Revenant in Death
Chapter 08
by Technomad
Eve Dallas
The time flew past quickly before the Nixie Swisher Fund fundraiser. Eve Dallas had long since learned to let the professionals handle the setup for parties, so she just relaxed and allowed them to do their jobs. They, for their part, had learned to leave her alone, and she concentrated on figuring out what would be the best uses for the money they were planning to raise. By the evening of the party, Roarke's house was as prepared as it could ever be. The areas off-limits to guests were discreetly secured, and the rest of the house was decorated in Roarke's excellent taste.
There were several different ways in which the money they expected to raise could be utilized. Part of it would go to the actual current victims of crime, to help pay their hospital bills, pay for rehabilitation, pay for repairs where they were needed, and try to restore them to where they'd been before crime had touched them, insofar as money could. Another part would go to the dependents of those who had been killed by criminals, to support them until they could make their own way in life. And yet another part would go to those who never could recover, who were in hospitals or clinics or nursing homes for the rest of their lives after having been victimized by crime. Their expenses would be paid, and they would receive such comforts as they could use.
Pledges of support were already coming in, and Eve was touched, as always, to see that her former colleagues on the police force were stepping up with contributions. She knew…none better…that police were often not paid terribly well, and to see them digging down to help those less fortunate warmed her heart. As always, Captain Peabody led the list, with an impressive amount in her own name and that of McNab.
When Peabody had received her captain's bars, she had requested that Eve be the one to pin them on for her. In her acceptance speech, she gave full credit to Eve, saying that Eve had shaped her into the policewoman she now was, and stating that she would not have climbed so high without Eve's shining example to live up to, every day of her life. When she had stood out of her wheelchair to pin the bars on Peabody's uniform, Eve had been all but blinded by tears and deafened by the standing ovation that the audience, led by Roarke, had given them. Although normally Eve was not demonstrative in public, she and Peabody had hugged, and Eve could hear her son's yell: "Hooray for Aunt Delia!" along with Peabody's own children cheering them on.
Thinking of Peabody always made Eve smile, and feel a little wistful. Although her life now was often very fulfilling, and she wouldn't have traded her son for anything in the world, there were times she still missed police work. With a shake of her head, she dismissed nostalgia, concentrating on the business at hand, just as though it were still the old days and she was bringing in a murderer.
Mame Burnside and Vera Charles were bringing in their usual haul from their upscale friends. Eve nodded in approval. Many of those people had far more money than they could ever use, and they liked to show it by splashing it around on good causes. And some of them had also been victimized by crime in the past, and hadn't forgotten.
When she thought of Mame Burnside, she remembered her new assistant. There was something about Jane Mollenbeek that just niggled at her. On the surface, Ms. Mollenbeek was a perfect assistant. She was unobtrusive, polite, apparently well-educated and well-trained, and clearly an asset to Mame in her daily doings. But there was something wrong there, and it bothered Eve that she couldn't put her finger on it.
She knew that Jane Mollenbeek had spent time in prison. The conviction had been for a minor charge, as a low-level go-fer and flunky in an illegals ring, apparently at the behest of her boyfriend. Could that be it? Eve knew that prison left a mark on people, and wondered if that was all she was seeing. She made a mental note to discuss it with Roarke, and wheeled off to her closet to select what she would wear that night.
Rayleen Straffo
The Nixie Swisher Foundation fundraiser was everything that Rayleen could have expected, and more. She was surrounded by people that she normally would only see on-screen, and they accepted her as casually as if they'd known her all her life. Of course, being in the wake of Mame Burnside helped. Mame knew everybody, and everybody knew her.
Following Mame like a baby duck its mother, Rayleen moved through the crowd. Mame, of course, had a drink in her hand, while Rayleen, as always, had something non-alcoholic. This time it was a glass full of ginger ale. It looked alcoholic enough to keep people from pressing drinks on her, but wasn't intoxicating. On this night of all nights, she had to keep her wits about her.
Regretfully, she had discarded the idea of assassinating Eve Dallas in the midst of her own party. There were far too many police around, in and out of uniform, and she had learned the hard way that even society matrons like her own employer could not be discounted easily. Instead, she was devoting herself to sussing out the defenses on Roarke's mansion, with the goal of entering at some time when things were quieter. Her portable computer had quite a few features on it that Mame didn't know about, and one of them was a program that passively sensed and recorded defensive measures, so that she could study them later, at leisure.
She had accepted that this was not going to be an easy project to bring off. Eve Dallas was apparently just about as sharp as ever, and she was also one of the most heavily guarded people in New York, if not the country. However, Rayleen was not discouraged. She had already completed the most difficult part of the project, and was a free woman again, for all that Eve Dallas didn't know it. Compared to the patience and skill it had taken to ghost through the layers of security that had separated her from her freedom, this would not be an insuperable obstacle.
