by J. D. Robb
“Do you know of any reason why Fitzhugh would have taken his own life?”
“Absolutely none.” Leanore kept her hands very still, her eyes level. “He loved life. His life, his work. He enjoyed every minute of every day as much as anyone I’ve ever met. I have no idea why he would choose to end it.”
“When was the last time you saw or spoke with him?”
She hesitated. Eve could almost see wheels working smoothly behind those heavily lashed eyes. “Actually, I saw him briefly last night. I dropped a file off for him, discussed a case. That discussion is, of course, privileged.” Her slicked lips curved. “But I will say he was his usual enthusiastic self, and he was very much looking forward to dueling with you in court.”
“Dueling?”
“That’s how Fitz referred to cross-examination of expert and police witnesses.” A smile flickered over her face. “It was a match, in his mind, of wits and nerve. A professional game for an innate game player. I don’t know of anything he enjoyed so much as being in court.”
“What time did you drop off the file last night?”
“I’d say about ten. Yes, I think it was around ten. I’d worked late here and slipped by on my way home.”
“Was that usual, Ms. Bastwick, you slipping by to see him on your way home?”
“Not unusual. We were, after all, professional associates, and our cases sometimes overlapped.”
“That’s all you were? Professional partners?”
“Do you assume, Lieutenant, that because a man and woman are physically attractive and on friendly terms that they can’t work together without sexual tension?”
“I don’t assume anything. How long did you stay—discussing your case?”
“Twenty minutes, a half hour. I didn’t time it. He was fine when I left, I’ll tell you that.”
“There was nothing he was particularly concerned about?”
“He had some concerns about the Salvatori matter—and others, as well. Nothing out of the ordinary. He was a confident man.”
“And outside of work. On a personal level?”
“A private man.”
“But you know Arthur Foxx.”
“Of course. In this firm we take care to know and socialize at least lightly with the spouses of partners and associates. Arthur and Fitz were devoted to each other.”
“No . . . spats?”
Leanore cocked a brow. “I wouldn’t know.”
Sure you would, Eve thought. “You and Mr. Fitzhugh were partners, you had a close professional and apparently a close personal relationship. He must have discussed his homelife with you from time to time.”
“He and Arthur were very happy.” Leanore’s first sign of irritation showed in the gentle tapping of a coral-toned nail against the edge of glass. “Happy couples occasionally have arguments. I imagine you argue with your husband from time to time.”
“My husband hasn’t recently found me dead in the bathtub,” Eve said evenly. “What did Foxx and Fitzhugh argue about?”
Leanore let out an annoyed huff of breath. She rose, punched in a code on her AutoChef, took out a steaming cup of coffee. None was offered to Eve. “Arthur had periodic bouts of depression. He is not the most self-confident of men. He tended to be jealous, which exasperated Fitz.” Her brows knit. “You’re probably aware that Fitz was married before. His bisexuality was somewhat of a problem for Arthur, and when he was depressed, he tended to worry about all the men and women Fitz came into contact with in the course of his work. They rarely argued, but when they did, it was generally about Arthur’s jealousy.”
“Did he have reason to be jealous?”
“As far as I know, Fitz was completely faithful. It’s not always an easy choice, Lieutenant, being in the spotlight as he was, and given his lifestyle. Even today, there are some who are—let’s say—uncomfortable with less-than-traditional sexual preferences. But Fitz gave Arthur no reason to be anything less than content.”
“Yet he was. Thank you,” Eve said as she rose. “You’ve been very helpful.”
“Lieutenant,” Leanore began as Eve and the silent Peabody started for the door. “If I thought for one instant that Arthur Foxx had anything to do with—” She stopped, sucked in a breath. “No, it’s simply impossible to believe.”
“Less possible than believing Fitzhugh slashed his own wrists and let himself bleed to death?” Eve waited a beat, then left the office.
Peabody waited until they’d stepped out onto the skywalk that ribboned the building. “I don’t know whether you were planting seeds or digging for worms.”
