Witness in Death

J.D. Robb's Witness in Death is set in a futuristic New York City, where Lieutenant Eve Dallas of the New York Police and Security Department (NYPSD) Homicide division investigates murders. Eve is married to Roarke, a wealthy businessman who owns the New Globe Theater.

Eve and Roarke attend the opening night of Witness for the Prosecution at the New Globe. During the final scene, actress Areena Mansfield, playing Christine Vole, stabs lead actor Richard Draco with what should be a retractable prop knife. Eve senses immediately that something is wrong and rushes backstage. Her aide, Officer Delia Peabody, arrives with a field kit, and Eve confirms the weapon is a real kitchen knife. Draco dies of a single stab wound to the heart in front of the entire audience.

Eve takes control of the crime scene, sequestering the cast and crew. Areena insists the knife felt normal when she picked it up. Eve enlists Dr. Charlotte Mira, a police psychologist who was in the audience, to keep Areena calm during questioning. A sweeper discovers the retractable prop knife hidden among roses in Areena's dressing room, but Eve considers the plant suspiciously obvious, designed to be found rather than to genuinely frame the actress.

As Eve begins background checks, a complex portrait of the victim emerges. Draco was a celebrated actor but a detestable person: vain, cruel, a serial womanizer, and a habitual user of illegal drugs. Nearly everyone connected to the production had reason to despise him. Carly Landsdowne, a young actress in the cast, volunteers that she was briefly Draco's lover and that he ended the relationship with deliberate cruelty. Kenneth Stiles, the veteran actor who played Sir Wilfred, openly admits he loathed Draco. Michael Proctor, Draco's understudy, lives in poverty and stands to gain the starring role. Even Nadine Furst, a crime reporter for Channel 75 and Eve's friend, confesses she had a devastating affair with Draco six years earlier and visited him at his hotel the day of the murder.

At Draco's penthouse, Eve and Roarke find sex recordings he made of partners without consent and a stash of drugs that includes Wild Rabbit, a substance that works only on the female system and eliminates a woman's ability to consent. Roarke reacts with cold fury. Commander Whitney assigns the case top priority given intense media attention. Captain Ryan Feeney of the Electronic Detective Division runs backgrounds on the cast and crew. Mira profiles the killer as bold but cool-headed, likely an actor who needed to watch the murder happen onstage and who viewed the crime as a performance.

A second murder follows when Linus Quim, the theater's head stagehand, attempts to blackmail the killer. Having deduced who switched the knives, Quim demands $500,000, planning to retire to Tahiti. The killer meets him in the theater's lower level, administers a tranquilizer, persuades the drugged Quim to write a confession, then talks him into climbing a ladder and jumping with a noose around his neck. Roarke discovers the body. Eve suspects murder rather than suicide: The original crime showed calculation, not guilt, and Quim had been planning vacations and placing bets, behavior inconsistent with someone contemplating self-termination.

The investigation turns when sealed records from 24 years earlier reveal that Stiles, under his birth name Stipple, assaulted Draco. Stiles explains that Draco seduced a young woman named Anja Carvell, who attempted to take her own life after he discarded her. Stiles found her in time, then attacked Draco in a drunken rage. Charges were dropped and a civil suit settled, with everything sealed. Eve senses Stiles is withholding information, and Peabody theorizes that Anja was the love of Stiles's life and that he never lost contact with her.

Cross-referencing the cast's histories, Eve discovers a sealed adoption record for Carly dated eight months after the assault incident. Roarke confirms that Carly's birth mother is Anja Carvell and her birth father is Richard Draco. Eve realizes with horror that Draco and Carly, father and daughter, were sexual lovers.

When Eve tries to bring Stiles in for further questioning, he disguises himself with theatrical makeup and slips past Officer Troy Trueheart, the rookie surveilling him. Eve tracks Stiles to Grand Central Station, where a botched apprehension leaves Trueheart seriously injured after he leaps to tackle Stiles and falls onto the tracks below. Stiles is captured but later attempts to end his own life in the hospital after telling a nurse he wants to confess. Medical staff revive him, though he sustains brain damage that delays questioning.

A woman identifying herself as Anja Carvell contacts Eve. She presents herself as composed and elegant, insists Stiles is innocent, and confirms she placed her daughter for adoption after Draco showed no interest. When Eve reveals that Draco and Carly were lovers, Anja reacts with horror, requests an attorney, and disappears from her hotel suite before Eve can return.

Eve confronts Carly with the truth about her parentage. Carly's genuine shock and devastation convince Eve that the young woman had no knowledge of the biological connection. The encounter triggers Eve's own painful memories as a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, causing a severe emotional breakdown before Roarke helps her recover.

The pieces fall into place when Eve recognizes that Areena Mansfield and Anja Carvell are the same person. Both women share the unconscious mannerism of touching their throat when composing their thoughts, and their eyes carry the same expression during moments of strong emotion. Voice print analysis confirms the match, and forensic evidence from the hotel room links directly to Areena.

Eve obtains approval for an unconventional operation and has Roarke summon the principal cast to the theater under the pretense of resuming production. The theater is wired with cameras and staffed with concealed officers. On the lit courtroom set, Eve works through each suspect's motive. When she moves to arrest Carly as a deliberate provocation, Areena breaks. She grabs the knife from the evidence table, shields Carly, and confesses, revealing herself as Anja Carvell, Carly's birth mother.

Areena explains that she recognized Carly when the young actress joined the cast and warned Draco to stay away. Instead, Draco seduced Carly knowing she was his daughter and threatened to resume the relationship. Areena planned and executed his murder, switched the knives herself, planted the prop in her own dressing room as misdirection, and killed Quim when he tried to blackmail her. She expresses no remorse.

Eve stages the confrontation in front of Carly for a reason beyond extracting a confession. By forcing the truth out in Carly's presence, Eve ensures the young woman witnesses that her birth mother loved her enough to sacrifice everything to protect her, giving Carly proof that strength and decency exist in her blood.

After the arrest, Eve privately advises Areena to pursue a defense based on extreme emotional distress and agrees to help relay updates about Carly. She gives Nadine an exclusive interview and returns the sex recording Draco made without Nadine's consent; Nadine snaps the disc in two. Trueheart regains consciousness with no paralysis, and Eve recommends him for a commendation. Reflecting that justice was served on a stage rather than in a conventional courtroom, Eve leaves with Roarke, expecting to sleep without nightmares for the first time in days.