Kindred In Death

“Um. Likewise.”

He gave her arm a quick squeeze, then released it. “And where is the estimable Peabody?”

“Field work. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover.”

“Then we’ll begin. I know MacMasters, of course. He’s solid. This will have put a hole in him.”

“He’s maintaining.”

“What else is there? Her name is Deena.” He glanced at Eve, got her nod. “Sixteen-year-old female in exceptional health prior to her death. She took care of herself, and was cared for. The scan showed no prior injuries of any note, and confirms excellent nutrition. Her last meal, consumed at approximately six-thirty p.m., was pizza with a topping of peppers, mushrooms, black olives, and about six ounces of cherry fizzy. As you flagged tox, I’ve determined the barbiturate she ingested with the meal was mixed with the drink.”

“He drugged her.”

“I can’t say, only that she ingested the barb, and there are no signs of regular use of same in her scan. All to the contrary. Given her weight, and the assumption she wasn’t accustomed to taking drugs, the dose would have been enough to render her unconscious, for perhaps as much as an hour.”

“Plenty of time for him to get her upstairs, restrained, then shut down the cameras and take the discs. If he did so in that order. Plenty of time. She’d have been groggy, disoriented when she came to.”

“Yes. She ingested another dose-smaller-at about midnight.”

“A second dose?”

“Yes. Her hands were cuffed behind her back at the wrists-there’s deep bruising, lacerations indicating she struggled against them, quite violently. The marks on her ankles indicate a different restraint. Probably cloth.”

“Bedsheets.”

“That’s consistent. She fought those, too. And if you look.” He paused to pick up a second pair of microgoggles, gave them to Eve. “Here.” They bent over the ankles together. “The bounds were extremely tight, digging into the skin. Here, here, here.”

“Tied, retied, tied again.” She saw it in her head as well. “Tied, raped, untied, turned, tied, sodomized. Untied, turned, raped again?”

“It would be my conclusion. Multiple rapes, multiple sodomy, all extremely violent. As you can see…”

He moved up the body. A line of sweat, icy cold, slid down Eve’s spine. But she moved with him, slammed more locks on her memories, and studied the damage.

“The tears, the trauma. Her hymen was intact before the rape. So young,” he murmured. “And so mercilessly used. I found no semen. He sealed up, and was cautious enough to do so with each rape. We’ve no trace of him in or on her. I’d speculate he removed his own genital hair, possibly all his body hair before the act. Otherwise, even sealed, with multiple, violent rapes, we should have found a stray hair. There’s some bruising on her legs, her torso from his hands. Deeper bruising on her shoulders where it appears he held her down more forcibly. On her throat-”

“He choked her. Watched her face while he did. Watched until she passed out. Between the rapes, between them because he wouldn’t want to risk going too far, taking her out too soon, spoiling the fun.”

She could see it, in the room with the soft violet walls and the glossy white furniture. See the terror, the horror. Feel the pain.

“He chokes her while she struggles, fights for air, goes out. Then he unties her legs, shoves her over, secures her again. And waits for her to come to so she can feel him sodomize her. No good if she’s out. He wants to hurt her. Needs to hurt her. Maybe he gets off that way. On her pain, her struggles, her pleas.”

“You’ve gone pale.” Morris touched her arm. “Step back, sit.”

She shook her head, brushed him off. She would get through it. Staring into her own past as much as Deena’s, Eve swiped the cold tube over her brow.

“Then what he does, when he’s finished, however many times he feels inclined, when she’s lying there, quivering or when she’s gone somewhere else, somewhere she can’t feel the pain, he pushes her face into the pillow, holds her down, smothering her until she passes out again. Then he can turn her over, tie her again. He worked her for about eight hours, a full day’s work. So he could let her lie there a while until he could get it up again.

“Maybe he promised to let her go if she gave him the passcode for the control room. But I think he may have already taken care of that. Either way, lots of time. She’d ask him why, why he was doing this. He’d tell her, tell her exactly. Because he was going to kill her, and he’d enjoy telling her why.”

“Why?” Morris spoke softly, watching her face.

“Don’t know. Not yet. But he’d make sure she knew it wasn’t because he wanted her. Not because he liked her. If he made all this time, took all this effort to hurt her physically, again and again, wouldn’t he want to hurt her emotionally, mentally? Break her down, carve her away, every inch. In addition to the rape, and all that does to your body, your mind, your fucking soul, he’d want to make sure she knew she meant nothing. That he’d played her. Taking her out, holding her hand, being a shy guy. Making her feel like a fool? Nice bonus.”

She kept her breathing even, she could do that, even if she couldn’t stop the pulse from hammering in her head.

“Mask’s off. No need for it now. He’d want her to see who he was. He’d want her to know what’s inside her when he rapes her, what’s tearing and ripping her. Young healthy girl, strong girl, so he can drag it out for hours, until the last time he put his hands around her throat, the last time she looks in his eyes as he starts to squeeze. Until he ends it.”

She did step back now. She didn’t tremble, though she wanted to. Still, she took a long, slow drink of the now-lukewarm Pepsi. “He leaves the cuffs. Cop cuffs. Standard issue. He unties her legs, but leaves her hands cuffed. Because that’s a message to her father. That’s an extra punch to the gut. It wasn’t her, not about her. She was just an instrument. A weapon. He could’ve killed her dozens of times before this, in dozens of ways. He wanted it to be in that house, inside the house where the cop believed his little girl would always be safe.”

She studied the face. “The second dose, that was for MacMasters, too. He wanted to make sure we found the drug in her system. As far as he knew, at the time of the murder, her parents weren’t due back until the afternoon, mid- to late afternoon. We wouldn’t have gotten to a tox yet on that time frame. We wouldn’t have gotten to one until evening, even flagged and expedited. Just another boost to make sure we found it. That’s why he left the glass.”

“Glass?”

“It’ll be her glass he left on the counter in the kitchen, and there’ll be traces of the barb there for the lab to find. It’s like… thumbing his nose. An insult to kick it all down. Look what I can do in the sanctity of your own home, to your precious daughter, using the very thing you work against every day of your life. It wasn’t about her, about Deena. That’s worse, isn’t it?”

She looked at Morris again, composed again. “It’s worse for MacMasters knowing it wasn’t about her. She was just the conduit.”

“Yes. It would be worse.” And what were you? he wondered. What were you to the one who used you this way?

But he didn’t ask. He knew her too well, understood her too well, to ask.

Later, she stood outside, breathing in New York, drawing in the sticky heat of a day that decided to soar to summer. She’d gotten through it, she told herself, gotten through what should be the worst of it. She got back in her car and drove to the lab.

She expected to butt heads with Chief Lab Tech Dick Berinksi. In fact, she looked forward to the tension relieving ass-kicking she hoped to give the man not so affectionately known as Dickhead. “He’s a fuck, but he’s the best,” she’d say about him.