“She’s already broken, so it doesn’t matter. Confession, no confession, it really doesn’t matter. What we’re doing?” Eve closed the window, turned. “We’re spitting in her eye.”
“For them.”
“For them. Let’s go spit in her eye.”
Eve didn’t see fear this time, but absolute arrogance. Though they hadn’t shackled her, they’d exchanged her designer dress for inmate orange.
Beside her, her attorney wore a dark suit, had her glossy brown hair in a twist smooth like Reo’s. Rather than confidence or nerves there, Eve thought she sensed resignation.
“Record on. Dallas, Lieutenant Eve, Peabody, Detective Delia, Reo, APA Cher, entering Interview with Harper, Phoebe, and her counsel of record, Felds, Malory.”
Eve recited the rest, then sat. “Ms. Felds, you’ll state for the record that your client has been read her rights and obligations in these matters and fully understands them?”
“I will.”
“Ms. Harper, you engaged the services of one Shaun Ye, a freelance technician, and agreed to pay him ten million dollars—half on agreement, half on completion. You further contracted to provide him with transportation to the Philippines, and purchase a home there for him. In exchange, he would undermine and remove from your son, Jonathan Harper Ebersole, the court-ordered monitor he was charged to wear as a condition of his release on house restriction pending trial for three counts of first-degree murder and other related charges. Is this true?”
“Lieutenant, my client does not deny those actions. In an emotionalstate after her only son’s arrest, my client led with those emotions in an attempt to protect her child.”
“He’s twenty-eight, shortly to be twenty-nine. He’s not a child. Ms. Harper, did you access false identification, including a passport for Jonathan Harper Ebersole in the name of Marcus Solo?”
“Lieutenant, as I said, Ms. Harper will not refute these charges. Her maternal instincts—”
Eve whipped her head around to Felds. “I will have the charges and her statement verifying them on this record, Counselor.
“Did you provide Jonathan Harper Ebersole, arrested and arraigned for three counts of murder in the first degree and related charges, with transportation to Caracas, which has no extradition treaty with the United States? Did you additionally provide him with lodging in Caracas, with funds in cash and in an account under his false identification?”
“Do you have a son, Lieutenant Dallas?” Phoebe demanded.
Not children, Eve noted. A son. “No.”
“Then you’d hardly understand the need, the duty I felt and feel to protect my son.”
“Is that a yes to the question?”
“Yes! I did what needed to be done to protect my son, to get him to safety.”
“That would include assaulting two police officers, and inflicting harm on a police officer.”
Appearing completely composed, Phoebe folded her hands on the table. “For a mother guided by a mother’s love, her child comes first, and no true mother would fault me for it.”
“You really think you can get off with that?” Eve glanced at Reo, who just smiled slightly, shook her head.
“Your head of security, whom you dragged into this, will do twenty years in prison. He doesn’t matter to you either.”
“He’s a grown man. He made his choice.”
“Jonathan’s a grown man, and made his.”
“We will submit to the court that my client took action in a desperate and emotional state. That she—”
“She got a hell of a lot done in a desperate and emotional state,” Reo said. “You can try it, Ms. Felds, but we both know the chances are slim. Maybe I don’t get the full fifty, but I’d lay odds on a minimum of thirty. And that’s not all.
“Lieutenant.”
“Did Jonathan Ebersole confess to you that he had killed three people, people he lured to his studio with the promise of payment for modeling?”
She saw it then, that first flicker. Not of fear, not really fear, but anger.
