Brotherhood in Death (In Death #42)(62)

“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?”