Vendetta in Death (In Death #49)(80)

“All right then. You can start knocking on doors.”

“We’re off shift at six hundred. Okay to put in the OT?”

Eve nodded at Keller. “Check with your LT. I’d like you on this. Peabody, let’s ID the body, just to cross that off. McNab, and Roarke if you’re still in this, you can start on the e’s once we do. The building’s got a door cam. Let’s find out if it actually works.”

She took her field kit from Roarke, walked to the body, crouched down to verify the ID.

Peabody hunkered beside her. “I didn’t think she’d hit again so fast. She’d go for another, yeah, but not three days in a row.”

“She’s goal oriented. And she’s on a streak. You don’t mess with a streak. Victim is identified as Kagen, Arlo, age thirty-one, of this address. As with the two other victims, his body shows severe burns, bruising. His left arm’s broken, most probably from a severe blow. Dig into it, Peabody. See if he was left-handed. Severe facial bruising—broken nose, some broken and missing teeth. His genitals have been severed and removed.”

She put on microgoggles, leaned in. “Looks like the same weapon or same type, the same method. ME to confirm. TOD three-fifty-six. COD most probably blood loss from amputation. ME to confirm.”

Eve pulled out an evidence bag, slid the poem into it, sealed it, read through it.

He used his fists against his wife,

So with cruelty and violence he lived his life.

Though she gave him a child to cherish,

He stroked her fears until all hope perished.

This death he earned by my decree,

Now mother and son are finally free.





LADY JUSTICE




“She can’t stop,” Eve mumbled. “The world she’s created and her place in it are too important to her.”

And that world was black-and-white.

“Vic was left-handed,” Peabody told her. “That’s why she broke his left arm. He probably led with his left when he beat his wife. It makes it specific. More specific,” she corrected. “And you know what? This isn’t just the third in a row. It’s the third in a row who hurt or cheated on a spouse. All of them were married. Pettigrew and Kagen were divorced, but they committed their crimes—what she’s using—while married.”

Eve sat back on her heels. “You’re right about that. She’s going after the men who are or were married first. We can narrow down the next potential by factoring that in. That’s good, Peabody.

“Let’s roll him—Wait,” she added as she heard a voice—firm and impatient—call her name. “Crap. McNab! You and McNab roll him, finish with the body. Contact the sweepers, the morgue. I’ll deal with this.”

“Good luck with that,” Peabody said under her breath as Eve walked to the barricades and the camera-ready and chin-jutted Nadine Furst.

The crime beat reporter might have ranked as friend—and a good one—but that didn’t make her less of a pain in the ass at the moment.

Glancing past her, Eve noted she’d brought the rock star with her. Looking casually scruffy, a streak of royal blue through his jet-black hair, Jake stood with Roarke. The two of them chatted as if they held freaking martinis at some high-class bar.

“I tagged you a half a dozen times yesterday,” Nadine began.

“I was busy.”

Nadine narrowed feline-green eyes. “You’re never too busy when you can use me, and my research team, on an investigation.”

“I was really busy, and you don’t want to shove into my face right now.”

“Oh, don’t I?”

“No, you fucking don’t.” Eve gestured her through the barricades, then gripped her arm—hard—pulled her away from the body toward the corner of the building.

Watching them, Jake rocked back on the heels of his scarred boots. “Think it’ll come to blows?”

“Odd, I always wonder the same.”

“Nadine’s pretty steamed. So’s your cop from the looks of it. You come to many of these … events?”

“Too many. Your first?”

“Yeah. Pulled an all-nighter at the studio. Thought: Hey, I’ll head over to Nadine’s, wake her up. She’s already up, dressed, and here I am.”

A tall man, he easily looked over the heads of people still pressing at the barricade. “I don’t get it. I gotta say, I don’t get why anybody wants a line of work where they deal with something like what’s lying out there. But both our women do. Can’t figure it.”

“The one who put him there thinks she stands for justice. She doesn’t, but, in their different ways, our women do.”

While they talked, their women bumped heads in a pitched battle.

“I want a one-on-one, right here. Now.”

“You can’t have one,” Eve tossed back. “And you don’t even have a camera with you.”

“I can have a camera here in ten frigging minutes.”

“Nadine, did you happen to notice the dead guy back there?”

“I noticed the dead guy. The third of his specific type of dead guy. I set an alert to signal me when you landed another naked, castrated dead guy. You’re giving the media the runaround when the public—”