Chapter Five
She’d been right about the traffic. It glided along relatively smoothly as she headed downtown.
Pedestrians, on the other hand, swarmed.
Joggers bounded down the sidewalks or pumped in place at crosswalks.
Others strolled, walked dogs, pushed a variety of baby carriages.
Still more streamed in and out of bakeries, delis, cafés or huddled at carts.
The air through her open window smelled of cart coffee, yeasty things, sidewalk flowers, and the occasional out-of-order recycler.
The sound was movement—the rolling traffic, the crowd, the bass beat through another open window, or the blat of a maxibus pulling up to a stop.
She made it nearly halfway before the first ad blimp lumbered overhead and blared out its morning hype for fall sales.
SNUGGLE INTO SWEATER WEATHER AT THE SKY MALL!
KICK UP YOUR HEELS IN BOOTS, BOOTS, BOOTS!
It seemed to her that marketing, one way or the other, tried to shove the current season aside like it was the enemy.
Ignoring the sales pitch, she watched an airboarder complete a pretty good reverse flip.
In the next block a couple embraced beside a waiting Rapid Cab as if one of them was going off to war.
As she braked for a red light, an old man with a streaming white ponytail ran huffing across the intersection.
The front of his shirt read: THREE MILES A DAY.
And the back: KEEPS THE REAPER AT BAY.
Beneath his baggy red shorts he had knobs for knees, toothpicks for ankles. His stringy arms pumped as he hit the sidewalk and kept jogging east.
Barring a cardiac incident, Eve figured he’d do the three miles in decent time.
Saturday morning New York City kept her entertained all the way to the morgue.
Her bootsteps echoed along the tiled white tunnel that smelled of death and bleached lemons. Inside the break room, she spotted a woman in scrubs who studied Vending without joy and muttered to herself.
“Shit coffee or shit tea. Maybe shit cocoa.”
Eve continued on and pushed through the doors of Morris’s home away from home.
Like Roarke, he didn’t wear one of his sharp suits today, and again, it threw her for a moment. Instead, under his clear protective cape he wore a green T-shirt with jeans and black kicks. He’d wound his dark hair into a single thick braid.
Today’s choice of music as he stood over the dead ran to something jazzy with a lot of complicated piano.
“Sorry to pull you in on a Saturday.”
He just smiled. “The dead may, we hope, rest in peace, but the work for them never rests.”
“I hear you. His wife states he wasn’t feeling well, turned in early. Wheezy, slight fever, so she slept in the guest room.”
With a nod, Morris gestured toward Barrister’s open body cavity. “Upper respiratory infection. Not serious, but enough to make him feel, in medical terms, like crap, and warrant an early night.
“Otherwise, I’m finding a healthy male, one in good physical shape. Muscle tone indicates regular exercise. Last meal, chicken soup, eaten at about seven last night. He’d taken OTC cold meds, had some valerian tea with lemon. I’d say closer to eight last night.”
“Which is worse?” She stepped up to the slab. “Murdered when you’re feeling great, or murdered when you feel, in those medical terms, like crap? Kind of a toss-up, but I think I’d rather go out feeling great.”
“I’d have to agree. Who wants their last moments dominated by a raw throat or gastronomical distress?”
“Yeah.” She shrugged. “Either way, you’re on a slab. No sleep meds then?”
“Nothing more than what’s in the cold tabs, but the lab will confirm with the tox report. He shows no sign of addiction, illegals, alcohol, tobacco, herbals.”
“Mild injuries to the face, knees. Hit from behind, fell forward, knees hit, face hit.”
“That’s accurate. A blow to the back of the head with a heavy object. In your prelim notes last night you indicated a rock. I didn’t see your updated report before I left this morning.”
“Yeah, sorry, I didn’t write it up until shortly before I left.”
“Understandable. Given his TOD, I imagine you didn’t get home until near to four this morning.”
“That’s about right. Big rock.” She held her hands apart. “Sort of club-shaped. Roarke ID’d it as an amethyst.”
“An amethyst.”
“Yeah, big purple rock.” She pulled out her ’link, brought up the crime scene photo as Peabody walked in.
“Sorry, sorry. Delay with the subway, so I hiked it. Whew.”
“I just read that three miles a day keeps the Reaper at bay.”
“Yeah?”
“I read it on a T-shirt, so it must be true.”
“Nothing keeps the Reaper at bay forever, but you’ll die in better shape.” Morris studied the image. “That’s a beautiful stone. A pity to use it for taking a life.”
“It’ll need to be cleansed,” Peabody said.
“Seeing as it’s got blood and brains on it, yeah, they’ll need to clean it up.”
