Creation In Death

“Who died?”

“Need to talk to you about that,” Eve told him. “But more how than who.”

“Well.” He scratched his jaw, and Eve could hear the rasp of his fingers on the night’s growth of beard. “Better come on in. Wife’s asleep. Let’s go on in the kitchen. Need coffee.”

It was a homey place. Lived in, Eve thought, like Jaycee’s had been, if you added another decade or two. Feeney’s kids had grown up, and there were grandkids now. Eve was never quite sure of the number. But there was a good-sized eating area off the kitchen, with a long table to accommodate the lot of them at family di

Feeney brought in coffee, scuffing along in slippers Eve would bet a month’s pay were a Christmas gift.

On the middle of the table was a strangely shaped vase in streaky colors of red and orange. Mrs. Feeney’s work, Eve determined. The wife had a penchant for hobbies and crafts, and was always making things. Often unidentifiable things.

“Caught a case,” Eve began. “Vic is female, brunette, late twenties, found naked in East River Park.”

“Yeah, I caught the report on screen.”

“Found nude. She’d been tortured. Burns, bruising, cuts, punctures. Her wrists were slashed.”

“Fuck.”

Yeah, he had it already, Eve noted. “Vic was wearing a silver band on the third finger of her left hand.”

“How long?” Feeney demanded. “How long did she last? What was the time he carved into her?”

“Eighty-five hours, twelve minutes, thirty-eight seconds.”

“Fuck,” he said again. “Motherfucker.” Feeney’s hand balled into a fist to rap, light and steady, on the table. “He’s not walking again, Dallas. He’s not walking away from us again. He’ll have number two already.”

“Yeah.” Eve nodded. “I figure he’s got number two.”

Feeney braced his elbows on the table, scooped his fingers through his hair. “We’ve got to go through everything we had nine years back, what data there is on him from the other times he went to work. Put a task force together now, at the get. We don’t wait for the second body to show up. You get anything from the scene?”

“So far, just the body, the ring, the sheet. I’ll get you a copy of the records. Right now, I’m heading to the morgue to see what Morris can tell us. You’re going to need to get dressed, unless you’re wearing purple terry cloth to work these days.”

He glanced down, shook his head. “If you saw the one the wife got me for Christmas, you’d understand why I’m still wearing this one.” He pushed to his feet. “Look, you go on, and I’ll meet you at the morgue. Going to need my own ride anyway.”

“All right.”

“Dallas.”

In that moment, Roarke realized neither he nor Peabody existed. They simply weren’t a part of the reality between the other two.

“We have to find what we missed,” Feeney said to Eve. “What everybody’s missed. There’s always something. One piece, one step, one thought. We can’t miss it this time.”

“We won’t.”

R oarke had been to the morgue before. He wondered if the white tiles through the tu

There were echoes throughout as well-the repeat and repeat of bootsteps as they walked. More silence, he supposed, as the staff would be on graveyard shift. So to speak.

It was still shy of dawn, and he could see the long night was wearing on Peabody a bit, with a heaviness under her dark eyes. But not on Eve, not yet. The fatigue would rush up and choke her-it always did. But for now she was ru

Eve paused outside the double doors of an autopsy room. “Do you need to see her?” she asked him.

“I do. I want to be of some help in this, and if I’m to be of any help, I need to understand. I’ve seen death before.”

“Not like this.” She pushed through.

Morris was inside. He’d changed, she noted, into gray sweats and black and silver skids she imagined he kept on the premises for working out. He sat, and continued to sit for a moment, in a steel chair drinking something thick and brown out of a tall glass.

“Ah, company. Protein smoothy?”

“So absolutely not,” Eve said.

“Tastes marginally better than it looks. And does its job. Roarke, good to see you, even though.”

“And you.”

“Vic worked for Roarke,” Eve said.

“I’m very sorry.”

“I barely knew her. But…”

“Yes, but…” Morris set the smoothy aside before he pushed to his feet. “I regret that we’ll all come to know her quite well now.”

“She managed one of Roarke’s clubs. The Starlight down in Chelsea?”

“Is that yours?” Morris smiled a little. “I took a friend there a few weeks ago. It’s an entertaining trip back to an intriguing time.”

“Feeney’s on his way in.”

Morris shifted his gaze to Eve. “I see. It was the three of us over the first of them the last time. Do you remember?”

“Yeah, I remember.”

“Her name was Corrine, Corrine Dagby.”

“Age twenty-nine,” Eve confirmed. “Sold shoes in a boutique downtown. Liked to party. She lasted twenty-six hours, ten minutes, fifty-eight seconds.”

Morris nodded. “Do you remember what you said when we stood here then?”

“No, not exactly.”

“I do. You said: ‘He’ll want more than that.’ And you were right. We learned he wanted more than that. Should we wait for Feeney?”

“He’ll catch up.”

“All right.” Morris crossed the room.

Roarke looked over, then he stepped over.

He’d seen death, bloody, vicious, violent, useless, and terrible death. But he saw, once more, Eve was right.

He’d never seen the likes of this.

3

SO MANY WOUNDS, HE THOUGHT, AND ALL washed clean. Somehow it might have been less horrid if there had been blood. Blood would be proof, wouldn’t it, that life had once been there.

But this…this woman he remembered as vital and brimming with energy looked like some poor doll, mangled and sliced by a vicious child.

“Tidy work,” Eve stated, and had Roarke’s gaze whipping toward her.

He started to speak, to let loose some of the horror he felt. But he saw her face, saw the anger was closer to the surface now however calm her voice. Saw, too, the pity. She had such pity inside her he often wondered how she could bear the weight of it.

So he said nothing.

“He’s very methodical.” Morris engaged the computer before offering Eve microgoggles. “You see these wounds on the limbs? Long, thin, shallow.”

“Scalpel maybe, or the tip of a sharp blade.” Though the wounds were displayed, optimized, on screen, Eve leaned down to study them through the goggles. “Precise, too. Either she was drugged or he had her restrained in such a way she couldn’t struggle enough to make a difference.”

“Which gets your vote?” Morris asked.

“Restraints. What’s the fun if she’s out of it, can’t feel fully? Burns are small along here.” Eve turned the victim’s left arm. “Here in the bend of the elbow, precise again, but the skin’s charred some at the edges. Flame? Not a laser, but live fire?”

“I would agree. Some of the other burns look like laser to me. And there, on the i

“Yeah. The bruising-no laceration, no scraping. Smooth implement.”

“Sap.” Roarke studied the bruising himself. “An old-fashioned sap would bruise like that. Leather’s effective if you can afford the cost. Filled with ordinary sand, it does its job.”

“Again, agree. And we have the punctures,” Morris continued. “Which are in circular patterns here, here, here.” The screen flashed with close-ups of the back of the right hand, the heel of the left foot, the left buttocks. “Twenty minute punctures, in this precise pattern.”