“Both.” Eve looked through the glass of the tube. She could see Roarke’s office building, shooting tall and polished ebony among the other spears. At least he had no connection with this case. She didn’t have to worry about uncovering something he’d done or someone he’d known too well. “She knew both the victim and the suspect. And Foxx didn’t mention her slipping by to discuss work last night.”
“So you’ve bumped Foxx from witness to suspect?”
Eve watched a man in a tailored robe squawk bad temperedly into a palm ’link as he glided by. “Until we prove conclusively it was suicide, Foxx is the prime—hell, the only—suspect. He had the means. It was his knife. He had the opportunity. They were alone in the apartment. He had the motive. Money. Now we know he has a history of depression, a record of violence, and a jealous streak.”
“Can I ask you something?” Peabody waited for Eve’s nod. “You didn’t care for Fitzhugh on a professional or a personal level.”
“I hated his fucking guts. So what?” Eve stepped off the skywalk and onto the street level where she’d been lucky enough to find a parking spot. She spied a glida grill, smoking soy dogs and potato rings, and made a beeline through the heavy pedestrian traffic. “You think I’ve got to like the corpse? Give me a couple of dogs and a scoop of potatoes. Two tubes of Pepsi.”
“Diet for me,” Peabody interrupted and rolled her eyes over Eve’s long, lean form. “Some of us have to worry about weight.”
“Diet dog, Diet Pep.” The woman running the cart had a dingy CZ stud in the center of her top lip and a tattoo of the subway system on her chest. The A line veered off and disappeared under the loose gauze covering her breasts. “Reg Dog, Reg Pep, hot potatoes. Cash or credit?”
Eve shoved the limp cardboard holding the food at Peabody and dug for her tokens. “What’s the damage?”
The woman poked a grimy purple-tipped finger at her console, sent it beeping. “Twenty-five.”
“Shit. You blink and dogs go up.” Eve poured credits into the woman’s outstretched hand, grabbed a couple of wafer-thin napkins.
She worked her way back, plopped down on the bench circling the fountain in front of the law building. The panhandler beside her looked hopeful. Eve tapped her badge; he grinned, tapped the beggar’s license hung around his neck.
Resigned, she dug out a five credit chip, passed it over. “Find someplace else to hustle,” she ordered him, “or I’ll run that license and see if it’s up to date.”
He said something uncomplimentary about her line of work, but he pocketed the credit and moved on, giving room to Peabody.
“Leanore doesn’t like Arthur Foxx.”
Peabody swallowed gamely. Diet dogs were invariably grainy. “She doesn’t?”
“A high-class lawyer doesn’t give that many answers unless she wants to. She fed us that Foxx was jealous, that they argued.” Eve held out the scoop of greasy potatoes. After a brief internal struggle, Peabody dug in. “She wanted us to have that data.”
“Still isn’t much. There’s nothing in Fitzhugh’s records that implicates Foxx. His diary, his appointment book, his ’link logs. None of the data I scanned points the finger. Then again, none of it indicates a suicidal bent, either.”
Contemplatively, Eve sucked on her tube of Pepsi, watched New York lumber by with all its noise and sweat. “We’ll have to talk to Foxx again. I’ve got court again this aft
ernoon. I want you to go back to Cop Central, get the door-to-door reports, nag the ME for the final autopsy. I don’t know what the hang-up is there, but I want the results by end of shift. I should be out of court by three. We’ll do another walk-through of Fitzhugh’s apartment and see why he omitted Bastwick’s little visit.”
Peabody juggled food and duly programmed the duties into her day log. “What I asked before—about you not liking Fitzhugh. I just wondered if it was harder to push all the buttons when you had bad feelings about the subject.”
“Cops don’t have personal feelings.” Then she sighed. “Bullshit. You put those feelings aside and push the buttons. That’s the job. And if I happen to think a man like Fitzhugh deserved to end up bathing in his own blood, it doesn’t mean I won’t do what’s necessary to find out how he got there.”
Peabody nodded. “A lot of other cops would just file it. Self-termination. End of transmission.”
“I’m not other cops, and neither are you, Peabody.” She glanced over, mildly interested at the explosive crash as two taxis collided. Pedestrian and street traffic barely hitched as smoke billowed, Duraglass pinged, and two furious drivers popped like corks out of their ruined vehicles.
