot of mornings with an I-got-laid look on him, even when his wife and family weren’t in New York. Po gives Eve the names of some of the clubs McEnroy frequented based on swag he had at the office.
  • Lance and Wes get to live the dream and Peabody’s reality of riding in the DLE when Eve drives them to the Perfect Placement office, located in Roarke’s midtown HQ building. Po tells them the two women were Jasmine Quirk, who quit after three weeks and Leah Lester, who lasted about three months, but didn’t go quietly. Sylvia takes one look at Eve’s badge and says, “Holy crap, somebody killed Nigel.” Between having murder cops at the office and not being able to reach McEnroy that morning, she’s not that surprised and adds the why’s not hard for her to process unless it was an accident or a mugging.
  • Sylvia says Nigel had a lovely, intelligent wife and two beautiful children, a successful business that afforded him the opportunity to live well and travel well, but he couldn’t keep his dick in his pants. If a husband, boyfriend, brother, or father didn’t eventually bash his head in, one of the women he used and abused would, just as she told him not even a year ago. She confirms the talking-to she gave him, and that the company paid $100,000 to each of the women who filed a complaint. It was low but there was no proof of the rapes. Sylvia says she found McEnroy despicable in many ways but her heart breaks for his children.
  • Sylvia provides all the company files, asking them to get warrants to cover their asses, and she will inform the other two partners, neither of whom is in New York. Po gets them his data and Eve goes to work on uncoding McEnroy’s locked drawers and passcoded files. Roarke texts her that he can give her data on McEnroy. McNab checked the apartment security, and reported that McEnroy returned home the night before he was killed with a pair of redheads who looked seriously wasted, and the women left around 4 a.m. still looking that way.
  • McEnroy’s desk drawer has a second layer lock, and as she’s working on it, Roarke comes in. She manages to open it, finding two ’links, a memo book, and a few discs. Roarke tells her PP has had their New York HQ in his building for six years, and are in the first year of their second five-year lease. They always pay rent and fees on time and have opted for the building cleaning service, along with IT and maintenance, but brought in their own decorators. They use the building’s live plant care service, floral company, bakery, and other craft services.
  • Roarke didn’t know McEnroy but knew of him: he enjoyed golf, tennis, boating, and sex. He wasn’t discreet, but since he was almost preternaturally good at matching clients, the less savory business was often overlooked. Eve tells Roarke how he was killed and has him uncode the ‘links and books. McEnroy documented all of his misdeeds with first names and dates, what drugs he used on his victims, where he met and took them, and if he paid them off afterwards.

Chapter 4[]

  • Peabody asks Eve what she would have done if a boss or superior tried the grab-ass on her, and Eve tells her the story of Detective Fuckface, who tried to corner her in the locker room and “initiate the rook.” While Eve was busting the guy’s nose and bruising his balls Feeney heard the commotion and came in. Detective Fuckface told Feeney Eve came at him, lost her shit, and he was filing charges. Eve had only been in homicide a few weeks and DF had a gold badge so she’s thinking why would anybody believe her – he’s bleeding, she’s not. Feeney gave him a shot in the gut that dropped him, put his boot on the guy’s chest and asked Eve to tell him what happened, which she did. He told her to get dressed (DF had ripped her support tank partly off) and wait in his office. Feeney came in, poured them shitty whiskey, and told her to file a formal report and speak to Mira about it, and he would do his best to keep it quiet, and DF is taking early retirement. “Nobody puts hands on one of his. Drink up, suck it up, because it won’t be the last time she has to bust some fucker’s balls.”
  • They arrive at Leah Lester’s place of employment – Universal Financial. One of the lobby guards knows Officer Dana Shelby, so we learn her first name, although it changes to January in Faithless in Death. Lester, who didn’t know about McEnroy’s death, and does not feel the least bit sorry about it, tells Eve and Peabody what happened. McEnroy had vids, which clearly showed her enjoying the sex (thanks, rohypnol, thanks, whore, thanks, rabbit) and told her nobody would believe her and he would ruin her if she went to the police. She was trying to bury it, just pretend it didn’t happen, when she walked into the bathroom at work and found Jasmine in there, sick. Jasmine blurted out what had happened, saying she had to quit, that she’d had sex with McEnroy and couldn’t even remember.
  • When Leah realized he’d done the same thing to Jasmine, they went to Sylvia Brant, who brokered a settlement for them. She would have had their backs if they wanted to pursue it further, but they didn’t tell her about the vids McEnroy had made of each of them, and they just wanted to move on. They joined a support group, Women For Women, which Leah still occasionally attends when she needs a booster (Jasmine joined a different group in Chicago, where she moved).
  • Eve thinks it could be something like what was done to Edward Mira (in Brotherhood in Death) and has Peabody look into the support group, plus the transportation McEnroy used since he wouldn’t have taken drugged women back to his apartment in cabs, while she heads to the morgue. The tox screen shows Rohypnol and Black Out in McEnroy’s system, and some Alert in his nasal passages: “No fun torturing an unconscious man.” The genitals were severed efficiently, probably with a sharp ornamental or ceremonial blade rather than a scalpel. It could have been one woman, using a pulley system and a dolly and ramps to move him in and out of a vehicle.

Chapter 5[]

