Innocent in Death (In Death #24)(72)

Peabody paused for breath, then blew a long one out before she chugged Diet Pepsi. “Williams was slime, but she’s just another form of slime. A user, a manipulator, a coward, and a hypocrite. She’s bitch slime.”

“What a proud day this is for me.” Eve laid a hand on Peabody’s shoulder. “Yeah, she’s bitch slime. She went into the synchronized swimming round with Williams of her own volition. Tough to prove otherwise seeing as he’s been eliminated from the competition, but we know what we know. But is the bitch slime a murderer?”

“Probably. She had motive and opportunity on both vics.”

“We’d like her to be the killer,” Eve acknowledged, “as righteous bitches to bitch slime, we’d love to take her down for a couple of murders in the first. But we don’t have enough to lock either one. The next thing we have to do is verify our own infallible instincts and prove Williams was murdered.”

“Oh, yeah.” Peabody hunched her shoulders. “I sort of forgot that little step.”

“It’s the little ones that trip you and send your face into the concrete. Let’s go to the morgue.”

14

SHE SWUNG THROUGH THE BULL PEN, THEN into her office for her coat. Stopped, kicked the desk lightly. She wasn’t answering those messages. She wasn’t a frigging saint. But she could do something about something else.

Pulling on her coat she walked back into the bull pen and straight to Baxter’s desk where he was slugging back cop coffee and reading a sweeper’s report.

“I saw you closed the underground case. Got a Murder Two. Trueheart handle the interview?”

“Yeah. He did good.”

She glanced over to the cube where the undeniably adorable Officer Trueheart was pecking away at paperwork. “Trueheart.”

He swiveled around immediately, blinked at her. “Sir.”

“Nice work on the Syke’s interview.”

He flushed. “Thanks, Lieutenant.”

“Taught him all he knows,” Baxter claimed with a grin.

“Hopefully, he’ll overcome that. As for earlier, I appreciate the sentiment. Let’s leave it there.”

“Got that.”

Satisfied, she left to study the dead.

Welcome back. Can I offer you some refreshments?” Morris was in pewter today, with a purple shirt and braided pewter tie. His hair was in a long tail that made Eve think of glossy thoroughbreds.

“Rather have a ruling.” Eve glanced down at Williams’s body. “Homicide.”

“I have fudge brownies. Home-baked by the lovely hands of a Southern goddess.”

Eve’s eyes narrowed on the mention of brownies. She swore she heard saliva pool in Peabody’s mouth. Then the Southern goddess mention struck. “Detective Coltraine?”

Morris laid a hand on his heart, thumped it to mime a beating heart. And Eve thought, Whatwas it with men and blondes with big tits?

Morris wiggled his dark, sharp eyebrows. “Our transplanted magnolia bakes for relaxation, it seems.”

“Huh.” Eve cocked her head. “What, you smitten, Morris?”

“Who wouldn’t be?”

“I could eat, like, a half a brownie.”

Morris smiled at Peabody. “In the personal friggie over there. Help yourself.” Then he turned to Eve. “Accident or murder? You be the judge.”

“It’s murder.”

“Well, well.” He stepped back from the body, gestured. “What do we see? A superficial wound under the chin.”

“Cracked it on the pool edging. Sweepers found some of his skin on the tile. It would’ve smarted, but I’m damned if it knocked him unconscious and caused him to drown.”

“Hmm. More superficial wounds on the back.”

“Consistent with injury sustained when he was dragged out of the pool. More skin found. That’s postmortem.”

“It is, it is, my canny student. We have a very fit individual, other than his being dead, of course. Excellent muscle tone. Your on-scene notes indicated he was a swimmer, that there was no sign of struggle. Yet you cry murder.”

“I say it, straight out.”

“And knowing you, knowing you wouldn’t send me a body unless you had strong cause, we’ve proceeded accordingly. His tox screen isn’t back yet. Shortly, as I flagged it.”

“What do you think’s in him, and how did it get there?”

“For the what, we’ll wait. For the how. Have a look.”

He handed her goggles, then gave her a finger curl. When she walked to Williams’s head, she noted Morris had shaved a circle of hair away on the crown.

“Man, would he hate that. Bald spot. And lookie, lookie.” She bent closer, and with the goggles could just make out the faint mark. “Pressure syringe,” she said. “Barely shows, and on the scalp, with a headful of hair, the naked eye isn’t going to see it.”

“Speak for yourself.”

Now she glanced over at Morris, grinned. “Yours excepted. I missed it. I looked over his body, between his fingers and his toes, even checked his tongue, the inside of his cheeks, but I missed this. Nice catch.”

“I ate a whole brownie,” Peabody confessed.

“Who could blame you?” Morris patted her arm when she joined them.