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Delusion in Death

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Plot Summary[]

Amazon UK: What would cause someone to want so many people, surely many of them strangers, to slaughter each other?' The scene that greets Lieutenant Eve Dallas and her team one terrible evening in New York is more shocking than any of them have ever witnessed. The usually comfortable downtown bar is strewn with bodies - office workers who have been sliced, bludgeoned or hacked to death with the nearest weapon available. It appears they all turned on each other in a desperate blinding rage. As Eve and her husband Roarke - who owned the bar among his many properties - investigate the big-business workers of the city, they link the attacks back to the Urban Wars and the chemical warfare used all those years ago. With another slaughter imminent, Eve must turn to unexpected sources in order to stop a killer who is getting revenge by creating mass carnage...[1]

Publishers Weekly: Eve discovers a possible link to the apocalyptic Red Horse cult, which orchestrated attacks with airborne hallucinogens during the Urban Wars of the early 21st century (before c. 2020).[2]

Review from OnceUponATwilight: This time New York is under attack with what seems to be terrorists with a connection to a very dark past, able to maneuver people's actions by using their own fears and kill each other. This connection to the past is so bad that is has even affected the unshakable Summerset, to the point that Dallas has given him a truce. They need to find out if there is a resurgence of the evil history or some copycat is using the same MO to hide their own agenda.[3]

Review from LikesBooks: The tox results reveal that the victims injected a potent cocktail of distilled LSD, Zeus (a fictional drug found in the In Death books), mushrooms, and synthetic enhancers. The motives and suspects are murky, but the danger is obvious. Releasing too many details to the public could cause widespread panic. Any public, enclosed space could become a drug-crazed battlefield. The word “terrorism” gets bandied about. Summerset provides Eve with an early clue: A couple of similar incidents happened years earlier, during the Urban Wars. Eve is still reeling somewhat from her experiences in Dallas (two books ago), where she came face to face with her mother. Roarke puts his foot down and makes her go talk to Mira, who helps her sort through some of the difficult emotions.[4]

Review from ErrantDreams: The chemicals are fast-acting and deadly, allowing the killer to strike quickly and decisively—anywhere, anytime. It’s an act of terrorism by its very definition, but when the killer strikes a second time, targeting people who overlap strongly in their occupations, employers, and area of residence with the first victims, Eve becomes convinced that the killer is going after personal enemies, despite the wide swath of destruction. There’s an additional character from 2060’s equivalent of Homeland Security who keeps things interesting.[5]


Map[]

Please reference the Delusion in Death Map for locations or approximate locations of sites listed here.


Timeline[]

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


Approximate Story Start Date: The last quarter of the year (October or November) 2060[6]

Day 1[]

Chapter 1[]

  • Macie Snyder and her best friend, CiCi Way, are enjoying happy hour at On the Rocks, on Manhattan’s Lower West Side, with Macie’s boyfriend, Travis, and his friend, Brendon, who has been set up with CiCi. Macie and CiCi go to the bathroom, with a man bumping into Macie on the way. Macie tells CiCi that Bren is perfect for her and really likes her, and they discuss after-drink plans.
  • Macie gets a headache and starts yelling and being mean to CiCi, and they head back to the table, with the same man bumping into Macie again, only this time she shoved him. At the table, she tells Travis she and CiCi want to go to Nino’s for dinner. He says he and Bren were thinking Tortilla Flats, which is almost around the corner, and doesn’t require a reservation. She gets angry, and when CiCi looks at Bren, she sees a monster who only wants to f**k her, and says “Screw all of you.” Macie grabs a fork and stabs it through Travis’s eye, “and the bloodbath began.”
  • Eve enters the club, and sees that over 80 people are dead: hacked, sliced, bashed, and worse. Officer Franks, first on scene, tells her that the 8 to 10 survivors were taken to the Tribeca Health Center. Eve has Peabody interview the witness, the one who alerted the officers that there was a problem, and call in Baxter, Trueheart, Jenkinson, Reineke, and Morris.
  • Eve starts working the scene, one body at a time. Peabody relays the witness’s statement – she was meeting friends, running late, and called one of them about 5:30 p.m. Everything was fine, but by the time the witness got there, 20 minutes later, it was chaos and carnage. She freaked and screamed until Officers Franks and Riley showed up. Eve demands a tox on every victim, and testing for all the food and drink, the ventilation, water, and cleaning supplies. Eve contacts the hospital to make sure it’s safe for her and the team to be inside, and they said the survivors being treated are fine – whatever happened, it was fast, under twenty minutes.
  • Roarke shows up – he owns On the Rocks – and Eve puts him on security until EDD arrives. He tells her there are no cameras inside the club, but he gets her a list of employees and schedules, which he compiled on the way to the scene. Eve asks him to start with the vics’ ‘links. Eve tells Morris she requested a Code Blue (media blackout), but it’s probably already too late to keep this quiet.
  • McNab finds Wendy McMahon's body in the ladies’ room and is able to get an outline of how the attack happened from her 'link conversation. She tagged her sister at 5:32 p.m., told her about a guy she met upstairs, Chip, then she says she’s getting a headache, and by 5:33 p.m., she’s calling her sister a whore. Another woman came in screaming, and they started fighting. Based on the officers arriving at 5:45 p.m., after it was all over, the entire massacre took 12 minutes.

