Brotherhood in Death

by J. D. Robb

  “The morgue before breakfast. Pro or con?” Peabody started upstairs. “I’ll let you know.”

  “Professional contacts,” Eve repeated. “Confirmation of alibis.”

  “LT, it’s oh-five hundred,” Baxter reminded her.

  “We’re up. Why shouldn’t potential murder suspects be up? Get gone.”

  “We’re going to be a couple of popular guys, Trueheart.”

  “Any orders for me, Lieutenant?” Roarke asked as they headed out.

  “You should go home, buy another chunk of the solar system.”

  “Just another day at the office.” He watched a white-suited sweeper bag the noose. “For both of us.” But he took her arm, led her a short distance away. “Do you believe these two men were partners in some sort of ugly sex game? Partners in rape?”

  “I don’t believe anything yet. But that’s an angle I’m going to look at. The grandson said they took his life, and took his dignity. They damn well did. There’s a reason for the humiliation as much as the torture and kill. I read payback. Who did these two men humiliate?”

  “And what sin or crime did they commit that what was done could be considered—by any—justice?”

  “Yeah. Good friends, long-term friends. What secrets did they share? There’s something, yes, ugly under this. And it still reads sex. I can get you a ride home.”

  “I can get my own ride, thanks all the same. Tend to yourself,” he murmured. “Not just my cop, but to that young girl you still carry with you.”

  “Don’t worry about me.”

  He took her face in his hands, kissed her firmly before she could stop him. “Don’t be a git. I’ll be in touch,” he added as he walked to the door.

  She let out a huff of breath, turned in time to see the nearby sweeper grinning through her face shield.

  “What are you grinning at?”

  “Just imagining having a guy who looks like that lay lips on me. It’s a smiley thought.” She bagged a blood sample from the floor. “You take ’em where you find ’em.”

  Maybe so, Eve thought. She wouldn’t find many smiley moments at the morgue.

  “Peabody, with me, damn it! Keep your hands off McNab’s bony ass or you’re walking to the morgue.”

  She was already pulling the front door open when Peabody rushed down the steps. “How did you know where my hands were?”

  “I’m a trained detective.” She glanced back, saw the sweeper grin again. “Another smiley moment?”

  “Ain’t it grand?”

  12

  Peabody scrambled to catch up while winding today’s scarf—icy winter blue with candy-green zigzags—around her neck.

  “If the two vics were pals, and sex is motive, maybe they shared some of the women on the list.”

  Eve slid behind the wheel. “Now you’re thinking.”

  “I can think even with my hands on McNab’s bony ass. And it was really just a friendly pat.” She let out a happy sigh as she settled into the passenger seat. “Ah. The seat warmer’s on. Now my not-so-bony ass is happy.”

  “I hereby issue a ban on any discussion of your ass or McNab’s.” Eve flicked a gaze in the side mirror, did a zip-switch of lanes. “Roarke’s going to ask security at the hotel if Wymann used the suite, and if so, who used it with him. We connect any of the sidepieces, we have a whole other conversation.”

  “On the other hand, why have a sex droid in the bedroom closet—and McNab said it was programmed for the universe of sex—if you’re diddling with live ones regularly?”

  “The answer to that is: penis.”

  “Oh yeah, how could I forget?” Peabody didn’t mention her ass, but snuggled it happily into the warm. “But don’t you think that has to slow down some once the penis has going on seven decades under its belt? And I just got a mental picture of a penis wearing a belt. It wasn’t pretty.”

  “Thanks for sharing that. Before the day’s over, after the sweepers are done, I’m going back to go through the vic’s house, and you know what I’d bet a year’s salary I’m going to find? Boner drugs and other sex . . . extenders.”

  “Boner extenders, good one. I’m not going to take the bet because we found boner drugs in the first vic’s place—really his grandfather’s place, so more eeww—and it follows. Okay, here’s another question.”

  Since the traffic was hell on Earth and the ad blimps insisted on blatting on about Cruise Wear Specials! (What the hell was cruise wear?), Eve resigned herself to Peabody’s endless curiosity.

