Page 4
Inside the morgue, the white tunnel always echoed. And always smelled of chemical lemons with an undertone of death.
Postponing the inevitable, Peabody paused by Vending.
“I could use a cold drink. I’ll buy you a Pepsi.”
“Peabody, Morris stocks them.”
“Oh, yeah, right.”
“You saw the body in the back of the limo.”
“Yeah, but it’s different on a slab. I don’t know why, but it is. I do know why,” she corrected as she walked down the tunnel with Eve. “It’s because I know Morris has been, you know, in there. Pulling out organs and all that. Cutting into the body and taking stuff out that shouldn’t be taken out.”
“Taking it out tells us why the victim’s a victim.”
“You’d think they’d find another way to do that.”
“Until they do.”
Eve pushed through the double doors of Morris’s theater.
He played Italian opera. Eve supposed it suited the moment.
Under his clear protective cape, the medical examiner wore a suit of pale, pale blue with a shirt of crisp white, a tie of sapphire.
He hadn’t taken his usual time with his hair, she noted—due to her contact, no doubt. So he wore it in a single high tail that streamed down his back.
The microgoggles accented the almond shape of his dark eyes.
“I think he enjoyed his last flight,” Morris began. “He had a late supper of Bolognese with rigatoni, a green salad, a sourdough roll, some cream cake. And about sixteen ounces of Cabernet. Another two ounces of Merlot less than eight minutes before TOD.”
“Poisoned?” Eve walked to the body laid out on the slab.
“No. No poison in the wine. In fact, a very fine vintage. He was gassed.”
“Gassed?”
“The lab will have to confirm and identify, but he didn’t ingest poison. He inhaled it. And he knew.”
Morris, in his gentle way, laid a hand on Rossi’s head. “He fought. His knuckles aren’t just bruised and scraped. He has some breaks. He fought hard.”
“Gassed,” Eve repeated as she studied the body. “So the passenger area was completely sealed off? And gas… through the air vents. The AC?”
“Again, that’s for others to determine. I can only tell you his mouth, his throat, his nostrils, his lungs, and so on indicate he inhaled what killed him. My findings indicate it took less than four minutes for him to lapse into unconsciousness, during which time he fought to live. In under five minutes, he lost that battle.”
Morris walked to his mini-friggie, took out the cold drinks, and passed them to Eve and Peabody.
“It would’ve been painful but brief. Otherwise, he was a healthy man for his age. A bit overweight, but not excessively. No face or body work detected, though he had some broken bones during his life, a couple of fingers, a couple of ribs. Well mended. There’s a scar—you see there—along his left rib cage. A knife wound most likely.”
“I think he was a spy.”
Morris smiled at Peabody as she cracked her tube of Diet Pepsi.
“Do you? How interesting. He certainly would have lived through the Urbans, and the knife wound appears to be at least thirty years old, and carelessly tended. A field dressing perhaps.”
“Gassed,” Eve said yet again. “I’ll have the sweepers look at how that worked. A lot of trouble for a kill.”
“He was nearing eighty,” Morris said. “Overweight, likely out of shape, but strong. He would’ve had good upper body strength.”
“So the killer didn’t want to risk going head-to-head. His widow’s coming in from Rome. I’ll let you know when she gets here.”
“I’ll have him ready for her. He had good health all in all. Could’ve expected another thirty or forty years.”
“We’ll find who took those decades from him. Appreciate the quick work, Morris.”
“Your name on a card in his hand? And the cryptic message. I’d like to be updated as you progress.”
“All right. Let’s hit the lab, Peabody. Gassed,” she said yet again. “There has to be a reason to go to that kind of trouble.”
Eve rolled it over on the short drive to the lab.
“Who gasses an almost-eighty-year-old man in the back of a limo?”
“Spies.”
Eve spared Peabody a glance. “Under consideration. There are easier, less risky, less expensive ways—thinking spies. Bump into him on the street, give him a little jab. They’ve got shit that’ll kill you in seconds that way. And if you’re going to all this trouble, why not poison the wine? Has to be simpler than rigging up some toxic gas.”
She thought of the smirk.
“Because he didn’t want the simple. He’s showing off his clever, his skill.”
“Maybe he showed off, killed the others he named, and showed off the same way.”
“Yeah, we’re running a global on like crimes once the lab identifies the gas. He’s got a kill list, and there are seven names still on it.”