Chapter 2[]

  • Eve and Peabody drive to the hospital, with Eve updating Whitney on the way, and requesting a meeting at 22:30 (10:30 p.m.). Of the ten victims brought there from On the Rocks, three are dead, with three in surgery, one in pre-op, and one in a coma. Peabody and Eve interview the remaining two, who are in exam rooms.
  • Dr. Tribido tells them the first one, CiCi Way, has been asking about Macie, but Eve knows she was one of the ones who didn’t make it. CiCi’s story doesn’t make sense – Macie turned into a monster and stabbed Travis in the face with a fork. She tells Eve and Peabody she and Macie went to the ladies’ room, and about the man who bumped Macie twice.
  • The second victim they interview, James L. Brewster, also has a weird story – while the waitress, Katrina, was serving him, she became covered with yellow jacket bees, his childhood phobia, then she opened her mouth and bees swarmed out, and then she turned into a giant bee. Brewster picked up his chair and beat her with it to try to kill the bees. Eve thinks the poison wasn’t in the food or drinks, but in the air.
  • Eve asks Peabody to try to talk to the other survivors while she goes to the morgue, and tags Feeney, asking him to bring whatever he finds to the briefing. Feeney says nobody is saying the one thing everybody is thinking (terrorism), and Eve says they won’t say it either.
  • Morris confirms that people were slaughtering each other and every sample so far shows traces of a complicated cocktail of chemicals on the skin, in the mouth, throat, nasal passages, and blood, meaning the poison was airborne and the victims breathed it in.
  • The cocktail is a bastardization of Zeus, LSD, Rush, peyote, synthetic adrenaline, and testosterone, plus one or two as yet unidentified elements, leaving no permanent damage other than violent death. Eve is worried that since it worked so well, the killer will do this again soon.
  • On the way to Central, Eve contacts Mira to join the briefing and asks her to make sure Mr. Mira stays home. She also sends a text to Mavis asking her to stay home until she contacts her.

Chapter 3[]

  • At Central, Eve gets ready for the briefing. Roarke stops by her office for good coffee and to commiserate. He listened to a lot of the ‘link recordings, and they were terrifying. They agree it’s not done yet – nobody has claimed credit, so Eve can’t call it terrorism yet, although Roarke says it’s nothing but terrorism. They agree that HSO will want in, and they will deal with that when it happens.
  • At the briefing, Peabody fills them in on her interview with another survivor, and lets them know the bartender, who was in surgery, died. The survivor she talked to, Dennis Sherman, lost an eye, and had an equally absurd story about sharks everywhere. Eve tells her the poison was in the air, but she’s still waiting on some details from the lab.
  • Whitney and Mira arrive and Eve starts the briefing, giving the new death count – 83 of the 89 people infected, and that it all took place in about twelve minutes. She tells everybody that the statements contain similarities – sudden headache followed by extreme delusion, and she displays the crime scene photos.
  • Mira’s take is the killer is somebody who can’t connect with others – he observes, and acts, but it’s only surface. He will follow the story religiously in the media, and try to insert himself into the investigation. She thinks he either works with or for the type of target he chose – white-collar – and might have been fired or passed over for promotion.
  • Eve divides the notifications, and will interview the three people who left the bar shortly before the massacre. Whitney offers to take point on media, and Mira asks to work with him and the media liaison on the statement.
  • Before Eve can leave, two people from Stevenson and Reede come in, Lewis Callaway and Nancy Weaver, as well as the club manager. Eve starts with Callaway and Weaver in the Lounge, where she learns that they left just before the mayhem began and haven’t been able to reach their friend/coworker, Joseph Cattery (victim 1). They give her some info and she lets them know Joe is dead.
  • Roarke gives her info on the company and the players, as well as on the bar manager.

Chapter 4[]

  • Eve interviews Devon Lester, the bar manager, who is devastated. Roarke arranges for a car to take him home and then take his husband and him back to the bar the following day to speak with the surviving employees. Eve is keeping him on her suspect list because his brother is a chemist, and it was Devon’s day off.
  • Next stop is the lab, where Dickhead was working away, dressed in skin pants, saying he was at a club when he got called back in. He has determined that the people who survived had the same tox results, and that the effects last eleven to fifteen minutes, with an average of twelve. He replicated the formula, gave it to rats, and they slaughtered each other. He says the LSD was distilled, condensed, extra concentrated, plus the Zeus, causing delusions with energy and strength. Kick in the mushrooms for more hallucinations, synthetic adrenaline to pump up the Zeus, condensed testosterone for more strength and aggression, and a little arsenic to add to the delusions.
  • Eve asks about an antidote, which Dickhead hasn’t come up with yet, appealing to his ego rather than using bribes. He says for now fresh air is the only way to diminish the harm.
  • Eve and Roarke visit Shelby Carstein since she was one of the last people to leave the bar before the annihilation began. She thought they were there because a woman there made a pass at her boyfriend, who thought it was funny, so she knocked her drink over and stormed out. Her boyfriend, Rocky, was there to corroborate her story, and then Eve told them the real reason she was there.
  • Eve and Roarke get home and begin bickering in front of Summerset, which he takes to mean they haven’t eaten, and orders them to the dining room for food. Roarke realizes that he hadn’t let Summerset he was alright, and is mad at himself for worrying him. They sit down to eat together since Summerset also hadn’t eaten. Eve tells Summerset what happened, and he recalls two similar incidents from the Urban Wars, and will research it.