  “Is this the last one?”

  “Probably not, but it’s another. Why do guys always sniff out the young ones? Dudes in their fifties, they’re hunting up sex partners in their twenties. In their sixties, same deal. Into the seventies, they’d go for the twenties if they could get them, and settle for the thirties, maybe forties, if they crash on younger.”

  “Same answer: penis.”

  “How is it the same answer?”

  As Eve made a turn, she watched oblivious tourists huddled at a glide-cart with their bags and wallets all but screaming “Steal Me!” to the canny-eyed street thief who sauntered their way.

  She couldn’t save everybody, and kept going.

  “The penis needs to convince itself it’s still twenty, and therefore urgently desired by sex partners of the same age. The penis refuses to accept it’s attached to an old guy.”

  “Then the penis is self-deluding.”

  “It’s good you’ve learned that while you’re still in your twenties. I suspect many women find it a harder lesson once their own decades pass. Now, put the penis in the same box as the asses, and close the damn lid.”

  Peabody held her silence for a moment. “You know what’s going to happen with a penis and two asses in the same box, right?”

  Despite herself Eve laughed. “Jesus, Peabody, get your mind out of the sex box.”

  “It’s not easy since we’re figuring sex as motive.”

  “Okay, that’s a point. Sex plays. You don’t bruise and bloody a guy’s genitals and sodomize him unless it’s about sex, so sex plays. Second vic’s got two divorces—the last one more than six years ago. We’ll check out the exes, see if there’s any overlap with the first vic, but it’s a stretch to think Wymann’s ex or exes waited this long for payback. Start digging, see if Wymann’s connected to anyone romantically.”

  “Gossip sites, here I come!” Peabody pulled out her PPC.

  Eve tapped her fingers on the wheel as another ad blimp announced: Get your summer bikini body in January at Slimderize! Free consult!

  Maybe a summer bikini body counted as cruise wear.

  “Scenario,” she said, doing her best to block out the blimps. “The senator and Wymann have a little sex club. The women involved join in—either knowing about the other women or not. If not, this is a pisser. If they did know, something went wrong, got ugly. Women form their own club. Murder club.”

  “If they went into it knowing, it had to get really ugly.”

  “Rape’s ugly. I think brutally sodomizing two men reflects rape. Otherwise, maybe, yeah, you kick him in the balls a couple times, but the rest . . .”

  “That sounds like rape club, not sex club. The women on our list weren’t raped.”

  “Not that they told us. Why tell us, why hand us a big, fat motive? It’s an angle we need to look at because we’ve got more than one killer. Torture and murder as partners, that speaks of a bond, a shared goal, and, in these cases, a mutual rage.

  “We know the senator let in his killers. So he felt no threat. A man who considers women objects, sex toys? He doesn’t see them as a threat.”

  “We still don’t know the identity of the Realtor.”

  And that, Eve thought, was a big hole that needed filling.

  “When we find it, we’ll find the killers—but . . . strong possibility
there wasn’t a Realtor, but a ploy. We need to know when Wymann was taken, where he was taken from. Eventually, we’re going to learn where he and the senator were taken to.”

  “You sound really confident.”

  “It’s fucking hard to keep secrets—they wear on you. It’s fucking hard to maintain a bond that leads to murder. One of them’s going to slip.”

  By the time she got to the morgue she was jonesing for coffee, and knew she couldn’t face the sludge she’d find in Vending on their way down the white, echoing tunnel.

  Barely six, she thought, and realized Morris might not be in yet. But she could take another look at both bodies, and have one of the other MEs run through the findings with her.

  She stopped at the short line of machines, scowled at them. Not only would the coffee be piss-warm sludge, but the machine would give her grief. They always did.

  Some sort of conspiracy, she thought bitterly.

  “Get me a tube of Pepsi, and whatever you want.” She dug in her pockets for credits, passed them to Peabody.