  • At Central, Peabody tells Eve Jasmine is alibied and didn’t give off any buzz. Her assault was similar to Leah’s, except since McEnroy’s wife was in town, she awoke in a hotel room with a disc and no memory of what happened. McEnroy’s usual transpo service wasn’t used the night he was killed, so Eve figures he has a secondary one and used his personal ’link to order it. Mrs. McEnroy asks to be interviewed after nine p.m. so the children won’t hear the conversation. Eve texts Roarke saying she could use a slick rich guy. “Interested?” He asks to meet at 7:30 for dinner first.
  • Peabody starts cross-checking the names in his memo books with staff and clients. McNab found a contact tagged multiple times from McEnroy’s desk drawer personal ‘link, including the previous night at 17:12 – Oliver Printz, his usual driver, driving off-book for him.
  • Eve watches the first disc, where an extremely eager redhead is telling McEnroy she wants him more than anything, even the position at Broadmoore. She strips for him, begging him to touch her, while he gives her a glass of wine, undoubtedly dosed. She pleasures him at his command while he sips his undosed wine. He takes her to bed where she all but weeps with need. He ties her to the bedposts and agrees to everything he asks for, again begging for more. Eve skips to the end, where a freshly showered McEnroy tells her to get dressed and go. She tells him she doesn’t feel well and he tells her he’s done with her – she can either catch a cab at the corner or walk to the subway. She tells him she doesn’t know where she is but walks out, repeating and following his instructions to take the elevator down to the garage and walk to the corner for a cab. “You’ll do very well at Broadmoore, Jessica. You have talent.” The vid stops and after a few seconds another starts, same bedroom, same setup, different redhead. Eve checks McEnroy’s memo book and sees three Jessicas, a Jessie, and a Jess.
  • Peabody is thrilled to take lead with the driver (Eve: “Jesus, Peabody, it’s an interview, not an ice-cream cone for being a good girl.”), who claims the women were always eager and all over McEnroy. He knew McEnroy was cheating on his wife, but didn’t know he was raping women. He never took the women anywhere afterwards – McEnroy paid him $500 a night to drive him to a club and then to either his apartment or the Blake Hotel, with whatever woman or women he picked up. He will provide the records of when and where he drove McEnroy off the books.
  • The killer knew enough to text Printz that he wouldn’t need to be driven home that night, and would have had their own transpo to get him from the club to the torture/killing place. The text to the driver was sent while McEnroy was still incapacitated, and since the original drop-off was at This Place, Eve and Peabody will follow up there after they interview Jessica Alden, the woman from the first sex vid Eve watched. Eve finds the pickup matching the vid timestamp – McEnroy and Alden were picked up from an Upper West Side restaurant, La Cuisine, at 9:30 the previous September. Eve figures he took her to a business dinner, slipped something into her drink, walked her out to the limo, slipped her a little more on the drive home, and got her up to the bedroom, where the camera was already set up.
  • Jessica Alden is annoyed that she had to come into Central, telling Eve she can’t possibly be talking to everyone who was placed through PP. Eve tells her, no, just the ones who may have reason to want McEnroy dead. She is genuinely shocked at that statement, saying she barely knew him and had met with him three or four times at most, mainly working with Sylvia Brant. Eve reminds her of her dinner with him on September 18 of the previous year. Alden said she was one of two candidates for the position she now holds, and had a business dinner with McEnroy, but doesn’t remember much after that, and she certainly didn’t sleep her way into the job.
  • Eve tells Alden she was always going to get the position, but McEnroy drugged and raped her. Alden thought she was sick at dinner and remembers getting a cab home on the corner, but nothing else clearly. After that she started having weird and disturbing dreams and couldn’t stand being touched by her boyfriend, leading to their eventual breakup. She asks Eve what she should do now, and Eve tells her, “Start healing.” Peabody takes a suddenly ill Jessica up to see Mira, and Eve feels a little sick herself, but Santiago needs to run a case he and Carmichael caught by her, so Eve keeps working.

Chapter 6[]

  • Eve and Peabody visit This Place, where the owner, Maxim Snow, has assembled the staff who were working the night before. Only the guy on the door, Edmund Mi, got a decent look at the woman who left with McEnroy, but several of them had the impression that she was leading him out, which was the opposite of how it had been every time in the past – they were used to seeing McEnroy leaving with a tipsy woman. Mi also remembered the car they left in wasn’t his usual limo, but a town car. When Eve tells them McEnroy habitually drugged the women, they were all surprised except Win Gregor, one of the bartenders – he said he never saw it but that makes sense since he always left with a woman and he was just average looking, not vid-star. Between the security footage of the killer arriving and Mi’s look at her, Eve is hoping Detective Yancy can put together a composite sketch.
  • Eve cuts Peabody loose and meets Roarke at Nally’s Pub, which he owns. She tells him she’s pissed because she empathizes with the women, and McEnroy got away with raping women for years – using his power and money to use, abuse, and humiliate women to get his rocks off. It pisses her off that someone decided to be judge, jury, and executioner, someone who thinks taking a life is an act of heroism and justice. Real justice would have taken away his power, money, and freedom for years [oh Eve, don’t we all wish that were true?]. Roarke says there was a time before he met her when he would have tipped on the killer’s side of the line. He also talks her down from thinking the killer is anything like Eve, pointing out that the situations are completely different.
  • Since they’re dining al fresco, naturally she sees a crime and has Roarke detain the couple while she chases the pickpocket to get the guy’s wallet back. She returns uninjured and the couple, who are celebrating their fifteenth anniversary, enjoyed The Icove Agenda, and are now drinking Irish coffees with Roarke, are delighted to be rescued by Dallas and Roarke and get to ride in a police car to retrieve their stolen items.

Chapter 7[]

  • Eve and Roarke debate whether or not McEnroy’s wife and the tutor knew about the cheating – Eve thinks “unless they’re both idiots, they had to know [he] cheated routinely.” Roarke says some spouses turn a blind eye. Eve tells him, “Some do. Me, I’d’ve strapped him naked to the bed, tied his dick in a knot after I’d slathered it with honey for the fire ants I’d have in a jar, which I’d dump out right on his knotted dick. But that’s just me.” Roarke says he’d buy up every coffee bean in the known universe and burn them, as well as the plants they grew on. Eve tells him, “I’m glad we’re us.”
  • Francie knew about the cheating but not about the raping. Geena said she thought he’d stopped cheating and she wants Eve to stop slandering her husband, stop trying to ruin his reputation. Eve tells her he hunted women for sport, he used them like toys, he drugged them, and in many cases brought them to their bed, recording the sex for his personal library and to humiliate them, to prevent them from taking action against him. Geena says those are lies, and he was so attractive, you see, women were drawn to him, so with his weakness, sometimes he faltered, but it shamed him and he struggled. Also, he never used illegals – he’d have no need to use them on women since he was so magnetic.
  • Geena tells Eve to leave, adding the usual threats, and Francie says neither of them knew about the drugs, and she had ignored signs he was cheating again (still) since Geena needed her illusions. Roarke tells Eve now she knows that Geena didn’t know, and wasn’t involved with McEnroy’s killing. “The truth makes it impossible for her to keep believing she loved and stayed with a good man. He was a rapist, an opportunist, not just unfaithful. How does she live with that and keep the light shining for her daughters if she accepts the truth of it?”
  • Detective Inspector Lavina Smythe has sent Eve detailed information on McEnroy’s London exploits, as well as confiscating the illegals and electronics from his London home and office, and started ID’ing vics from the vids, adding a note that while his murder occurred in New York, he is now posthumously under investigation for possession and use of illegals, for rape, extortion, and abduction, all of which took place in London. In the spirit of cooperation, Eve sends Smythe the info she has amassed so far. Eve hopes for the same level of cooperation from Paris and the other offices.
  • Eve watches some more vids, running facial recognition to identify the women. She has Roarke run travel and backgrounds for the women – checking to see if they have a medical (physical or emotional) issue that appeared soon after the date of the attack. Eve is sure the killer worked with somebody, finding it hard to believe a lone woman would have been able to transport McEnroy.
  • Lady Justice is finishing her new look for her next victim, thinking, “Once a cheater…” She leaves her beloved Grand fast asleep, with the medical droid on alert. It had been child’s play to hack into Thaddeus Pettigrew’s ‘link, with the only hitch being the whore he lived with had left a day early so the cheater had booked another whore for that night, moving her schedule up a night. She arrives at his brownstone, introducing herself as Angelique, and when he takes her hand she pumps the drug into his palm from the mini syringe in hers. He walks to the car with her, and as the droid drives them back uptown, she hands Thaddeus the wine she’d already dosed. She draws him to her as the drug takes him under.

