by J. D. Robb
“The judge is clearing the road, seeing that we have full access and in a speedy fashion.”
“You don’t suspect the husband?”
“No, but you’ve got to look. COD’s the broken neck?”
“Yes. Someone very strong and very skilled. It wasn’t from a fall. The report said she was found at the bottom of a stairway.”
“A short one, and no, not a fall. She didn’t fall. They put her there when they were done, tried to make it look like a mugging. It wasn’t.”
“She has some minor injuries. Facial bruise, the injured lip, both from a blow—a hand, not a fist—slight bruising around her mouth, bruising on her right wrist, slight bruising on both knees and her left elbow, the abrasion on the heel of her right hand.”
“Knees and hand. Like she skidded on some kind of rug or carpet?” Eve held up her hand, shoved the heel of it forward.
“That would be my conclusion. I found fibers in the hand abrasion, and sent them to the lab.”
“Blue fibers?”
“Yes, as your notes stated you found on her pants. You’d marked for Harpo, so I sent her the ones I removed.”
“Good.”
“I’ve barely started on her, and don’t have much.”
“Any stun marks? Any tox?”
“Very light marks from a stunner, just above her left shoulder blade.”
“I’d figured no on that,” Eve murmured, hooking her thumbs in her front pockets as she walked closer to the body. “If you want it to look like a mugging, leaving stun marks is seriously stupid. Your average mugger’s not going to have access to a stunner. They use stickers. Shoulder blade,” she continued. “He took her down from behind.”
“Yes, and I’d say a very low stun, just enough to incapacitate her, daze her for a moment or two. I’ll go over her very carefully. I’ve sent off a blood sample for tox screening. I can flag it.”
“Wouldn’t hurt.” Eve walked around the body, taking her own study. “Grab her when she comes out of the office building—not inside unless they could shut down security, and why do that, why leave bread crumbs? Slap a hand over her mouth, shove or toss her in a van, that’s quick. Stunning her—maybe the killer’s another woman, or small, worried she’d fight back, get away.”
“The slight lacerations on her knees and hand read like a fall on a carpet. In the apartment?”
“No rugs or carpeting there. Tarps—beige. No blue. But tossing her into a vehicle with carpeting on the interior floor, yeah. And she’s dazed from the stun and doesn’t catch herself, skids over it. She could’ve gotten the bruises on her knees, the fibers on her pants from the transpo. They didn’t walk her eight blocks to the murder scene, so he or they had transportation.”
“Harpo should be able to identify the carpet type, the manufacturer, the dye lot.”
“Or lose her crown, yeah. One person could do it,” Eve mused as she walked around the slab. “Stun her, push her in the back of a van or a car, but she’d come out of a light stun pretty quick. You have to keep her quiet and contained, drive, get her out, over, unlock the door. It’s likelier two people, one to drive, one to deal with her.”
“Big hands,” Morris said. “I don’t think whoever manhandled her was small. The pattern of the bruising indicates large hands.”
“Okay. Okay.” The need to stun Dickenson made less sense now, but facts were facts. “So, just taking no chances. Maybe the mugging gambit was last-minute. Either way, they took her to an empty apartment, lower level, direct access, no sign of break-in. They want her scared, scared enough to be cooperative, to give them what they want, tell them everything she knows. Backhand.” Eve swung her own through the air. “She goes down—face bruises, elbow knocks the floor. When they’re done, and it doesn’t take very long, one of them snaps her neck. Manually?”
“Yes, almost certainly, and left to right. From the angle, the bruising, the break, my conclusion is left to right, from behind.”
“Behind again. He’s right-handed. Strong, trained. It’s not that easy to snap a neck. Prepared, controlled enough not to mess her up too much, but not especially professional. Military maybe or para, used to kills on the field where you don’t have to clean things up before the cops get there. I found a little blood on a paint tarp bunched up on the floor. Apartment’s being rehabbed. It’s going to be her blood.”