  “I’m never going to be able to go back to Vending hot chocolate now, not after experiencing Mr. Mira’s. Even what you’ve got stocked in the vehicle AutoChef doesn’t hit that stupendous mark. Coffee’s as crappy here as it is at Central. Tea . . . maybe.”

  “Would you like to see the full menu, perhaps request a sampler?” Eve’s all-too-pleasant tone had Peabody risking a sidelong glance. “Or are you going to plug the damn credits in and get something before I boot your ass?”

  “My ass is still in the box.” Pleased with herself, Peabody ordered up the Pepsi, and opted for a Diet Cherry Fizzy.

  The machine spit them out, then began to drone on about nutritional value—zero—as Eve turned her back and kept going.

  She cracked the tube, using her shoulder to push through the doors leading to autopsy.

  It shouldn’t have surprised her to find Morris already wearing a protective cape over a suit the color of wet stone. He’d chosen a tie of shimmery lavender, and twined his black hair into a single thick braid.

  He had music on low, something . . . jazzy, she thought.

  He glanced up. And though he held his scalpel, he had yet to start the Y cut on Wymann’s body.

  “You were quick,” he said.

  “Or really slow, considering we didn’t make it in yesterday for Senator Mira.”

  For now, Morris set the scalpel down, gestured to a second steel table. “I had our earlier guest brought out of the drawer, as I expected the doubleheader would bring you by this morning.”

  He stepped over, brought up the lights.

  “Without delving deeper into our newest arrival, and going by a visual exam only, the injuries are similar: facial and genital insults, the ligature marks on the wrists, sodomy by foreign object. In the senator’s case, that foreign object was about two inches in circumference, tapering down to a rounded point on the end. It had also been heated to a degree to cause severe burning around and in the anus.”

  Peabody blanched, turned away.

  “The proverbial hot poker,” Morris added, giving Peabody a sympathetic pat on the shoulder. “The object was used multiple times, with considerable force. The pain would have been excruciating. Again, only with a visual exam, I believe the same object was used on Wymann.”

  “That’s beyond rage,” Eve stated. “Maybe we’re looking for sexual sadists—a team like Ella-Loo Parsens and Darryl Roy James.”

  “I don’t like thinking there are more like them out there,” Peabody replied, back still turned.

  “There are always more. But . . .” No, Eve thought, not like the two twisted lovers they’d recently locked away. Not like that.

  “These two weren’t picked randomly. They were targets—and the sex, the sadism, the message left, all clearly read revenge.”

  “Revenge was had,” Morris said. “In the biggest of ways. I agree with your insight regarding the contusions. A smooth, weighted sap. There are no indications fists were used.”

  “Might break a nail, ruin your manicure. It’s a woman. Women,” Eve added.

  “No defensive wounds.”

  Because they didn’t give him a chance to fight back, Eve concluded. “Stun marks?”

  “One, barely visible even with microgoggles. In the groin.”

  “The groin.”

  “I sense a theme. A mild stun, enough, in my opinion, to debilitate—and hurt, considering that sensitive area, like a swarm of angry wasps—but not enough to render him unconscious. Which plays to them being female.”

  She walked it through. “Two of them could easily get him into the chair. One works on him, the other holds the stunner. Mr. Mira walks in, and they adjust.”

  “How is Dennis?”

  “He’s good. He’s dealing. What else can you tell me?”

  “From the ligature marks on the wrists, recent injuries to the rotator cuffs, arm and shoulder muscles, the victim was restrained with cord, arms above his head, with his full weight pulling downward. The restraints were removed an hour, no more than two, before TOD.”

  “He was alive when they hanged him.”

  “Yes, he was, and his hands free so he attempted to drag the noose from his neck. It’s his own skin under his fingernails, along with fiber from the cord.”

  Morris shifted his attention, and Eve’s, to the neck. “This wasn’t a sharp drop—not the trapdoor on the gallows, or a chair kicked out that could snap the neck, but a gradual strangulation. The drag of his own weight tightened the cord, increased the pressure, choking him. He died slowly, and painfully.”