Chapter 5[]

  • Roarke thanks Eve for indulging Summerset, and she says “I’m not going to kick at him when he’s twisted up worried about you. I’ll wait till he’s untwisted, then kick at him.” They have shower sex and then get to work.
  • Since nobody has claimed credit for the attack, Eve figures it’s not political. They have to follow up on anybody who was in the bar and had an issue with somebody else (restraining orders, bad breakups, etc.), but Eve doesn’t think it’s that either. She agrees with Mira’s assessment that it’s somebody playing God. It’s not like Cassandra, which was about big targets, taking credit, issuing warnings. She wants to rule out money as a motive because she thinks it’s personal, maybe to move up the career ladder. She thinks it’s somebody who frequented or worked at the bar.
  • Eve falls into a dream about the dead, including Stella and her father. She wakes up to Roarke comforting her and he tells her she has to talk to Mira, that it’s killing him, and he gets her to commit to the following day. They go to bed.

Day 2[]

Chapter 6[]

  • Summerset gives Eve a disc with data on it regarding the similar attacks during the Urban Wars, including a witness. The base was LSD, with some other elements. A suspect was apprehended after the second attack, but the investigation was closed without an arrest – deemed an accident. Speculation was that either the suspect was executed in an unknown location or was held and used to create an antidote, or the military used him to create more of the substance.
  • The theory is that it was a fringe element who believed society had to be destroyed (although presumably not them) before it could be rebuilt, and it was called The Purging. Summerset said they targeted homes and hospitals, and abducted children to indoctrinate them into their ideology. The attacks were immediately followed with a message, “Behold a Red Horse.” The red horse is the Second Horseman of the Apocalypse, and is used to represent war. Eve thinks maybe the killer is descended from one of the abducted children who was raised in Crazy Town. She listens to Revelation on the way to Central.
  • Nadine is waiting for her outside the bullpen – for once her bribes didn’t work. She tells Eve Jenkinson turned down three dozen handmade pastries. Eve tells her they are Code Blue, but gives her five minutes. She takes the bakery box and puts it on Jenkinson’s desk, asking him to have Peabody start setting up in the conference room when she arrives.
  • Nadine rattles off questions to Eve once they are in Eve’s office, with Eve telling her she just wasted a chunk of her five minutes. She tells Nadine about the chemical substance that causes paranoid delusions and violent behavior, and she gives her a brief outline of Red Horse and The Purging, letting her know she can’t release any of it. Nadine said it hurt her feelings when Jenkinson turned down her baked goods, that she’s soft on him, on all of them.
  • Peabody has heard of Red Horse, a hardline religious cult, and tells Eve reading Revelation gave her nightmares. When Mira enters the conference room, Eve requests personal time with her, and they agree to get together right after the briefing. During the briefing, Peabody gives a thumbnail explanation of Red Horse, Feeney adds that it wasn’t in New York, and Eve tells them about the two confirmed attacks in Europe that used a very similar biological weapon as On the Rocks, along with the fact that after the government shut down the investigation, they covered it up and went underground with it.
  • Feeney gives her Callendar and another EDD resource, Nickson, to help dig for a connection. Baxter found a person whose sister was in charge of his trust fund administration, and two more, then Jenkinson and Reineke added a few more. Whitney offers two more uniforms or detectives to assist in the search for illegals sources, and she requests Strong. Peabody contacts Devon Lester to come in and then plans to send uniforms for his brother, Christopher the Chemist, once Devon is in the house.

Chapter 7[]

  • Eve meets with Dr. Mira to talk about the weird dreams that aren’t nightmares. Eve is having trouble reconciling her feelings about Stella – she’s glad Stella didn’t recognize her because she would have made her and Roarke’s lives hell, but it’s hard for her to understand how somebody can carry a child for nine months and live with them for three years and then not recognize them. She also feels responsible for her murder, even though McQueen was going to kill her anyway. Mira points out that Eve wasn’t the one who killed a guard and injured a nurse escaping the hospital and stole a car to get to McQueen.
  • Mira tells her that it’s harder on Roarke now because he didn’t get the chance to confront Stella and because he lived through the experience with her in Dallas. “He loves, Eve, and those who love suffer when who they love suffers.” Eve thinks the dreams/nightmares are making her weak, but Mira says vulnerable isn’t the same as weak.
  • Mira also asks her if she’s figured out why she thinks of them as Stella and her father, and Eve says because whatever else Richard Troy was, he provided food and clothes for her – not because he cared about her as a child, because he wanted to protect his investment, his commodity. He wasn’t a good or kind father (obviously), and he terrorized Eve, but he wasn’t the one who left. Her memories of Stella are her hurting Eve – slaps, pinches, locking her in dark closets, not feeding her, and looking at Eve with naked hatred. If her father had left, Stella would have killed her – smothered her or locked her up to starve. Mira asks Eve to think of her the next time she dreams of Stella.
  • Eve is pleased to find that Kyung Beaverton is the media liaison; he wants the NYPSD to deflect and defuse, and definitely not use the word terrorism. It will just be Whitney, since if Chief Tibble attended, the mayor also would have, making this a bigger deal and adding politics to the mix. Kyung tells her she won’t take questions, and if she’s not able to make it that’s ok, since it means she’s in the field investigating. The statement will be: “The NYPSD has recovered and identified a substance which was dispersed by an individual or individuals. Contact with this substance caused violent behavior.”
  • Eve tells Whitney and Kyung that she told Nadine enough to have her dig for a connection with Red Horse, but she won’t release anything until Eve gives her the ok. Eve also lets them know that there will be another attack, but hopefully the media attention will be enough to hold him/them off for a little while.
  • Eve gives Peabody a quick overview of the Lester brothers, including the fact that Devon wanted to buy the bar when it came up for sale but wasn’t able to get a loan. Devon walks Eve and Peabody through a typical day, assuring Eve that the only people besides him with the codes to get in are the assistant manager, D.B., the overall bar manager, Bidot, and Roarke. Eve paints a scenario where somebody who wanted to buy it but couldn’t afford it might sabotage it to bring the price down. Devon is offended.

