Vendetta in Death (In Death #49)(21)

He sipped Pepsi contemplatively. “He’s not a big man, tall but slim. A woman strong and determined enough, I’d say yes, it’s possible.”

“Hanging him up by the wrists. Could’ve used a pulley system.”

“Yes, and a dolly and ramps to move him in and out of a vehicle. Quite a lot of physical labor, but … hell’s fury.”

“Yeah.” But she pointed to the mutilated genitals. “Seems to me hell’s fury isn’t usually so precise. Thanks for the tube.”

“Anytime at all. Enjoy the sunshine while you can.”

“Yeah, I’ll do that,” she said as she left.

Morris looked down at the body. “Well, Nigel, what do you say we close you up now?”





5


When Eve walked into her bullpen, Jenkinson’s tie du jour scorched her corneas. His way to celebrate almost spring, apparently, equaled a forest of Peabody’s daffodils—these infused with sulfuric acid—over a field of Venusian green grass.

She winced, turned away to save herself.

“Peabody, my office.”

In her office, with nuclear yellow still blooming across her vision, she hit the AutoChef.

At last, real coffee.

“Report’s written and sent,” Peabody told her, adding a puppy dog look toward the AC.

“Don’t beg, get coffee.”

“Thanks! I spoke with Jasmine Quirk—and was writing up that addition. No travel shows on the run for her, and I corroborated she attended a work meeting until six central time last night. Also corroborated she and her roommate, a family friend, then attended a birthday party, for her brother, from eight to eleven CT. After which she and her roommate took the L back to their apartment.”

Peabody sighed in some coffee.

“She didn’t give any buzz, and though she was visibly more shaken than Lester, she gave me her version of her experience with McEnroy. It follows pattern, except since his wife was in New York at the time of the rape, she woke up, alone, in a room in the Blake Hotel. He’d left her a vid disc. Sex disc.”

“Well, he was a charmer.”

“Oh yeah. Lester’s alibi holds, and EDD is making progress. I checked with McEnroy’s usual transpo service. He didn’t use them last night.”

“Then he’s got a secondary he uses when he’s hunting. He’d use the personal ’link to order it. Have McNab look.”

“Will do. Ms. McEnroy’s due back in about an hour. I contacted her, or mostly the tutor. She’s—the widow—willing to talk to us as soon as possible, but won’t leave the children and doesn’t want them exposed to the conversation. She asks that we come to her this evening after nine when the children are in bed.”

“All right. I’ll handle that.” With, she thought, her expert consultant, civilian. “I need to set up the board and book. You can get the discs and memo book from McEnroy’s desk drawer out of Evidence. Start cross-checking those first names with staff and clients. And we’ll split interviewing the partners.”

“I’ll get on it.”

As Eve sat to pull up Peabody’s report, the sweepers’ and Morris’s preliminaries, she shot off a text to Roarke.

Need to interview vic’s widow after 2100—at her request. Could use a slick rich guy. Interested?



She scanned the reports, pulled up her own notes, added more, and started her murder book. When she rose to set up her board, her ’link signaled a return text.

Meet me at half-seven at Nally’s Pub, West 84 between Columbus and Amsterdam. A slick rich guy will buy you dinner first.



Nally’s Pub, she thought. Well, at least it didn’t sound fancy.

She answered: Solid.

She finished the board, started to program more coffee for study and thinking time. Peabody clomped back in with an evidence box.

“Points for McNab,” she said. “He found a contact tagged multiple times on the desk drawer personal. Tagged last at seventeen-twelve yesterday. Two-minute conversation with one Oliver Printz re limo pickup at McEnroy’s residence at eleven-fifteen.

“And points for me,” Peabody added as she put the box on Eve’s desk, then swiped a check mark in the air. “Because I recognized Printz as McEnroy’s usual driver through Urban Ride.”

“So Printz worked off the books.” She’d print out his ID shot, add it to her board. “We need to talk to him. Have him brought in. Use the potential witness to a crime deal, but get him in.”

She unsealed the box. “And shut the door.”

“You’re going to review the discs.”

“I’m going to look at a sample, yeah, so shut the door.”

With a nod, Peabody backed out, shut the door.

Eve slid one of the discs into her unit, ordered play.

The McEnroy bedroom flashed on-screen, the bed neatly turned down. She heard voices, a man’s, a woman’s.

“No, in here,” it said as McEnroy came on-screen. The woman—redhead, late twenties—wrapped around him, rubbed against him.

“Anywhere. Everywhere.”

He took her wrists, turned her more toward the camera. “What do you want, Jessica?”

“You. I want you.”