Vengeance in Death (In Death #6)(29)

“Yes. Dallas.”

“Lieutenant Dallas, if Lawrence is in any sort of trouble… I’d like to help however I can. He’s a lovely man. A gentleman.”

“A lovely man,” Eve muttered as they headed back to the elevator. “A gentleman. Right. Penthouse floor,” she ordered as the tube closed them in. “I want to go over the scene again. Set your recorder.”

“Yes, sir.” Efficiently, Peabody clipped the minirecorder onto her starched lapel.

Eve used her master code to bypass the police block on Brennen’s door. The apartment was dim, the outside light blocked by security screens. She left them in place and ordered the lights to bright.

“It started right here.” She frowned down at the bloodstains on the carpet, the walls, and brought the gruesome image of a severed hand into her mind. “Why did Brennen let him in? Did he know him? And why did the attacker hack off his hand? Unless…”

She circled around, moved back to the door, eyed the direction of the bedroom. “Maybe it went this way: The killer’s an electronics whiz. He’s already messed up the cameras. Can’t take a chance that some bored security guard scans discs before he can do the job here then get back to them. So he’s taken care of that. He’s smart, he’s careful. He can get into this place easily enough. Bypass the codes, pop the locks. That’d give him a kick, wouldn’t it?”

“He likes to be in charge,” Peabody offered. “Could be he wouldn’t want to ask to come in.”

“Exactly. So he lets himself in. What a thrill. The game’s about to begin. Brennen comes out, from the kitchen most likely. He’s just had lunch. He’s caught off guard, and he’s a little sluggish from the tranq. But he grew up on the streets, he grew up rough. You don’t forget how to take care of yourself. He charges the intruder, but the intruder’s armed. The first injury, it could have been no more than a defensive move. Unplanned. But it stops Brennen, stops him cold. There’s blood everywhere. Most likely some of it splattered on the intruder. He’ll have to clean up, but he’ll worry about that later. Now he wants to do what he came for. He tranqs Brennen a little deeper, drags him into the bedroom.”

Eve followed the trail and puddles of dried blood, then stood in the bedroom, eyes keen. She lifted the statue of the Virgin from Eileen’s dresser, scissoring the head between her fingers to upend it and check the markings on the base. “The same. The same as at the Conroy scene. Bag this.”

“Seems kind of — I don’t know — disrespectful,” Peabody decided as she sealed the marble image.

“I’d think the Mother of God would find cold-blooded murder a bit more than disrespectful,” Eve said dryly.

“Yeah, I suppose.” Still, Peabody pushed the sealed statue into her bag where she didn’t have to think about it.

“Now, he’s got Brennen in here, on the bed. He doesn’t want his man to bleed to death. He wants to take his time. Gotta stop that bleeding. So he cauterizes the stump, crudely, but it does the job.”

She circled the bed, studying the grisly rust colored stains. “He gets to work. Secures his man to the bedpost, gets out his tools. He’s precise. Maybe he was nervous before, but now he’s just fine. Everything is going just as he wants. Now he puts his symbolic audience on the dresser so she has a good view. Maybe he says a prayer to her.”

She frowned, looked back at the dresser, put the statue back in place in her mind. “Then he gets down to it,” she continued. “He tells Brennen what he’s going to do to him, and he tells him why. He wants him to know, he wants him to piss himself with fear, he wants to be able to smell the pain. This is payback, and payback’s the big one. Passion, greed, power, they’re all part of it, but revenge drives it all. He’s waited a long time for this moment, and he’s going to enjoy it. Every time Brennen screams, every time he begs, this guy gets off. When it’s done, he’s flying. But he’s a mess, covered with blood and gore.”

She moved toward the adjoining bath. It sparkled like gems, the sapphire walls, the ruby insets in the tiles, the silver dials and faucets. “He’s come prepared. He had to be carrying a case of some kind, for the knives and rope. He’s got a change of clothes in there. He’d have thought of that. So he showers, scrubs himself like a f**king surgeon. He scrubs the bathroom too, every inch. He’s a goddamn domestic droid in here. He sterilizes it. He’s got plenty of time.”

“We didn’t find a single hair or skin cell in here,” Peabody agreed. “He was thorough.”

Eve turned away, walked back into the bedroom. “The ruined clothes go back in his case, along with all his nasty tools. He gets himself dressed, watching where he steps. Don’t want to get blood on our shiny shoes, do we? Maybe he stops back here for a last look at his work. Sure he does, he wants to take that image away with him. Does he say another prayer? Oh yeah, one for glory. Then he walks out, and he calls a cop.”

“We can review the lobby tapes, check out anyone with briefcases or satchels.”

“There are five floors of offices in this building. Every second person carts in a briefcase. There are fifty-two shops. Every third person has satchels.” Eve moved her shoulders. “We’ll look anyway. Summerset didn’t do this, Peabody.” When her aide remained silent, Eve turned impatiently. “Brennen was five-ten, but he was a hundred and ninety pounds — and a lot of that was muscle. Maybe, just maybe, a skinny, bone-ass fart like Summerset could take Brennen by surprise, but he doesn’t have the arm to have severed flesh and bone with one swipe. And one swipe was what it took. Say he got lucky and managed that — how do you figure he hauled dead weight from here to the bedroom, then managed to drag that nearly two hundred pounds of dead weight up two and a half feet onto the bed? He isn’t physical enough. He’s got strong hands,” she murmured, remembering well how those fingers had gripped her arm from time to time and bruised. “But he’s got no muscle, no arm, and he’s not used to lifting much more than a tea tray or his nose in the air.”