Eve nibbled away at her lunch as the two men pushed, shoved, and shouted imaginative obscenities. She imagined they were obscenities, anyway, since no English was exchanged. She looked up but didn’t spot one of the hovering traffic copters. With a thin smile, she balled up the cardboard, rolled up the empty tube, passed them to Peabody.
“Dump these in the recycler, will you, then come back and give me a hand breaking up those two idiots.”
“Sir, one of them just pulled out a bat. Should I call for backup?”
“Nope.” Eve rubbed her hands together in anticipation as she rose. “I can handle it.”
Eve’s shoulder was still smarting when she walked out of court a couple of hours later. She imagined the cab drivers would have been released by now, which wasn’t going to happen to the child killer Eve had just testified against, she thought with satisfaction. She’d be in high security lockup for the next fifty years minimum. There was some satisfaction in that.
Eve rolled her bruised shoulder. The cabbie really hadn’t been swinging at her, she thought. He’d been trying to crack his opponent’s head open, and she’d just gotten in the way. Still, it wasn’t going to hurt her feelings that both of them would have their licenses suspended for three months.
She climbed into her car and, favoring her shoulder, put the vehicle on auto to Cop Central. Overhead, a tourist tram blatted out the standard spiel about the scales of justice.
Well, she mused, sometimes they balanced. If only for a short time. Her ’link beeped.
“Dallas.”
“Dr. Morris.” The medical examiner had heavy-lidded hawk eyes in a vivid shade of green, a squared-off chin that was generously stubbled, and a slicked-back mane of charcoal hair. Eve liked him. Though she was often frustrated by his lack of stellar speed, she appreciated his thoroughness.
“Have you finished the report on Fitzhugh?”
“I have a problem.”
“I don’t need a problem, I need the report. Can you transmit it to my office ’link? I’m on my way there.”
“No, Lieutenant, you’re on your way here. I have something I need to show you.”
“I don’t have time to come by the morgue.”
“Make time,” he suggested and ended the transmission.
Eve ground her teeth once. Scientists were so damned frustrating, she thought as she redirected her unit.
From the outside, the Lower Manhattan City Morgue resembled one of the beehive-structured office buildings that surrounded it. It blended, that had been the point of the redesign. Nobody liked to think of death, to have it spoil their appetite as they scooted out of work at lunchtime to grab a bite at a corner deli. Images of bodies tagged and bagged on refrigerated slabs tended to put you off your pasta salad.
Eve remembered the first time she’d stepped through the black steel doors in the rear of the building. She’d been a rookie in uniform shoulder to shoulder with two dozen other rookies in uniforms. Unlike several of her comrades, she’d seen death up close and personal before, but she’d never seen it displayed, dissected, analyzed.
There was a gallery above one of the autopsy labs and there students, rookies, and journalists or novelists with the proper credentials could witness firsthand the intricate workings of forensic pathology.
Individual monitors in each seat offered close-up views to those with the stomach for it.
Most of them didn’t come back for a return trip. Many who left were carried out.
Eve had walked out on her own steam, and she’d been back countless times since, but she never looked forward to the visits.
Her target this time wasn’t what was referred to as The Theater, but Lab C, where Morris conducted most of his work. Eve passed down the white tiled corridor with its pea green floors. She could smell death there. No matter what was used to eradicate it, the sulky stink of it slid through cracks, around doorways, and it tainted the air with the grinning reminder of mortality.
Medical science had eradicated plagues, a host of diseases and conditions, extending life expectancy to an average of one hundred fifty years. Cosmetic technology had insured that a human being could live attractively for his century and a half.
You could die without wrinkles, without age spots, without aches and pains and disintegrating bones. But you were still going to die sooner or later.
For many who came here, that day was sooner.
She stopped in front of the door at Lab C, held her badge up to the security camera, and gave her name and ID number to the speaker. Her palm print was analyzed and cleared. The door slid open.
It was a small room, windowless and depressing, lined with equipment, beeping with computers. Some of the tools ranged neat as a surgeon’s tray on the counters were barbaric enough to make the weak shudder. Saws, lasers, the glinting blades of scalpels, hoses.
