Faithless in Death

by Robb, J. D.

  “First, it just pisses me off when people lie to me.” Eve judged the traffic, zipped out into it.

  “The take-out bag—that holds up. The uniforms confirmed with the security feed Huffman—no need to run facial recognition now—brought the coffee and muffins at zero-seven-twenty hours.”

  “Yeah, that holds. And the wedding planner deal’s going to hold. We’ll check it, but that’ll be solid enough. The time might be a little off, but it’ll hold. The lawyer-fiancé’s late legal prep, that’ll hold. The rest of it’s bullshit.”

  She cut west, then headed south on Lexington.

  Peabody thought it over. “My bullshit detector’s pretty good, but I’ll cop yours is better.”

  “She does the wedding stuff, then goes back to her place. An hour or so later, she decides: Hey, I’m bored. She goes out for a two-or three-hour hike, into the park, window-shopping. Does she strike you as an urban hiker, Peabody? Or a woman who window-shops all that time and buys nothing?”

  “Now that you mention it, not really. I mean, it’s plausible. Urban strolling, in her case, head full of wedding plans. Just getting out in the air. But, yeah, a long stretch of it, alone. But she said she was home at the time of the murder.”

  “We’ll check the feed, but she probably was, or she’ll have come through the lobby and not gone out that way again. She’s still a liar. Wherever she was during that three-hour stretch, it didn’t involve urban strolling. Not alone.”

  “Cheating on the fiancé.”

  “It occurs to me, yeah. Add this.” She flicked Peabody a glance. “A woman like that doesn’t book a sitting at eight in the morning. She doesn’t get there thirty minutes early. People wait for her, that’s how it works.”

  “You don’t like her even a little bit.”

  “She’s a liar, potentially a cheat. Jury’s out on a murderer, but she’s checking boxes.”

  She cut west again, thinking it through during the fits and starts of crosstown traffic.

  “She waltzes into the victim’s apartment—and we’ll establish when you check with the other lobby staff if the victim, her good friend, ever waltzed into hers—starts up the stairs to the studio.”

  “Taking time before to buy the takeout, which, yeah, now that you’re laying it out, seems off, too. That’s really early.”

  “She spots the body, drops the bag. Splat. Possibly in genuine holy shit, possibly to establish holy shit. Then she leaves. Backing up? A woman who can afford that apartment would most usually use a car service. But she didn’t. She claims she walked around in some sort of fugue state until she hailed a cab.

  “We’ll need to track down that cab,” Eve added. “She gets back, goes up to her place. Thinks about taking a sleeping pill. Poor me! Then, finally, more than an hour after seeing her dead friend in a pool of blood, she hits nine-one-one.”

  “I give you it’s a long time,” Peabody said as Eve nipped through a yellow light and pushed south again. “The line’s going to be shock, and how different people experience it. That’s not really wrong.”

  “She took a shower, changed her clothes, dried her hair, put on very careful makeup. Given the time it took her to get back, she did at least some of that after calling it in. Preparing. No way she went out this morning without doing her face up a lot more than what we saw, her hair up a lot fancier. And she was wearing white—a symbol of innocence. No splatter of coffee on her. And in all that, she contacted the lawyer-fiancé. She had the DND to give her more time to prep, to talk to him first, to make sure she had him with her when we interviewed her.”

  “She’s calculating,” Peabody agreed. “That sounded loud and clear—especially with the slow, perfect tears. But why go back this morning? Why go back, buy coffee and muffins first, and put yourself in the murder scene?”

  “Some people like attention, and I’m betting she qualifies. More, we’re going to find her prints on scene, too. Either way, liar, liar, fancy pants on fire.”

  3

  Eve hit the morgue first and started down the long white tunnel. Two techs stood at Vending, slurping up bad coffee and replaying the previous night’s baseball game.

  She aimed for the chief medical examiner’s domain.

  His sealed hands smeared with blood, Morris stood over Ariel Byrd’s body. He wore a clear protective cape over a suit that made her think of ripe peaches. Obviously in a springtime frame of mind, he’d paired it with a shirt of the palest green and a tie precisely matching the suit. He’d wound his long, dark hair into braids, all tied back with pale green cord.