Chapter 8[]

  • Eve tells Roarke she’s watched all she can stomach for the night. He suggests splitting a soother and she suggests a different kind of soother, so they make love to wipe out the ugliness of what she just viewed. As Eve drifts off, Lady Justice tortures Thaddeus Pettigrew. She tells him to confess and admit he’s worthless, a liar, and he cheated and stole from his wife, who loved and trusted him, and that he cheats on the whore he took over his vows. She tells him she’ll let him go if he admits all of that and says the name of the woman he betrayed, which he does: Darla. She tells him she lied and castrates him.

Day 3 – April 13, 2061[]

Chapter 8 (Continued)[]

  • Eve’s communicator wakes them up – a naked and mutilated body was found outside 26 Vandam. Roarke drives and Eve gets data on the address – Thaddeus Pettigrew and Marcella Horowitz. They find a Mirium Pettigrew at the London officer of PP, but no connection to Thaddeus, who was a divorced financial lawyer with no offspring. A neighbor was walking his new puppy when he came across the body and called 9-1-1. It’s the same COD, with another poem, this one about cheating with whores and greed. The violence has escalated and the body is more mutilated than McEnroy’s.
  • Pettigrew shut off the house droid at 19:13 (7:13 p.m.), which was not unusual and the outside cams were shut down about an hour later. It looks like Thaddeus was expecting company, having laid out an impressive variety of sex toys on the nightstand, but was waylaid in the foyer by someone he invited in – either the expected woman or somebody else, and never got the chance to go upstairs to the bedroom. The witness didn’t see anything useful besides the body, but another neighbor saw Pettigrew getting into a dark-colored town car with a woman around 9 p.m. – short hair, brown or blond, with tips a darker color, maybe blue or purple or black. Eve contacts his girlfriend to break the news – she’s at a spa with her mother, sister, and a friend, and they arrange to come home.
  • Roarke finds semi-regular transactions with a licensed companion broker calls Discretion. Every month or two Pettigrew places an order and makes a payment. Since this information is on his office comp, it’s probably not something Horowitz knows about. He had ordered an LC for the previous evening two days ago, but there was a refund since it was canceled the previous afternoon. Also, the fifteen million dollar settlement he received at the time of his divorce came from Roarke – he acquired a company a couple of years ago, absorbing it, all done through lawyers and brokers. It turns out the company was Data Point, which manufactures droids and other complex electronics. The company was sold due to a divorce by the principals, but since it was such a small amount, he wasn’t directly involved: “Fifteen million is small?” “Twenty-two million, actually. The ex-wife got seven.” Eve figures that’s the greed and the LCs are the sex, so she just has to find the power referred to in the poem.

Chapter 9[]

  • They drive uptown to interview the ex, Darla Pettigrew, who lives with her grandmother, the famous actress and activist, Eloise Callahan, whom Peabody’s granny marched with. Darla is shocked and devastated that her ex-husband was murdered that morning. She asked if he was killed by the woman he left her for, and says despite everything, she still loves him – he is the love of her life. Her alibi was that she was with her grandmother, whom she’s been caring for. The day nurse, Donnalou Harris, left around 5 p.m., they had dinner at 6, and around 8 Grand was in bed, and they were watching a vid together. Afterwards Darla went to her room to read, but she has an intercom so she can hear her if Grand is restless or ill. Darla checked on her around midnight and then woke around 3 a.m. thinking there was a problem with Grand, but she was fine. She wonders if she sensed Thaddeus’s death, although Eve didn’t actually tell her what time he was killed, just that it was in the early hours.
  • Darla leaves the room because she’s so upset and Peabody is sad that it hit her that hard, but Eve is skeptical – “you’re married for a chunk of your life to a guy who decides to ditch you for a younger skirt, and takes the bulk of the money from a company you co-own, and maybe, like the divorce, didn’t want to sell.” Eloise Callahan enters, and is delighted to meet Eve and Peabody and also to drink some of Eve’s coffee, which is forbidden until she is fully recovered.
  • It comes out that Darla was also a member of the Women For Women support group, and remembers Leah and Jasmine (first names only), but they had stopped going a while ago, as had she. Eloise walks Eve and Peabody out, telling them she’s not sorry Thaddeus is dead, other than Darla having to grieve again, and asks if this was the same MO as McEnroy’s murder, which Eve confirms. Callahan says she will try to keep Darla away from the news.

Chapter 10[]

  • Peabody and Eve agree that Darla’s alibi is shaky, although Peabody doesn’t think she would have left her grandmother alone for that long. Eve points out that in a house that large, there are probably a lot of soundproofed rooms where you could torture a man to death and still keep tabs on Granny.
  • They visit Natalia Zula, who runs Women For Women and has a therapy practice out of her home, specializing in women in and children. She can’t offer much help because people only use first names, and there’s no checking to see if those are their real names, but she tells Eve if she gets a warrant she will provide her notes with those first names. Peabody shows her Yancy’s sketch of the woman McEnroy left with, but she doesn’t recognize her. She and her daughter are both alibied for the murders, and would never promote violence as a solution. Her ex forced himself on her daughter, and when Kendra told her, they went to a doctor and to the police – he is now serving time in prison, which she considers justice.
  • Peabody pushes for the warrant and they visit the morgue. On the way there, Marcella Horowitz’s mother, Bondita Rothchild, tags Eve to say she and her daughter will be back in town in about an hour, and requests a visit at her home in Brooklyn. Commander Whitney tags Eve since Geena McEnroy whined to the mayor, demanding Eve meet with him and Chief Tibble in The Tower. Eve delays it a few hours to finish up at the morgue and meet with Marcella. She gives Peabody permission to skip the meeting since she wasn’t even at the interview with Mrs. McEnroy, but Peabody tells her they’re ass partners and if Eve’s ass is in the frying pan, hers is in there also.
  • Pettigrew has no defensive wounds, but does have substances under his toenails from digging his toes in while he was being tortured to try to relieve some of the weight on his arms and shoulders. It’s from stone or concrete. Eve wonders why the escalation in violence for somebody who didn’t rape or abuse women. He cheated on Darla with Marcella, but he cheated with LCs. Discretion, the LC agency, is on the way to Brooklyn, so they stop in to ask about Thaddeus. He was a client for over a decade, the owner recognizes them from the vid and media, and is cooperative and helpful.

