Thankless in Death (In Death #37)(53)

He turned around, walked out.

She gathered herself, digging for breath, digging for strength. She’d scream, however much it hurt, however much he hurt her for it. She’d scream and someone would hear.

Please, God.

Before she could, he came back, holding her little dog. Snuffy whimpered when he saw her, and she could see from his eyes he was hurt. And still he wagged his tail.

Fear came back, raw as the skin on her wrists. “Don’t hurt him. He’s just a little dog.”

“Too late for that. He’s already hurt. Probably needs the vet. Maybe I’ll take him to a vet if you do what you’re told.”

“You won’t.”

He shrugged. “Maybe yes, maybe no. But if you don’t.” He turned the nippers, pushed Snuffy’s paw out. “I’ll just start snipping away.”

Tears stung her eyes, ached in her burning throat. “Don’t. Please, Jerry.”

“Wouldn’t take many snips with a rat-dog like this.” To motivate her—and because it was fun—he pinched the dog, hard, so it yelped. “But I’d start small. This paw, that paw, maybe his tongue so he can’t yap.”

“I’ll do it. Don’t hurt him, and I’ll do it.”

Smiling, he closed the snips a little more. “Maybe I’ll snip just one paw because you said no first.”

“Please. Please.” The tears rolled now. She couldn’t stop them. He was a sweet old dog, he was family. He was defenseless. “I’m sorry. I’ll make the ID for you, and upload all the data you want. I’ll make it perfect. I’ll hide the money. I’ll bury it so nobody can trace it.”

“Damn right you will. And one mistake? Just one? He loses a paw, you lose a finger.”

He dumped the dog in her lap where Snuffy whimpered at her.

Reinhold sat at the desk, cracked his knuckles. “Let’s get started!”

11

EVE WENT STRAIGHT TO THE MORGUE. NO need that she could see to pull Peabody in, not for this. The investigation was better served with her partner checking out the shops they knew Reinhold had visited, and at her desk, tracking down pawnbrokers who might be slow—or reluctant—to report the purchase of items sold by a murderer.

She traveled the white tunnel as she had the day before, and thought, yeah, it was past time for luck to turn.

She found Morris with Lori Nuccio. As he often did, he’d chosen music to suit either his mood or the victim. This was light, kind of breezy, with a high, clear female voice singing hopefully about what lay behind the bend in the road.

He looked up from his work when Eve entered, ordered the music to low volume. “I’d hoped not to see you again quite so soon.”

“Same here,” she said as she joined him.

“Young. Very pretty.”

“Hard to tell now, after he messed her up.”

Morris shook his head. “No, not really. Her bone structure, coloring. There’s an ugliness to what he did here, but she shows through it.”

“She’d like to know that.” Eve lifted her shoulders, let them fall at Morris’s arched brows. “You know how it is. They get in your head, and you feel like you know.”

“Yes.”

“She mattered to him, in his own twisted way. He hated her for that. He didn’t rape her.”

“No,” Morris confirmed. “There was no sexual activity, consensual or forced.”

“He might go there with another, if he gets the chance. He orgasmed during the kill, so now he has a sexual connection—a bonus round.”

“This one’s difficult for you.”

“I don’t know why this one, especially, except we kept missing her. It’s like everything was weighted on his side. We’re trying to contact her, her neighbor’s looking out for her, and still, he gets in, does this, walks away.”

Studying the body as he did, Eve hooked her thumbs in her front pockets. “She was living cheap, you know? Padded crates, stringed beads for curtains in this little box apartment. But she kept it nice, kept herself nice, worked hard, had friends, had family. He took it all because she wouldn’t let him sponge off her anymore, do nothing anymore. Her parents are wrecked.”

She paused, pinched the bridge of her nose as if to release tension. “They told me her older sister and her spouse, their baby were all in from Ohio for Thanksgiving. They were having a big family dinner, and this one here was getting some fancy dish from the restaurant where she works.

“I don’t know why they told me all that. Sometimes they tell you things because they don’t have anything else.”

“Death’s cruel. Crueler yet at times when family traditionally gathers.”

“Yeah. And about that. They’re going to want to come in, see her. I don’t know how much you can do, considering, but they shouldn’t see her like this.”

“Don’t worry.” He touched a hand briefly to Eve’s arm. “We’ll take care of her, and them.”

“Okay. Good. So.” She had to put it away, out of her head, and do her job. “The way it pieces together, he had keys, or he’d made copies. He went in when the neighbor went out. We have him sitting in a café across the street where he had a good view of the building. It was the vic’s regular day off, and from statements she usually went out, ran errands, shopped, hooked up with a friend. When he saw the chance he went in. He’d been shopping. We’ve got him coming and going on his hotel security cams. He bought the tape, the cord. And I’m thinking another baseball bat.”