  It always amazed her, would always amaze her, how anyone managed to coordinate a look so perfectly.

  He lowered his microgoggles. “Young, healthy, and dead on a lovely day in May.”

  “I wasn’t sure you’d have gotten this far on her yet.”

  “Not only your name on her tag, but I recognized hers.”

  Instantly alert, Eve looked into Morris’s dark eyes. “You knew her.”

  “Not personally, not really. I admired her work, and spoke to her at last month’s Art in the Park festival. Garnet, her daughter, and I went for a couple of hours.”

  Garnet DeWinter, Eve thought, bone doctor, fashion plate, and Morris’s pal—platonic.

  “Garnet took her card, and visited her home studio.”

  “Is that right?”

  “She bought a gargoyle for her garden wall. It’s charming.”

  “Did you go with her, to the studio?”

  “No.” Morris shifted his gaze back to the body. “This is my second time meeting the artist. A talented woman.”

  Eve moved closer to study the talented woman who lay on the slab with her chest open. “What else can you tell me about her?”

  “Healthy, as I said. Good weight for her height and frame, and good muscle tone. A greenstick fracture, left wrist, from childhood. A common injury, and well healed. No signs of alcohol or illegals abuse. Peabody.” He smiled at her. “Why don’t you get something cold for yourself and Dallas from my box?”

  “Thanks. Pepsi?” she asked Eve.

  “That’ll work.” And occupy her, as Peabody disliked open body exams.

  “No defensive wounds, no injuries other than the laceration and contusion on the face, from the fall, a cracked rib from an impact injury.”

  “Worktable.”

  “Yes, in studying your crime-scene recording, I agree. And of course the killing blows.”

  “More than one.”

  “Three, though the first would have done the job without quick medical attention, the second would have completely sealed the deal. Forceful blows, from slightly above and to the right, which knocked her forward and to the left, sharply into the table. She’s only five-three, small stature, slight build. The impact with the table—a solid table bolted down—cracked her lower right rib. She wouldn’t have been conscious for the second blow, delivered as she bounced back from the impact with the table, pitched to her left. The third struck her as she fell.”

  “She had a lot of tools—organized. Hammers, chisels, files. It looks to me like the killer picked up the murder weapon from another worktable behind the victim, to the right side of the steps going up. Big hunk of rock on it, and a chisel. No mallet.”

  Absently, she cracked the tube of Pepsi Peabody handed her.

  “She had company, either the killer or someone earlier. Someone she shared wine and sex with.”

  “Yes. She had about twelve ounces of red wine, a Shiraz, in her stomach contents. Consumed over a period of three hours to one hour prior to death. She had chicken, rice, brussels sprouts about four to four and a half hours prior to death.”

  “No wine with dinner. Saved the wine to drink with the bedmate. And the sex? Possible DNA?”

  “The lab has the fluids to identify DNA. There was no semen in or on her.”

  “Condomized, but she didn’t have any condoms in her apartment.” Eve shrugged as she circled the body again. “Not all women do. No sex toys, n
o condoms. No oral birth control. Internal?”

  “Not that I’ve found, as yet. She never gave birth to a child.”

  “Okay, this is a good start. I appreciate the quick work.”

  “I’m sorry to see such young talent snuffed out,” Morris said. “Who knows what she might have created in an uninterrupted life span.”

  “I get what you’re thinking,” Peabody said when they walked out.

  “What am I thinking?”

  “That Gwen Huffman was cheating on her fiancé with the victim.”

  “It could play. Side piece way downtown. Keep her out of your neighborhood, your social circle. She knows the fiancé’s tied up for the evening, the night. Sitting could be their code for a romp. She doesn’t come empty-handed. The wine, the flowers. Huffman’s careful. After the wedding planning, she goes home. I bet the security feed’s going to show she changed. Then she doesn’t have the doorman get her a cab, or call her car service. Doesn’t want any possible record of her trip to the West Village.”

  “Walks a couple blocks, hails one. Maybe gets out a couple blocks before Byrd’s place.”