Chapter 11[]

  • Marci is hysterical and tells Eve she’s lying about Thaddeus using LCs – “Thad would never, never do that. He would never cheat on me.” Since he cheated on Darla with Marci, Eve figures she’s naïve. They had only booked the extra day two days prior, after Marci complained that she wouldn’t be able to get all the treatments she wanted in the two days originally booked. Eve asks about the town car her mother owns since it fits the description of the vehicle Thad and the killer left in, although it doesn’t make sense that Marci or her family would have been involved. Bondi’s husband was home playing poker with at least six others, including their son, the night Thaddeus was abducted and killed. Peabody gives Marci’s sister, Roz, the names of some grief counselors. Roz told them Marci wouldn’t have had a clue Thad was cheating on her or she would have told her and her friend Claudia. Peabody runs the son, who doesn’t have a license or vehicle, and doesn’t ring – Eve says it’s a vendetta.
  • McNab confirms that Thaddeus had been cyber-stalked by a hacker for about sixteen months.
  • At the Tower, Chief Tibble tells Eve although he rarely summons his officers there over a complaint, the complainant reached out to him personally, as well as to the mayor and Commander Whitney. Eve gives the details of McEnroy’s crimes, and the fact that he himself documented the rapes and drugs, and Tibble asks why she didn’t speak to Geena about this preponderance of evidence. Peabody interrupts to say she read the lieutenant’s report and Eve did tell Mrs. McEnroy, but she didn’t want to hear or believe it. Mrs. McEnroy complained that Eve was “badgering and belittling her, while smearing her husband’s good name in order to blame him for his own murder” and has threatened to bring suit against Eve and Roarke and the department unless Eve and Roarke are both dismissed. She intends to appeal to the governor if Eve isn’t fired by the end of the day.
  • Eve says Roarke tried to sympathize and comfort Mrs. McEnroy, which he’s better at, while Eve tried to ascertain whether or not the spouse was involved or complicit in his death. Tibble asks about the second victim, and Eve brings Whitney and Tibble up-to-date on the connection with the support group. Eve discloses the sale of Darla’s company to Roarke, including that in Roarke’s world, $22 million is small. Peabody brings up the grandmother and Tibble tells them “If you’re going to look hard at Eloise Callahan’s granddaughter, you better have damn good vision. She’s beloved, and through her activism she has political connections that make Geena McEnroy’s threats to bring in the governor look like a toddler’s tantrum.” He tells Eve to consider those threats handled, and she tells him that even though she doesn’t have Peabody’s or Roarke’s ease with sympathy and comfort, she would never belittle the obviously shocked and grieving widow of a murder victim.

Chapter 12[]

  • Yancy sends a sketch from the witness who saw Thaddeus leaving with the fake LC, but it’s really vague and doesn’t match McEnroy’s taker, and neither really resembles Darla. Eve calls Leah Lester to ask about Darla; she says Darla gave money to a woman in the group named Una, whose husband smacked her around until she left with their kid. Peabody talked to the London partner, who knew McEnroy strayed with redheads, but not that he drugged or raped women. He figured since McEnroy married a brunette and built a life and family with her, it must have been true love, although “he strayed from time to time.” The other partner has been scrambling, trying to put out fires the murder and scandal have lit.
  • Mira agrees that a woman is doing the killing, a justice seeker who believes she’s enacted the justice by the violent murder of men who have misused other women. Eve doesn’t think it’s multiple women – she thinks the head of the support group would have picked up on a pact being formed, and the singular “Lady Justice” suggests one killer. She tells Mira she’s leaning toward Darla for a lot of reasons, including that Thaddeus Pettigrew was weak, greedy, and a liar, but there’s no evidence he harmed anyone physically. Mira says Eve is looking for a mature, goal-oriented killer, a female at least thirty, probably older. Controlled until she has her target subdued, controlled enough to stalk, research, plan, prepare, and lure him, and the endurance to physically torture her victims for hours, with the emotional distance to ignore their screams or pleas since there’s no sign they were silenced during the torture. She wants to hear them beg and scream. She wants them found quickly, so it shows their loved ones and the city who they were and why they were punished. She will be pleased that she’s being hunted by female police since she’ll appreciate their power, but unhappy because as women, they don’t see and appreciate what she’s doing.
  • She has no man in her life, nor does she wish to – men are animals to be butchered, predators to be hunted. She has to have a private area to carry out her torture and some medical skill or has practiced the castration. The unmanning is the main mission. The hunt, lure, and torture are for her entertainment as well as for their punishment. The purpose and point is severing their manhood, removing that, so they die without it – sexless. She’s able to project the persona needed to lure the specific man. She adapts and can become the part. Eve suggests maybe she learned the acting and staging from her grandmother – makeup, wardrobe, drama. Mira warns Eve that she’s vicious, and Eve says so is she.
  • Darla is out shopping, using the excuse that she needs to keep busy to help settle herself over Thaddeus. She thinks her grandmother and the nurse won’t understand how true love and deep hate can live in the same heart. Thaddeus hadn’t known her through her disguise, even though she’d shared her bed and body and given him her trust and devotion. She remembers that his last word had been her name, after she’d removed her mask, but like a question. She thinks about how fun it had been to play up the shock and grief for the police, and how smart she’d been to check on her grandmother when Thaddeus passed out. She thinks about how she’d created a company, using her brain, skills, and energy, and had let him take it from her, just as he’d taken her self-respect. She’d learned from the group she wasn’t alone, and now they had a champion in her.
  • She gets home and prepares the fruit and cannolis for her grandmother and Donnalou, who are playing Scrabble. After delivering the food, she tells them she needs to keep busy and takes the elevator down to her lair, which has been thoroughly cleaned by the droid, including the floor and restraints, and of course, Lady Justice’s uniform. She double-checks her drug supply, deciding she needs to send a droid out for more, especially since Grand is getting stronger and therefore requires a stronger dose of the sleeping draught to keep her safe and dreaming throughout the night. She will send Jimmy, the droid with the tough face and small scar to score drugs that night. She gets ready to select the costume she needs for the next scene.

