Calculated in Death (In Death #36)(82)

“It wasn’t pretty. He told everybody she’d gone to Europe. But, oops, one of the bags got caught in this other guy’s boat hook thing. It took awhile to put her back together, and not long to hook the husband. He tried the temporary insanity, diminished capacity, fugue f**king state bull crap. But since we had the saw, and CI determined it would take about six sweaty hours to cut her into the more compact and portable pieces, that didn’t fly.”

Peabody said nothing for a moment. “Do we lead interesting lives or really disgusting ones?”

“Both, depending. Out,” she said as she swung toward the curb near the lab. “Get me prints.”

17

SHE FOUND MORRIS, WITH SOME SORT OF bass-heavy rock bumping out of his speakers, working on the seriously bludgeoned Jake Ingersol. Parzarri, chest still wide open, lay on a second slab.

“Two slabs,” Morris said as he poked around in Ingersol’s chest. “No waiting.”

“I bet they’d have been happy to.”

“No doubt. Your accountant had a standard mix of painkillers and relaxants in his system. He would’ve been quite happy before having his air supply so rudely cut off. Manually, and with a large hand.”

“Any chance of prints?”

“Sorry, no. We can give you a reasonable reproduction of the size and shape of his right thumb and forefinger from the bruising, and estimate the size of his hand. I believe you’ll be able to say with confidence, it’s the same hand that bruised the first victim’s face.”

“That couldn’t hurt.”

“This second vic’s hands and feet were restrained during the attack, and despite the drugs, the victim had a strong survival instinct. He struggled hard as you can see from the bruising on his wrists and ankles. As for the third victim, he never had a chance to struggle at all.”

Morris, his hair in a long, sleek tail today, offered Eve microgoggles. “Your observation at the crime scene was correct. You can see the discoloration from a stun stream, mid-body. A full charge from the look of it. He never felt what came after.”

“I want to hear Mira’s take, but I don’t think he stunned him unconscious to spare him pain. He was dealing with a man this time, and not one hurt, doped up, or restrained. So he put him out.”

“Taking no chances? Careful then, and you could say cowardly.”

“I do.”

“A careful coward with this much rage? A dangerous combination.”

“Maybe. Rage, sure, but fun, too. Knees, groin—that one’s personal—chest, face, head, hands.”

“My analysis is the hands were crushed rather than broken.”

“Crushed. More stomped on than hammered?”

“I believe so.”

“He really didn’t like this guy. He took Parzarri’s travel case and Ingersol’s briefcase and ’link and appointment book. And he left four hundred in cash on Ingersol, and a fistful of credit cards, a six-figure wrist unit. He didn’t care about making this one look like a robbery. What’s the point? And still, leaving the cash, the wrist unit . . . it tells me the hacker was most likely the one to take the cash out of the safe at Brewer’s, and he either wasn’t inside when this happened, or he’s a little too delicate to root around in the blood and gore for profit.”

She tucked her thumbs in her front pockets. “This is about money, more of it, greed for more. These two died for it, but money’s not the killer’s god.”

“These two will have some explaining to do if and when they meet theirs.”

“Yeah. It’s tough to buy your way past those gates. I wonder how they, it, he, she, whatever keeps track.”

“The higher power? Of the dead?”

“Yeah. I mean, think of the number of dead just you and I deal with. And we’re just two people and one city. Then expand that pretty much by infinity. It’s a lot. It makes you wonder if there’s a bunch of people up there with ledgers, checking people off. Okay, John Smith from Albuquerque, too bad about that shuttle crash. Follow the green line to Orientation. And what if two John Smiths from Albuquerque happened to be in the same crash? It could happen. Plenty of room for clerical error there.”

And over death, Morris smiled at her. “Entirely too much room. Let’s hope the system’s a bit more sophisticated.”

“Yeah, but it makes you wonder.”

She put existential musing aside and headed into Central.

She heard rolls of laughter as she approached Homicide, noted a small clutch of uniforms—that weren’t hers—crowding the doorway of the bullpen.

“Has crime taken the day off, Officers?”

They scattered quickly, making a hole for her to go in.

She saw the reason for the party atmosphere in the person of Marlo Durn—vid star, celebrity darling, and the actress playing Eve in The Icove Agenda.

She’d let her hair grow and had gone blonde again, a vague relief to Eve as they no longer resembled each other closely. She sat on the edge of Baxter’s desk, obviously in full flirt mode as she entertained the detectives and uniforms currently not doing any work.

Baxter looked like he’d been hit with a heart-shaped stunner.

Peabody spotted her first, dropped the cowboy boots she’d propped on her desk to the ground. “Hey, Dallas. Ah, look who’s here.”