by J. D. Robb
Twin circles of clean under them. Dust skimmed the rest of the shelf.
“The murder weapon wasn’t here with these two.” She walked back into the bedroom, found a similar circle on the dresser.
“The murder weapon sat right here. The killer and vic are in the vic’s bedroom. No overt signs of break-in, so it’s probable the vic knew his killer. No signs of a struggle – none from a vic who wins personal trainer trophies, so it doesn’t look like a physical fight. No scuffle, but maybe an argument. The killer picks up the trophy, and bashes.
“But doesn’t leave the body where it falls, and that’s interesting. The killer drags the body to the bed – leaves some blood smears on the way, hefts it on there, props it up. Takes the time – and has the rage or coldness – to get the knife, write the message, and stab what I’m betting was a dead man in the chest just to ice the cookie.”
She took her Identi-pad, her gauges, out of her kit, rose to walk over to the body.
Victim is identified as Trey Arthur Ziegler, mixed race male, age thirty-one. Resided this apartment. Single. No marriages, no legal cohabs, no offspring on record.
She heard the door open, paused until she heard the clomp of her partner’s boots.
“Back here,” Eve called out. “Seal up.”
Detective Peabody came to the bedroom door. Pink cowboy boots, big puffy coat, a couple miles of rainbow-striped scarf and a bright blue hat with earflaps.
She looked, Eve thought, like an Eskimo running away to the circus.
“I saw Trina downstairs,” Peabody began, then looked at the body on the bed. “Wow, ho, ho, humbug.”
“Yeah, he won’t be going home for Christmas.”
“I got from Trina this was her pal’s ex-boyfriend.”
“Who they found when they snuck in to put itching powder in his face gunk.”
“Fun.” Peabody pulled the cap off her dark hair, stuffed it in her pocket. “You don’t think Trina had anything to do with the dead guy.”
“I wish I did, then I could toss her in a cage.”
“Aw.” Peabody began unwinding her scarf.
“But according to my on-site,” Eve continued, removing the gauges, “it looks like he bought it about eighteen-thirty hours. We’ll check Trina and Sima’s alibi, but it’s going to hold up. Besides, Trina’s too cagey to kill somebody this way, and the friend doesn’t have the balls.”
Eve replaced her gauges, pulled out microgoggles. “Check and see if there are any security cams, then go ahead and call in the ME and the sweepers. Let’s get the uniforms started on a canvass of the building. Maybe somebody heard or saw something.”
“Oh boy, a bunch of pissed-off neighbors.”
“Not once they find out there’s been a murder. People love finding out somebody’s dead and they’re not. Get that going, then we’ll go through the place when I’m done with the body.”
Eve fit on the goggles, leaned over to peer at the shattered side of the skull. “So, Trey,” she murmured, “what have you got to tell me?”
2
Death killed any illusion of privacy. After she’d examined the body, Eve began a systematic search of the bedroom.
As Trina stated, Trey owned an extensive wardrobe. Slick, sexy workout gear, spiffy suits, stylish club wear.
“He coordinated his socks and underwear,” she commented when Peabody came back in. “Colors and patterns. Who does that, and why?”
“I read this article about how what you wear under your clothes is all about what makes you feel empowered and in control. It’s the Under You.”
“If wearing matching boxers and socks makes you feel empowered, you’re a weenie. He’s got standard over-the-counter male birth control, a few unimaginative sex toys, some porn discs in the bedside goodies drawer. Golf clubs, various golf paraphernalia in the closet with his clothes. No female clothes in here.”
“Did you check this?” Peabody held up a ’link sealed in an evidence bag.
“Yeah, some client checks, a couple guy conversations, some out-goings to women, not yet answered. Nobody threatening to kill him.”
“There’s a knife block in the kitchen with one missing,” Peabody said. “The one sticking out of him looks like part of the set.”
“Bash with the trophy, it’s handy. Then get a little creative with the kitchen knife, again handy.” Eve put her hands on her hips, then walked out to the living area.
She scanned the room – messy, sloppy, but nothing that indicated a fight. “Okay, considering there’s no sign of break-in, no sign of struggle out here, the vic let the killer in. He knows him – or her. He’s wearing drawstring pants and a T-shirt – at-home clothes, so he’s comfortable with the killer, enough that they went back to the bedroom together.”
“Maybe he was forced into the bedroom. Maybe the killer had a sticker.”
“If the killer had a sticker,” Eve argued, “why bash the vic in the head with a trophy? Plus, the vic’s extremely buff, so I’ve got to figure he’d put up a fight. But the vic was taken by surprise. They go back in the bedroom. For sex? The bed’s messed up, so maybe there was sex.”
“Red-shoes lady?”
“Possibly.”
Eve studied the shoes, the bra, all out in plain sight.
“But if you have the cold blood to haul a dead guy onto the bed, go into the kitchen, rip off the top of a take-out pizza box, write up the message, take the knife, go back in the bedroom, stab the dead guy, wouldn’t you have the brains to grab your shoes and underwear?