Chapter 13[]

  • Back at Central, where Jenkinson’s tie and Reineke’s socks both sport screaming yellow rubber duckies on atomic-green backgrounds (“Just the luck of the draw”), they tell her the Zulas were cooperative and the daughter is working on the mother to give thumbnail shrink sketches on each member. Eve settles in to read Natalia’s notes on Darla. She started going to WFW November, 2059, and gradually progressed from emotionally shattered and feeling worthless, unattractive, undesirable, foolish, and bitter to being able to listen and sympathize with others, but still feeling bitter and angry and betrayed, She stated that the other women had helped her find purpose again, and in July, 2060 gifted Una with several thousand dollars to help her rent an apartment. In December she brought small gifts for the holiday meeting and seemed upbeat except about her grandmother, who was feeling poorly. That was the last meeting she attended. Eve thinks she found her purpose, and it’s to avenge the other women.
  • Peabody has been cross-referencing the first names Natalia provided with first names from McEnroy’s memo book, and will check with Sylvia Brant to try to narrow it down. She thinks it’s just busywork since Eve is stuck on Darla being the killer. Peabody thinks the violence escalated because all men are the same to the killer, and it was going to escalate anyway, regardless of the perceived crime/sin/offense. At the lab, Eve bribes Dickhead to give her the info on the substance under Thaddeus’s toenails – epoxy covered concrete, the kind used in an indoor area that doesn’t get too wet, so basically a basement, kitchen, or bathroom. Eve is betting on a basement.
  • She sends Peabody home to work on the names and she takes the flooring material search home. Mavis and Bella are hanging out with Someshit, who Mavis said is like Bella’s granddaddy, eating cookies. Bella decides she wants Eve’s stunner/toy but happily settles for a business card with her name on it (since she can’t read yet, although give it a few books…). Mavis tells Eve she’s recording a disc with Jake at his studio, so she decided to drop by, and also she’s knocked up again, a couple of months in. She wanted to tell Eve so she can tell everybody else, and also she wants Eve and Roarke to be there for number two, just like they were for Bella.

Chapter 14[]

  • Thaddeus didn’t keep a list, like McEnroy, but did have a calendar on his office unit, passcoded, with dates and times when he booked an LC. He usually booked hotel rooms, unless Marci was out-of-town, and then used his home. With Darla, he always used hotels, so Eve figures either Marci was easier to fool or it mattered more with Darla because they were married and he had more to lose. Eve thinks McEnroy – a criminal, a rapist, a predator, a man who if found out while alive would have spent a great deal of time in a cage and Pettigrew – a crappy husband and partner, greedy, opportunistic, but nothing illegal that would have landed him in a cage, were the same to Lady Justice. “Because they’re all the same. Men, as a species, are a plague that needs to be eradicated. Start with your circle – the support group – eliminate them one by one, and after that go on the hunt. Men are the enemy, destroying them the mission.”
  • Roarke says “Well, now, that’s a warm welcome home,” but Eve assures him she’ll keep him around for the sex and coffee. She tells him about Mavis, including that she wants them to be at the second birth, which they both agree not to discuss or think about it, and to talk about something less traumatic over dinner, like murder. She fills him on her day and he tells her a little more about Data Point – Darla started the company with her grandmother’s backing, and made it into a success but had allowed her husband to set up the legalities, heavily favoring himself. They manufacture personalized domestic droids on a small scale with an eye toward quality and affordability.
  • Roarke is impressed that Eve spoke with Eloise Callahan, and wants the details over a steak dinner (because she’s looking tired). Eve calls him a fanboy and wonders if that kind of talent is inherent or learned, thinking about Darla. They wonder if Darla used droids to pick up McEnroy and meet Thaddeus, but Eve rules it out, thinking she needs to do that part herself. She does think maybe she programmed a droid to watch over Grand at night and alert her if anything goes wrong. It comes down to Eve just not believing that Darla would be that grief-stricken two years later for somebody who cheated on her and cheated her out of money.
  • Eve realizes Darla must have more than a first name for the woman she gave money to for a deposit on an apartment, so she tags Darla to ask – It’s Una Ruzaki, who lives in the same building as another member of the group, a widowed woman named Rachel Fassley. They each have a son, and Eve and Roarke head downtown to visit them.

Chapter 15[]

  • Una is wary when Eve and Roarke visit. She doesn’t know who Nigel McEnroy was but she heard about the murder, and she recognizes the name Pettigrew from Darla, but hadn’t met Thaddeus. Eve tells her they’ve spoken with Natalia Zula and a few other members of WFW. Una was home studying and working on her online courses the night McEnroy was murdered and the night Pettigrew was murdered (the previous night), her friend Rachel came over around ten. Eve asks if that would be Rachel Fassley, from the group, which Una confirms.
  • Eve is the mean bully cop who needs her to talk about the women in the group while Roarke comforts her, suggesting they bring Rachel over. Una explains that she was worried when she first saw police at her door that it had to do with her ex, who has visitation rights for their son, but doesn’t use them. No-nonsense Rachel convinces Una that they need to talk to the police so they can identify the murderer, just as they did when her husband was killed – that guy is serving time now.
  • Rachel explains why she no longer works – she worked until her son was born, becoming a professional mother for a few years, as she and her husband planned, and then when Jonah started school, she got a job as office manager, but the creepy asshole son tried to rape her when the father was away. She kneed him in the balls, “just like my pop taught me,” and threatened to report him, but he just laughed at her and told her no one would believe her and she’d be out on her ass without a reference. He told her she’d be smart to just lie back and enjoy it because she’s fucked either way. She quit and has been reluctant to apply for another job because they will ask why she left her last one. That’s also why she joined the support group. Roarke gives her his card, telling her to contact him when she’s ready to return to work because he values strong women who know how to listen and care, in fact, he married one.
  • Una joined the group because her ex used to beat and rape her. After a few sessions, Natalia found her a safe shelter and Una got a divorce. Darla helped her out with the security deposit and first and last month’s rent on her apartment. Una doesn’t want to give Eve members’ information, but Rachel says the killer is making them part of the murders, and they give Eve a few more names.
  • Eve asks Roarke if he would really hire Rachel, and he says of course, and will she follow up with the asshole who tried to rape her, and she says yes – if he went at her, he’s gone after others, so unless he ends up on a slab, she’ll pass the info on to SVU. They think it would be crazy to kill another man that night, but were glad to have eliminated a couple other members of the group. Eve is convinced it’s a solo act, and thinks Darla fits the bill for calling herself a lady, as in Lady Justice. Roarke looks for another vehicle registered to Darla and Eve checks the names Rachel and Una provided.
  • Arlo Kagen, Una’s ex-husband, is getting drunk at his favorite hole-in-the-wall bar, Nowhere, when Darla, dressed as a beat-up street-level LC, picks him up, drugs his beer, and brings him home to torture and kill.