Chapter 8[]

  • Devon stands up for his brother, saying he works to save lives, and says he would never have gone to his brother for a loan to buy the bar, even though Chris would have been happy to lend Devon the money. Chris is just as loyal to Devon, saying he would never cause harm to people, the staff mattered to him, he was devastated, and he was paying for memorials out of his own pocket even though he doesn’t have much money to spare. He offered to lend Devon the money to buy the bar, but was turned down. Eve asks Peabody to get a warrant for what Chris is working on, since it involves hallucinogenics, but both of them think it’s not the Lesters.
  • Baxter says the Stewarts are hinky, but not for the killings, so Eve has him pass it to Carmichael and Sanchez/Santiago until they solve the mass murders.
  • Eve and Peabody return to the crime scene. Eve figures the killer came in with others, spent some time chatting up his coworkers, then walked out after he’d released the poison. He wouldn’t be able to stay and watch, but he either has an apartment where he can see the chaos or maybe he was at a nearby café.
  • Meanwhile, Café West is in full lunchtime swing. Lydia McMeara is annoyed because she’s on a diet and reduced to eating a salad. She’s jealous of her friends who are with her: one is thin and the other smokes (not sure why that’s worth envying). She’s in a two-year rut with Bob. She feels a headache coming on, so she leaves, thus living another day.

Chapter 9[]

  • Chaos at Café West, which fortunately is not a Roarke property. Also fortunately police officers were nearby and stunned people who were out of control in the café. Somebody smashed the glass in the front door, so fresh air was able to come in, but there were still 43 dead, with 14 survivors.
  • Feeney and McNab take the electronics, with Feeney still having blood on his trench coat from the previous day’s massacre.
  • Peabody, Baxter, and Trueheart start identifying the victims, while Reineke and Jenkinson get witness statements. Eve talks to Lydia, the woman who left with a headache as soon as the toxins started to hit the air, and asks Jenkinson to make sure she goes to the hospital and is tested.
  • Eve tells Baxter to go back to Central and start a run on businesses and homes between the two crime scenes. Morris comes in to do some of the tox screening on site, and determines that it’s the same chemical.
  • At EDD, Feeney identifies the last person to go into the café before Lydia leaves as Jeni Curve, who is saying “No prob. I’ll put it in for you” to somebody off camera.
  • Eve is called to Whitney’s office, where he finds Chief Tibble and an HSO rep, Agent Teasdale. Eve and Teasdale go back and forth a little, and Eve eventually agrees to bring Teasdale in.

Chapter 10[]

  • Eve tells her team they are taking on an HSO agent to assist, and if anybody has a problem with Teasdale, come to her – if it’s legit, she’ll kick her ass, if it’s not, she’ll kick the ass of the complainer.
  • Roarke is working with Peabody at her desk, Eve tells her to take a break, then tells Roarke about Teasdale. He, too, is not pleased. Eve tells him she can’t put herself ahead of 127 dead people, but if Roarke finds anything wrong with either Teasdale or Hurtz (Director of HSO, New York branch), she will find a way to remove Teasdale from the team. She tells Roarke she talked to Mira, and feels lighter for it despite not liking being maneuvered into it by Roarke.
  • At the briefing, Roarke supplies pizza, everybody gives Teasdale a wide berth, and Detective Strong is doing better but still favoring her leg. Eve updates everybody on Café West, and tells them there are now 44 deaths from there, in addition to the 83 deaths from On the Rocks, and the survivors all confirm the same scenario – headache, hallucinations, anger, and fear.
  • Reineke interviewed eight survivors, five of whom knew at least one person who had died at On the Rocks the previous day. Trueheart created a spreadsheet with all of the crosses. The highest percentage of connections involve Stevenson and Reede for place of business, excluding the club and café, and the most common residence is along a block of Franklin.
  • Eve gets a call from Morris – Jeni Curve’s tox levels were significantly higher than anybody else’s, so she’s the source. Macie Snyder was the source at On the Rocks for the same reason, and both had broken glass in their pocket. Teasdale asks for the formula, and confirms it’s Red Horse. Callendar is cross referencing abducted children with current victims, witnesses, etc., and Teasdale says she can help do that faster. Mira finds it notable that he chose a woman both times – she would be a dupe and the weapon, first to attack as she would have been first exposed and infected. The killer resents women in authority, and treats women as tools, masking it with charm. The goal is to find somebody with a connection to Red Horse. He will be cooperative, concerned, and ask a lot of questions.

