by J. D. Robb
“Have I ever?”
“No.” And because he hadn’t, she kissed him back. “We’re good,” she said as she walked out. “See you later.”
* * *
It definitely felt like the lion, Eve thought when she walked outside. The air had bite, and the wind held a low, throaty roar. She hopped into her waiting car, grateful for the blast of the heater.
As she headed toward the gates then through them, she sent Peabody a voice text to report to the morgue.
The air blimps were back, blasting out their hype from a blissfully blue sky. No ice, no rain to dampen New York drivers’ competence at the wheel down to zero, no gritty gray piles of snow heaped at the curbs.
Maybe the lion really was getting ready to lie down.
Of course the lack of gray and gloom, rain and sleet didn’t stop the traffic heading downtown from tangling, clogging, or breaking noise-pollution laws with screaming horns.
But she’d take it.
The sun actually glared—enough that she dug into the center console, and was pleasantly surprised to locate a pair of sunshades.
As she bullied her way downtown, she thought over her impressions of Marcus Jones, aka Slice.
A badass, no question, and one likely to end up dead on the street or spending a lot of quality time in a cage. But not completely stupid. Smart and badass enough to work his way up to a command post in the Bangers, and, more, to have outside business interests.
A landlord, a property owner with business partners. Sleazy ones, but non–gang member business partners.
So where had he gotten the scratch to buy into real estate?
Illegals, identity theft, the protection racket. Could be some skimming off the top—or bottom—of gang business involved. Or some side deals—a little blackmail maybe, some solo illegals action.
Considering, she sent a memo to a contact in Illegals. Detective Strong—solid cop—who might be able to fill in some blanks.
One thing stood out for her, and she replayed it in her head as she parked. Slice’s reaction when he heard Lyle Pickering had been murdered.
Shock—that had read genuine—and anger. Not the smirking smugness she might have expected, not the dismissive shrug. Maybe, just maybe, he possessed the acting skills that could earn him one of Nadine’s dickless gold guys. But why trot them out?
If he hadn’t arranged the hit on Pickering—and she had to give that a fifty-fifty at this point—who had?
And why?
She stuffed the shades in her coat pocket as she started down the white-tiled tunnel of the morgue. She smelled bad coffee, somebody’s breakfast burrito, chemical cleaner, and the death none of those other scents could quite smother.
As she reached Morris’s double doors, she heard the familiar clomp heading her way. Peabody sort of trotted down the tunnel. Not in her fuzzy-topped pink snow boots, but in the pink cowgirl boots Eve—in a moment of weakness—had allowed Roarke to persuade her made a fine souvenir gift for her partner.
Then there was the pink magic coat, another moment of weakness. The color, Eve thought, not the magic. Another scarf worked the pink into what Eve assumed stood as spring green.
At least the pants were a dignified black, even if she’d styled her hair into a short yet jaunty tail.
“Good morning!” Peabody all but sang it. “Isn’t that a beautiful sky out there? And we’re heading up into the sixties today.”
“I’m sure the dead guy on the slab in there shares your joy.”
“Aw.” Then Peabody did a couple of shoulder bounces. “He’s dead either way, but we get to hunt down his killer under blue skies.”
Hard to argue, Eve decided. And since it was, she pushed through the doors.
Under his protective cloak, the chief medical examiner wore a suit not the color of Peabody’s beautiful sky, but softer, more the tone it would take on as dusk crept in. He’d paired it with a shirt the color of the salmon Galahad favored.
Which, she had to admit, was a kind of pink.
His tie matched the suit, as did the cord woven through the black braid down his back. Though blood streaked his sealed hands, his dark eyes warmed as he looked up—and paused in the act of weighing some internal organs.
Kidneys, Eve decided.
“Ah, two of my favorite people, and my first live visitors of this gorgeous day.”
His tone matched the—damn it—jaunty music on his speakers. She began to worry that spring wasn’t such a winner after all.
He ordered the music’s volume lower, turned away to clean his bloody hands.
