Strangers in Death (4 page)

Eve streamed through traffic, cutting around a maxibus, then began to hack her way across town. “How about the spouse?”

“Attractive, well-spoken. Ah, involved in some charity work, it seems to me. Anders sponsors sports camps for underprivileged children. I believe she beats the drum for funding. I can’t say I’ve seen them out and about together more than a handful of times, but he had a reputation for avoiding the social scene…as some do.”

She slid her eyes in his direction. “I go to stuff. Impressions of their relationship?”

“Hard to say, as we weren’t chummy. They struck me as a team, appeared affectionate. In synch, I suppose I’d say.”

“Any mumbles about him screwing around on her?”

Roarke’s brows lifted. “None I’ve heard, though I don’t know as I would, either way. Is that basic cop cynicism, or is there reason for you to believe he cheated on his wife?”

“At the time of death, the wife was out of town. That’s verified. Anders’s housekeeper—house
manager
,” Eve corrected, “found him this morning just after six. Naked, hands and feet bound with black velvet rope. The kind the bondage shops sell by the yard. Another length was wrapped around his neck in what would appear to be an erotic scarfing session gone bad. There were numerous sex aids and toys on the nightstand, and the corpse still sported an impressive hard-on when the primary began her investigation. There was no sign of forced entry, no sign of struggle, no additional visible signs of trauma or violence on the body.”

Roarke was silent a moment. “People have their secrets, and the appetites they hide from the rest. Still, I wouldn’t have thought him the sort for sport of that nature. It’s the kind of salacious details the media will salivate over. Difficult for the family he leaves.”

“Anybody you can think of who might want to do him, and set it up so the media salivates?”

“For what point? If you’re thinking a competitor, killing Anders doesn’t kill, or damage, the company. And a scandal like this? It wouldn’t hurt stock or sales—not appreciably. In fact, it might give them a temporary boost. People are odd creatures. I need a new pair of track shoes, one might say. I think I’ll buy some by that guy who died with a boner.”

“If he lasted, so will they.”

“Exactly. They could use it as a bloody slogan.”

“Forrest’s alibi checks,” Peabody said from the backseat. “I tagged EDD, and they’ve got a geek squad on scene. Another will be transporting Anders’s office electronics. First report verifies my findings. Security shut down at two twenty-eight, rebooted at three thirty-six. Security was dark for nearly an hour.”

“Had to be remote.” Eve glanced at Roarke. “Have to have the passcode or system specs to avoid the auto alarm.”

“There are ways. There are always ways.”

“You wouldn’t need ways unless it was premeditated. Randy Tom’s going to entertain, he doesn’t need to shut down his security. His wife’s out of the country, and for several days yet. So he lets them in, or he gives them the passcode. This way? It’s too elaborate, it’s too fucking
careful
.”

“With a side of mean,” Roarke added. “There are ways, always ways, to kill a man. Why choose to kill this way? Intimately, and in a manner that smears the victim and his family?”

“We’ll find out. First stop.” Eve pulled over to double park in front of the morgue. “Peabody, I’ll take this. Head back to Central, start the runs. See if you can locate the vic’s golf partner, and run him. I want EDD to start evaluations on what type of remote was used. Let’s start a time line on the vic’s day yesterday.”

Ignoring the furious blast of horns, she shifted to Roarke. “This is your stop, ace.”

He glanced through the window at the morgue. “Not for some time, I hope. Good luck, Peabody,” he added as he slipped out of the car to join Eve on the sidewalk. “I could make some inquiries. I know people who knew him, people who did business with him.”

“You could.” Considering that, Eve stuck her hands in her pockets, and surprised herself by finding gloves in them. “Word’s spreading by now, so it couldn’t hurt. Do you really have business downtown?”

“I do. But even if I didn’t, it would’ve been worth the trip.”

She looked at him in the stubbornly frigid, blowing wind. “Murder talk makes it worth the trip?”

“As entertaining as that invariably is, no. This would make it worth the trip.”

He grabbed her—she should’ve seen it coming—and his mouth covered hers. The instant blast of heat slammed right through such matters as late winter freezes and windchill factors. The sudden power and punch of the kiss rocked her back on her heels, and made her wonder if little beams of sunlight were shooting out of her fingertips.

He caught her chin in his hand, smiled down at her. “Definitely worth it.”

“Cut it out.”

“Nice work, stud.”

