Down the Rabbit Hole

“She had a severe and sudden headache a minute before she did it. It came on during the interview when I asked her about Darlene Fitzwilliams. I think we’re dealing with the same thing here. Drugs and mind-control. Some sort of post-hypnotic trigger. Look for any similarities with Darlene Fitzwilliams, will you?”

“I will. Mira might be helpful here, as she’s trained in hypnotherapy.”

“I’ve talked to her, and will again. Do me a solid, send the dead wagon.” She gave him the address, signed off. Then immediately tagged Peabody to have her and McNab report to her.

“Dupres was a link,” Eve said to Roarke. “We’re going to turn this place inside out, find out where Dupres sent Darlene Fitzwilliams. Mad Hatter, my ass.”

“But you’re considering the fact both dead women made references to Alice in Wonderland.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“I’ll start on the electronics while you consider.”

“McNab can handle it. This is going to take longer than the hour or two I asked for.”

“She died on my watch as well, Eve.” Roarke took her hand briefly. “I’m fully in it now.”

Understanding, she started her search in the bedroom.

Dupres had a conservative wardrobe—nothing extravagant, but good fabrics, good quality. The same ran true with jewelry, accessories. Nothing there shouted mind-reading psychic who talks to dead people.

No sign, Eve noted, anyone else had spent any time there—no sex toys or enhancements, no men’s belongings. No women’s belongings, she noted, other than what appeared to belong to Dupres.

Oddly, in the underwear drawer, like at Darlene’s, she found a small notebook. A paper book with a good leather binding. She frowned as she paged through, and was still standing there reading when Peabody stepped in.

“The morgue’s right behind me,” she said, and glanced into the bathroom. “That’s a lot of blood.”

“Gashing the femoral artery will empty you out pretty fast.”

“Why kill herself if she’d drugged Darlene into murder/suicide? Did she try to . . . you know?”

“Put the whammy on me? No. And I don’t think she killed herself because she worked Darlene into killing. I think the same person who did that, did this.”

“But . . . you were right here. Was she high?”

“Didn’t appear to be, and that’s troubling. But it fits for me.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s like a diary, but not. Just observations, thoughts, little poems. She mentions bad dreams, headaches, memory blanks. Sleepwalking.”

“Like Darlene.”

“‘The Mad Hatter and the March Hare hold their tea parties, but the tea is blood. The Dormouse sits in the corner, counting the money.’ What’s a dormouse?”

“I don’t know, exactly. It’s another character in the story.”

“Figured. And here, the last thing she wrote. ‘Day and night, darkness bright, he has the sight and feeds it on their sorrow. Bright and mad, deceiving sad, take what they had and bring them death tomorrow.’”

Eve glanced up. “Then she writes ‘WHY CAN’T I REMEMBER?’ in all caps, and circles it again and again.”

“So he used her, probably to solicit rich clients—the dormouse counting the money—and somehow blocked her memory of it.”

“Something like that,” Eve agreed. “But the keys here are ‘he.’ So it’s a man, like Mira predicted, and more, there are three. If we take this literally. Mad Hatter, March Hare, Dormouse. Three of them working this.”

“It’s weird to the mega. Where do you want me to start?”

“Take the kitchen,” Eve told her as the morgue team did their work. “We’re going to send samples of any tea, coffee, herbs—hell, pretty much any consumables. And we’ll get the sweepers in here, in case there’s anything.”

McNab, who could’ve passed for a weird psychic in his sunburst shirt and the hip-swinging vest covered with neon blue stars, came to the doorway, then sidestepped for the morgue team and body bag.

“We may have something.”

“What something?” Eve demanded.

“We found a memo cube in the room across the hall. A recording. Roarke says it’s your vic’s voice. It’s weird, like she was in a trance.”

Eve nudged by him and went into the room where Roarke stood working his PPC.

“Her circle of light,” he said.

“Yeah, I saw that. This cube?”

When he nodded, she picked it up and activated it.

“In my circle the door is closed. Nothing passes through. Safe and quiet mind, safe and quiet mind. Too much blood! Too much. What have I done? Help me see. Blue smoke, blue light. Too many voices. Quiet, be still.”

Just breathing now, long, deep, a shuddering breath, and more steady ones.

“Blue smoke, blue light. See through it. See true. Bright, bright, bright. Not true. A lie, another lie. I am not weak.”

Weeping now, the words thick with tears.