“These patterns. Could be credits. Cloth sap filled with credits. Old-fashioned and dependable. You’ve got ridges, possibly from the edges, then those more circular shapes. Yeah, could be credits. Lots of them from the weight it would take to crush the skull.”
She put the goggles back on, re-examined the wounds. “Three blows maybe. The first at the base—they’d be standing, vic with her back to the killer. Goes down, second blow comes from above—you’ve got more punch there, more velocity. And the third…”
She stepped back, shoving the goggles back up. “One,” she said, miming a two-handed swing from her right and down. “Two.” Overhead, this time and down. “And three.” Swinging, still two-handed, from the left.
She nodded. “Fits the spatter pattern. If the sap was cloth—a bag, a sock, a small pouch—you could get those imprints. No defensive wounds, so she didn’t put up a fight. Taken by surprise. From behind, so she’s not afraid. If the killer had another weapon—a knife, a stunner to force her to turn around—why not use it? And it’d be a quiet murder. First blow takes the vic down, she wouldn’t have time to scream.”
“Simple, and straightforward.” Morris set his own goggles down. “Let’s go back, review our previous program.”
With his sealed fingers, he tapped some icons on his diagnostic comp. He wore his long, dark hair in a braid today, and the braid curled up in a loop at the nape of his neck. His suit was a deep, conservative navy, until you added the pencil-thin stripes of showy red.
“Here’s our facial wound. Let’s enhance it a bit.”
“Similar ridged pattern. Same weapon.”
“And the same on the abdomen, torso, thighs, left hip. But something interests me here. Look closely at the facial wound again.”
“I’d say the attacker was close in.” She paused, puzzled. “From the bruising, the angle, it looks like an uppercut.” She turned to Morris, swung up toward his face, and had him blink and jerk his head back a fraction as her fist stopped a hairsbreadth from his skin.
“Let’s use the program, shall we?”
She couldn’t quite stop the grin. “I wouldn’t have tapped you.”
“Regardless.” He moved back to the screen, cautiously keeping it between them. He pulled up his program, showing two figures. “Now, you see the angles and movements of the attacker, programmed to recreate the injuries we see. The facial injury indicates a left-handed blow, uppercut, as you said. It’s awkward.”
Eve frowned as she watched the screen. “Nobody hits like that. If it’s a leftie coming at her that way, he’d‘ve swung out, caught her here.” She flicked fingers on her own cheekbone. “If he swung up, he should’ve caught her lower. Maybe right-handed, and he… no.”
She turned from the screen and back to the body. “With a fist, maybe, maybe you get bruising like that. But with a sap, you’ve got to swing it, even close in, you’ve got to lead with it.”
Her brows drew together, and her eyes narrowed. Then she lifted them to Morris. “Well, for Christ’s sake. She did it to herself?”
“I ran that, and got a probability in the mid-nineties. Have a look.” He brought up the next program. “One figure, a two-handed swing, right taking the weight, cross-body to the face.”
“Sick bitch,” Eve said under her breath.
“And a motivated one. The angles of the other injuries—save the head—could all be self-inflicted. Probability hits 99.8, when we factor in the facial injuries as self.”
She had to wipe away previous theories, get her head around the self-inflicted. “No defensive wounds, no sign she struggled or was restrained.”
While her mind whirled, Eve put the goggles on yet again, moved back to examine every inch of the body. “The bruising on the knees, the elbows?”
“Consistent with a fall, timing coordinates with the head wounds.”
“Okay, okay. Somebody clocks you in the face like this, comes at you to beat on you some more, you run, or you fall, you put your hands up to try to ward them off. Should be bruising on her forearms at least. But there isn’t, because she’s beating on herself. Nothing under her nails?”
“Now that you mention it…” Morris smiled. “A couple of fibers, under the index and ring fingers of her right hand, under the index of her left.”
“They’re going to be the same as what you found in the head wound.” Eve closed her right fist. “Digs into the cloth, gets her courage up. Crazy bitch.”
“Dallas, you said you knew her. Why would she do this?”
Eve tossed the goggles aside. She’d found her anger now, and it soaked into her bones. “So she could say someone else did. Me, maybe Roarke. Maybe go to the media with it,” she said as she began to pace. “No, no, you’re not going to get big fat piles of money that way. Attention, sure, and some dough, but not a bakery full. Blackmail. Figured she could go back on us. Pay up, or I go public, show people how you hurt me. But it turned back on her. Whoever she was working with decided they didn’t need her anymore. Or she got greedy, tried to cut them out.”
“Takes some brass ones to try to blackmail a cop like you, or a man like Roarke.” He looked back at the body. “Takes some sick need to do this to yourself for money.”
“Got paid back, didn’t she?” Eve said quietly. “All the way back.”
* * *
Peabody took a detour. Dallas would roast her if she got wind, but she didn’t intend to be long. Besides, the sweepers hadn’t found anything so far in the rooms vacated.
She wasn’t even sure McNab would be in-house. He could be out in the field for all she knew. Since he hadn’t bothered to leave her a message. Men were such pains in the ass, she wondered why she bothered to keep one. She’d been doing okay solo. It wasn’t as if she’d gone out looking for somebody like Ian McNab. Who would?
Now she was cohabbing, with a lease in both their names. They’d bought a new bed together—a really uptown gel. And that made it theirs instead others , didn’t it? Which she hadn’t thought about until now. Which she wouldn’t have to think about now, except he’d been such a complete dick.
And technically, he’d been the one to walk out, so he should be the one to make the first move. She hesitated, nearly jumped off the glide. But the box Dallas had given her was burning a hole in her pocket— and the idea that maybe she’d been partly to blame was burning one in her gut.
Probably just indigestion. She shouldn’t have grabbed that soy dog on the corner.
She stalked into EDD, her chin jutted up. There he was, in his cube. How could you miss him when even in the rainbow hues of the division his green zip pants and yellow shirt vibrated.
She sniffed, then stomped over to jab him sharply on the shoulder twice. “I need to talk to you.”
His eyes, cool and green, flicked to her face, away again. “Busy here.”
The back of her neck sizzled at the dismissal. “Five minutes,” she said between her teeth. “Private.”
He shoved back from his station, swiveled around fast enough to make his long tail of blond hair swing. He gave a jerk of the shoulder to indicate she should follow him, then strode off on his shiny yellow airboots.
Color, from anger and from embarrassment, rode her cheeks as she wove through the clicks and clacks of EDD. The fact that no one paused long enough to hail her or send her a wave told her McNab hadn’t kept their situation to himself.
Well, neither had she. So what?
He opened the door to a small break room where two detectives were arguing in the incomprehensible terms of e-geeks. McNab simply jerked a thumb toward the door. “Need five.”
The detectives took their argument and a couple of cherry fizzies out the door. One paused long enough to glance back at Peabody with a look of sympathetic understanding.
Of course, Peabody thought, the look came from a female.
McNab got himself a lime fizzy, probably color-coordinating his outfit, Peabody thought nastily. She closed the door herself as he leaned back against the short counter.