Obsession in Death (In Death #40)(15)

“And you already thought of that,” Peabody finished.

“Yeah, it’s run through my mind. Easier if you have a police-issue stunner to just put it on full, hold it to her throat, and kill her that way. But… that kind of murder says cop first, so the garrote could be window dressing.”

“Crazy cop if a cop,” Peabody added. “Because the message says crazy.”

“No argument there. Thanks, Morris.”

“Dallas. Have an extra care – as a favor to me. Crazy,” he said, lifting his hands, “is crazy.”

“Yeah, it is. But while it’s not pink – thank you, Jesus – I have a magic coat,” Eve said, making him smile again before she walked out.

I could see it, the way you said.” Peabody hunched her shoulders as they moved from the tunnel to the slap of late December, pulled her cap on over hair she wore in a dark, bouncy flip. “I had most of it, I think, but I could see the details when you walked through it. I hadn’t thought about the coat, the gloves.”

“Somebody that careful isn’t going to want the vic’s blood on the coat – you took your own off before you examined the body. He isn’t going to want it on the gloves, or anywhere on his clothes, for that matter. The box is handy. Blocks the cameras, holds whatever’s needed – coming and going. From behind lowers the probability she knew the killer. This was a task. No, more like a mission. Stunning her covers two areas, too. Takes her out, no struggle, no chance of a mistake, and it keeps her from feeling it. Even the message covers more than one base. It lets me know somebody’s looking out for me – in the crazy world – and it’s a way of bragging. It’s all really efficient.

“Let’s go talk to people who did know her. Maybe something will pop.”

But after six interviews, nothing did.

“We’ll check out the travel on the other five on the list.” Eve wound her way through traffic, aiming for the lab. “Confirm they’re out of town, do the interviews via ’link if necessary.”

“I’ll take that.” Peabody studied her own notes. “I’m guessing we’re not going to get much of anything new. She didn’t really have friends. Not real friends. Everybody’s sorry and shocked, but Dallas, nobody knew her well enough to feel much else. It’s almost like we talked to them about somebody they met casually at some party, or had a few surface conversations with.”

“Her choice. It strikes her work was her life, and the rest just there.”

It troubled her because she knew what that was like, that choice, that life. She knew exactly what it was like.

“Efficient. That’s what you called her murder. Clean and efficient, no passion to it. It’s like she wasn’t really important, but you…”

“I’m what’s important. You can say it, Peabody. I get it.” Eve didn’t snap, but it was close. “We’re still going to cover all the angles. Stern rakes in her share of the firm, so we look at him, his financials, his personal relationship with the victim. Maybe one of her f*ck buddies wanted more, and got pissed off, and just made sure to keep the kill clean. Maybe a client she’d repped got out of prison and went for some payback. Mira needs to analyze the threat file.”

“Absolutely.”

“And we start looking at who might want to give me a dead lawyer as a f*cking holiday gift.”

She let that hang a moment as she waited at a light. The latest ad blimp, she noted, had switched from post-Christmas sale to a RING OUT THE OLD, RAKE IN THE SAVINGS end-of-the-year theme.

The glide-cart operator on the far corner raked in his own, smearing bright yellow mustard on hot pretzels for some sort of tour group. All of them wore bright blue parkas and white caps.

The light changed, she drove on. Moved on in her head.

“The correspondence, my own case files. We go through it all.” She let out a breath. “Cops. Cops who might feel they owe me something and hate lawyers.”

“I gotta say that’s going to be a lot of cops. But it’s not just owing you something, Dallas. It’s admiration.”

Now she really wanted to snap, reined it in. Because Peabody wasn’t wrong. “Why Bastwick and why now? Those are other questions. A holiday gift might not be wrong. But this was planned well in advance, so what flipped the switch?”

“Could be the Icove thing, the exposure. For some people, the book, the vid, it romanticizes you, and the job.”

“Yeah,” Eve muttered as she found herself blocked in behind a farting maxibus. “This is romance.”

Eve went straight to chief lab tech Dick Berenski. He’d earned the name Dickhead, many times over, but that didn’t mean he didn’t excel at what he did.

“I need everything you’ve got.”

He held up one of his long, skinny fingers, kept his egg-shaped head with its slick, shiny skin of black hair bent over a scope another moment.

“What I got is nada. Hold it.” He pointed that finger at her before she could snarl. “Nada should tell you something. No fibers, no prints, no DNA, not a fricking hair in the place didn’t belong to the vic. Tells me she didn’t have a lot of company, or made everybody who came in seal up head to foot. Sure as hell tells me the killer did.”

He angled around, craned his neck. The goatee he’d recently started sporting didn’t look any more flattering to Eve than it had the week before.