Devoted in Death Read Free Page 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.”
    But here, she thought, the face was the least of it, as if the killer had wanted to keep it fairly unharmed.
    So they could see the victim? So he remained recognizable?
    “Pissed off doesn’t torture like this for a couple days,” she added. “Pissed off and crazy, maybe. But again, I’d expect to see more physical contact – more from fists or saps. Some damage to the genitals, but again, not as much as I’d expect if it was a pissed-off friend or lover.
    “But we’ll look at that.”
    Shifting, Eve looked down the alley toward Madison, turned, looked north toward Henry.
    “The killer had to have transpo, and likely pulled up on Madison. The dump site’s close to Madison. The vic’s – what was it – five-ten, and one-fifty-five. We’ll have the sweepers determine if the plastic with the body was dragged down the alley, but it doesn’t look like it. Hard to be certain in this light, but dragged or carried, the killer had some muscle. Or help. We’ll see if the canvass turns up anything.”
    She looked up, scanned dark windows. “Middle of the night, middle of the winter. Cold as a bitch’s tit.”
    “It’s ‘witch’s.’   ”
    “Why? Doesn’t matter,” Eve said quickly. “Neither way makes sense. If somebody’s a witch, why do they put up with cold tits? I’m a bitch, and twenty-four hours ago, my tits were plenty warm.”
    “Was it wonderful? Your vacation?”
    “It didn’t suck.”
    Blue skies, blue water, white sand and Roarke. No, it hadn’t sucked.
    And now it was done.
    “Let’s call in the sweepers, the morgue, and get a couple of uniforms back here on the body.” She checked her wrist unit. “We’ll go by the vic’s residence first. There’s no point waking his mother up at this hour to tell her he’s dead.”
    Eve tugged the silly cap farther over her frozen ears, bobbled her light. As she leaned over to retrieve it, her gaze flicked toward the body where the end of the beam arrowed.
    “Wait. Is that… Peabody, microgoggles.”
    “You see something?”
    “I’ll see if I see something better with the microgoggles.”
    She was kneeling beside the body now, drawing the left arm farther out.
    “Fuck me, I almost missed this.”
    “Missed what?” After she pulled the microgoggles from Eve’s field kit, Peabody pushed them at her, tried to angle to see what Eve’s light beamed on.
    “It’s a heart. So much blood and bruising, I might’ve missed it. Morris would have caught it once the vic was on his table, but in this light, I didn’t see it.”
    “I don’t see it now.”
    “Just under the