Smiling, Morris stepped back to the body. “I believe Peabody means a spiritual cleansing. Still, if his family loved him, they won’t want it back. Your notes indicated a break-in.”
“That’s also accurate.”
Eve filled him in while he worked, and Peabody found something—anything—else to focus on.
“Fascinating. What joy does someone gain by hoarding the precious only for themselves?” He shook his head.
“Considering the OTC meds, round about eight, is it likely he’d have woken, gone down sometime after twelve-thirty, heading toward one?”
“With the infection at this stage, it’s very likely he’d have slept poorly, even with the meds, and after four hours or so, very likely been restless.”
With his microgoggles in place, he opened Barrister’s mouth, shined a light. “His throat’s inflamed. Again, it’s not serious, but would be very uncomfortable.”
“So he gets up.” Eve began to pace. “Goes down. Maybe going to get more tea, take more meds. But he didn’t. He goes into the office. Did he hear something, see something? Maybe just glanced in, saw the vault open. Possible.”
“No defensive wounds,” Morris told her. “Nothing to indicate a struggle.”
“Bashed from behind. Never saw it coming. A couple minutes, maybe three minutes later, because she’s looking for him, because she hears something fall, his wife walks in and finds him. Just him. Killer’s gone, that fast.”
She frowned. “The window’s closed. He closed the window behind him. But not the vault.”
“The window’s the escape route,” Peabody pointed out. “Takes a second to close it, and then nobody’s going over to look out and see you running away.”
“And it would take longer to close the vault, close the panel. Yeah.”
She slid her hands into her pockets. “His daughters are coming in from college. They may want to see him. I’m going to do a follow-up with the family later today.”
“I’ll have him ready for their goodbyes by noon. If they want to visit later than one, Cicero will be on duty. I’m scheduled to meet Garnet and her daughter about that time. We’re going to the street fair.”
Garnet DeWinter, Eve thought, scientist, bone expert, and fashion plate.
“That’ll be fun. McNab and I were going but, you know, dead guy. But Mavis, Leonardo, and Bella are. You should tag them, maybe meet up.”
“I’ll do that.”
“We’ll get out of your way.” Eve took a last look at the body. “If he hadn’t had a cold, he’d probably be alive.”
As they walked out, Eve ran through the timing again in her head.
“It’s all so damn close. If the wife checks on him after he wakes up, but before he goes down, she’s likely the one who goes for tea or whatever.
Or gets him more meds. Need to check if they’ve got an AutoChef in the bedroom, because why not program tea there if that’s what he wanted? ”
“The cook kept loose valerian tea leaves in the pantry. He didn’t want any at dinner, but she suggested he have some before bed.
Since they keep it for a kind of sleep aid, and nobody actually likes it, it’s not programmed.
She always makes it at the time, a cup when needed, and adds fresh lemon because he prefers that when he’s not feeling well. ”
“That covers that. I want you to contact the MTs who worked on him, get the position of the body when they arrived—in relation to the vault, the door, the desk, the window. How much they had to move it to examine and pronounce.”
“Okay.”
“It won’t be much. The uniforms were right behind them.”
Outside, Eve got behind the wheel. “We’ll work at Central. I’ve done a deeper run on the victim, and I’ll copy you. We need one on the wife, sister, daughters, staff, and the dead father.
“Probably at some point the dead father’s four ex-wives.”
She pushed back into traffic, already thickening, and headed downtown.
“We’re going to split the list of stolen items in the vault. Since it’s Saturday, we might not reach anyone with real authority. But I’m betting when we say, ‘Hey, we found your priceless painting of an unripe pear,’ they perk up and get us somebody.”
“How about telling somebody at the Tate, ‘Hey, we found out where your bunch of emeralds and diamonds were, but oops, they’re gone again’?”
“Yeah, that’ll be a knee-slapper.”
She had to be careful, had to be guarded in what she told Peabody and how. And she hated it.
“Roarke’s reaching out to some contacts. So far there’s no talk about any of this. The theft, the murder, or the fact that Barrister had a load of stolen art and jewelry in a vault in New York.”
Peabody gave her the side-eye—Eve felt it. “Okay. I guess there will be talk about it all pretty soon.”
“That may be to our advantage. He thinks, and I agree, this Royal Suite is too recognizable, too famous, for a fence—even a high-end one.”
“So somebody wants to do what Barrister did—the father anyway—keep them all locked away just for him.”
“Maybe. Or, and what feels more likely, or at least worth pursuing: auction. Exclusive, underground. Then somebody with piles of money locks them away and gloats over them.”