“They could be anywhere.”
“If he wants me hunting him, they’re in New York, or like Rossi, he’ll get them here. If he killed the other three, why leave the card on this kill?”
“Maybe Roarke will dig up a connection.”
Eve wasn’t sure if she considered that a good thing or not.
In the lab, she scanned the labyrinth of counters, cubes, glass walls. It always made her think of a hive.
She spotted Chief Lab Tech Dick Berenski’s egg-shaped head bent over at his station. Imagined his long, spidery fingers at work.
If necessary, she’d bribe him to push on the gas angle.
He’d earned the title Dickhead for a reason, and she figured a couple of box seats to the ball game would do it this time.
As they made their way through the maze, Eve saw him slide his rolly chair from one end of his workstation to the other, then back again.
Something, she decided, had his attention. With luck, she could hold back the bribe for another time.
He looked up, scowled at Eve.
“What the hell you got going?”
“You tell me. Morris said the victim was gassed.”
“Like a rat in a hole. What they used it for back when. We’ve got better ways now for pest control.”
No bribe this time, Eve noted because she saw the interest in his dark, beady eyes as he gestured to a screen where she saw formulas, symbols. Something that looked like a three-legged pyramid.
“Okay, what is it?”
“Phosphine.”
“And what is it?”
“Jesus, Dallas. It’s your freaking murder weapon. Colorless, odorless—for the rats and all, technical grade, they added shit that made it stink. What you got here’s a mix of pure phosphine with some CO 2 —that agent’s to take down the flammability point. The pure shit’ll go off. It can self-ignite.
“I alerted the sweepers. Might be more in there, so they need to follow protocol.”
He held up a spidery finger, rolled down his counter. “It’s bad shit, and got phased out for commercial use over thirty years ago. Planetwide.”
“So not something the killer could access easily.”
“Hell no. You can make it, yeah, if you know what you’re doing and don’t mind the risk. Close quarters, like that limo, inhaling it? You’re dead pretty quick. But…”
“But?”
“If you know how to make it, you ought to know how to make something that wouldn’t maybe light you up in the lab. Or in liquid form spill on you and give you a hell of a case of frostbite. Like hydrogen cyanide. The fucking Nazis used that—Zyklon B. Or arsine. Or—”
“I get it. Easier ways.”
“And plenty you can get—pest control, right, industrial uses, textiles. I figure you got yourself a mad scientist.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time. Anything else you can tell me?”
“I gave you the murder weapon. You want more, bring me more.”
Berenski looked back at his screen, shook his head. “He’s a goddamn loose cannon using that shit.”
“What would he need to make it?”
“Balls. That’s first because you’d want white phosphorous, and that’s a killer right there. Add that to boiling water with sodium hydroxide, and you got phosphine gas.”
“The gas was released in a limo.”
“You asked. Made a canister, maybe got his hands on one from thirty years ago or whatever. That’s your deal. Wouldn’t mind knowing when you do.”
“What about his clothes?”
“You don’t get residue with this—that was an advantage. Harvo’ll let you know if different, but with this?” He pointed at the screen again. “Not happening.”
Dickhead or not, Berenski knew his science.
“All right. Appreciate the quick work.”
Berenski continued to study the screen as Eve moved off.
“Badass, fucker’s a crazy son of a bitching badass,” she heard him say.
At the moment, Eve’s main concern was the crazy.
“He wanted that,” she said as they walked out of the maze. “That reaction, Dickhead’s reaction. A kind of admiration. A little horrified, but admiration.”
She paused, frowned at the hive.
“Let’s see how far they’ve gotten with processing the limo.”
They took the interior walkway to the next building, then the elevator down to the garage level.
She badged a tech with goggles around her neck and her hair bundled under a clear cap.
“Spooner brought in a limo early this morning.”
“Bay four, and it’s on lockdown. Potential toxic substance.”
“I need to talk to Spooner, or whoever’s in charge of bay four.”
The tech, short, curvy, barely old enough to buy a legal drink, stopped herself before she completed a full eye roll. “All the way down.” She gestured. “Locked down,” she repeated. “You can talk to Spooner through the intercom until it’s clear.”
“All right, thanks.”
Though it echoed here, too, unlike the morgue it smelled—faintly—of bad coffee and someone’s spiced-up veggie hash.