“A good catch on the needle mark, Dallas. It’s all but obscured by what’s left of his gang ink. We’d have caught it in the PM, of course, but finding it on scene gave us all a head start.”
“What was it? Do you have that yet?”
“I put a rush on the tox. Hopefully, it won’t take long. I can tell you the fresh needle mark, the fresh mark from the pressure syringe are the only signs on the body of drug use. Added to the health of his internal organs, his skin tone, and so on, I’d judge him as clean before the overdose.”
“The bruises on his wrists.”
“I agree with your on-site there, too. Gripped by good-sized hands, with some force behind them. From the angle”—he ordered a close-up on-screen, enhanced it—“You can see the bruising from the thumbs, from the fingers. From the angle,” he repeated, “he was gripped from behind.”
“Grab his wrists from behind, keep him locked while a second assailant jabs the needle in to take him out. It’ll be a barbiturate of some kind. Some kind of tranq.”
“Most likely, yes, and again, I agree. I found microscopic bits of fabric in the needle mark. The lab will, no doubt, confirm they came from his shirt. So they injected him right through his shirt.”
“In a hurry. Get him down, or at least compliant, then you can stage the self-induced. The tourniquet to pop the vein, the pressure syringe, overloaded. Plant illegals in his room.”
“Just another addict losing the battle,” Peabody said. “They’d figure that’s what the cops would see, would say.”
“They’re not as smart as we are, are they, Peabody?”
She nodded at Morris. “Not even close.”
“It’s sloppy,” Eve added. “Surface smart, maybe, but not thought through. Bad tactics. Rushed, maybe. Because if you wanted him dead, send the three guys to beat the crap out of him one night when he’s heading to a meeting, or coming home from work. It’s … a cop bias on top of it. It’s thinking, Cops won’t look past the obvious show. He’s just another junkie. Stupid to jab him with a tranq—but without it, he’s going to put up a fight. And the slice on his throat. Just in case he struggled, even under the tranq, hold a knife to his throat as you shoot him up.”
She slid her hands into her pockets, rocking on her heels as she studied the body. “It’s lousy tactics. I don’t see how you climb up to command status in a gang by using crap tactics. You take him in his apartment, you kill him with the substance he’s worked hard to kick? There’s personal in there. Sloppy, rushed, personal.”
She pulled her hands out along with her communicator as it signaled. “Dispatch,” she said. “Maybe something on the BOLO.
“Dallas.”
Dallas, Lieutenant Eve, the body of the subject of your BOLO, Duff, Dinnie, has been found on East Broadway under the Manhattan Bridge underpass. See the officers at that location. Probable homicide.
“Copy that. Detective Peabody and I are on our way. Damn it,” she added, stuffing the comm back in her pocket. “I’ll be sending you another body, Morris.”
“We’re here to serve.”
“Let me know, will you, when this vic is ready for his family to come in?”
“Why don’t I contact Rochelle directly, save you that time?”
“Appreciate it. Let’s move, Peabody.”
“Moving.” At the doors, Peabody glanced back. “You totally smoked the sax at Nadine’s, Morris.”
/> He smiled at her. “Happier times.” When the doors closed, he sighed and looked down at the body. “Let’s see what we can do for you.”
Peabody trotted to catch up. “You didn’t seem surprised about Dead Duff.”
“Because I wasn’t. She had to be dead or in the wind, and dead was the better bet. Junkies are unreliable, so you use one to kill, you’d get rid of her before she gets picked up for something and blabs to try to get out of it. Or blabs the next time she’s high, or blabs to try to broker a high.”
“You figure she was dead, essentially, the minute she opened the door of Pickering’s apartment.”
“Yeah.” Eve slid behind the wheel. “She was mostly an easy lay. Just one more junkie who’d trade sex for a flop or a fix. Her usefulness here was the connection to Pickering.”
Eve pushed into crosstown traffic. “And that usefulness ended when she opened the door. Turned her into a liability. Shaky tactics again.”
“Why— Wait.” Peabody narrowed her eyes, let it work through. “Because a better one would be to kill her right there in the apartment, same way as Pickering. Then it looks like they got high together, and went too far.”
