A/N: To put things bluntly, I originally was going to plan a scene where Coltraine were to transform herself to a cold-blooded killer. But the more I thought about it the more I began to realize that it would've been unfair to the two ladies who brought her back to life. So I'm going on a different direction and this chapter will be a symbolism of it. For the record, I may add more scenes to the chapter or may create a new chapter all together, stay tuned and happy reading. Also I need to let you guys know that when Eve Dallas works with her boys in the NYPSD, they call her sir instead of ma'am. Don't ask why because I really don't know the answer.
Standard Disclaimers Apply
Chapter 9
As Eve, Batou and Mira were making their way to Coltraine's room, she, Morris and Motoko were waiting for them.
"Are you sure you're ready for this, Ammy?" Morris asked again after she told him she was ready to talk to Eve.
"I know it's sudden, Li," Coltraine replied. "But her mentioning Alex to me made me remember everything. It took a while but I think details of my death are starting to fall into place."
"Like a puzzle piece," Motoko replied. "And a big one I'm guessing."
Coltraine nodded, "And it had to take the Lieutenant's deductive skills to figure that out."
"She's worried about you, you know," Morris said softly.
"I can only imagine why," Coltraine's expression grew dark. "There's so much I want to do to when I confront my killer, so much I want to say...hell I'm having visuals right now on how I want to kill her in order to achieve my revenge."
"But you know we can't let you do that," Motoko replied solemnly. "There are many reasons why revenge is never a good answer especially when it comes to being a ghost."
Just then the doors to Coltraine's room opened and Eve walked in with Batou and Mira behind her. One look at Eve's cop eyes and it was enough to make her eyes go All Cop.
"I know who killed me Lieutenant," was what she began to say.
Eve nodded solemnly, then prepared to take out her recorder. "With your permission, Coltraine, I wish to record this for your safety and for the record."
"If your Major doesn't have a problem with it, I don't." Coltraine replied while looking at Motoko.
"I'm not her Major, Detective," Motoko replied with her own set of cop eyes. "But she is still your Lieutenant and the primary in your murder case."
Coltraine nodded at both Eve and Motoko to confirm her permission, Eve and Mira began to sit down on her bed to begin.
"Just so you know," Mira said before Eve could talk. "If at any point you begin to feel uncomfortable, you can stop at any time."
"Understood...Lieutenant?"
"Record on. Dallas, Lieutenant Eve interviewing Detective Coltraine Amarylis of the New York Police and Security Department, Robbery Division. You have the right to remain silent." Eve began to read off the revised Miranda.
Batou: Kinda pointless to read the revised Miranda to the deceased.
Motoko: True, but dying declarations are still admissible in court.
Cybernization may have been common in Japan, but in the U.S. a good chunk of the population still clung to the idea of humanity. But people who did convert to being cyborgs had been involved in a debate on whether they had the same civil rights as a human being. Motoko briefly remembered the day when her American political allies with The Ghost Organization had drafted and successfully passed The Cyborg Civil Rights Act of 2040, three years after she had rescued Eve from Texas. The act included a provision where if a human volunteered their body to be converted to cyberization and were in a near fatal attack that involved attempted murder, the victim had a right to declare dying to be admissible in the court of law. In Coltraine's case, she'd be the first individual to have a dying declaration after already being dead.
"Do you understand your rights and obligations, Detective Coltraine?"
"Yes sir."
"What can you tell me about your relationship with Alex Ricker?" Eve asked Coltraine after reading the revised Miranda.
"It started three years ago, I was working the robbery of his store, an upscale antique shop. Manager of that shop was badly beaten, thousands of dollars in cash were stolen, twice that money was destroyed in merchandise. Alex Ricker owned that store."
"Looking into your old case files, the three people behind that robbery were eventually found dead at the Chattahoochee River-chained together."
"If you're asking if Ricker was involved in those deaths, I always suspected but I could never get anything concrete from him. After all his alibi was that he attended a charity event in Miami."
"And your sexual involvement with Alex Ricker?" Eve asked as the cop in her disregarded Morris' discomfort.
Coltraine, on the other hand, had to take a moment to look at her lover to see if there was a sign of discomfort. But Morris showed nothing but stoicism and she knew that there was a reason for it, but couldn't afford time to dwell on it.
"It started about three months after the investigation of his antique store, it was mostly out of lust at first. But three years pass and we began to care about each other overtime, he gifted me with jewelry, I accompanied him to foreign trips."
"Yet you never reported your trips or your relationship with Alex to your superiors in Atlanta?"
"You think they would've accepted it, L.T.?" Coltraine threw the question back at Eve.
"Then maybe you can answer me this, do you remember the day you and Alex Ricker decided to end your relationship?"
"It was after you arrested his father, Max Ricker, I had begun to notice a change in him. He had become cold distant and argumentative, our breakup mostly involved us debating over whether or not he could distant himself away from being his father and when I accepted the fact that he would never change, we mutually agreed to go our separate ways. I ended up giving him back the jewelry he gave me not long after I transferred to New York City. A month before I started, I was on vacation when I met Li Morris, and it was three months before I met you."