“I found no defensive wounds.” Gently, Morris lifted the victim’s hand. “Nothing under her nails, in her teeth. So yes, I’d say it will be her blood.”
“It all went according to plan, except for the blood they missed, and the fact the owner hoped for some nookie and brought his date over so we found her quicker. But I wonder if they got what they were after. Did she have it? Did she know it?”
“I can’t tell you that, but the lack of any sign she fought back? No indication she was bound? No signs of torture, only relatively minor injuries . . . It reads as if she’d have given them what they wanted if she’d had it.”
Eve thought of the condo again, family-friendly. Photos of happy kids, the big dog.
Yes, she’d have given them what they wanted. If she’d had it.
“Rough her up first, scare her, hurt her just enough, then tell her if she tells them or gives them what they want, they won’t hurt her again. They killed her from behind. He didn’t need the rush of face-to-face. A job, a duty, a task. And he probably didn’t see the need to draw it out, give her more pain or fear.
“It wasn’t personal.”
Though Morris nodded, he touched a hand to Marta’s shoulder. “I imagine she feels differently about that.”
EVE PUSHED AND DODGED HER WAY THROUGH Central at change of shift. Cops going off tour, coming on, or those like her who’d caught something and were trying to get in or out to follow up.
She stopped by Vending to study her choices, decided they all sucked, and settled for something laughingly billed as a blueberry Danish.
She plugged in her code, her selection. And got nothing but a grinding hum and blinking lights.
“Come on, bitch.” She repeated the process, and this time received a few weak beeps. “Damn it, I knew it wouldn’t last.”
Her poor history with machines haunted her, and now she wanted that damn anemic-looking excuse for a breakfast pastry on a matter of principle.
She gave the machine a solid kick.
Vandalism or physical force on this machine or any others on the premises can result in termination of Vending privileges for a period of thirty to ninety days. Please insert coin, credit or authorized code, and your selection.
“That’s what I did you useless piece of junk.” She reared back to kick it again.
“Hey, Dallas.” Baxter, the slickest dresser of her detectives strolled up. “Problem?”
“This miserable pile of junk won’t give up that blob of crap disguised as a Danish.”
“Allow me.” Whistling between his teeth, Baxter keyed in his own code, selected the Danish.
It slid smoothly into the slot. Eve eyed it while the machine cheerfully listed its mega-syllabic ingredients and dubious nutritional value.
“There you go, LT.” Baxter pulled it out, offered it. “My treat.”
“How do they know it’s me? Why do they care?”
“Maybe it’s body chemistry, something to do with energy.”
“That sounds like bullshit.”
“Well, you got the Danish.”
“Yeah. Thanks for that.”
“So, Trueheart and I closed the double murder. Ex-girlfriend who didn’t want to be the ex.”
She toggled back into her mental files. “The bludgeoning in Chelsea.”
“Yeah,” he continued as they walked. “Beat them both to shit and back again with a tire iron. I figured the didn’t-want-to-be-ex hired somebody or sexed somebody into doing it. That kind of
damage? You don’t expect a woman.”
“Why?”
“Well, you know, LT. Women typically go for poison, or something less gruesome. Especially seeing as this one’s barely five feet tall and a hundred soaking wet. Just didn’t figure she had the chops or the muscle. Trueheart broke her down.”
“Trueheart.” Eve thought of the clean-cut, kindhearted uniform she’d given to Baxter to train.
“He stuck with the ‘hell hath no fury’ bit from the jump. Wouldn’t let go of it. And he played her, Dallas, played her in Interview like a shortstop plays an infield grounder.”
She heard the pride in his voice, still some big brother in it, but that’s what worked.
“It was beautiful, I gotta say. He’s all sympathy and understanding, talking about having his heart broken.” With a grin, Baxter thumped a hand on his heart. “Getting the whole simpatico deal going, getting her worked up about how he done her wrong and all that shit.”
“Good angle,” Eve praised.