“Got it in one. Whoever ordered it didn’t count on somebody looking out and seeing the three Duff let in, but even then, if they’d done them both, it could read as a party where two partied too hard. You leave more illegals sitting around, right with the bodies, maybe some booze. Strip them down some so it looks like they were at least planning to have some sex along with the high.”
“It’s a good plan. Good thing you’re on our side.”
“First mistake was jabbing him with a tranq, second was letting Duff slip out so you had to kill her later. We need to know more about Marcus Jones. Here’s what we’ve got so far.”
She filled Peabody in as she drove.
“I’m not sorry I missed the trip to the underground. What stands out is Jones having enough money to go into a real estate partnership. Sure, the area where he has property is mostly dumps, but you still have to have enough to lay down.”
“Yeah, and I can’t give him more than fifty-fifty on arranging these hits. Figuring out real estate will generate income, getting enough to lay down for it, working a partnership, and so on. It takes calculation and some brains. And some forward thinking. These hits?”
“Sloppy,” Peabody finished.
Eve wound her way to the windy, pitted litter trap where the road above echoed and vibrated with traffic. As she got out she flashed her badge to one of the four uniforms securing the scene.
Two droids, two live, she thought. Smart as, if she had it right, they stood pretty much on the border between Banger and Dragon territories.
“Officer Grogan, Lieutenant.”
She got her field kit out of the trunk, then ducked under the police barricade. “What do you know, Officer?”
“Nancy Nuts found her. That’s Nancy Tobias, sir. Around here, she’s Nancy Nuts. Sidewalk sleeper, scavenges for junk, sets out a hat now and then, does a song and dance for booze money. My partner and I just came on, and she rolls her basket up to us, says there’s a dead girl down here, and how is she supposed to get herself an audience if there’s a dead girl? We had her show us. Vic’s messed up pretty bad, and no ID on her. We got her thumb on the pad, hit your BOLO.”
“Where’s Nancy?”
“We got her to sit down outside on the street, bought her an egg pocket. They won’t let her in the café there. She’s pretty ripe, so you can’t blame them. The droid’s got her.”
“Peabody, why don’t you go talk to her. Find out if she saw anything besides the DB, where she slept last night. You know what to do.”
She started toward the body with Grogan. “This would be the crossroads, more or less, between Banger and Dragon turf. Is that right?”
“About. This is neutral territory because it’s not worth spit. They use it sometimes when they stage a challenge. Assholes fighting for a leadership position, or the champion of one gang taking on the champion of another. She’s not the first DB we’ve found here.”
Eve looked down at the body. It might have been, in some distant past, Dinnie Duff had some pretty to her. The ID shot Eve had studied had shown considerable wear and tear for a woman of twenty-four, but some remnants of that distant past.
Her killer or killers had beaten even that out of her.
Her face was a mass of black-and-purple bruises, dried blood, gashes, swelling. As she wore no coat, no shirt, more bruising—black along the ribs—bloomed on the bone-thin torso.
One of her bare feet cocked crookedly, and had likely been stomped on. Her tights, covered with bleeding hearts, bagged around her ankles while a short strip of skirt fluttered over her abdomen and left the violent bruising on her thighs, her genitals, exposed.
“Seen her around now and again,” Grogan said, “even rousted her a few times for begging without a license. Popped her for possession last summer. She didn’t have much of a life, but they sure as hell crushed what she had out of her.”
“Yeah, they did.”
“It’s a violation of the neutral zone,” he added. “It comes out Dragons did this, we’re going to have a gang war.”
Considering, she turned, looked at him. “Is this the sort of thing the Dragons do?”
“It seems to me if she crossed some line and they decided to beat her to death, rape her with it, then they wouldn’t leave the body here. They’d dump it over in Banger territory. Leaving her here, in violation, messing her up this bad when everybody knows she’s a Banger Bitch? You’re asking for a war.”
Interesting, Eve thought, crouching and opening her kit.