'Right around the time when I worked the Icove incident,' Eve thought to herself as she began to mentally travel back to that timeframe.
"Can you remember the day of when you were murdered, Coltraine?"
"The day before, I was at Alex Ricker's flop for drinks and catching up, the entire time I knew Alex was trying to gently convince me to come back to him. But I was falling in love with Li that I knew there was no chance of that happening and I wouldn't have been as happy with myself if I did. But during that time, I was called in with O'Brian to investigate that robbery in Chinatown. The night I was killed, I was getting ready to turn in early when my 'link signaled. But when I answered it, it wasn't Detective Patrick O'Brian on the readout."
It was right then and there, Eve knew that Coltraine was about to reveal who killed her, was kinda struggling with how to approach saying the name of her killer.
"Detective Amaryllis Coltraine, if you know who killed you, if you were friends with him, he stopped being your friend when he zapped you at your apartment staircase."
"That's the thing though, Lieutenant, of all the people who I trusted most in New York...I had no idea that it would be Cleo Grady pressing the stunner to my throat. When I saw her name on the 'link, she told me that she had a solid on the Chinatown case. On the third flight of stairs is when I saw her with the stunner in her hand and she shot me without hesitation. When I woke up, I couldn't move my body, but I could see her face clearly and her eyes were cold and deadly. 'Alex is killing you, bitch. Alex is taking your own goddamn weapon and pressing it to your throat. Feel it? You don't walk away from a Ricker and live.' Next thing I knew, I felt the electricity hit my throat and I was screaming in pain while I felt my body convulse. I didn't even have the chance to beg her for mercy and stop."
"She wouldn't have given you mercy, Coltraine, once someone adopts the eyes of a killer all mercy goes out the window." Eve said after Coltraine finished her story.
"She was never a friend, never a partner." Sorrow weighed down Coltraine's voice. "Not to me, not to any of us."
"I doubt you were her first. It usually takes more than one to do it that cold. She doesn't have any kills on the job. Probably too bad as Testing after a termination pretty intense. More intense than the screening, the evaluations, to get a badge."
Eve would know, as she's been through her share of Testing, last time that happened was after she narrowly escaped the Icove cloning center and had to kill some human clones in order to escape.
"Are you having any urges to get revenge on Cleo Grady?" Eve asked.
"Yes," Coltraine said without hesitation. "A voice inside my head is screaming at me to escape this room you brought me in, to look for Cleo and kill her and even kill Alex Ricker then ask questions later. But there's another factor that's outweighing that idea and stopping me...it's you."
"Me?" Eve asked in mild surprise.
"Everyone looks up to you, lieutenant. Most cops admire you for the code you carry when you work, a code that I try to follow when I put the badge on and go to work. I admired you, Dallas, even when I figured out that you were jealous of me being with Morris."
"I wasn't jealous of you being with Morris," Eve rebutted. "That was more Peabody's attitude, me on the other hand I was nothing but a cold bitch and for that I am sorry."
Coltraine gave a light smile to Eve's apology and nodded. "Then if there's anyway we can start over and arrest Grady, I'll give you my word that I won't kill her."
As form of resolution, Coltraine extended a hand for Eve to hopefully shake in order to seal that promise. In a last ditch effort to see if Coltraine was deceiving Eve, she hesitated returning the handshake and spent at least two minutes studying her eyes, but seeing as Coltraine had none, she gave her hand in solidarity and ordered the recorder off.
"We need to build a firmer case against her," Eve said after getting up from Coltraine's bed. "It's not that the courts wouldn't accept your statement, but you know my code of never giving criminals a sliver of escape if I catch them. I want them to stay in prison and never get out."
"I want to help with that, sir," Coltraine said while trying to get up from her bed. "Let me help, Dallas."
"No Coltraine...No!" Eve said when Coltraine began to argue. "I don't want to risk your cover being blown while your case is still ongoing. Your squad still thinks you're deceased and you being in a cyber-body is still classified a Code Blue."
"I'm not talking about helping with the investigation, LT."
"What are you talking about then?" Motoko asked after staying silent during the interview.
"I'm talking about a sting op, something that will take Cleo Grady by surprise as we arrest her."
Before Eve could press for an explanation, her communicator beeped and she picked up to answer as she saw Feeney's name in the read out.
"Block video. Dallas."
"I hope I'm not interrupting anything, kid, but your partner Peabody and my boy McNab got involved in a serious car wreck."
ooooOOOOoooo
Feeney told Eve about Peabody and McNab being tailed by a late-model, nondescript black sedan with tinted windows and New York plates. To Peabody's credit, she was able to get the vehicle registration codes: New York. Eight, six, three, Zulu, Bravo, Echo.
They had been in Eve's Police Issue from Requisitions, which had been rear ended by a speeding van. By the time Eve and Mira arrived, she had already found Roarke near the barricades and his car had been double parked a few blocks away, letting her know he made it on foot.