“Oh yeah, and he got better. He pulls out how he bet it hurt her, deeply, to see her ex’s new lady wearing that sexy leopard print nightie—he even said nightie. And the stupid bitch can’t resist saying how it was a tiger print, and that flat-chested slut didn’t have the tits to fill it out.
“The dead woman just bought the thing—tiger print, which my boy knew—that afternoon, so the ex couldn’t have seen her in it, unless she was in that bedroom. The boy took her apart from there. Got a full confession. How she’d climbed up the fire escape—the dead ex always left the bedroom window open a little, fresh air fiend. Bashed him first, then went to town on the new skirt, went back whaled some more on the ex. Then went down to the basement laundry room, he hadn’t changed his codes on that. Washed her damn clothes, cleaned up, walked out. Tossed the tire iron in the river.”
“That’s good work. Does the lab have the clothes?”
“Yeah. I’m leaving it to the boy to follow up there. We both figured her for involvement, but he’s the one who saw her with the tire iron, swinging for the fences.”
He paused a moment, and knowing there was more, Eve waited.
“He’s lost his green, Dallas. Well, he’s one of those who’ll probably always be fresh, but you know what I mean. He’s earned a shot at detective.”
She’d promised to consider it, and though Baxter’s second pass was a little ahead of schedule, she couldn’t fault his logic. “The first of the year. If he wants it, he can take the exam then. That’ll give him time to get a little more experience under his belt and study up. Let him know. You’ve done good with him, Baxter.”
“He’s gold, boss. I figured him mostly for ballast when you tossed him my way, but he’s gold. Appreciate it.”
“Prime him,” she warned. “The exam’s not for pussies.”
“He’s a sweetheart, but he ain’t no pussy.”
When they walked into the bullpen, things were already hopping. She gave Peabody the come-ahead and kept moving into her office where Eve headed straight for the AutoChef and coffee.
“Morris confirms COD is the broken neck. No apparent defensive wounds. The bruises she has could be—most likely are—the result of the snatch, the backhand. Manual neck snap.”
“Big ouch.”
“I don’t think she felt much. He stunned her first—extra careful maybe—light stun, on the shoulder blade.”
“Like an ambush, from behind.”
“Yeah, and I’m betting the fibers on her pants, and the ones Morris took out of the heel of her right hand are from the interior of the vehicle used to transport her. I’m going to set up the board and book. What have you got?”
“McNab’s already in and started on the ’link. EDD’s waiting for the go-ahead for the rest of the electronics. Carmichael and Santiago are on tap for the search, and Uniform Carmichael’s on the canvass. I put an alert out for the wedding ring and the wrist unit, and went ahead and contacted the husband about the earrings so we could alert all of it. She had on these gold heart-shaped studs the kids gave her last Mother’s Day. I really hope we get them back. Something like that . . . Anyway, we could get lucky there if the killer decides to pawn or sell.”
“They’re not pros, so we could get lucky.”
“I started a run on the financials—vic and spouse. They both have life insurance—and plenty—but they’re solid money-wise. He makes considerably more than she did, but she didn’t do half bad. They’ve got investments, the low-risk, long-term growth type, and already have college funds started for the kids.”
She took out her notebook, swiped through just to refresh. “They own the condo, and have a mortgage going on a house on Long Island, in Oyster Bay. One vehicle—family-style cargo deal, late model, but not flashy. Some art and jewelry. Dickenson and Grimes started their firm eleven years ago, took on the other partners along the way. They have a good rep. The vic worked for Brewer and company for about the same amount of time, moving up, time off for each of the kids with standard maternity leave. The nanny’s been with them since the first kid came along. I have her data.”
“Okay, we’ll talk to her, to the vic’s work people, to the law partners.”
“Crossing, there are some clients popping on each, and I’ve got a couple so far who’ve used or are using the wit’s firm.”
“Run it through, then we’ll work the matches.” She glanced down when her unit signaled an incoming. “There’s the warrant.” She ordered it to print, read the attachment. “Yung says the family’s heading over to her place. Give Carmichael the warrant, and get them going. Give EDD the nod on the electronics. Be ready to— Sir.”