Day 4 – April 14, 2061[]

Chapters 16-17[]

  • Eve wakes from a dream where she heard the screams of the tortured and tormented behind a wide black door, but is unable to get in. Around her a calm and quiet voice says, “They get what they deserve.” Eve says it’s not for her to say, the law decides. The voice tells her men made the laws and Eve does their bidding. “You defend them, even knowing what they are. I stand for the women they abused. I stand for their victims.” Eve is still trying to find a way in, and tells the voice “You stupid, self-righteous bitch. You’ve made them victims.” Eve is now in a small empty room with only the white walls and the black door. She says “I’m going to find you. I’m going to stop you. I’m going to put you in a cage.” The voice, which is coming from everywhere, asks why she cares about them – “You were betrayed, abused, beaten, raped, trapped, terrified, helpless. You would seek to stop my justice? Why?” Eve tells her because she’s sick, sadistic, and perverts the justice Eve took an oath to uphold. “Because, you twisted excuse for a female, I’m a cop. I’m goddamn fucking Eve Dallas.” She takes out her badge and this time when she kicked the door, it burst open. The screams snap off, and then beeping replaces them. Eve’s communicator is signaling and she recognizes the address as Arlo Kagen’s.
  • Eve is pissed, but not surprised about Arlo. She tells Roarke, “I can’t imagine now why I used to fight, why I used to resent you helping, you being a part of what I do. You make everything better.” As he programs egg pockets for breakfast, she tells him after she closes this case she wants to take two days with him, which he counters with four so they can compromise with three. They’re going to spend the time at the Italian villa hotel Roarke’s been working on. On the way, Eve tells Roarke about her dream, which he said he was about to wake her from when her communicator went off, and she seemed more pissed than upset. Eve tells him the killer, now a serial killer, wants to rack up as many bodies as she can and sees herself as a hero. Eve asks Roarke why he met with Jake, and he tells her Jake and he and his bandmates volunteered to teach music and songwriting at An Dídean now and again.
  • A former cop, Brigg Cohen, found the body and recognized him as the mean drunk asshole who lived down the hall from him. He saw him the previous night when he was heading for work and Kagen was heading out about the same time, 7 p.m., probably to “get his drunk on” at the dive bar a couple of blocks away. Eve has the beat cops who were first on scene when Cohen called it in, start knocking on doors. Peabody says she didn’t think the killer would hit again so fast, but Eve tells her she’s goal-oriented and on a streak. It’s the same MO, and Peabody points out that so far the victims were all married when they did their cheating/lying/beating. As Eve gets ready to roll the body, she hears Nadine and leaves that task for Peabody and McNab while she heads off the press.
  • As Eve pulls Nadine away from where Roarke and Jake are chatting “as if they had freaking martinis at some high-class bar,” Jake asks if Roarke thinks it will come to blows. He answers, “Odd, I always wonder the same.” Eve tells Nadine she’s been too busy with bodies piling up to give her soundbites. Nadine tells her Eve needs media support to get public support, so she will go get coffee and when she gets back she will do a one-on-one with Eve, Peabody, or McNab. Eve demands real coffee, which Nadine says between being an Oscar-winning screenwriter, a bestselling author, and an Emmy-winning newscaster, and having a rock star with her, she will be able to get.
  • Eve sends Roarke and McNab into the building for the security feed, and Peabody comes up to her with a black hair from the scene, not from the vic, probably from a wig, saying she flagged it priority for Harvo. Eve thanks her by telling her she’s doing a one-on-one with Nadine when they’re done with the crime scene. They visit Kagen’s pigsty of an apartment, but find nothing useful there. Eve sends Peabody back down to Nadine. Roarke tells Eve she couldn’t have saved Kagen – he’d left his apartment before she had the ex-wife’s name, before she knew he existed. Jake brings doughnuts to go with the coffee, saying anybody who starts the day like she did earned a doughnut, and “Detective Face” (Peabody) says, “Our day begins when yours ends.”
  • Eve checks with Baxter, who she sent to Una’s apartment for the notification and verification of her and Rachel’s whereabouts after Eve left them; he reports that the women are too busy raising kids and making rent to cook up a plot to kill three guys. Roarke takes Jake to tour An Dídean and Eve and Peabody walk over to the bar to rouse the bartender/manager, Mr. Tiller, who lives above it. Tiller tells them Arlo was a regular and a regular asshole. He gives them a timeline of the previous evening’s events based on the Yankees-Red Sox game, and a vague description of the “LC” who picked Arlo up, but really just the purple hair and the fake scar on her cheek.
  • At Central, Eve writes up an extensive report and profile of Darla, sending it to Mira, and Peabody gets the other WFW women in for interview. They start with Jacie Pepperdine, who was raped by a record producer, reported it to his company, and then was blacklisted and is now working crappy jobs to make rent and singing at crappy clubs. She gives them another woman from WFW, Sherri Brinkman, whose husband dumped her for a younger woman after he gave her an STD and hosed her in the divorce. Eve gives her Mavis’s contact info, letting Mavis know to expect the call and demo, gives a tip to Nadine about Ryder Cooke’s bad behavior, figuring Jacie wasn’t the first woman he raped and blacklisted, and contacts SVU to give them a heads-up about Cooke, who is safely in New L.A.
  • Eve runs Sherri Brinkman and sees that her ex is a perfect target for Lady Justice. She tags his company to request his whereabouts, which they only provide as out of town and unavailable. She tags Roarke, who tells her he will find out if she eats something for lunch. She tries to, but The Candy Thief has struck again. She goes out to the bullpen and announces, “This isn’t over.” Roarke lets her know Linus Brinkman is in Vegas, returning that afternoon, with a black-tie event planned for the evening and an at-home massage in between.
  • Mira stops by on her way to a lunch meeting with Natalia and asks how confident she is that Darla is the killer. Eve tells her 95%. Mira warns her that although her violence has focused on men so far, it will spread to anyone who attempts to stop her from enacting her form of justice. She currently sees Eve as a kind of colleague, but that will change. Mira tells her a bag of soy chips doesn’t count as lunch so Eve settles for a cup of minestrone and soy chips from her AC, giving a second cup of soup to Peabody when she comes in to report. Eve tells her to interview the remaining women from the group while she goes to the morgue and lab.
  • Baxter and Trueheart caught a murder/suicide – the couple were divorcing and the man stabbed his wife multiple times before slitting his own throat. The kids were in school, and are now with the sister. She tells Trueheart, “Sometimes there’s nothing for us to do but write it up. There’s nobody to hunt down, bring in, put in a cage. We can only write it up and close it.” He said Baxter told him the same thing and he’s writing it up now. Eve trades her bag of soy chips to Morris for a quick summary. He tells her the murdered woman didn’t go down easy, but Eve’s vic did, as he was drunk and then drugged. He thinks the initial stimulant to bring him around failed because he was too far under, what with the three pints of beer and three shots of whiskey prior to the barbiturates. Eve thinks that’s why Kagen wasn’t as badly damaged – the broken left arm was because he was left-handed and therefore symbolic since he beat his wife.
  • Harvo gives Eve the scoop on the hair, which was black with streaks of silver and from a high-quality wig that was well-maintained. Eve deduces Lady Justice has different costumes for her different roles, and the black wig is for that role, when she’s in control and the men are helpless.

