Obsession in Death (In Death 40)

“Place has a dining area you can close off. We’re sitting on him there.”

“Keep sitting. I want the building’s security discs, exterior, interior, and I want a canvass started, beginning with this floor.”

“Yes, sir.” He jutted his chin to the writing on the wall. “You know the vic?”

“I’ve had some dealings with her.” To discourage any more questions, Eve turned away.

She and Peabody had sealed up on entering the apartment. She’d turned on her recorder before stepping into the bedroom. Now she stood a moment, a tall, slim woman with short, tousled brown hair, with long-lidded eyes of gilded brown cop-flat in her angular face.

Yeah, they’d had some dealings, she thought now, and she hadn’t had a modicum of liking for the victim. But it appeared she and Peabody would be spending the last days of the year standing for the once-high-powered defense attorney who’d had—to Eve’s mind—the ethics of a rattlesnake.

“Let’s verify ID, Peabody, and keep every step of this strict on procedure.”

With a nod, Peabody took off her pink leather coat—Eve’s Christmas gift—set it carefully aside before she pulled her Identi-pad from her field kit. With her striped pink pom-pom hat still over her flip of dark hair, she approached the body. “Victim is identified as Leanore Bastwick of this address.”

“Cause of death looks pretty straightforward. Strangulation, probably a wire garrote, but the ME will confirm. Get time of death.”

Again Peabody dug into her field kit. She worked the gauges, angled, as she read Eve’s unspoken order, so the record would pick up everything.

“TOD eighteen-thirty-three.”

“No sign of struggle, no visible defensive wounds or other injuries. No sign, at a glance, of forced entry. The vic’s fully dressed, and there’s plenty of easily transported valuables sitting out. It doesn’t read sexual assault or burglary. It reads straight murder.”

Peabody lifted her gaze to the message on the wall. “Literally reads.”

“Yeah. Security discs may tell a different tale, but it looks like the vic opened the door—someone she knew or thought she knew. Her killer disabled her—note to ME to put priority on tox screens, check body for any marks from a stunner or pressure syringe—or forced her back here. Places like this have excellent soundproofing, so she could have shouted for help, screamed, and it’s not likely anyone heard. Windows are privacy screened.”

“No sign on her wrists, her ankles that the killer used restraints.”

Eve approached the body now, examined the head, lifted it up, to check the back of the skull. “No injuries that indicate blunt force trauma.”

She reached into her own field kit for microgoggles, took a closer look. “Abrasion, small contusion. Fell back, hit her head maybe. Disabled, drugged or stunned, either when she opened the door, or if she knew the killer, after he was inside. Back here, carrying her or forcing her. The bedding’s not even mussed, the pillows are still stacked up behind her.”

Lifting one of the hands, she examined the fingers, the nails, under the nails. “Clean, no trace here, nothing to indicate she got a piece of her killer. You’re going to struggle, if you can, when somebody garrotes you, so she couldn’t struggle.”

With the microgoggles still in place, Eve leaned over the crystal dish to examine the severed tongue. “It looks pretty clean—not jagged, not sawed. Probably a thin, sharp blade. Maybe a scalpel. Can’t talk trash without your tongue,” she said half to herself. “Can’t defend criminals if you can’t talk. This was a little something extra, a symbol, a . . . token.”

“For you.”

Eve studied the message, coated a layer of ice over that sick thought. “Like I said, it reads that way. We butted heads over Jess Barrow a couple years back, and just before that when her partner was killed. She was a hard-ass, but she was mostly doing her job. Doing it as she saw it.”

Turning from the body now, Eve walked over into a large and perfectly appointed dressing room. “She’s got an outfit set out here. Black dress, fancy shoes, underwear, and jewelry to go with it that looks like the real deal. Nothing disturbed. She’d gotten out the wardrobe for her dinner meeting.”

She moved from there into an elaborate master bath, all white and silver. More purple flowers—must have been a favorite—in a square vase of clear glass on the long white counter.

“Towels on a warming rack, a robe on the hook by the shower, a glass of wine and some sort of face gunk set out on the counter.”

“It’s a mask.”

“I don’t see a mask.”

“A facial mask,” Peabody elaborated, patting her own cheeks. “And that’s a really high-end brand. Since there’s nothing else set out, it looks like maybe she’d been about to give herself a facial, have some wine while it set, then take a shower, but she went to answer the door.”

“Okay, good. She’s prepping for the meeting—we’ll check her home office—going to get clean and shiny, but somebody comes to the door.”

Eve walked out as she continued. “Nothing disturbed out here. Screen on in the bedroom—a little company or entertainment while she gets ready for dinner. She’s back there, in the bath or the dressing room when she gets the buzz.”

“Security on the main door,” Peabody poin