Brotherhood in Death (In Death 42)

“I don’t want to see—” She broke off when Reineke shot his foot out from behind his desk and showed off red socks shocked with blue lightning bolts.

She had a terrible flashback to Juju’s airboots.

“There is no merciful God,” Eve muttered.

“I gotta keep up with my partner,” Reineke claimed. “Figured I’d go for the footwear, and shoes cost too much to play with.”

The best cops she knew, Eve thought as she escaped to her office. Her bullpen was stocked with the best cops she knew.

But there were times.

She contacted Reo, again, for another warrant to get her into Betz’s bank box.

She got coffee, updated her board and book. Then did what she’d wanted to do for hours. She put her boots up on her desk and let herself think.

Five women, with a mutual secret, a mutual goal. Downing hadn’t had those two pictures in her apartment studio by chance.

Painting out her issues. Painting out her feelings.

Love and hate? Yeah, it could play like that.

Five women, Eve thought. It took deep loyalty and determination to keep a secret.

Age ranges, if the portrait held true, went from early twenties to mid-forties. A solid twenty-year gap. That gap took the older woman out of the usual range as a sexual target for the men in the morgue.

Six men. Half of them dead, and none by natural causes or accident. Six men who’d shared a house in college—and, she was convinced, a great deal more. Powerful men, wealthy men. Her two dead known adulterers with a taste for young flesh.

Something brought them together in college, she thought. Six young men, with privileged backgrounds. Ivy league young men.

What brought young men together?

Young women—the desire for them, the attaining of them.

At a university like Yale, they’d have to work, study, produce, or—money or not—they’d get the boot. A lot of stress, particularly as there’d been a war brewing. And that brew was stirred with anger and resentment against all of that privilege.

More restrictions, she concluded, for security.

What did young men want—besides women—that college provided? Freedom from the parental locks. No parents clocking their time, their activities. But now those restrictions set in, squeezing at those freedoms.

Sex, drugs, drink. Isn’t that a way to celebrate breaking the parental lock? To flip the bird at rules? To prove yourself a man? An adult?

But with rebels outside the gates, shaking fists, throwing stones, the gates get locked. What do you do?

None of their records showed any bumps for illegals, for alcohol violations. Could have been covered up—war and money—but either way, that left sex.

And sex was the key.

Six young men. Had it started all the way back there?

Old keys in a hidden drawer. A rich old house symbolically—or literally—burning.

And six old men on their way to hell.

She shifted to glance at her comp when it signaled an incoming. And dropped her boots to the floor when she noted it was from Morse.

Analyzed tattoos on both victims. Fully scientific report to follow. Simplifying same, the tattoos are between forty and fifty years old—and I lean toward closer to fifty. Have sent samples to lab for further analysis and verification, but evidence indicates your victims were young men when inked.

Six young men, she thought again, forging a brotherhood.