She straightened her shoulders when Commander Whitney filled her doorway. She’d expected contact, and quickly, but wished he’d called her up to his office, given her time to prepare.
“I’ve been informed Judge Yung’s sister-in-law has been murdered.”
“Yes, sir. I’ve just come in from the field. I haven’t written up my initial report, and am waiting for some lab results.”
“Run it through for me.”
“Peabody, get things started. Commander,” she began, then gave him an oral report.
He was a big man in her small office, his dark face grim as he listened, as he walked over to stare out of her skinny window at the gloomy morning.
“You’re not leaning toward the husband?”
“I’m leaning away from the husband,” Eve told him. “But we’ll take him through the process. Both he and the judge have been cooperative. I’ve got Carmichael and Santiago heading over to the vic’s residence to do a search, and EDD’s picking up the electronics. McNab’s already processing the husband’s ’link. The upshot is she was snatched by person or persons unknown for reasons as yet undetermined. But it wasn’t random, it wasn’t a mugging, and there’s no evidence at this early stage to indicate Judge Yung is connected to that reason. I’m going to take a harder look at the wit, and his partners, and find out what the vic was working on, or has worked on, her current clients.”
He nodded, turned back to her. “The wife of a prominent judge’s brother, the media will stir that. We’ll have the liaison issue a statement, save you time.”
Sing “Hallelujah.” “Thank you, sir.”
“I’m acquainted with Yung, as most of us are. You should know she and her husband and Chief Tibble and his wife are friendly.”
“Understood.”
“Keep me informed.”
“Yes, sir.” The minute he left, she opened the murder book, then set up her board, centering Marta Dickenson’s photo. She ran through the time line again, scanned the interview with the wits, then the spouse. For a moment, she studied the printouts she made from her crime scene record.
Blood drops on the tarp, she mused. Sloppy cleanup. Quick grab—timed well. Killing method, quick and brutal. Trained, she thought again
, but not professional.
So who’d hired, or had on their payroll, a couple of thugs with training—spine-crackers, security, bouncers—who weren’t above breaking the neck of a defenseless woman?
Start with why, she mused, and gathered her things.
Her ’link signaled again. “Dallas?”
“Lieutenant.” Harpo with her spiky red hair popped on screen. “Figured to give you a quick heads-up on those fibers.”
“You ID’d them.”
“Give me a challenge next time. Interior carpet on the Maxima Cargo, Mini Zip, and 4X Land Cruiser. Color’s Blue Steel, and comes standard with Indigo exterior, but you can order it custom. GM intro’d the color last year, so the model is either a ’59 or ’60. But the fibers were coated with the factory sealant so it hasn’t seen much wear or use.”
“That’s good, quick work, Harpo.”
“Like I said, no challenge. The ones from the morgue match, blood trace on them. I checked with the blood boys, so I can tell you the blood on the tarp and the blood on the fiber both came from your vic.”
“Really good, quick work.”
“A lot of us have testified before Judge Yung. So . . . I’ll send along the reports.”
“Yeah. Thanks, Harpo.”
“We do what we do,” she said. “I do it best.”
At the moment, Eve couldn’t argue.
“Peabody,” she said as she swung through the bullpen.
Peabody snagged her coat and jogged to catch up. “McNab’s finished with the ’link. Everything corroborates Dickenson’s statement. Vic called, said she’d be working late—chatting about food, kids, domestic stuff. She contacted him again at just after ten to tell him she was heading home. He pushed her to call their car service, but she brushed that off, just as he said. She also said she was bringing some work home, but she was going to deal with it in the morning—that she’d arranged to work at home until noon.”
“He forgot to tell us that.”
“McNab’s sending up a copy of all transmissions. He says you can clearly see the vic pulling on her coat, a scarf, even a hat and gloves while she talked with the husband. She had him on her desk ’link. McNab says she had the briefcase Yung described, and a red handbag also with shoulder strap. Wedding ring, wrist unit, and the heart stud earrings.”