  “There you go,” Eve agreed. “Wine and flowers. We’re going to have uniforms check on that because she’d have bought them close to Byrd’s.

  “Have some wine,” Eve continued as they got into the car. “Have some sex, some more wine, maybe some more sex.”

  “And the fiancé texts!” Into it now, Peabody shot up a hand. “How are you going to feel when you’re all soft and snuggly and the woman all soft and snuggly with you gets a text from her fiancé?”

  “Irritated. More irritated right up to pissed when your bedmate answers the text, then spends time texting back and forth with you right there.”

  “I’m liking this now. I’m seeing this now.” Because she did, Peabody wiggled a little in her seat. “Byrd’s like, ‘This is supposed to be our time, but you bring him here. I’m tired of being a convenience to you.

  “And it escalates. Maybe Byrd even threatens to tell the fiancé.”

  “But if Huffman was home at TOD—”

  “It’s a fine alibi. It doesn’t mean she doesn’t know another way out. Fire exit, staff exit. We’re going to check. You’re steamed.” Eve continued with the scenario. “If Byrd goes to Caine, it’s over. Maybe you can convince him it’s a lie, or was a mistake. But maybe he calls off the wedding, dumps you. You come home, establish you’re in, find a way out again you don’t think we’ll think of or bother to look for. Go back, go in—because you’ve got a key card, you’ve damn well got one. Bash her head in.”

  “Then you go back in the morning, pick up the takeout to cover yourself, because you’ve realized you might have left prints. But … why don’t you get rid of the wineglasses, the sheets?”

  “Not as smart as she thinks she is.” Eve tapped her fingers on the wheel. “Or, in the hard light of day, looking at your dead lover with her head bashed in really does shock you. And you run. Then, because you panicked, you have to cover as best you can. You come up with a plausible story, call nine-one-one, and put on a show.”

  “It’s a good theory.”

  “But that’s all it is. With as many holes in it as there are in her story. Do a run, see if her prints and DNA are on file.”

  Eve hunted up parking again, this time for the lab, and scored a second-level street spot nearly at the door.

  “A day of miracles.”

  “Not if you want her prints and DNA. Which is kind of weird because both her parents—married thirty-one years—are doctors. Mother an ob-gyn, father a general surgeon. They ought to know better. Parents’ prints—not DNA—on record at Mercy Clinic, where they both work—hold that, own as well as work—and where all staff are required to have prints on file. Her older sibling—that’s Trace Huffman, twenty-nine—resides in Vegas, has both his on file, due to an arrest for drunk and disorderly—underage drinking—and possession of illegals when he was sixteen. Second arrest, at twenty-three, in Vegas, for simple assault. Bar fight, charges dropped.

  “He goes by Trace D. Huff. He’s a musician-slash-performer-slash-songwriter.”

  “We’ll poke at the holes in Huffman’s story,” Eve said as they walked into the warren of the lab. “And widen them enough to get her prints and DNA.”

  She glanced up the steps that led to DeWinter’s territory.

  “Take Dickhead, see if he’s got anything for us.”

  “I don’t have anything to bribe him with.”

  “Use charm. I’m going up to see if DeWinter knows any more about the victim.”

  She found DeWinter examining what might have been a tibia from the carefully arranged bones on a worktable.

  She’d contained her hair in a sleek twist and wore short, sparkly dangles at her ears. Her lab coat matched the deep pink tone of her body-skimming dress. Her shoes, a creamy white, boasted deep pink, needle-thin heels.

  She studied the bone with a magnifier, had started to reach for goggles when she spotted Eve.

  “Dallas.”

  “DeWinter.”

  They still tended to be wary of each other. Eve figured they probably always would.

  “And what can I do for you?”

  “I want to ask you what you can tell me about a victim.”

  DeWinter’s lips, dyed to match the dress, curved. “Got bones?”

  Eve shook her head. “Not this time. You know the vic.”

  Distress flickered over DeWinter’s face. “Who’s dead?”

  “Ariel Byrd.”