In the center of the room was a table with gutters on the side to catch fluids and run them into sterilized, airtight containers for further analysis. On the table was Fitzhugh, his naked body bearing the scars of the recent insult of a standard Y cut.
Morris was sitting on a rolling stool in front of a monitor, face pushed close to the screen. He wore a white lab coat that fluttered to the floor. It was one of his few affectations, the coat that flapped and swirled like a highwayman’s cape whenever he walked down the corridors. His slicked-back hair was snugged into a long ponytail.
Eve knew, since he’d called her in directly rather than passing her off to one of his techs, that it was something unusual.
“Dr. Morris?”
“Hmm. Lieutenant,” he began without turning around. “Never seen anything like it. Not in thirty years of exploring the dead.” He swung around with a flutter of his lab coat. Beneath it he wore stovepipe pants and a T-shirt in loud, clashing colors. “You’re looking well, Lieutenant.”
He gave her one of his quick, charming smiles, and her lips curved up in response. “You’re looking pretty good, yourself. You lost the beard.”
He reached up, rubbed a hand over his stubbly chin. He’d sported a precise goatee until recently. “Didn’t suit me. But Christ, I hate to shave. How was the honeymoon?”
Automatically, she tucked her hands in her pockets. “It was good. I’ve got a pretty full plate right now, Morris. What do you have to show me you couldn’t show me on screen?”
“Some things take personal attention.” He rode his stool over to the autopsy table until he pulled up with a slight squeal of wheels at Fitzhugh’s head. “What do you see?”
She glanced down. “A dead guy.”
Morris nodded, as if pleased. “What we would call a normal, everyday dead guy who expired due to excessive blood loss, possibly self-inflicted.”
“Possibly?” She leaped on the word.
“F
rom the surface, suicide is the logical conclusion. There were no drugs in his system, very little alcohol, he shows no offensive nor defensive wounds or bruising, the blood settlement was consistent with his position in the tub, he did not drown, the angle of the wrist wounds . . .”
He bumped closer, picked up one of Fitzhugh’s limp, beautifully manicured hands where on the wrist the carved wounds resembled some intricate, ancient language. “They are also very consistent with self-infliction: a right-handed man, reclining slightly.” He demonstrated, holding an imaginary blade. “Very quick, very precise slashes to the wrist, severing the artery.”
Though she’d already studied the wounds herself, and photographs of them, she stepped closer, looked again. “Why couldn’t someone have come up from behind him, leaned over, slashed down at that same angle?”
“It’s not beyond the realm of possibility, but if that were the case, I’d expect to see some defensive wounds. If someone snuck into your bath and sliced your wrist, you’d be inclined to become annoyed, quarrelsome.” He beamed a smile. “I don’t think you’d just settle back in the tub and bleed to death.”
“So you’re going with self-termination.”
“Not so fast. I was prepared to.” He tugged on his bottom lip, let it snap back into place. “I ran the standard brain analysis required with any self-termination or suspected self-termination. That’s the puzzle here. The real puzzle.”
He scooted his stool over to his workstation, gestured over his shoulder for her to follow. “This is his brain,” he said, tapping a finger on the organ floating in clear liquid and attached to wire thin cables that fed into the mainframe of his computer. “Abby Normal.”
“I beg your pardon.”
Morris chuckled, shook his head. “Obviously you don’t make time to watch enough classic videos. That’s from a takeoff on the Frankenstein myth. What I’m saying is, this brain is abnormal.”
“He had brain damage?”
“Damage—well, it seems an extreme word for what I’ve found. Here, on the screen.” He swiveled around, tapped some keys. A close-up view of Fitzhugh’s brain flashed on. “Again, on the surface, completely as expected. But we show the cross section.” He tapped again, and the brain was sliced neatly in half. “So much went on in this small mass,” Morris murmured. “Thoughts, ideas, music, desires, poetry, anger, hate. People speak of the heart, Lieutenant, but it’s the brain that holds all the magic and mystery of the human species. It elevates us, separates us, defines us as individuals. And the secrets of it—well, it’s doubtful we’ll ever know them all. See here.”