Delusion in Death (In Death 35)

She was a tall woman wearing boots that showed some wear and a good leather jacket. Her hair, short, choppy, mirrored the golden brown tone of her eyes. Her long mouth firmed now as she took a moment, just a moment, to block off the trickles of pity and horror that wanted to eke through.

Those she stood over now needed more than her pity and better than her horror.

“Dallas, Lieutenant Eve,” she began. “Visual estimate of more than eighty victims, multiple and varied injuries. Male and female, multiple races, unknown age span. The scene has been compromised by medical personnel treating and removing survivors. The DBs and survivors were discovered by police at approximately seventeen-fifty. Vic one,” she said and crouched down, opened her kit.

“Male,” she continued, “severe trauma to the face and head, minor to severe gouges, face, neck, hands, arms, belly.” She pressed his fingers to her pad. “Vic one is identified as Cattery, Joseph, mixed-race male, age thirty-eight. Married, two offspring, male and female. Brooklyn address. Employed as assistant marketing director, Stevenson and Reede. That’s two blocks away. Stop in for a drink, Joe?

“Skin under his nails.” She took a small sample before sealing them. “He’s wearing a gold wedding ring, a gold wrist unit. Carrying an engraved case—credit cards, some cash, ID. Key cards, pocket ’link.”

Bagging the contents, sealing, labeling, working precisely, she focused on Joseph Cattery.

She peeled up his split top lip. “Teeth are broken. Took a hard one to the face. But it’s the head trauma that probably killed him. ME to confirm.” She took out her gauges. “TOD seventeen-forty-five. That’s five before the first on scene.”

Five minutes? she thought. Five minutes before the beat cop opened the door. What were the odds?

She had only to shift to continue. “Vic two,” she began.

She’d identified and examined five when Peabody stepped back.

“The team’s on the way,” Peabody told her, steady now. “I got the wit’s information. According to her statement she was meeting a couple of friends here, and ran late. Got caught at work. She talked to one of them, a Gwen Talbert, at about five-thirty. I confirmed that with the wit’s ’link. Everything was fine. She got here about twenty minutes later, and found this. It was done when she opened the door, Dallas. She freaked, stumbled back, screamed, and kept screaming until Officers Franks and Riley got to her.”

“Talbert, Gwenneth, vic three. Broken arm—looks like somebody tromped on it. Slit throat.”

“How could this happen in twenty minutes? Less. How could the entire population of a bar be attacked and slaughtered in under twenty minutes?”

Eve pushed to her feet. “Look at the scene, Peabody. I’ve gone over five DBs, and it’s my take every one of them was killed with a weapon of opportunity. Broken glass, a bottle of liquor, kitchen knife, bare hands. There’s a guy over there with a fork sticking out of his left eye, a woman still clutching the gored, broken table leg it appears she beat the man lying beside her to death with.”

“But—”

Sometimes the simplest explanation, no matter how terrible, was truth.

“There are briefcases, purses, jewelry, money all over the scene. There’s good liquor still behind the bar. A gang of chemi-heads gone fucking crazy? They wouldn’t be out in twenty, and they’d take valuables to buy more shit. Gang of spree killers looking for major kicks? They’d lock the door and have a party after they’d finished. Added to it, it would take a damn big gang of anything to massacre over eighty, injure about ten more. Nobody gets out, hides, manages to get to their ’link to call for help?”

Eve shook her head. “And when you do this kind of damage, you’re covered with it. Franks had blood on his uniform, his shoes, still had some on his hands and he only assisted the medicals.”

Eve stared into Peabody’s stunned eyes. “These people killed each other, Peabody. They waged war, and they all lost.”

“But … how? Why?”

“I don’t know.” But she’d damn well find out. “We need a tox on every vic. What they ingested. I want the sweepers to go over every inch. Something in the food, the drink. Product tampering, maybe. We need to check it out.”

“Everybody wouldn’t have been eating or drinking the same thing.”

“Enough of the same, or more than one thing was tampered with. We start with the vics—IDs, COD, TOD, relationships with each other. Where they work, where they live. And the scene, any trace. We get every glass, bottle, dish, the coolers, the AutoChefs, the grill—whatever—to the lab, or we bring the lab to the scene. We check the ventilation, the water, the cleaning supplies.”

“If it’s something like that, it could still be in here. You’ve been in here.”

“Yeah, I thought of that, after the first couple bodies. I tagged the hospital, talked to the medicals who treated the survivors. They’re fine. Whatever happened, happened fast. That twenty-minute window. I’m well past that.

“Ingestion’s most likely,” she considered. “Even if only half of them were affected, they could’ve taken the rest by surprise.” Eve glanced down at her sealed hands, now smeared with cooling blood. “I don’t like it, but it’s a theory. Let’s work the bodies.”

Even as she spoke, the door opened. She spotted Morris.

As he wore jeans and some sort of silky crewneck shirt the color of ripe plums rather than one of his snazzy suits, she assumed he’d gone off shift. His hair, pulled back into one sleek tail, left his interesting, angular face unframed. She watched his eyes, dark as his hair, scan the room, and for an instant, both the shock and the pity lived in them.

“You’ve brought me a crowd.”

“Somebody did,” she began. “I—” She broke off as Roarke came in behind Morris.