Chapter 11[]

  • Eve is sure that Snyder and Curve were the two carriers – just tools to the killer. She figures he stuck around long enough to notice the change in Macie from when she went to the ladies’ room until she came back and then left. For Café West, Eve figures he never went in, but stayed nearby to watch. He recognized Jeni because he lives and/or works in the neighborhood.
  • Christopher Lester comes in as she’s getting ready to go home, and Nancy Weaver calls to tell her three of her people didn’t come back from lunch and asks Eve to come by S&R to talk to Callaway, Vann, and her. Eve starts with Lester, asking Peabody to get background on everybody in the Lester family, including their spouses – do it from home, but stop by Devon’s residence and get a picture of them from the neighbors.
  • Lester asks about the day manager of Café West because he and Devon go there sometimes and they know her and haven’t been able to reach her. He says he thought it was a terrible accident after the bar, but now he knows it’s worse. He sent his family away to their second home on Long Island and he wants to help find the maniac. Peabody leaves the room, and comes back to tell him his friend is in serious but stable condition.
  • On the way to S&R, Roarke tells Eve Teasdale checks out: “She’s brilliant, dedicated, ambitious, and quite like you in that she doesn't give up, can't be bought, and appears to believe in both the rule and the spirit of the law.” Lester: Eve can’t find a link to Red Horse or to a military source. S&R: Eve cleared Whistler (the person Lewis walked out with), but since S&R lost people in both incidents, and since they have contacted her directly twice, including asking for a meeting, she’s suspicious.
  • Eve thinks they are expecting Peabody, and wants to keep everybody off-balance. She asks Roarke to play aloof megaboss, which she calls scary Roarke-lite, who is along because it’s on the way home. Weaver tells Eve Carly Fisher was among the people killed; she was Weaver’s intern in college, then an assistant, and newly promoted.
  • Eve asks to speak to Vann alone first, since she hadn’t yet interviewed him. They head to his huge, corner office, where Roarke makes himself comfortable at Vann’s desk, while Eve and Vann take the visitors’ chairs. He tells Eve Joe was a go-to guy, and Vann was lead on their current campaign because he brought in the client, not because he’s related to the boss. He and Joe were friends outside of work because their sons were the same age.

Chapter 12[]

  • Back in the conference room with the three of them, Eve asks about Macie Snyder, if any of them saw her. Weaver and Vann said they did, and then Callaway admitted she looked familiar. Vann remembered her at a table with another woman and two guys, laughing and flirting. All of them recognized Jeni – she had delivered food to them or somebody else at their company most days. Vann flirted with her, but didn’t pursue it because he was working a lot on the current campaign. Callaway said she was the delivery girl, and then he called Fisher another bright girl, Nancy’s protégée.
  • Nancy asks for an update, if Eve can tell them anything, and after she tells then the police are pursuing every angle, avenue, and lead, Callaway demands to know what leads, if the two people Eve asked about are suspects. Callaway tells Eve she has an excellent rep, but it feels like she’s treating this as a standard homicide, to which she replies that there are no standard homicides. He asks her how much experience she has with terrorism, and Roarke looks up from his PPC long enough to tell Callaway to ask those associated with the group formerly known as Cassandra. Eve acts annoyed and “lets it slip” that the HSO is involved, but asks them not to mention it since it’s not a matter of public record.
  • Nancy tells her the public has a right to know, and can’t she issue a warning; Eve says the warning would be to lock yourself at home or flee the city – the perpetrator wants panic and attention, and she needs to get back to the investigation. Roarke leaves the doors open as they leave so they can hear him telling Eve she spends too much time placating people, and it’s a tedious job, that he knows she’s frustrated that the HSO are involved, but that might allow her to sleep, which she’s barely done since this began.
  • Outside, she mimics Roarke’s comment about Cassandra, telling him “good one,” since it gave her the opportunity to slip HSO in, to maybe buy a little time before the next attack. She thinks it’s one of them, but not Weaver, because she would have used a man for the delivery. Roarke gives her some more background on her – broken engagements to rung-climbing, making her callous, but not murderous, and they agree she and Vann slept together. They also agree that Vann isn’t interested in climbing rungs, that he wouldn’t want Weaver’s position, that he enjoys the shine, the business lunches, the travel, but doesn’t want more work. Callaway and Vann both referred to Carly as a girl, and Callaway also referred to Curve that way. Of the three of them, only Callaway’s a loner.
  • At home Summerset gives her a name: Guiseppi Menzini, who was a scientist, and the leader of one of the Red Horse factions. They sit down to drinks since Eve thinks Summerset looks even more dead than usual, and hear the story of an evil man and his equally evil father, Salvador, both of whom believed that women are there to bear children in pain and blood, and as long as they are over the age of fourteen it’s not rape. Salvador was shot to death by the father of a fifteen-year-old girl who disagreed, and Guiseppi came to the attention of the CIA, MI6, and other organizations due to his aptitude for chemistry. He is believed to have developed the LSD mix being used in the current attacks, having tested them in Europe in at least two locations, with women carrying and dispersing the poison, before being removed and likely employed by one of the alphabet groups.