They both glanced over at the sidewalk sleeper huddled in a nearby doorway. The woman—or Eve thought it was a woman as she was bundled in so many mixing layers she resembled a small, patchwork mountain—offered a grin and a thumbs-up.

Eve jammed a finger into Roarke’s chest to dismiss any notion of an encore. “Go away now.”

“Absolutely worth the trip. Good hunting, Lieutenant.”

He strolled off, and she peeled away to the entrance of the morgue. But when she couldn’t resist a glance back at him, she saw him stop and crouch down to speak to the sidewalk sleeper. Curious, she slowed her pace to keep him in view a moment longer, and wasn’t surprised to see him dig something out of his pocket and pass it over.

Credits, she supposed, and probably more than the sleeper generally pulled in over the course of a week. She’d probably buy brew with it instead of a bed out of the cold, Eve thought. He had to know that, and still…

And still, she thought, pleased to love a man who’d toss a handful of credits into the void, just in case. Thinking of that, she walked into the house where death always had a room.

3

IN A ROOM OF WHITE TILE AND BRIGHT STEEL, Chief Medical Examiner Morris stood unruffled and stylish over Thomas Anders’s corpse. He’d teamed a rust-colored shirt with a dull gold shirt, and mirrored those tones with the thin rope worked through his long, dark braid. His clever face with its long eyes and hard planes was half covered with goggles while his skilled fingers gently lifted out the liver Anders no longer had any use for.

He set the organ aside on the scale, then offered Eve a welcoming smile. “A traveler stops by a farmhouse to ask for shelter for the night.”

“Why?”

Morris wagged a bloody finger. “The farmer tells the traveler he can share a room with the farmer’s daughter, if he keeps his hands to himself. The traveler agrees, goes into the room, and in the dark slips into bed beside the farmer’s daughter. And, of course, breaks his word. In the morning, guilty, the traveler offers to pay the farmer for the hospitality, but the farmer waves this off. So the traveler says he hopes he didn’t disturb the daughter in the night. ‘Unlikely,’ the farmer replies, ‘as we’re burying her today.’”

Eve let out a snort. “Sick death humor.”

“A specialty of the house. And it seemed apt under the circumstances.” He gestured toward Anders’s stubborn erection.

“Yeah, how about that?”

“Somehow sad and enviable at the same time. I’m running tox, but unless your dead is a medical marvel, we can presuppose he was loaded with happy cock aids. Then after he achieved liftoff, the strategically placed rings trapped the blood supply at the—sticking point.”

“Gee, Morris, I’m just a cop. You’re confusing me with all these complicated medical terms.”

He laughed, then removed a thin section of the liver. “We see death erections fairly routinely, particularly in stranglings or hangings, as the blood in the torso tries to obey the laws of gravity and travels down. The erectile tissue fills with it, and expands. But once the body’s moved, as our friend’s here was, it dissipates.”

“Yeah, and people noticed guys got boners when they were publicly hanged, back in the good old days, and thought: Hey, maybe if I choke myself during sex I’ll make really good wood. People are really stupid.”

“Difficult to argue that point, as you and I often see them at their most terminally stupid. So, as to our current guest: Erotic—or auto-erotic if you’re going solo—asphyxiation decreases oxygen, and pumps up the endorphins to heighten sexual pleasure. It’s responsible for a considerable number of accidental deaths annually, and many deaths that are officially termed suicide.”

“This wasn’t suicide.”

“No, indeed.” Morris looked down on Anders. “I believe it took him between fifteen and twenty minutes to die, slowly choking. Yet, there’s no bruising on his wrists or ankles. However cushioned the rope, when a man slowly chokes to death he’ll fight, he’ll struggle, and velvet restraints or not, there would be ligature marks. Even here.” He gestured again, then offered Eve a pair of microgoggles. “Here, where the rope tightened, cut in, cut off his oxygen, there’s no evidence he fought against it, writhed, strained. The bruising here is almost uniform.”

“So he just lay there and died.”

“Essentially.”

“Even if a guy wants to self-terminate, the body fights it.”

“Exactly so. Unless—”

“It can’t. How long for the tox?”

“I flagged it. But I can give you something now. Look here.”

She bent over Anders again, scanning the bruising under the right ear until she saw it. The faint, circular mark was nearly obscured by the more traumatic bruising. “Pressure syringe.”

“Yes, my bright young student. An odd place for self-medicating—especially by a right-hander—which he was.”