“You’ve got enough brains and cold blood to take the marker used to write the message – because I haven’t found one on scene – to wipe off the knife handle and the trophy base so you don’t leave prints, but you leave your polka-dot bra and red shoes?”
“Yeah, it’d be a pretty big oops.”
“Still… Maybe there’s sex, or the start of it – he’s fully dressed, so either they did and he put his clothes back on, or he never got them off. Either way, before, during, after, whoever came back here with him grabbed the trophy, swung. Vic goes down, but you bash again because we’ve got one wound on the side of the head, one on the back of the head. You don’t panic, you don’t keep bashing so there’s some control. But you’ve got a need to – ha ha – twist the knife, so you dig up some cardboard, write the note. You’ve got to haul him onto the bed, prop him up, then jam the knife, with note, into his chest.”
“That part’s just mean. Yeah, murder’s the ultimate mean,” Peabody said when Eve glanced at her. “But the knife and note’s salt in the wound. Seriously.”
“It’s steel in the chest. He really pissed you off,” Eve continued. “But you paid him back. There’s satisfaction here. Quick violence – probable impulse – followed by a cold-blooded flourish.”
“Well, just for the sake of argument, say it’s Red Shoes.”
Trying to visualize an alternate scenario, Peabody circled said shoes.
“Things get hot, they’re moving along into the bedroom. She changes her mind, he gets pushy – bash. Or they do the deed, then he acts like a jerk. Says something about her weight, her technique, or whatever. Bash. She holds it together long enough to set him up like this – it’s all fury and adrenaline. Then she panics, and runs.”
“Possible.” She’d put away people who’d done stupider, Eve considered. “Let’s have his comp taken in, go through it. And let’s find Red Shoes.”
“They’re really nice shoes. I wonder what size they are.”
“Jesus, Peabody.”
“Just wondering,” she said and hurried to the door to let in the sweepers – and avoid Eve’s wrath.
By dawn, Ziegler lay on a slab at the morgue, the sweepers swarmed over his apartment, and the initial canvass of the building netted a not-unexpected “nobody saw nothing.”
“I vote the classic crime of passion.” Peabody, once again wrapped up like a woman facing the Ice Age, walked out of the building with Eve. “Jewelry, cash, credits, pla
stic, electronics, fancy sports equipment still on premises, no sign of break-in, obvious signs of hanky-panky.”
“How does hanky-panky translate to sex? Who comes up with words like that?”
“Probably people who don’t have sex, which doesn’t include the dead guy. The lab should be able to give us the DNA on whoever he hanky-pankied with when the sweepers get the sheets in.
“I wish it would snow.”
“If the state of his apartment, and Trina’s statement about him banging anything not already nailed are indicators, they’ll probably find multiple DNA – What?” Her brain caught up with Peabody’s last statement. “Snow?”
“If it’s going to be this cold, it should snow.” Peabody jumped into Eve’s car, shivered. “It’s almost Christmas so we should have snow anyway. Snow’s pretty.”
“Then we could creep behind the plows that shove it against the curbs where it turns to black sludge, wind our way through all the vehicles that spun out because people don’t know how the hell to drive in the snow, or step over all the pedestrians who slip on the snowy sidewalks.”
“You need a good dose of holiday spirit.” Peabody wriggled down into her seat, grateful and happy with the automatic seat warmers. She thought, at that moment, a warm ass was a happy one. “We should get some hot chocolate.”
Eve didn’t spare Peabody a glance. “We’re going to the gym.”
“If we got hot chocolate first, we could work it off at the gym.” Peabody tried a winsome smile, gave it up with a shrug. “I’ll run the supervisor.”
“What a fine idea.”
Eve navigated the streets, still quiet in the weak winter dawn. Streetlights fizzed off, leaving the air cold and gray with puffs of steam rising intermittently through the subway vents. She passed one half-empty maxibus where the passengers all looked dazed and palely green in its flickering security lights.
Even at the early hour, she had to wrangle a parking spot in a loading zone, half a block from Buff Bodies.
She flipped on her On Duty light.
“Lill Byers,” Peabody began as they got out into the frigid swirl of wind. “Age thirty-eight, divorced, one offspring, male, age seven. Employed with Buff Bodies for twelve years, currently as manager. Little bump here – arrested for destruction of property, disturbing the peace, six years back. She took a tire iron to her ex-husband’s vehicle. I guess it wasn’t an amicable divorce.”
“There’s no such thing as an amicable divorce.”
The lights of the gym shone bright against the wide front windows. The glass rose high, to expose three spacious floors. Through the first level Eve saw several bodies – appropriately buff – running, lunging, lifting, climbing.
While the maxibus passengers had looked stunned and weary, the dawn workout brigade appeared terrifyingly alert.