Chapter 13[]

  • Callaway is too young to have been one of the abductees, but Eve thinks it’s a parent or grandparent. She gives Roarke the reasons she’s sure it him: basically, he’s a loner in middle management, who was careful not to stand out during the questioning, came forward first (with Weaver), was pushing, and pushing Weaver to ask for information. Roarke says he will speak to their campaign client in the morning.
  • While Roarke researches Callaway’s background, Eve gets started on the abductees – 78 children who’d never been located, alive or dead, most of whom had families, but many who were war orphans. She got a sense of how Red Horse worked – use women to infiltrate camps, hospitals, child centers, gather intel on routines, security, numbers, then raid, often sacrificing the females in the process. Take the kids and kill the rest. Secure the kids, transport, and scatter. Then they would begin indoctrinating the kids who survived the raids. Under four, reward with sweets and toys, over four, punish with pain or deprivation.
  • Roarke pulled Callaway’s background – military for his father, as a medic, then after his enlistment was up a physician’s assistant. After he married and had Lewis they moved six times in six years. Callaway was home-schooled until 14, and his mother was a professional parent. They moved twice more when he was a teenager, and he attended three high schools. No disciplinary trouble recorded, but plenty of concern and signs that something was off. Two years of local college, then NYU, but barely. S&R reviews are solid on work ethic, less so on social skills, especially relating to clients and presentations.
  • In contrast, Cattery’s reviews praise his client skills and team work, and he received a hefty bonus for a project he did with Callaway and was in line for a promotion and raise. Callaway’s bonus was much smaller.
  • Lewis traveled back to Arkansas to visit his parents yearly until this year, when he’s been there four times so far, and nothing to indicate that his parents have medical issues (so that’s not the reason for the extra visits).
  • Eve and Roarke find the same data at the same time: Callaway’s mother was an abductee at the age of 18 months, who was raised by another family, and Eve thinks the mother told Lewis about the Red Horse connection. Eve agrees to get the data to Whitney to put somebody on Lewis to prevent further attacks, and then they will call it quits for the night.

Day 3[]

Chapter 14[]

  • Eve wakes from a dream about the world exploding that ends with her punching Stella in the face, and Mira congratulating her for doing that. She and Roarke have sleepy morning sex.
  • Roarke gives Eve a disc with info on Gina MacMillon, Lewis’s grandmother. Lewis’s mother, Audrey Hubbard, née Karleen MacMillon, was Gina’s daughter, but not with her husband, William unless it was a 14-month gestation, and the bio father is Menzini. Meanwhile, Gina, William, and Karleen disappear, listed as deceased (the parents) and abducted (the child). Gina’s half-sister, Tessa Hubbard fakes a birth certificate for Karleen MacMillon as Audrey Hubbard, who marries Russell Callaway and they have Lewis.
  • Roarke has also spoken with the CEO of S&R’s campaign client, New Harbor. She was at dinner with Vann when Lewis called to tell them about Joe’s death. She was familiar with Vann, Cattery, and Weaver, but hadn’t connected with Callaway. Vann had credited Joe with two key points, and Weaver with her flexibility, but hadn’t mentioned Callaway.
  • Eve heads to the office in her body armor lined coat.

Chapter 15[]

  • Eve and Peabody swap information, with Eve saying she wants Teasdale to bring Lewis’s parents in for questioning. Eve brings everybody up-to-date. After the meeting she talks to Mira, saying she thinks the Callaways moved so much because of Lewis, not because of the father, and when he found out about his connection to Red Horse, he was glad to have that since he didn’t fit in anywhere. Eve also tells Mira that she had a dream, Mira made a cameo appearance, and Eve punched Stella in the face. Mira congratulates her, which is what Roarke thought she would do.
  • Eve and Peabody drive to Brooklyn to visit Joe Cattery’s family. On the way, Eve fills Peabody in on what went down in Dallas, including that Stella was her mother.

Chapter 16[]

  • Elaine Cattery’s mother, Dana Forest lets them in, and Elaine tells them she just found out she’s pregnant but hadn’t told Joe yet. Eve tells Elaine that Joe was up for a promotion for the campaign, and asks her if she knew the people he worked with. Nancy stopped by, Steve sent food, and Lew called. Joe knew about Steve and Nancy’s affair, but it didn’t bother him. Joe didn’t like Callaway – he told Elaine Lew needed to work on the grip and grin – he did better with ideas, the big picture. Elaine would get annoyed when Joe spent a lot of time working out Callaway’s concepts and not take the credit for it. When Callaway sulked, Joe would say “Lew’s on the broody train again.” Joe also liked Carly Fisher a lot, said she was bright, and she would probably be his next boss, which he was fine with because he didn’t want to be the boss, he wanted to be one of the team.
  • Teasdale is bringing the parents in, and secures a search warrant for their house if somebody from the NYPSD joins HSO, so Eve sends Baxter and Trueheart to Arkansas. Eve has Peabody contact Callaway to come into Central if he has the time, that they can use his help.
  • Back at Central, Eve changes the murder boards a little to leave out Red Horse and Menzini, but show all the victims and a few of the connections, including to Callaway. Teasdale wants in, and tells Eve she has a search warrant for his apartment, so they plan to search it while he’s at Central. Teasdale also apologizes to Eve for HSO’s involvement with her in Dallas as a child.

