“It’s not easy since we’re figuring sex as motive.”
“Okay, that’s a point. Sex plays. You don’t bruise and bloody a guy’s genitals and sodomize him unless it’s about sex, so sex plays. Second vic’s got two divorces—the last one more than six years ago. We’ll check out the exes, see if there’s any overlap with the first vic, but it’s a stretch to think Wymann’s ex or exes waited this long for payback. Start digging, see if Wymann’s connected to anyone romantically.”
“Gossip sites, here I come!” Peabody pulled out her PPC.
Eve tapped her fingers on the wheel as another ad blimp announced: Get your summer bikini body in January at Slimderize! Free consult!
Maybe a summer bikini body counted as cruise wear.
“Scenario,” she said, doing her best to block out the blimps. “The senator and Wymann have a little sex club. The women involved join in—either knowing about the other women or not. If not, this is a pisser. If they did know, something went wrong, got ugly. Women form their own club. Murder club.”
“If they went into it knowing, it had to get really ugly.”
“Rape’s ugly. I think brutally sodomizing two men reflects rape. Otherwise, maybe, yeah, you kick him in the balls a couple times, but the rest . . .”
“That sounds like rape club, not sex club. The women on our list weren’t raped.”
“Not that they told us. Why tell us, why hand us a big, fat motive? It’s an angle we need to look at because we’ve got more than one killer. Torture and murder as partners, that speaks of a bond, a shared goal, and, in these cases, a mutual rage.
“We know the senator let in his killers. So he felt no threat. A man who considers women objects, sex toys? He doesn’t see them as a threat.”
“We still don’t know the identity of the Realtor.”
And that, Eve thought, was a big hole that needed filling.
“When we find it, we’ll find the killers—but . . . strong possibility there wasn’t a Realtor, but a ploy. We need to know when Wymann was taken, where he was taken from. Eventually, we’re going to learn where he and the senator were taken to.”
“You sound really confident.”
“It’s fucking hard to keep secrets—they wear on you. It’s fucking hard to maintain a bond that leads to murder. One of them’s going to slip.”
By the time she got to the morgue she was jonesing for coffee, and knew she couldn’t face the sludge she’d find in Vending on their way down the white, echoing tunnel.
Barely six, she thought, and realized Morris might not be in yet. But she could take another look at both bodies, and have one of the other MEs run through the findings with her.
She stopped at the short line of machines, scowled at them. Not only would the coffee be piss-warm sludge, but the machine would give her grief. They always did.
Some sort of conspiracy, she thought bitterly.
“Get me a tube of Pepsi, and whatever you want.” She dug in her pockets for credits, passed them to Peabody.
“I’m never going to be able to go back to Vending hot chocolate now, not after experiencing Mr. Mira’s. Even what you’ve got stocked in the vehicle AutoChef doesn’t hit that stupendous mark. Coffee’s as crappy here as it is at Central. Tea . . . maybe.”
“Would you like to see the full menu, perhaps request a sampler?” Eve’s all-too-pleasant tone had Peabody risking a sidelong glance. “Or are you going to plug the damn credits in and get something before I boot your ass?”
“My ass is still in the box.” Pleased with herself, Peabody ordered up the Pepsi, and opted for a Diet Cherry Fizzy.
The machine spit them out, then began to drone on about nutritional value—zero—as Eve turned her back and kept going.
She cracked the tube, using her shoulder to push through the doors leading to autopsy.
It shouldn’t have surprised her to find Morris already wearing a protective cape over a suit the color of wet stone. He’d chosen a tie of shimmery lavender, and twined his black hair into a single thick braid.
He had music on low, something . . . jazzy, she thought.
He glanced up. And though he held his scalpel, he had yet to start the Y cut on Wymann’s body.
“You were quick,” he said.
“Or really slow, considering we didn’t make it in yesterday for Senator Mira.”
For now, Morris set the scalpel down, gestured to a second steel table. “I had our earlier guest brought out of the drawer, as I expected the doubleheader would bring you by this morning.”
He stepped over, brought up the lights.
“Without delving deeper into our newest arrival, and going by a visual exam only, the injuries are similar: facial and genital insults, the ligature marks on the wrists, sodomy by foreign object. In the senator’s case, that foreign object was about two inches in circumference, tapering down to a rounded point on the end. It had also been heated to a degree to cause severe burning around and in the anus.”
Peabody blanched, turned away.
“The proverbial hot poker,” Morris added, giving Peabody a sympathetic pat on the shoulder. “The object was used multiple times, with considerable force. The pain would have been excruciating. Again, only with a visual exam, I believe the same object was used on Wymann.”
“That’s beyond rage,” Eve stated. “Maybe we’re looking for sexual sadists—a team like Ella-Loo Parsens and Darryl Roy James.”
“I don’t like thinking there are more like them out there,” Peabody replied, back still turned.
“There are always more. But . . .” No, Eve thought, not like the two twisted lovers they’d recently locked away. Not like that.
“These two weren’t picked randomly. They were targets—and the sex, the sadism, the message left, all clearly read revenge.”
“Revenge was had,” Morris said. “In the biggest of ways. I agree with your insight regarding the contusions. A smooth, weighted sap. There are no indications fists were used.”
“Might break a nail, ruin your manicure. It’s a woman. Women,” Eve added.
“No defensive wounds.”
Because they didn’t give him a chance to fight back, Eve concluded. “Stun marks?”
“One, barely visible even with microgoggles. In the groin.”
“The groin.”
“I sense a theme. A mild stun, enough, in my opinion, to debilitate—and hurt, considering that sensitive area, like a swarm of angry wasps—but not enough to render him unconscious. Which plays to them being female.”
She walked it through. “Two of them could easily get him into the chair. One works on him, the other holds the stunner. Mr. Mira walks in, and they adjust.”
“How is Dennis?”
“He’s good. He’s dealing. What else can you tell me?”
“From the ligature marks on the wrists, recent injuries to the rotator cuffs, arm and shoulder muscles, the victim was restrained with cord, arms above his head, with his full weight pulling downward. The restraints were removed an hour, no more than two, before TOD.”
“He was alive when they hanged him.”
“Yes, he was, and his hands free so he attempted to drag the noose from his neck. It’s his own skin under his fingernails, along with fiber from the cord.”
Morris shifted his attention, and Eve’s, to the neck. “This wasn’t a sharp drop—not the trapdoor on the gallows, or a chair kicked out that could snap the neck, but a gradual strangulation. The drag of his own weight tightened the cord, increased the pressure, choking him. He died slowly, and painfully.”
“Not just an execution. Those are done quickly, efficiently. They wanted him to know, to feel, to suffer. It was torture to the end.”
“Yes. A torturous death. Other than that, I can tell you there were no other injuries. He’d had regular face and body work—what you’d call tune-ups—and was in excellent health. His last meal, consumed approximately fourteen hours before his death, included lobster bisque, a field green salad, and some Pouilly-Fuissé. As there were traces of vomit in his mouth, I can only guess at the amounts consumed.”