  Puzzlement came first. “I don’t know … Oh, of course. The sculptor.” She set the bone down again. “I’m really sorry to hear this. How was she killed?”

  “Somebody bashed her skull in with one of her mallets.”

  “God, people. What they won’t do to each other. What can I tell you? I only met her twice. Once at the art festival downtown, and then when I went to her studio to buy a piece I’d seen in her portfolio.”

  “What did you talk about?”

  “Mostly art.” DeWinter stepped over to order a bottle of water. “Do you want anything?”

  “No, I’m good.”

  “She was working on a piece—a small one—in the park. That’s part of the draw, seeing artists work, being able to talk to them. My daughter was captivated, had a dozen questions. She—Ariel—was very sweet with my girl. We talked for a bit—Li was with us. And I skimmed through her portfolio. The gargoyle—limestone—was just what I was looking for, for my garden.”

  DeWinter paused to drink, to think back. “I didn’t know I was looking for a gargoyle until I saw it, but it was just right. She gave me her card, told me I could get in touch if I decided on it, and come by her studio. She had some pieces in a local gallery, but most at her own place.”

  “Do you know the gallery?”

  “Let me think.” DeWinter rubbed fingers on her temple. “No, sorry. I’m sure she mentioned it, but I don’t remember.”

  “Poets and Painters? It’s street level of her building.”

  “Yes, that’s right. Another one, too, I think. Anyway, I contacted her a few days later, made an appointment, and bought it directly from her. This saves her the gallery commission.”

  “Okay. Anyone else there?”

  “No.”

  “What else did you talk about?”

  “Nothing important. I asked about the types of stone, the tools. She asked what I did, the way you do. She found it interesting, asked some questions. It was all just … pleasant. She was pleasant. Oh, I asked if she took commissions, and she said she did. I talked about her doing a statue of my daughter and our dog, and we talked about what medium I might want, talked about our schedules. I was supposed to contact her in a couple of weeks to set it up.”

  “She didn’t mention anything about friends, other clients, anyone.”

  “No. But …” DeWinter held up a finger. “She had these gorgeous striped tulips—like candy canes—on her table. When I complimented them,
she got that look in her eye.”

  “That look?”

  “The look you get when you think about a lover. That’s how I read it anyway, but she didn’t actually say: Oh, my lover brought me those.”

  “Got it. Appreciate it.”

  “If I think of anything else … Jesus, Dallas, she was so young, so … fresh, I want to say. And just a little thing. I hope whoever gave her those damn tulips didn’t kill her.”

  “It’s where you look first.”

  She made her way downstairs and found Peabody walking her way.

  “My charm’s on high today.” After a little hip wiggle, Peabody tried a hair toss.

  “Never, never do that again.”

  “You’re going to want to do the same when I tell you Dickhead already had the sheets done. Two separate DNAs from fluids, both female. One from the victim, one not in the system.”

  “Good, solid. But I don’t do the wiggle and toss.”

  “’Cause you’ve got no hips and really short hair. But inside, you’re wiggling and tossing.”

  “No. What about the murder weapon?”

  “No prints other than the vic’s because, the experts say, the killer sealed up or wore gloves.”

  “Huh. Interesting. Some premeditation in that.”

  “Sweepers got some hair—from the sheets and pillowcases—and Harvo’s on it.”

  “If Harvo’s on it, we’ll have the results soon.” The queen of hair and fiber always came through. “We’ll take a look at the security feed back at Central. Then you check the alibis, get a couple of uniforms to start looking for likely flower and wine shops. I’ll write this up, start the board and book. Once we get that, we’re going to want to get whatever other security feed the apartment building has on alternate exits.”

  “Cabs?”

  “We backtrack from the drop-off—near or at the coffee place this morning, near or at the flower or wine place yesterday once we nail that down. Run the fiancé; let’s get a sense.”

  Peabody settled in with her PPC. “Merit Andrew Caine, age thirty-six. Single, no marriages, no official cohabs. Only dings a handful of traffic violations. Harvard Law—like his father, mother, paternal grandfather. And give him a zing, graduated top of his class, and clerked for Supreme Court Justice Uma Hagger.”