Shoving up the goggles, Eve put herself back in Anders’s bedroom. “Killer comes in, crosses to the bed. Sealed up, all sealed up, booties over the feet to muffle any sound. Lots of thick carpet anyway. Tranqs Anders while he’s sleeping. Quick, clean. Guy could’ve slept right through that—even if he started to wake up, a good tranq would take him under in seconds. Then you truss him up, set the scene, walk out, and leave him to die. Pick up the security discs. You’ve already shut down the system, but you take the discs. You’re either anal or hoping we’re just incredibly stupid and that’ll throw us off and make us think it was an accident.”

“Incredibly stupid we aren’t.”

“Either way, he’s dead.” She paced away, among the steel and comps, back again. “If you’re going there to do the guy, why just tranq him? Why not load him up so he ODs? Okay, you don’t slit his throat or beat him to death with a bat because maybe you’re squeamish, or you prefer more passive methods. But why the elaborate and demeaning when a lethal dose of barbs or poison or any number of substances would’ve done the job?”

“It was too personal for that.”

She nodded, appreciating a like mind, and her grin was fierce. “See? Incredibly stupid we aren’t. As soon as you get the tox back, Morris.”

“As soon as.”

W
hen she strode into the Homicide bullpen at Cop Central, Eve saw Peabody sucking down something from a mug the size of the Indian Ocean while she worked at her desk. It reminded Eve that she was probably about a quart low on coffee. She signaled her partner, jerked a thumb toward her office, and turning, nearly plowed into one of her detectives.

“Make a hole, Baxter.”

“Need a sec.”

“Then fall in line.” She moved through to her office with its single, stingy window, battered desk, and sagging visitor’s chair. And hit the AutoChef for coffee.

Taking the first slug, she studied Baxter over the rim. He was slick, savvy, and smart enough to wait to have his say until she’d kicked in some caffeine. “What’s your deal?”

“Case I caught about a couple months ago, it’s stalled.”

“Refresh me.”

“Guy gets his throat slashed and his works sliced off in a rent-by-the-hour flop down on Avenue D.”

“Yeah.” She flipped through the files in her head. “Came in with a woman nobody remembers, and nobody remembers seeing said woman leaving.”

“Maid service, and I use the term loosely, found him the next morning. Custer, Ned, age thirty-eight, worked in building maintenance for an office building downtown. Guy left a wife and two kids.”

“Cherchez la femme,”
Eve said, thinking of Peabody’s comment that morning.

“I’ve been
cherchez
ing the damn
femme.
Got zip. Nobody remembers her—not clearly. We dug, found the bar—using that term loosely, too, where they hooked up, but other than her being a redhead with a sense she was a pro, nobody can paint her picture. Guy was a player. A little pushing with his friends and associates got that much. He screwed around regular, cruised bars and clubs once or twice a week to score—usually paying for it. The kid and I,” he continued, speaking of his aide, Officer Troy Trueheart, “we’ve put in hours trolling dumps, dives, and dens of iniquity. We’re stalled, Dallas. It’s going stone-cold.”

“What about the wife? Did she know he was dipping strange?”

“Yeah.” Baxter blew out a breath. “It didn’t take more than a poke to get her to cop to it. And to admit they fought about it. He tuned her up now and then, too. She copped to that, and neighbors verified.”

“Maybe
she
should’ve cut his dick off.”

“Yeah, yeah, women always go for the jewels. She didn’t though. When he didn’t come home by midnight, she tried his ’link, left messages until nearly three. TOD was about one-thirty, and we’ve got her tagging him from her home unit at one-fifteen, again at one-forty. Pissed off, crying, and nowhere near Avenue D. She’s better off, seems to me. But I hate to lose one.”

“Hit the flop again, push the street LCs who use it, or work the bars in the neighborhood. How about transpo?”

“No cabs letting off fares on that block, and nothing popped on the underground surveillance. We figured they hoofed it, and that’s how we zeroed in on the bar.”

“Make the rounds again, get meaner. Any chance he was into something nastier than banging strange?”

“Nothing’s popped. Blue-collar asshole, pissing it away on cheap brew and loose women with a nice wife and a couple of cute kids at home. The thing is, Dallas, it was a cold kill. One slice.” Baxter mimed cutting his own throat. “From behind. Then the bastard drops, but he’s still alive, according to the ME, when she cuts off his dick. She had to be freaking covered with blood, but there’s no trail, not out the door, not out the window and fire escape. Not a drop.”