Chapter 17[]

  • Eve and Teasdale interview Callaway’s parents, who are shocked but not surprised about Lewis’s involvement. Mr. Callaway confirms Eve’s theory that they moved a lot because of Lewis’s behavior. Teasdale adds that Lewis used to start rumors to stir up trouble, and Eve adds that he did the same to both of them – little lies and sabotage to cause conflict and friction – his parents confirm both observations.
  • Audrey says she learned about her bio parents when her father was dying; he thought she needed to know the truth, and was afraid she’d find out after he wasn’t around to explain it. There were journals, essays, and pictures boxed up in the attic, Lewis found them, and decided they were his legacy. Eve tells the Callaways what their son is responsible for and they weep, knowing it’s true.
  • After speaking with a roommate and a coworker, Peabody tells Eve that Carly wasn’t a fan of Callaway’s, that he stole her ideas the first time they worked together, and then after that she documented everything, dating it and running it by Weaver first. She got a bonus on that project and Lewis never worked with her again.
  • Eve has set up the conference room to look like the team’s been spending a lot of frustrating time there, getting nowhere. Mira tells Eve to take off her jacket so it rubs it in Lewis’s face that she has a weapon, since he’s there to help the inept females solve a case. Eve brightens Roarke’s day by adding him to the search team at Callaway’s apartment. She further spreads cheer by having Sanchez/Santiago and Carmichael give her grief, but mostly S/S since he’s male, when Callaway is close enough to hear.
  • Eve lies to him that she’s not going to lie to him, but they’re in a bind. She then proceeds to tell him it’s not possible that one person pulled this off, that it’s too complex, too risky, too much planning, then continues with how charismatic and intelligent the leader of the group is. She shows him CiCi’s picture, since she’s a survivor, and he suddenly remembers that she was shifty, tracking the room, nervous, and most damning of all, took something out of her pocket as she sat down after the trip to the restroom.
  • Teasdale comes in to take Eve out of the room, and while that power struggle is going on Peabody asks Callaway to go over the details again.

Chapter 18[]

  • Teasdale tells Eve the Callaways are in a safe house, and gave her a few more incidents from his childhood. Eve tells Teasdale she sees her as a pushy federal shill wrapped in red tape, and Teasdale tells Eve she sees her as an incompetent, overly aggressive city employee, and they head back in to tag team Lewis.
  • Back in the conference room, Lewis tells them he went out for air on the day of the second attack, and he was remembering how Joe would come to him for help on projects, especially if he was having a spat with his wife or his kids were acting up. He thought about going to the café, but just wanted to get air, and oh yeah, he saw Carly going in and wanted to avoid her because she was always asking him for help, picking his brain for ideas, but he wasn’t in the mood that day.
  • He suddenly remembers he saw a man giving Jeni something at the café door, and she put it in her pocket, and she was probably used because she’s just the delivery girl, easily manipulated by someone who’s highly intelligent, organized, and charismatic. Eve says it sounds like he’s describing himself, and asks Mira (their profiler) for some more qualities of this leader. Mira adds that he’s a loner with sociopathic tendencies, internal violence, rigidly suppressed, and uses others to carry out the violence. Eve says it sounds like he’s a coward who doesn’t have the balls to kill face-to-face.
  • An agitated Callaway tells them it seems that by staying above the fray, he’s demonstrating his intelligence. Teasdale is fake pissed that Eve is giving information to a civilian, and she expands the profile – lives alone, no social circle, no relationships, probably sexually impotent, works and lives in the neighborhood, so that’s a mistake – he should have gone elsewhere, but he took the easy way. She adds that nobody likes him, and the ones who pay attention see him as a fake, a user, with an inflated sense of entitlement.
  • Callaway butts in to say he thought the person was charismatic, and Eve says he adapts, morphs, blends, but is weak on social skills, which is why he hasn’t advanced as much as he feels he deserves in his career – “you know the type I’m talking about, Lew. You work with people like that. Then there’s people like your pal Joe. He has the social skills and a willingness to go the extra mile, or Carly, who was fast-tracking her way up.” She tells him this guy has plateaued, that he’s lazy, didn’t even come up with the plan by himself – it’s based on somebody else’s work. He has delusions of grandeur but he’s just a cheap copycat.
  • Eve tricks him into naming Red Horse. Because Eve is awesome she lets Teasdale take him down as he’s heading for the door to leave, not understanding the “you’re under arrest” part of “you’re under arrest.” Teasdale has great moves, impressing Eve. Mira found it interesting that Callaway called two mass murders “accomplishments.”
  • At Callaway’s place, Reineke calls him a sick f during the search because he seems more interested in being fashionable than in getting laid, and has no sex toys, enhancements, or porn. Roarke quickly uncovers the death room / lab, which includes Menzini’s notebooks and manifesto (called End of Days). He calls Eve to give her enough details so she can confront Callaway, then she reminds him of the so much sex, which Reineke overhears, and Roarke tells him that at least he knows Roarke isn’t a sick f.

Chapter 19[]

  • Callaway says he’s not related to Menzini, then after Eve says she has proof, and his mother says he is, he admits it and says that’s why his father was so abusive to him, his mother was too weak to stand up to him, his father abused her as well, he looks like Menzini, so he must have reminded his mother of him, he brought all of the journals back so he could dump them in a recycler, no wait, he recreated the substance to kill himself, no wait, he brought it to the bar but Joe wouldn’t leave and he lost his nerve, but then a woman (not sure if he meant CiCi or Macie) bumped him, knocked the vial and it fell, and he panicked and left. Then he has blanks in his memory from the shock and the stress.
  • Eve finishes goading him into confessing almost everything, then Teasdale tells him the agency would be very interested in somebody who can do all this working for them. Eve fake yells at Teasdale for making him a pretend offer for some cushy government job working for the HSO, and Callaway spills the rest. He says his next target would have been Appetito for Weaver, who goes there a lot – he made friends with a waitress there so he’d just need to plant the vial on her for delivery, but S&R’s loss is HSO’s gain.
  • Eve tells Peabody to get a couple of uniforms to process Callaway, Teasdale explains that she meant the HSO would be interested him after he’s finished serving out his 127 consecutive life sentences and then another 127 in a federal institution. Teasdale confirms that Menzini died a few months ago.