She had also decided to bring in a friend of hers. Someone she had met in captivity, who had just as many good reasons as she did to wish Eve Dallas dead, who also had skills that she, Rayleen, admittedly lacked.
Having tabled the notion of striking at the fundraiser itself, Rayleen let herself fall into the persona of Jane Mollenbeek, sometime small-time convict trying to make good as the assistant of a rich, warm-hearted, impulsive older woman. With that, she began to enjoy the party for its own sake.
Mame walked up to a woman about Rayleen's own age, embracing her, before turning to Rayleen. "Jane, darling! You haven't met the guest of honor! Nixie, this is Jane Mollenbeek, my new assistant. Jane, I want you to meet Nixie Swisher Sullivan!"
Nixie stepped forward, taking Rayleen's hand in both of hers. "Welcome, Jane! I'm so glad you could come! Isn't this a wonderful event?" Her eyes sparkled, and Rayleen thought she might have had a few drinks already.
"It sure is! I don't think I've seen so many yummy men in one place in years!" And that, Rayleen reflected, was the simple truth, told in such a way that her interlocutors would not understand what she was really saying. The men on tap in the places where she had been confined for so long were mostly not terribly appetizing, and while she'd not been above consoling herself with them when opportunity offered, they were not to her taste. She deserved only the best, and she would have it, one way or another!
Nixie laughed. "Ain't that the truth!" She patted Rayleen on the shoulder, said "Have a good time! We're already raising lots of money!" and went on her way to schmooze the next person. In the privacy of her own mind, Rayleen laughed at how easily Nixie had accepted her for what she ostensibly was.
The evening wore on, with the climax of the festivities being Eve Dallas herself, up on a platform behind a podium she could cling to while out of her wheelchair, announcing the total amount that the event had raised. At her announcement, the room rang with cheers, and Rayleen joined in, while inside she gasped in wonder at how much money had changed hands.
Part of her mourned that she couldn't tap into that windfall herself. While working for Mame Burnside was very useful, and gave her a legitimate reason to be in the Roarke mansion and a role that let her pass unnoticed, she did not intend to spend her life as a rich woman's go-fer and flunky. She deserved wealth, and with wealth she could surround herself with luxury and comforts, and forget the long decades she had spent in austere confinement.
When they finally left, Mame was visibly tiddly, and Rayleen gently took charge of her, steering her to where her transpo waited. She and her boss both got in, and the big limousine purred smoothly out into the early-morning Manhattan traffic, heading back to the Upper East Side where Mame's mansion was.
Once they were home, Mame said "Darling, I'm off to bed. I don't want to be disturbed until I get up under my own power tomorrow. Can you arrange that, dear?"
"Of course, Mame." The women exchanged chaste kisses, and Mame was soon tucked up in her own bed, sleeping the sleep of the more-than-somewhat-intoxicated. Once her employer was asleep and out of the way, Rayleen went to her own quarters.
Agnes Gooch was away, visiting some relatives of hers, and she had no particular fear of being interrupted. Even so, she locked her door carefully, and put a chair into place where it would be knocked over if someone came in. She had neglected her precautions before, and that had led to decades of uncomfortable, degrading confinement. If nothing else, Rayleen Straffo was a gifted student, and did not need to learn any lesson twice.
One of the few possessions she had brought along from her previous residence was the personal computer she had bought as soon as she was out of prison. It was state-of-the-art, and with the skills she had studied obsessively while in confinement, she had added safeguards that would, she believed, hide the data she needed hidden from the eyes of any but the very best e-geeks. And, if things went as she wished, she would not come to the attention of any such people.
She uploaded the data she had obtained at the Nixie Swisher Fund fundraiser, adding it to what she had already found out about Roarke's mansion. As she worked, schematics came and went on the screen, detailing the various security systems in use and the areas they covered. When she was done, she sat back and studied what she had learned.
A thoughtful frown creased her face. The more she looked at it, the less possible it seemed to be to make a surrepitious entry into Roarke's mansion. Roarke himself, as a former criminal, was obsessive about his security systems, and with his great wealth, he could obtain the very best, often before they even hit the general market. That meant that countermeasures against them were not easily obtainable.
If she had been in touch with the criminal community, she could possibly have obtained the countermeasures she'd need to break into Roarke's mansion. But that idea, wonderful as it was, had its faults.
