“First, it just pisses me off when people lie to me.” Eve judged the traffic, zipped out into it.
“The take-out bag—that holds up. The uniforms confirmed with the security feed Huffman—no need to run facial recognition now—brought the coffee and muffins at zero-seven-twenty hours.”
“Yeah, that holds. And the wedding planner deal’s going to hold. We’ll check it, but that’ll be solid enough. The time might be a little off, but it’ll hold. The lawyer-fiancé’s late legal prep, that’ll hold. The rest of it’s bullshit.”
She cut west, then headed south on Lexington.
Peabody thought it over. “My bullshit detector’s pretty good, but I’ll cop yours is better.”
“She does the wedding stuff, then goes back to her place. An hour or so later, she decides: Hey, I’m bored. She goes out for a two-or three-hour hike, into the park, window-shopping. Does she strike you as an urban hiker, Peabody? Or a woman who window-shops all that time and buys nothing?”
“Now that you mention it, not really. I mean, it’s plausible. Urban strolling, in her case, head full of wedding plans. Just getting out in the air. But, yeah, a long stretch of it, alone. But she said she was home at the time of the murder.”
“We’ll check the feed, but she probably was, or she’ll have come through the lobby and not gone out that way again. She’s still a liar. Wherever she was during that three-hour stretch, it didn’t involve urban strolling. Not alone.”
“Cheating on the fiancé.”
“It occurs to me, yeah. Add this.” She flicked Peabody a glance. “A woman like that doesn’t book a sitting at eight in the morning. She doesn’t get there thirty minutes early. People wait for her, that’s how it works.”
“You don’t like her even a little bit.”
“She’s a liar, potentially a cheat. Jury’s out on a murderer, but she’s checking boxes.”
She cut west again, thinking it through during the fits and starts of crosstown traffic.
“She waltzes into the victim’s apartment—and we’ll establish when you check with the other lobby staff if the victim, her good friend, ever waltzed into hers—starts up the stairs to the studio.”
“Taking time before to buy the takeout, which, yeah, now that you’re laying it out, seems off, too. That’s really early.”
“She spots the body, drops the bag. Splat. Possibly in genuine holy shit, possibly to establish holy shit. Then she leaves. Backing up? A woman who can afford that apartment would most usually use a car service. But she didn’t. She claims she walked around in some sort of fugue state until she hailed a cab.
“We’ll need to track down that cab,” Eve added. “She gets back, goes up to her place. Thinks about taking a sleeping pill. Poor me! Then, finally, more than an hour after seeing her dead friend in a pool of blood, she hits nine-one-one.”
“I give you it’s a long time,” Peabody said as Eve nipped through a yellow light and pushed south again. “The line’s going to be shock, and how different people experience it. That’s not really wrong.”
“She took a shower, changed her clothes, dried her hair, put on very careful makeup. Given the time it took her to get back, she did at least some of that after calling it in. Preparing. No way she went out this morning without doing her face up a lot more than what we saw, her hair up a lot fancier. And she was wearing white—a symbol of innocence. No splatter of coffee on her. And in all that, she contacted the lawyer-fiancé. She had the DND to give her more time to prep, to talk to him first, to make sure she had him with her when we interviewed her.”
“She’s calculating,” Peabody agreed. “That sounded loud and clear—especially with the slow, perfect tears. But why go back this morning? Why go back, buy coffee and muffins first, and put yourself in the murder scene?”
“Some people like attention, and I’m betting she qualifies. More, we’re going to find her prints on scene, too. Either way, liar, liar, fancy pants on fire.”
3
Eve hit the morgue first and started down the long white tunnel. Two techs stood at Vending, slurping up bad coffee and replaying the previous night’s baseball game.
She aimed for the chief medical examiner’s domain.
His sealed hands smeared with blood, Morris stood over Ariel Byrd’s body. He wore a clear protective cape over a suit that made her think of ripe peaches. Obviously in a springtime frame of mind, he’d paired it with a shirt of the palest green and a tie precisely matching the suit. He’d wound his long, dark hair into braids, all tied back with pale green cord.
It always amazed her, would always amaze her, how anyone managed to coordinate a look so perfectly.
He lowered his microgoggles. “Young, healthy, and dead on a lovely day in May.”
“I wasn’t sure you’d have gotten this far on her yet.”
“Not only your name on her tag, but I recognized hers.”
Instantly alert, Eve looked into Morris’s dark eyes. “You knew her.”
“Not personally, not really. I admired her work, and spoke to her at last month’s Art in the Park festival. Garnet, her daughter, and I went for a couple of hours.”
Garnet DeWinter, Eve thought, bone doctor, fashion plate, and Morris’s pal—platonic.
“Garnet took her card, and visited her home studio.”
“Is that right?”
“She bought a gargoyle for her garden wall. It’s charming.”
“Did you go with her, to the studio?”
“No.” Morris shifted his gaze back to the body. “This is my second time meeting the artist. A talented woman.”
Eve moved closer to study the talented woman who lay on the slab with her chest open. “What else can you tell me about her?”
“Healthy, as I said. Good weight for her height and frame, and good muscle tone. A greenstick fracture, left wrist, from childhood. A common injury, and well healed. No signs of alcohol or illegals abuse. Peabody.” He smiled at her. “Why don’t you get something cold for yourself and Dallas from my box?”
“Thanks. Pepsi?” she asked Eve.
“That’ll work.” And occupy her, as Peabody disliked open body exams.
“No defensive wounds, no injuries other than the laceration and contusion on the face, from the fall, a cracked rib from an impact injury.”
“Worktable.”
“Yes, in studying your crime-scene recording, I agree. And of course the killing blows.”
“More than one.”
“Three, though the first would have done the job without quick medical attention, the second would have completely sealed the deal. Forceful blows, from slightly above and to the right, which knocked her forward and to the left, sharply into the table. She’s only five-three, small stature, slight build. The impact with the table—a solid table bolted down—cracked her lower right rib. She wouldn’t have been conscious for the second blow, delivered as she bounced back from the impact with the table, pitched to her left. The third struck her as she fell.”
“She had a lot of tools—organized. Hammers, chisels, files. It looks to me like the killer picked up the murder weapon from another worktable behind the victim, to the right side of the steps going up. Big hunk of rock on it, and a chisel. No mallet.”