Knowing Roarke, he'd probably let that car be towed and bill him to pick it up. They both saw the wreck first-the accordion pleats of metal, the shattered glass and bitten chunks of fiberglass.
Seeing Eve behind the barricades beside him, lessened the anger, but he still felt irritated.
"I thought you were in that vehicle when I heard about Peabody," Roarke said when Eve and Mira got close to him.
"No I was with Motoko and Mira, Coltraine was ready to talk," Eve replied evenly. "But where's Peabody and McNab?"
"They're with an MT, being treated, something that you would have acted like a baby over if it were you in the car."
Eve couldn't argue that logic, Roarke knew her that well. Suddenly she found Feeney helping those MTs load Peabody and McNab onto the Med-Bus.
"How come you're not injured?" Eve asked him after badging her way past the barricade.
"I was on my way back to Cop Central to follow up on the evidence we secured from Alex Ricker. Not long after I began to leave, I saw the black sedan tail your car and saw the accident happen. And before you say I should have followed the people on the sedan, you think I would leave a fellow officer to bleed on the streets?"
"No you wouldn't," Eve replied after taking a breath. "But change of plans, Feeney, I need you to meet me at my house, it's about the Code Blue."
"What about it?" Feeney asked.
"What I can tell you is that we're on a wild goose chase, but I can't say anything more about it." She walked over to the Med-Bus and let the EMT's know to delay their transport of Peabody and McNab after letting her know the severity of their injuries.
Eve had been injured on the job many times before, but when it came to being treated, she didn't want to be drugged up with medicine designed to either put you to sleep or make you loopy. Even when it came to safer medicines like sleep tranqs or boosters, she refused to take them. Peabody on the other hand, never had a problem with the loopy drugs and Eve could tell her partner was drugged up when she looked at her partner wearing the drug equivalent of beer goggles.
"I fucked up Dallas, please don't be mad at me." Peabody said in the voice of a guilty kid.
"Why should I be mad at you for following cop instincts, Peabody?"
"We did a search and seize on Ricker's place, which he was expecting. Still, it had to be done. We split off after, to head back to my place, work from there. Spotted a tail. I should've known. It was sloppy, obvious, McNab and I got smug. Had my attention on the tail, and verifying the registration, start to cross at the light, and wham." Peabody clapped her hands to mimic an explosion.
That's when McNab jumped in, "This van came out of nowhere, laying for us. Peabody punched it, over and up, but a vehicle like yours Dallas, it doesn't respond like the freaking wind. Dipshit behind the wheel of the van caught the rear wheels and sent us into a dive. We wrecked your ride as a result. The woman behind us at the light catches the fender and sent us into another spin. We're padded in as we're going round and round."
"From what Feeney told me, the guys-or guy and a woman-who may be white, or Hispanic, were out and gone by the time he caught up to you. The sedan was shooting up Madison and was dumped on Eighty-sixth and Third. No wits had come forward yet."
"You're not mad at us for wrecking your ride, sir?" Peabody asked with tears in her eyes.
"Fuck the ride, Detective, I'm more happy that both of you are still alive. It's bad enough that we have to deal with another dead cop, let alone two."
"Yeah we don't want that," McNab agreed before the techs told Eve they needed to go.
"I need both of you guys to stay at the hospital until the doctors give you the all clear, when he thinks you're ready I need you to report to my house, understand?"
"Yes, sir," Peabody replied as she was about to slip off to sleep.
ooooOOOOoooo
"What can you tell me about the van?" Eve asked Feeney as the ambulance began to leave.
"The van was reported stolen by some delivery company in the Bronx this morning," Feeney continued. "The sedan was registered to a guy in Queens, and according to his wife and his boss, he's in Cleveland on business, and has been for two days. The vehicle was boosted from long-term parking at the transpo center in Queens."
"They probably hit my vehicle thinking I was in it, damn it." Eve said after punching a light pole in anger.
"It's a stupid way to try to kill them, kid," Feeney empasized with Eve's anger.
"It's not a matter of kill, Feeney, they were trying to just mess my partner and your boy up. The part was fucking success," Eve said the last part sarcastically. "Even if they were to mess them up or me up, if I had been in the car, the investigation's ongoing. Especially after we've been led to a wild goose chase."
"Speaking of wild goose chase," Feeney interrupted her. "I reached Whitney, Tibble, Baxter and even called Cher Reo for good measure. They're going to meet at your house tonight."
"Well I'm going to need Webster in on this meeting as well," Eve then told Feeney about her meet with the IAB Lieutenant at the Down n Dirty while Roarke walked into the conversation. "Crack says hey by the way."
"Interesting venue," was all Roarke said.
"The connection with Crack makes it my turf. I needed to let Webster know about Coltraine being in her new body."
Roarke tapped her chin. "Isn't it lucky I'm not the jealous type?"
She simply stared at him. "Oh yeah, that's lucky. But let's finish this conversation at the mansion."
Coltraine now knew who killed her, but Eve now had to figure out why Cleo Grady held the stunner to her throat.