Devoted in Death (In Death 41)

An ice-pick wind stabbed down the litter-strewn alley, slicing at exposed flesh, hissing and snarling as it hacked its way from Madison Street through the tunnel formed by graffiti-laced buildings of crumbling red brick or pitted concrete.

The few lights that worked cast purple shadows along with sickly yellow glows so the pools and splashes of them bloomed bitter, like a bruise.

The lowest of low-level street whores – licensed or not – might take a john into one of the narrow niches hoping for shelter from the worst of the cold and wind while business was conducted. A junkie desperate enough for a fix might follow an illegals dealer into those bruising shadows.

Anyone else thinking to shortcut through might as well wear a flashing sign offering themselves up to muggers, rapists and worse.

None of those options applied to Dorian Kuper as he’d met his unfortunate fate elsewhere before his body had been wrapped in plastic and dumped, much like the wind- and vermin-tattered bags of garbage beside a broken recycler.

The vicious wind wouldn’t trouble Dorian any longer. Its toothy knives cut keenly enough, so Lieutenant Eve Dallas gave into necessity and yanked on the ski cap with its embarrassing snowflake. But she drew the line at the fuzzy gloves – both given to her on a cold December day by the dreamy-eyed Dennis Mira.

She thought, fleetingly, that twenty-four hours earlier she’d been basking, mostly naked, on the sun-washed sand of her husband’s private island with Roarke, also mostly naked, beside her.

However she’d begun 2061, she was back in New York now, and so was death.

She was a murder cop, so while others slept in the blustery dark still an hour shy of dawn, she crouched over a body, hands bare but for sealant, brown eyes flat and narrowed.

“Killed the hell out of you, didn’t he, Dorian?”

“He’s got an Upper West Side address, Dallas.” Detective Peabody, wrapped in a pink coat, her feet toasty in fuzzy-topped pink boots, and her face all but buried in the many swirls of a multicolored scarf, relayed the data from her PPC to her partner.

“Age, thirty-eight, single, no cohab. He’s with the Metropolitan Opera company. First cellist.”

“What’s a cellist from the Upper West Side doing dead in Mechanics Alley? Wasn’t killed here. Plenty of blood on the tarp, on him, smeared from surface to surface. Ligature marks, wrists and ankles, and some of the bruising, the lacerations from struggling look at least a day old. Maybe more. Morris will confirm.”

“A lot of cuts, punctures, burn marks, bruising.” Peabody, her eyes a deeper, darker brown than Eve’s, scanned the body. “A lot of them superficial. But then…”

“Yeah, a lot of them not. Bound, gagged – the corners of his mouth are cut and abraded – tortured for hours. Maybe a day or more before it stopped being fun. And then… the slice across the gut, that ended him. But it would have taken time for him to bleed out. Some painful time.”

Taking out her gauges, she established time of death. “The painful time ended at twenty-two-twenty last night.”

“Dallas, there’s a missing persons on him. Just filed this morning. His mother filed it. Ah… okay. He didn’t show for work night before last, didn’t answer his ’link, missed his class – he’s teaching one at Juilliard – yesterday afternoon, and was a no-show for last night’s performance.”

“So about two days. Contact whoever caught the missing person, get a full report. We’ll notify next of kin.”

Hunkered back on her heels, Eve studied the face of the dead. His ID shot had shown an attractive man with deep green, flirtatious eyes and long, rich blond hair. A face sharp at the cheeks, full at the lips.

His killer had hacked at the hair, leaving thin tufts and ugly little wounds, burned small circles in his cheeks, like blackened dimples. Spiderwebs of red shattered the whites of his eyes. But the killer had focused most of his energy and creativity on the body. She thought Morris, the chief medical examiner, would find multiple broken bones and damaged organs.

“Some of these burns are small and precise,” she noted. “Probably used a tool. But see on the back of the hands here? Bigger, not precise. Somebody put out cigarettes, herbals, joints, whatever, on the vic’s hands. Cellist. A cello’s that violin type thing, right?”

“Well, it’s…” Peabody made a large shape in the air with her hands, then mimed sawing across it with a bow.

“Yeah, a big, fat violin. You need your hands to play one of those. Burned the hands, broke four of his fingers, right hand, crushed the left hand – heavy object. Maybe personal. Hacking off the hair, that reads personal. Dumping him naked could read personal.”

Eve lifted one of the hands, used her light to do a cursory exam of the nails. “I don’t see any skin under here, and nothing that looks like defensive wounds.” She shifted to the head, lifting carefully, feeling the skull. “Big knot back here.”

“He has a fight – verbal, I mean,” Peabody began. “With someone he knew, turns his back, and they give him a good bash. They’re pissed off enough to bind him, gag him, torture him.”

“This isn’t pissed off.” Eve shook her head, finally straightened up. The wind snatched at her long, leather coat, sent it billowing, snapping around her legs. “It isn’t patient and intricate like – Remember The Groom?”

“I’m not likely to forget. Ever.”

“He made a science out of torture. It was his work. This looks more like play.”

“??‘Play’?”

“Pissed off usually whales right in. Pissed off would go for the face more, especially if there’s a personal connection.”