Chapter 20[]

  • Eve calls Nadine to give her a heads-up that there will be a media conference announcing the name of the person they arrested within the hour. Eve settles back to read the journals of Captain Crazy and his Red Horse Army. Menzini detailed the rapes of young girls, calling them initiations or cleansings, in additional to the rest of the “God made me do it” ramblings. He called his poison mix “God’s Wrath.” Peabody stops by to invite Eve to a celebration at The Blue Line with the rest of the team, but she declines, because she wants to finish writing up the report.
  • Eve is summoned to the media room, along with Peabody. She thanks her team, tells them good work, including the ones who took the load off the Red Horse team, and if anybody wants or needs personal time, to get real – they have a lot of catching up to do. Baxter invites her to the bar with them, inviting Roarke as well, but Eve says no, he won’t pick up the tab for them, she just wants a quiet evening at home, and Reineke rolls his eyes, knowing her plans.
  • Eve asks Teasdale for an agreement with HSO to keep the formula sealed and buried. Eve also asks that Callaway’s parents be taken home quietly, and assigned protection until it blows over. Kyung says he will help them with a statement, and also it seems the mayor is delayed because Channel 75 leaked the news of an impending arrest, so they should start the conference without the mayor. He loves the visual of five strong, beautiful women (Eve, Peabody, Mira, Teasdale, and Reo) playing a part in securing the safety of the city.
  • As soon as the media conference ends, Eve and Peabody are tagged by EDD, who finished decrypting Callaway’s electronics and found out that Gina MacMillon is still alive. She faked her death, having her “neighbor” identify her body, which was cremated, and the neighbor conveniently died shortly afterwards. She was the trigger, not finding out about his grandfather, and has been funding Callaway as well as feeding him lies.
  • Roarke finds her by tracking down the one painting in Callaway’s apartment that was nice. She now goes by Gina Bellona (Bellona being the ancient Roman goddess of war), and lives on the Upper East Side. Eve figures she wants to finish Callaway’s work, so she contacts Vann, who is home, and tries to contact Weaver, but has to leave a message. She orders police protection on Vann, and sends police to Weaver’s building. Whitney orders a SWAT team for Gina’s building.

Chapter 21[]

  • Roarke arranges security for everybody and their apartments. Bella’s recently deceased husband (he slipped in the shower around the same time Menzini died) was a chemist, and left her lots of money.
  • Eve sets up a SWAT operation on Gina’s building, giving Lowenbaum instructions to stun them if she gives him the signal, i.e., if there’s poison involved, but Gina is no longer there.
  • Eve figures she’s going to finish what Callaway started by getting rid of Weaver for him. She and the team head to Appetito to try to head Weaver off if that’s where she’s going for dinner.
  • Weaver is on a date with the CEO of S&R, and has her ‘link off. They arrive at the restaurant, where Gina is sitting at the bar with three vials of Red Horse poison, scheming.
  • Gina makes her way to Weaver’s table, where she sits with them, jabbing the point of the knife against Weaver’s side, telling her and her date to smile and ask for another glass for their old friend when the waiter comes by. Gina tells Weaver who she is and says since Lewis wouldn’t sleep with Weaver, she’s done everything possible to sabotage his career. Weaver tells Gina he frightens her, with all that intelligence, but Gina’s having none of that.

Chapter 22[]

  • Eve and the rest of the team assess the situation, and the decision is that Eve will change into Peabody’s clothes and go in dressed as a Free-Ager, alert the staff to the situation, asking them to get as many people as possible into the kitchen, where police will remove them from the area. She will then sit with Gina and bargain her down, with Mira hooked to her feed to guide her.
  • Eve manages to get Gina to swap her knife for Eve’s stunner, which she proceeds to put to Nancy’s throat and fire. Eve tells Gina she forgot to mention that her stunner’s disengaged, but the one she’s pulling out of her pocket now isn’t disengaged. Eve distracts her with that stunner, and then punches Gina in the face. As she’s falling, her hands open, releasing the vials into Roarke’s waiting hands. Eve tells him “good fielding” and he says he has a bit of a headache, but manages to tell her “just kidding” before she stuns him.
  • The NYPSD gratefully passes Gina and her property to the HSO to take into custody. After a quick stop in the kitchen for food for everybody and cannoli for Peabody, they head back to Central so Eve can tell Callaway to his face that they have his grandmother in custody. Roarke covers Eve’s recorder to remind her about the so much sex.


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[]

Footnotes[]

  1. ↑ http://www.amazon.co.uk/Delusion-Death-In-Series/dp/0749955074/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1334609071&sr=8-1/
  2. ↑ http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-399-15881-0
  3. ↑ http://www.onceuponatwilight.com/2012/08/book-review-delusion-in-death-by-jd-robb.html
  4. ↑ http://www.likesbooks.com/cgi-bin/bookReview.pl?BookReviewId=9118
  5. ↑ http://www.errantdreams.com/reviews/2012/08/20/delusion-in-death-j-d-robb/
  6. ↑ Delusion in Death, Chapter 1

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