She verified ID, recording the body in situ. “Evidence of rape, possibly multiple rapes. Victim has been beaten—face, torso, abdomen. Her left foot and ankle appear to be broken. She has no identification, no coat or shirt, no shoes. The tears on her earlobes indicate she’d been wearing earrings, and an assailant ripped them from her ears. Bruises on her throat indicate strangulation. Manual choking.”
Carefully, Eve ran her sealed hands over the blood-matted hair, around the back of the head. “Skull’s crushed. Pounded it into the ground,” she added. “That’s what they did.
“Lure her in here. Got some good stuff, payment for the job you did tonight. Start punching. She’s got deep bruises around her mouth. Hold a hand over her mouth so she can’t scream. It’ll be the same three who did Pickering. It’s going to be the same three.”
Three big males against one underweight female. Brave bastards, a credit to their gang.
Fuckers.
“Beat, kick, rape. Take turns there. Choke her. Beat her head against the concrete. Take her coat, her boots. Her shirt’s going to be ripped most likely, why take her shirt? Take her ’link if she has one, anything else, rip the fucking earrings out of her ears, and leave her.”
She took out her gauge, checked for time of death.
“Just before twenty-two-thirty. About the time we got to Banger HQ. She’s already here getting the shit beat out of her when we’re talking to Slice.”
“Are you thinking Slice ordered this, Lieutenant?”
She pushed to her feet. “You don’t?”
“Well, you’re Homicide, but…”
“But you work this area.”
“I sure do.”
“So, tell me why you don’t think Slice ordered this.”
“I don’t see him wanting a gang war, not this way. He wants more turf, sure.”
“Turf’s pride,” Eve put in. “It’s power and money.”
“That’s right. But you’re asking for just what you’ve got this way. A bunch of cops asking all kinds of questions. Like I said, leaving her here is a violation. I’m not saying he’s a humanitarian, but if he’d ordered her hit, it’d be cleaner.”
He swiped a finger across his throat. “He likes the sharps. Beating and raping her takes time. He’d want it quick and done. Dump her somewhere, maybe in the r
iver. Looks more like a sex deal gone wrong, a mugging, whatever. Keep away from his turf. Cops’ll ask questions, but not like we will now, and not a spit away from his HQ.”
His take ran on the same track as hers.
“You’ve got points, Grogan. Right down the line. I need you and your partner to do a canvass. TOD is just before twenty-two-thirty, but it wasn’t quick. We’re looking for anything from twenty-one to twenty-three. Do you know if she had any friends?”
“I don’t know much about her, Lieutenant. She had some crazy in her—not, you know, benign like Nancy Nuts. A mean streak of crazy. I can’t remember seeing her hang out with anyone much. She struck me as more a hanger-on than part of the inner circle, if you get me.”
“I get you. Stay with the body,” she ordered the droids, and called for the sweepers and the dead wagon.
7
As Eve wrapped up, Peabody came back with a torn, bloody shirt in an evidence bag.
“Pretty sure this is the vic’s,” she said. “Nancy had it. She said how it was just lying there, and she could use it. I bartered an energy bar for it.”
“Good catch. It’s been compromised now, but we’ll send it to the lab. Did she have boots or shoes, a coat?”
“No. What she has is mostly broken stuff, a couple stray socks, hubcaps. Junk. She did say she’d seen the girl with the purple face around.”
Peabody glanced at the body. “Purple face is pretty accurate at this point. She recognized the hair, the pink hair, and figured it was Meanie who got dead. That’s what she called Duff, because she was mean.”
“Officer Grogan concurs.”
“She said mean things to Nancy—who really ought to be in a shelter. She won’t go, Dallas. She likes camping out. Sidewalk sleeping’s camping out to her.”
“How much did you give her?”
Peabody sighed. “Twenty. I know it’s pissing in the wind, but—”
“No, it’s not. She’ll get a couple of decent meals out of it.” And some rotgut, Eve thought, but why say so? “Put in a chit for it.”
“Thanks, but it was personal. I liked her. She called me Officer Puppy. She said I have puppy eyes.”