First, she didn't have any such contacts. Most of the people she'd been locked up with had had them, but they didn't always choose to share them with her. The longer they'd been inside, the less likely their information was to be up-to-date. And she couldn't exactly just write or call them and ask about such things. All communications into prisons were monitored, and asking openly about any such thing would raise red flags everywhere.
Second, the criminal community was riddled with police informants. Many of her fellow-unfortunates had ended up in prison because of the treachery of some subordinate, either to remove a rival for preference and promotion, or to get themselves out of some jam or other. Rayleen worked alone, at least as much as she could, and did not confide her plans to people, mainly because what they did not know, they could not spill.
Third, criminals were untrustworthy. There were many of them who'd have happily sold her "countermeasures" that did not work, and laughed to see her hauled back to the hell she had escaped. Others might have sold her bad countermeasures purely inadvertently. Just because someone was in The Life did not make him or her competent. Incompetence, on their own part or the parts of others, was another factor that had been the downfall of many of her former companions.
So, striking from within Roarke's own house was impossible, at least without things that Rayleen did not have. But that did not mean that Eve Dallas, damn her, had won the game! There were more ways than one to peel this particular fruit.
Eve Dallas did not spend all her time in her husband's fortress-mansion. She left it, apparently on a fairly regular basis, on various errands. Rayleen had heard that she regularly traveled to the Police Academy, to lecture up-and-coming police cadets on the things she had learned in her years behind the badge. She didn't have the schedule for those trips, but she was sure that she could find out just when they happened. And once out of her fortress, Eve Dallas would be vulnerable. Particularly to one person that Rayleen knew would be up for the job.
In her time inside, Rayleen had made various friends. The closest of them all, though, was Willow Mackie, another young girl who had been convicted of multiple murders and sent to prison for life. On the surface, they couldn't have been much different, but once they met, they bonded. Rayleen had been in for some time when Willow was first brought in, and once she found out what the other girl was in for, she had stepped forward and offered herself as a guide and mentor, teaching her new friend all about the ins and outs of prison life.
Willow had not had her level of skill with computers, but she made up for that with skill and knowledge in other areas. They had formed a tight partnership. Under Rayleen's knowledgable guidance, Willow had soon become a "model prisoner" in her own right, with privileges and immunities to some of the lesser annoyances of prison life.
Rayleen had confided her long-term strategy for regaining her freedom to Willow alone, and had promised to do all she could to break the other girl out of confinement as well. With her cooperation, Rayleen had carefully fiddled with the computerized records, once it was safe, erasing or moving the recommendations that Willow be kept strictly confined in the same way she had done for her own records.
Once they had been moved back planetside, they had separated, as planned. Rayleen had managed to manipulate the records to make it seem as though Willlow was insane, and had seen to it that she was placed in a mental institution, not far from New York itself. She had been in position to be released for some time, and all it would take would be one or two last tweaks to the system.
Unlike criminals, insane people could be released with little fanfare, once their keepers were satisfied that they were able to deal with reality in a sane way. Rayleen had carefully coached Willow on just what to say to the doctors, and everything had gone swimmingly. She was on the track to be released, and all it would take would be the approval of the court that had declared her mentally incompetent. Approval that Rayleen knew how to manufacture.
Once Willow was out, she knew what to do. She had some money available, in an account that Rayleen had set up, and Rayleen had also let her know where her previous living quarters were and how to access them. The rent on that mini-apartment had been paid up in full for a year in advance, since Rayleen had not anticipated such a stroke of luck as to be hired on as Mame Burnside's personal assistant. Willow would just move on into the mini-apt, and they would get together and figure out just what to do next.
Rayleen nodded to herself. One thing she herself lacked, she admitted freely, was skill with weapons. She'd had no exposure to them prior to her conviction, and for obvious reasons, her keepers did not see fit to remedy that gap in her education. However, her best friend was a crack shot with a long-distance laser, and had sniped twenty-five people before being stopped. While Willow was admittedly out of practice, Rayleen thought that once she got in some target range time, her friend would be back up to her former high level of skill.
Rayleen also knew she could trust her friend implicitly. Willow Mackie had been thwarted in her desire to be the top-scoring long-distance serial killer of all time by Eve Dallas, and had been sent to what had been meant to be lifelong confinement by the accursed Lieutenant. While they were different people in many ways, with Willow having little or no patience for Rayleen's interests in the arts, and Rayleen being bored by Willow's obsession with weapons, the hatred they shared for Eve Dallas was more than enough to ensure that they could work together on this.
And afterward, who knew? Rayleen knew that she herself was a dab hand with poisons, and could make computers all but sit up and beg. Combine that with Willow's deadly marksmanship, and add both women's utter ruthlessness, and you might just have a combination that would be in demand among those who were in the market for others' deaths.