Chapter 18[]

  • Baxter and Trueheart will stake out Eloise Callahan’s house that night and alert Eve if any vehicles leave. Eve tags Roarke so they can attend the Spring Gala Brinkman is scheduled to attend that evening, which is conveniently being held at the Roarke Palace Hotel. He generously offers to arrange for Trina to come in and see to Eve’s hair and so on, but Eve declines. Peabody fills her in on the interview she just did – a grad student, Mae Ming, was raped by two trust fund grad students at a party just before Thanksgiving, citing the justification that Ming was rubbing up against one of them when they danced, so she was asking for it. She didn’t report it because, duh, rich kids, but saw a flyer for WFW and started attending meetings because she was having nightmares. Eve ran the men’s names and went to a couple of detectives in SVU to put the assholes on their radar.
  • Linus Brinkman disembarks from his private shuttle at the Startack Transpo Station to find a droid chauffeur waiting instead of his usual driver. He tells Brinkman Viktor took ill so the company sent him in his place. When he opens the rear passenger door for Brinkman, a woman introduces herself as Selina, saying the company sent her as a companion to compensate for the trouble. She offers a hand, injecting the drug into his palm, and then gives him a glass of drugged wine. She tells Wilford to stop by the salon, then take her to the market, then chain Brinkman up in her torture chamber, and shut down.
  • After a fun day of hearing about horrible men, Eve and Peabody head over to Eloise and Darla’s residence for a follow-up interview. Eloise and her nurse are there, but Eloise tells Eve she sent Darla to the salon. Eloise has convinced Darla to take a trip with her to the Côte d’Azur in a couple of weeks when she’s cleared for travel – the whole family will go and stay in a villa.
  • Darla enters the living room, saying she was in the kitchen with the strawberries she just brought back from the market and shows off her manicure. Eve tells her there’s been a third murder, and Darla says that’s why Grand talked her into going to the salon. Eve says all three men were connected to women in her support group and it’s possible one or more of the members is behind the murders. Darla says that’s not possible since the women are victims. Peabody is all sympathy, while Eve tells Darla they’ve been tracking down the members and checking alibis. Darla suggests that someone infiltrated the group with this purpose. Peabody reads off the full names of the women they have interviewed, and Eve sees “the flicks of anger quickly masked by downcast eyes, the tightening of the jaw, and the tiniest of smirks.” Donnalou takes her upstairs with a soother, and Eloise tells Eve they will look after Darla. Eve cuts Peabody loose, giving her cab money and telling her to watch her back and contacts Baxter to move the stakeout up to now.

Chapter 19[]

  • Eve stops at Brinkman’s apartment to give him a heads-up that he’s a target of a homicidal, sadistic whack job, but he never arrived home for his massage and his unconcerned wife says he’s not answering his ‘link. The maid tells Eve which ride service he uses, and when she calls, the dispatcher says Brinkman canceled his pickup since his trip was extended. Eve heads for the transpo station to check security footage, calling Peabody on the way to have the cab turn around and take her to the Callahan house to meet Baxter and Trueheart. Roarke says he’ll meet Eve at the station and she asks McNab to clear it with Feeney and get to the Callahan house.
  • The man doing curb security is displeased with Eve until she parks her vehicle, but finally calls the head of security, Darren, so Eve can explain that Linus Brinkman was abducted. Since Darren heard about the three previous homicides – abduction, torture, castration – he becomes helpful. Roarke arrives and Darren becomes more helpful – Roarke owns at least some of the station. The check-in clerk remembers Brinkman arriving and meeting his driver. Darren plays the feed and Eve sees that it’s a droid meeting Brinkman. They follow that to the droid opening the rear door of the car and see a pair of crossed female legs and a hand reaching out to shake Brinkman’s hand, using a mini pressure syringe to tranq him. They get the make and model of the car and the plate number. It’s registered to Maura Fitzgerald. Roarke recognizes the name since it was the part Eloise played in her first Oscar winning role, with the address from another of Callahan’s vids. Eve says she’ll bang Roarke like a drum in Italy to thank him for the help, and if they take her down that night there will be drum practice ahead of their trip.
  • ADA Reo says it’s all circumstantial, but she’ll start pushing on getting a warrant. When Eve and Roarke arrive at the Callahan house they see the nurse leaving on foot. Eve asks if there’s a basement, and Donnalou tells her there’s a lower level for Darla’s workshop, but it’s off-limits and Darla only spends time down there when Donnalou is at the house. Eve calls for a patrol car to drive her home, telling her not to contact anyone at the Callahan residence. Eve asks what her priorities are, and Donnalou tells her the health and well-being of Miss Eloise. Eve asks what her medical professional opinion is of Darla, and she tells Eve she’s a little secretive and the equivalent of bipolar episodes, but has been working on a new project downstairs and it keeps her busy and happy from what she can see. Eve tells Donnalou she will contact her if Eloise needs her.

Chapter 20[]

