Connections in Death (In Death #48)(47)

“He looked so sad. Pissed, yeah, but sad, too. He loves her—I mean the big L. Jeez, he gave her ten thousand dollars earrings for V-Day.” She gave Eve an elbow bump. “What did I say about romance? Spring!”

“V-Day’s in the winter.” Eve returned the jab. “Shiny gifts equal follow-up sex, which equals body heat for some types. So what did I say?”

“Damn it. No, I’ve got better.” Peabody shot a finger in the air. “Romance knows no season.”

“We’re heading to the morgue. See what that does to romance.”

“It’ll still be spring.”





10

Dinnie Duff wouldn’t see spring, not this one or any other.

She lay on the slab with Morris’s precise Y-cut closed with his equally precise stitches.

He swiveled around from a short counter where he’d been working, rose.

“And here we three meet again, without the thunder, lightning, or the rain.”

“I know that.” Peabody lifted a finger. “Shakespeare, right?”

“It is indeed.” He crossed to the body on the slab. “Unfortunately for young Duff, she didn’t have the same outcome as the bard’s Macduff.

Since Eve didn’t know what the hell they were talking about, she focused on the body. “COD confirmed?”

“While several of these injuries, particularly the combined injuries would likely have caused death left untreated, it was, as you noted in your on-site, the skull fracture. The repeated slamming of same against the concrete and gravel. She had several pieces of both in the wounds. Broken ribs—and a punctured lung from the breaks. Broken nose, detached retina, fractured cheekbones—both—the bruising on her neck indicates repeated chokings.”

“Choke, let her come around, choke again. Probably during the rapes.”

“I can’t tell you how many violated her as they suited up, but she was repeatedly and forcibly violated. At least once postmortem.”

“Sick fucks.”

“I can’t disagree, though the sick fucks might not have fully realized she was dead. I’m finishing the report now, but I can tell you, in technical terms, they beat the crap out of her, raped the crap out of her, and killed her by beating her head against the ground until her skull cracked like an egg.”

“Suited up.” She’d held out a little hope they’d gone into her bare. “Either because they worried she’d give them an STD or because they were smart enough to worry about DNA. Or both. Did she fight back, get a piece of one of them?”

Morris gestured so they lowered their heads together over the body. “The bruising on the arms, the legs—mostly calf area or close to ankles?”

“One goes in, the others hold her down.”

“Yes. And though it’s hard to make out without goggles due to the extent of the facial damage, I also conclude a hand over her mouth at some points. Squeezing. And then the choking would have also prevented calling for help. I can’t tell you how many, as I said, but I’d say no less than three.”

“It’ll be the same three she let into Pickering’s apartment. Cut bait,” Eve murmured.

“Her tox came back positive for Zoner and Funk. I found no sign she’d been a habitual user of Funk, at least not long term.”

“Wanted her compliant,” Eve mused. “Maybe told her it was her usual mix.”

“A stingy amount of both, so while I agree on the compliance, they also wanted her awake and aware. And while they suited up, I found some hair, some fiber. No DNA match on record on my scan for the hair, but I’ve sent it all to the hair and fiber queen.”

“Harvo will run it down if it can be run.” And faster, Eve knew, than anyone else on-or off-planet. “Chilly last night. Why undress when you can just unzip? Sloppy again. If you’re smart, you pump her with the junk like you did Pickering, but hey, what’s the fun in that?”

Because it had told her all it had to tell, she stepped back from the body. “These were hits, both of them, carried out by thugs. Underlings. And both of them personal. Maybe doing her where they did, leaving her there has a side benefit of stirring up gang tensions, but it’s personal.”

“I doubt this poor, doomed woman would disagree. She would have suffered. I gauge the first blows occurred about an hour before death.” Morris looked back down at Duff’s face. “A very long hour for her.”

“Yeah. She was dead when Lyle opened the door, but a long hour.”

When they walked outside, Peabody took a deep gulp of air. “Still spring, even if that put a damper on it. Bigger damper would be you saying we’re going back to Banger HQ.”

“We’ll let the beat cops keep an eye out there for now. Whoever ordered this wanted her to suffer, wanted her hurting and violated. Personal. She was flopping with the one named Bolt, one of the lieutenants. Let’s find out more about him.”

“I’ll see what I can dig up.”

While Eve drove, Peabody dug.

“Okay, got him. Kenneth Jorgenson’s a very bad boy. Age twenty-five, bad boy son of Oliver Jorgenson and Pauline Grant, who ended their eleven year marriage shortly after Oliver—also a bad boy—went in for fraud, embezzlement, and money laundering. One sibling, Jessica, age twenty-eight. That’s Staff Sergeant Grant—she took her mother’s maiden—U.S. Army, currently based in Nevada, ten years in. She enlisted at eighteen.”