“I hate them all,” Peabody muttered. “Every one of them. Just look. All perfectly packed in frosty outfits designed to show off every cut, rip, and ripple. Smug looks on their faces, a sheen of sweat on their skin. And zero percent body fat among the whole buff bunch. How am I supposed to enjoy my frothy hot chocolate now?”
“You don’t have a frothy hot chocolate.”
“In my mind I did. Now even its imaginary frothy goodness is spoiled.”
“Buck up,” Eve suggested, swiped her master over the members’ entrance pad, and walked inside.
Straight into a wall of noise.
Screaming, pounding, throbbing music blasted out of the speakers and banged against her eardrums. She saw a woman on a cycle crouched over, face fierce as she sang along, presumably at the top of her lungs.
Her eyes looked just a little insane.
Machines whooshed and whirled, feet slapped on treads, weights clinked and thumped. The open three-story space boasted a juice bar – currently unoccupied – on the second level, and what looked to be classrooms, glassed in, on the third.
She could see more buff bodies performing graceful yoga sun salutations behind the glass of one of the rooms.
“Must have amazing soundproofing,” Eve decided.
The check-in desk – a semicircle of glossy white – was currently unmanned, but Eve spotted a woman in snug shorts and an equally snug tee sporting the gym’s double B logo whipping a client through a series of punishing squats and lunges on a teeterboard while he curled twenty-pound free weights.
“Come on, Zeke! Quads of steel! Get low. Push off. Squeeze!”
“Excuse me,” Eve began.
“One sec. Dig for it, Zeke. Five more!”
“I hate you, Flora.”
She absolutely beamed at him. “That’s the spirit, that’s what I want to hear. Four more.”
“Lill Byers?” Eve said.
“Should be here, should be in her office. Don’t you quit on me, Zeke. Don’t you quit. Three. Squeeze it, pump it, form, form, form. Two more. Just past check-in,” she added for Eve. “You got it, you got it, last one. Finish strong.”
Eve heard the guy collapse, gasping, when Flora whistled her approval on the last set.
“Thirty-second water break,” Flora announced as Eve headed toward the office. “Then it’s time for crunches.”
“You’re a monster, Flora.”
“That’s what you love about me.”
“Maybe I should get a personal trainer,” Peabody speculated. “If I had someone like that hammering at me, I’d have a perfect heart-shaped, drum-tight ass in no time.”
“You’d blast her with your stunner before the end of the first session.”
“Other than that.”
Through the narrow glass of the office door Eve saw a woman with a skullcap of orange hair and a body honed scalpel sharp sitting at a comp with two screens running.
One showed the CGI image of a woman carrying maybe twenty-five to thirty extra pounds struggling through a session of core work – crunches, leg lifts, crisscross – while the other ran a spreadsheet of names and figures in various columns.
Eve knocked briskly.
The woman tweaked one screen so the figure pushed through some single leg stretches.
Rather than bang on the glass again, Eve pushed in, said, “Hey!”
“Let’s add five full roll-ups,” the woman said, and the figure on the screen moaned and began them.
Eve tapped the woman on the shoulder. She squealed and jumped as if she’d been scalded, spun around to goggle, then to laugh. And finally removed earplugs.
“Sorry, so sorry, I didn’t hear you come in. The first shift wants the music up to scream, so I use these. What can I do for you?”
“Lill Byers?”
“That’s right. I’m the manager.”
Eve pulled out her badge. “Lieutenant Dallas, Detective Peabody. Is there somewhere we can talk?”
The healthy color in Lill’s face dropped to gray. “My kid. Is my kid okay? Is Evan okay?”
“It’s nothing to do with your son. It’s one of your employees.”
“Oh Jesus.” She ran a hand over her bright cap of hair. “Sorry. My kid’s with his father for a few days – a pre-Christmas deal as the asshole’s going to Belize with his current slut over the actual holiday, so too bad for his son. Anyway.” She let out a long breath. “Something’s up with one of my gang?”
“Is there somewhere quieter we can talk?” Eve asked.
“Sure. Relaxation room, this way.” She led the way out of the office, across the workout area, passed a mini self-serve juice bar, up the curl of steps to the second level and into a room with soft gray walls, two long benches and a half dozen padded sleep chairs.
The door closed, brought silence.
“We offer clients a meditative space to balance things. Yin and yang. Somebody’s in trouble?”
“Trey Ziegler.”
“Crap.” Lill dropped onto a bench, gestured for Eve and Peabody to have a seat. “He swore he’d behave in AC. Do I have to post bond?”
“He never got to AC. I regret to inform you Trey Ziegler’
s dead.”
“Dead?” She didn’t go gray again, but stiffened, toe to crown. “What do you mean dead? Like dead?”
“Exactly like dead.”
“Oh my God.” She shoved up, holding her hands on either side of her head as she walked up and down the room. “Oh my God. Was there an accident?”
“No. We’re Homicide.”
“You’re…” Lill stopped, dropped down again. “Homicide. Murder? Somebody killed him? How? When?”