  • Roarke determines that he will need 10-15 minute to bypass security at the house once they get a warrant, and the plan is for Baxter, Trueheart, and McNab to cover the back and side exits and go in on Eve’s go, shutting down all droids. Eve, Peabody, and Roarke will take the front. Feeney pulls up in the EDD van: “You think I’d miss a chance to get inside Eloise Callahan’s?” He says she was his father’s hall pass, maybe still is. Eve figures there are house monitors and Darla will have locked down the elevator. She’ll be armed with an electronic [sic] prod, but probably not a stunner, and she’s insane. Reo sends the warrant and they get started.
  • Darla has already sedated her grandmother and put her to bed, with a medical droid watching. Pettigrew and Brinkman are on the lower level, with him vertical, i.e., hanging from the ceiling, and a droid. Roarke disables the system and they go in. Roarke goes up to the third floor to check on Eloise and disable the droid in case it’s set up to alert Darla. Darla is circling Brinkman, who is still upright, meaning she’s not watching the house monitors, which are now down. The door to the work area is locked down, alarmed, and with a couple of fail-safes to kick it off, so they have to open it in layers or they will set off a secondary alarm. Fortunately, it’s one of Roarke’s systems.
  • Darla is dressed in an actual Lady Justice costume – a skin suit, a breastplate, a luxurious black wig that spills in waves over her shoulders, with a glittering silver cats-eye mask on her face. When Eve tells her to step away from Brinkman, she calls for Wilford to defend, and Roarke disables the droid. Eve stuns Darla, they get Brinkman down, call for a bus, and contact Donnalou for Eloise. Roarke says, “She’s quite barking mad, isn’t she?” Eve restrains the still unconscious Darla white Baxter and Trueheart comfort Brinkman, who’s in shock and a lot of pain. Baxter calls Darla’s costume a little classic Wonder Woman, a little Dark Angel, with Roarke adding, “a touch of Rose and Thorn.”
  • As Darla starts to wake up, Eve tells her, “You drugged your own grandmother.” Darla says she’s not finished, but Eve assures her she is and reads her the Revised Miranda wile Darla continues to rage and weep in frustration. Roarke, Feeney, McNab, and Callendar stay in the basement to play with the e-toys, while Baxter and Trueheart take Darla to Central and Eve waits for the MTs to come down and treat Brinkman. Donnalou arrives in a cab, and Eve sends her up to be with Eloise, telling her Darla sedated her, which she has been doing routinely so she could kill men in the basement. Peabody has found Darla’s warehouse with her victims’ clothing, ’links, and wallets and her wardrobe, wigs, and enhancements, plus a shelf with jars of liquid preserving the genitals Darla had removed, all carefully labeled.
  • Eve asks Donnalou to wake Eloise up so she can explain what’s going on before she leaves to process the evidence. Eve tells Eloise she probably already knows or suspects, but her granddaughter is mentally and emotionally ill, and is now in custody. Eloise asked what Darla did, and Eve tells her.

Chapter 21[]

  • While Eloise gets dressed, Nadine tags Eve to tell her she’s already convinced two women to go on the record about Cooke and it’s going to blow wide open in a matter of days. Eve tells her something else is about to blow, so she should save space and time for it because it’s going to be big. Nadine correctly guesses that Eve has caught Lady Justice, and Eve says she can’t give her the details yet, but she will. Eloise tells Eve she thought Darla was self-destructive, but had no idea how severe the illness was or she and her son (Darla’s father) would have gotten her help. Eve tells her she believes her, and never thought otherwise. Eve suggests engaging her own psychiatrist to evaluate Darla.
  • Eloise thanks Eve for being kind and patient with her. Eve, of course, tells her she’s just doing her job, and Eloise replies, “Kindness isn’t a job, it’s a choice.” She’s going to stay with friends and send for her son so he can be in New York. Eve and Peabody are going to interview Darla that night, while Darla is still upset about not getting her kill, with Mira observing. Roarke tells her to share a pizza with Peabody while they work out their strategy, and asks her what happened upstairs to make her sad. She tells him, “I was witness to grace and strength, and it scraped me raw.”
  • Eve, Peabody, Reo, and Mira eat pizza and discuss Darla’s mental state. Reo thinks because she planned each murder precisely, she knew right from wrong, and Mira says she’ll observe, but Eve thinks Darla will go into the mentally defective wing of some high-security prison. She goes back to her office to update Nadine on the arrest, emphasizing that Eloise Callahan had been sedated by Darla and is not a suspect or person of interest, but another victim.
  • Darla is anxious to speak with Eve and Peabody, and tells them the charges against her are nonsense since she executed justice – the city should throw her a parade. She did what Eve and Peabody are unable to do, what with being restrained by the system and all. She stopped the men from causing more harm – none of them deserved to live. Peabody asks her if she planned to kill all men, asking if there were any age restrictions. Darla says they would be better off smothering males at birth but until there’s a way to propagate without them, the solution may be in droids or human/droid hybrids, she has a business plan for that, and is hoping to begin work on that when the initial phase is complete.
  • Darla gives them all the details, since she’s so proud of her work, saying she shouldn’t be mad with her ex-husband since he gave her her purpose. She let her grandmother hold onto the illusion that her husband never strayed and never harmed anyone since the truth would have only hurt her. She drugged her to give her rest, which is healing, and never left her alone; in fact, Darla needs to get back before Grand wakes. She began on Brinkman earlier than the others, because she hadn’t had much sleep in the last several days and using stimulants makes her jumpy. Tomorrow’s plan is she will be Roweena Carson, an interior designer meeting a man with a wife and a mistress, who cheats on both; she has a marvelous costume for the scene. Peabody asks her if she realizes it’s not a vid, and she says, of course but she plays the parts, dresses the part before revealing to the men who she really is, Lady Justice. Eve assures her Donnalou is staying with her grandmother, so she can get some sleep and then meet with Dr. Mira in the morning.
  • Darla said she was angry with Eve at first, bit then she realized that women have to stick together. They end the interview. Mira doesn’t think she reaches the threshold for legal sanity but will fully evaluate her the next day. Mira tells Eve and Peabody to take some time off, get some rest, and leave Darla to Reo and her now. Eve writes up the report and she and Roarke go home. Eve tells him her time off starts now, so they can leave for Italy anytime he’s ready, which is in 30 minutes. Eve says she just wants to wake up somewhere else for a couple of days, and not think about sick, sad women who think killing men is not only necessary, but heroic. She tells Roarke she loves him and would never want him replaced by a droid-human hybrid.
  • The End.

Character List[]

List of Main Characters Appearing in this Book[]

List of Secondary Characters Appearing in this Book[]

List of Recurring Characters Appearing in this Book[]

List of Minor Characters Appearing in this Book[]

List of Peripheral Characters Appearing or Mentioned in this Book[]

Trivia[]

YANNIs[]

  • Tisha Feinstein’s stag/bachlorette party was either her “and fourteen friends” or “fourteen of us” (Chapter 1)
  • Frances Early had been with the McEnroys for either seven years (Chapter 2) or eight years (Chapter 7)
  • In the audio version, Eve told Roarke, “I’ve got to travel to check,” but it should be “I’ve got travel to check” (and is in the book). (Chapter 7)
  • In the audio version, Jacie Pepperdine said, “I’m not stupid enough to get drink at the most important meeting of my life.” - it should be drunk, as in the print version (Chapter 17)

Footnotes[]

  1. ↑ Vendetta in Death, Chapter 21
  2. ↑ Chapter 1: “April 11, 2061, the day that marked the rise of Lady Justice.”
  3. ↑ Vendetta in Death, Chapter 4
  4. ↑ Faithless in Death, Chapter 7
  5. ↑ Vendetta in Death, Chapter 9
  6. ↑ Vendetta in Death, Chapter 13
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