Memory in Death (In Death #22)(32)

"Oh, honey."

"My feelings were, 'Fine, she wants to pout in there, she can stay in until we leave on Monday. I'm going to do the town with my wife.' Oh hell. Oh hell," he repeated and wrapped his arm around Zana. "I don't know why somebody'd hurt her like that. I don't understand it. Did they... was she—"

Eve knew the tone, knew the look in the survivor's eye. "She wasn't raped. Did she have anything of value with her?"

"She didn't bring much of her good jewelry." Zana sniffled. "Said it was asking for trouble, though she loved wearing it."

"I see you've got your window closed and locked."

Bobby glanced over. "It's noisy," he said absently. "And there's that emergency escape out there, so it's best to... Is that how they got in? Through her window? I told her to keep that window shut, keep it locked. I told her."

"We haven't determined that yet. I'm going to take care of this, Bobby. I'm going to do everything I can. If you need to talk to me, either of you, you can contact me at Central."

"What do we do now? What do we do?"

"Wait, and let me do my job. I'm going to need you to stay in New York, at least for the next few days."

"Yeah, okay. I... I'll get in touch with my partner, tell him—tell him what happened."

"What do you do?"

"Real estate. I sell real estate. Eve? Should I go with her? Should I go with Mama now?"

He was no good to anyone now, Eve thought. He and his baffled grief would only be in the way. "Why don't you give that some time? There's nothing you can do. Other people are taking care of her now. I'll let you know when there's something more."

He got to his feet. "Could I have done something? If I'd made the manager open the door last night, or this morning, could I have done something?"

And here, she thought, she could do the one thing, the single thing, that soothed. "It wouldn't have mattered."

When Eve and Peabody walked out, she drew a clear breath. "Take?"

"Comes off a decent guy. Shocky right now. So's she. One holds up 'til the other goes down. Want me to run them?"

"Yeah." Eve rubbed her hands over her face. "By the book." She watched as the morgue unit rolled out the body bag. Morris came out behind them.

"One-twenty-eight a.m. on time of death," he said. "On-scene examination indicates the fatal blow was a head wound inflicted with our old favorite—the blunt object. Nothing in the room, at my scan, matches. The other bodily injuries are older. Twenty-four hours or more. I'll get you more exact once I've got her in my house." His eyes stayed level on hers. "Is that what you wanted to hear?"

"Yeah, it is."

"I'll let you know what I know when I know it."

"Thanks." Eve walked back into the crime scene, signalled one of the sweepers. "I'm looking, particularly, for a pocket or hand 'link, her personal communication device."

"Haven't got one yet."

"Let me know when and if." She moved straight to the window, glanced back at Peabody. "We'll go down this way."

"Oh, man."

Eve ducked through and out the window, dropped lightly on the narrow evac platform. She hated heights, freaking hated them, and had to wait a moment for her stomach to stop rolling. To give her system time to adjust, she concentrated on the platform itself.

"Got blood." She hunkered down. "Nice little dribble of a trail. Over the platform." She hit the release, watched the steps jut out. "And down."

"Logical route out and away," Peabody commented. "Sweepers will get samples, and we'll know if it's the vic's."

"Yeah." Eve straightened, studied the access to other rooms on the floor.

Tricky, she decided, with the gaps, but not impossible if you were athletic or ballsy enough. A good strong jump would do it, which she'd have preferred over the tiptoe route along the skinny spit of ledge. Which meant the killer could have come from inside or outside the hotel.

But logic said in and out the emergency route. Down and away, to ditch the weapon just about any damn where.

She looked down, breathed through her teeth as her head went light. People crawled along the sidewalk below. Four floors, she thought. She probably wouldn't pull a Tubbs if she fell, and kill some innocent pedestrian.

Then she crouched, examining a splat of pigeon dung. She cocked her head up as Peabody stepped out beside her. "See this flying rat shit."

"What a lovely pattern, abstract yet compellingly urban."

"Looks smeared to me, like somebody caught the side of it with a shoe." She poked her head back in the window. "Yo! Got some blood and some pigeon crap out here. I want it scraped up and bagged."

"We get all the class work," one of the sweepers commented.

"Mark it, Peabody," Eve ordered, then started down the zig-zagging stairs. "I want the hotel's recyclers, and any recyclers in a four-block radius, searched. We got some luck there, it being Sunday."

"Tell that to the team pawing through the garbage."

"Emergency evac makes basically every room this side of the building accessible to the other. We're going to want to take a look at the copy of the registration disc."