Vendetta in Death (In Death #49)(38)

“I’m checking to see if I can find a connection—personal, business—with McEnroy. If this does connect, one way or the other, she’s killed two in two days. That’s fast work. Fast work.”

“A mutilated male body left at his residence? Odds are.”

“Yeah, well. I’ve got a Pettigrew in McEnroy’s London office, but that’s a Mirium, and no connection to a Thaddeus that shows. This guy was a lawyer, a partner in Moses, Berkshire, Logan, and Pettigrew. Looks like he specialized in financials, estate law, like that. Divorced, no kids. Ex lives Upper East.”

She kept searching. “Might not be Pettigrew.”

“Odds are,” Roarke said again.

“We wait and see. Vandam. Quiet neighborhood. Upper middle class. Pettigrew can afford the neighborhood, since he rakes in a good annual with the law firm. And since he came into a windfall … the same time he got the divorce. Settlement? Fifteen-point-six million isn’t chump change.”

She let it ride. Better to walk into the crime scene without theories or leans.

When Roarke pulled up behind the cruiser, Eve noted the cops on scene had put up the barricades. Even as she got out, she spotted Peabody, with McNab in tow, hoofing up from the corner.

She held up her badge, ducked under the tape.

“My partner and an EDD detective.” She gestured as she studied the body. “Report, Officer.”

“We got the nine-one-one at three-forty-three, Lieutenant, and arrived on scene at three-forty-five. My partner’s walking the nine-one-one caller down the block to his place so he can put his dog in the house. He was walking his dog, found the body. We secured the scene and the wit, rang the bell on the house here, knocked. No response. The wit said he thinks it could be the guy who lives here, but he couldn’t be a hundred percent. Wit’s Preston DiSilva.”

“Peabody,” she said as her partner approached. “Take the nine-one-one caller.”

“Officer Markey’s got the wit, Detective,” the uniform said to Peabody. “His pup was getting pretty agitated, so Markey escorted him back to 22 Vandam.”

“I’ve got it.” She looked down at the body, back at Eve. “Two for two.”

No mistaking it, Eve thought, and took the field kit Roarke handed her. Crouching, she opted to ID the victim first. No surprise there, she mused.

“Victim is identified as Pettigrew, Thaddeus, of 26 Vandam. McNab, Roarke, take the house, clear it. Check the security feed. There are outside cams. He lived with a female. Horowitz, Marcella. If she’s in there, keep her in there. Just let me know if she’s in there and breathing.”

As they moved past her, Eve settled into it.

“The body shows multiple and severe burns, welts, lacerations, contusions. Wounds on the wrists indicate restraints. It appears both arms are dislocated at the shoulders. ME to confirm. Possible COD, blood loss from the amputation of genitalia.

“Escalation of violence demonstrated with this victim from McEnroy though method appears to match. As with McEnroy, a sign is tacked to the body, a poem.”

He had it all but wanted more,

So he cheated whore by whore.

He lived through lust and lies and greed,

The quest for money, sex, and power his creed.

At last judgment called his name,

And he has no one else to blame.

LADY JUSTICE



Eve took an evidence bag from the kit, untacked the sign, slid it into the bag, sealed it.

McNab hustled out of the house on his plaid airboots. “House is clear, LT. Nobody’s in there, but it looks like somebody was expecting some company in the master bedroom. Fire’s going, bed’s turned down, a bottle of wine, two glasses, and, ah, several sex toys lined up beside the bed.”

“You sealed?”

“Sure.”

“Help me turn him.”

McNab stepped up to assist. “There’s a house droid, but it’s been shut down since about nineteen hundred. And the security cams were shut down about an hour later. Roarke’s taking a look, but we can’t get anything from twenty hundred on. Jesus,” he muttered as they turned the body facedown. “Somebody was seriously pissed off”

“She went at him harder than McEnroy. Sodomized him with the prod. She didn’t go that far with the first. No time off between hits, either. Major escalation.”

She picked up her kit, pushed to her feet. “Wait for Peabody, would you? And go ahead and call in the wagon, the sweepers. I want a look at the house.”

“Security hub’s main floor in the back, off the kitchen. Droid station’s there, too.”

With a nod, Eve started for the house. Nice place, she thought, three-story brownstone, well maintained. And with top-of-the-line security.

No sign of forced entry.

And, she thought as she stepped in, no sign of struggle in the entranceway. A long, narrow hall—a delicate-looking table along the left wall with a slim vase of fresh flowers on it.

“Vic was a well-built man,” she said for the record. “If a man his size and build had put up any sort of a fight in this space, there’d be signs.”

She continued back—rooms to the right and left. Fancy living space to the right with what she thought of as a lot of fluffy, female touches. Lots of pillows, more flowers, dust catchers. Big wall screen in the room on the left, a built-in bar, read a bit more masculine.