  “Not just an execution. Those are done quickly, efficiently. They wanted him to know, to feel, to suffer. It was torture to the end.”

  “Yes. A torturous death. Other than that, I can tell you there were no other injuries. He’d had regular face and body work—what you’d call tune-ups—and was in excellent health. His last meal, consumed approximately fourteen hours before his death, included lobster bisque, a field green salad, and some Pouilly-Fuissé. As there were traces of vomit in his mouth, I can only guess at the amounts consumed.”

  “What did he do—did they do—to earn this level of vengeance? I’m looking at rape, but this brutality? It’s beyond even that.”

  “Kids maybe.” Steadier, Peabody took a testing sip from her fizzy. “Maybe they went for kids.”

  “Pedophilia . . . Yeah, that could work up this sort of rage. There’s not even a whiff of that around either, and the first, at least, had regular sex with adults. But we’ll look. Because anyone who considered this justice believes the crime is horrific.”

  “If it was,” Morris commented, “both men kept it well hidden. They lived public lives, where the media slides every act under the microscope. Hiding the horrific takes a great deal of skill and work, particularly if more than one person is involved. Secrets rarely hold.”

  “Agreed. Now that we know we’re looking for secrets, and possibly the horrific, it should be easier to find. He’s going to run about the same,” Eve said, glancing at Wymann. “His injuries, COD, the works. But if you come up with any surprises, let me know.”

  “I will, of course, but that reminds me. I thought little of it at the time, but the senator has a small tattoo.”

  “Lots do.”

  “Including myself. His was barely visible, again, due to the bruising. Groin area.”

  “He has a tat there?” Eve said as Peabody went, “Ouch!”

  “Just to the left of the root, we’ll say, of the penis.” He offered Eve microgoggles, took a pair for himself.

  “Check the new guy,” she told Morris as she put on the goggles, bent down, searched. “Yeah, yeah, I see it now. Barely. It . . . it looks Celtic, right? Like one of those Celtic symbols. Mira’s not Irish or Scots, though. Is it?”

  “Arabic, perhap
s, or American Indian. But . . . yes, your second victim has the same. Same tat, same area.”

  “Can you tell me when? How long ago they got the ink?”

  “I’ll work on that. I’ll excise the dermis, test it myself, and send it to the lab.”

  “What the hell does it mean? Peabody, get a picture of it. Let’s run it, see if it has a specific meaning.”

  “You’re already there, ah, with the goggles.”

  Eve only rolled her eyes, dragged out her ’link. She called up the camera function, took three shots. “It’s going to need to be enhanced, cleaned up.”

  “I can do that,” Peabody began, but Eve was already tagging her expert.

  “Hey.”

  “And a hey back to you,” Roarke said.

  “Quick one, just in case you know. What’s this symbolize or mean? Wait a sec.”

  She fumbled a little, but managed to send him the image.

  “Can you see the tat? There’s a lot of bruising and discoloration, but—”

  “I see it, yes. And it happens I do know its meaning, as my mates and I nearly had the same done one memorably drunken evening. It’s a Celtic symbol for brotherhood.”

  “‘Brotherhood.’ Yeah, that fits. Why didn’t you get the ink if you were drunk enough to think about it?”

  Amusement sparked in his eyes. “Not quite drunk enough to forget identifying marks aren’t wise for some of us in certain areas of business. I’ve a meeting in a moment, unless you need more.”

  “No, that’s great. Thanks. Buy that solar system.”

  She clicked off, looked back at both victims. “Brotherhood,” she repeated.

  —

  Back in the car, she headed for Central. “Tag Harvo at the lab. See if the Queen of Hair and Fiber found anything on the rope fibers. Odds are low, but we’ll check. And whatever other hair or fibers the sweepers managed to get to her.”

  As Peabody contacted the lab, Eve tried Mira’s personal ’link.

  “Eve.”

  “Sorry it’s so early.”

  “Not at all. We’re up. I thought I’d come in early today in any case.”