At the door to bay four, the NO ENTRY light burned red.
Eve looked through the thick glass, saw a team of sweepers in hazmat suits and breathing masks.
She pressed the intercom. “Spooner, Dallas. Can we suit up and come in?”
One of the team stepped back. The head shook, but she walked toward the door.
“Not yet, and no need. We found a canister, about two hundred and twenty-five grams. Appears to be empty, but it’s going to our lab for testing.”
“Where was it?”
“Positioned in the ceiling, has a remote trigger. Piped into the AC. Canister’s clean as you get, but it’s not new, Dallas. It says Phosphine, and some joker drew a skull and crossbones on it, along with the name of your vic.”
“His name?”
“And that’s recent, but the canister itself isn’t going to be. It’s dated 2024, and it’s an old-school device. So’s the remote.”
“I need to see it.”
“I’ll send you a picture, and you’ll get the canister when we’re done with it. We need to strip the vehicle down, make sure there isn’t more. We got a cam, too, one with audio. And that is new. The driver could see and hear what was going on in the back on the dash screen.”
“Did it record?”
“Yeah, it did. I’ll get that to you asap. Everything in here has to be tested, scrubbed, and cleared before it leaves the bay. That includes us.”
Behind the protective shield, Spooner’s eyes went hard. “The victim didn’t go easy. He went fast, and that’s your blessing, but he didn’t go easy. Did Dickhead tell you about the chemical?”
“Yeah, enough. Be careful in there, Spooner.”
Now she smiled, a little. “Never anything but.”
Studying the limo as the team continued to dismantle it, Eve jammed her hands in her pockets.
“So he watched—more personal. He had to feel it when Rossi kicked at the privacy window. Knew what was happening, but he needed to see it, and to hear it. Or have the record for his client to see, to hear.”
“Proof for the balance of payment?”
“Maybe. Could be that.”
Accepting she couldn’t make the sweepers work faster by watching, Eve turned away and started down the corridor.
“But that smirk, Peabody? I can see a pro holding up the card if that was part of the deal. But the smirk? You don’t pay for that. Personal,” she said again. “And I don’t recognize the face. Let’s find out if EDD hit a match. I want this bastard’s name.”
Back at Central, she had Peabody go back to digging into the victim’s background. And she went straight to EDD.
Even the crazed mix of colors, patterns, movement couldn’t compete with Jenkinson’s choice of tie today. She saw McNab, skinny hips rocking in a pair of baggies striped in red, blue, yellow, and orange. His red-streaked tail of blond hair bounced on the back of a red T-shirt with a full moon floating on the back.
The moon had a grinning face with one eye closed in a knowing wink.
She started toward his station when Callendar waylaid her.
Callendar’s bibbed baggies hit a green you might get if you fertilized your lawn with plutonium. She’d cut her hair into a kind of wedge. One side ink black, the other plutonium green.
Eve thought: Why? Then let it go.
“We haven’t hit. McNab’s trying searches with different hairstyles, colors, bald. I’m doing dead guys, in case he tried that angle. Nothing’s hit.”
“Okay.”
“I’m thinking a pro who keeps it down low enough wouldn’t hit. But the card he left on the body sure as hell isn’t down low. So puzzlement. We could still hit,” she added. “We’re all over it and back again twice.”
“Thanks. I’ll let you get back again twice.”
As she started out, Feeney came to his office door, waved her in.
In contrast with his unit, he wore brown, a wrinkled shit-brown jacket and pants, a tie the color of shit that had dried out after a few weeks in the sun, with a shirt of sad beige.
She found it comforting.
His wiry ginger hair exploded on his head. His baggy basset hound eyes studied her face.
“We’re working it.”
“I know.”
“I got a program running in here. Not that the kids don’t know what they’re doing.”
“Callendar’s running dead people.”
“Cover the bases. You got COD yet?”
“Yeah. Not poison—or not the usual gulp down some wine and die. He was gassed.”
Frowning, Feeney leaned back on his desk. “In the limo?”
“No question where, and now no question how. Sweepers found a canister of it. In the ceiling, which meant removing the ceiling, installing the canister so it would go through the AC vents, the air vents. Replacing the ceiling.”
“Lot of work. Lots easier ways to get the job done. He’s a poser.”
“Yeah.”
Since he was there, the man who’d trained her, taken her into Homicide, made her his partner, she pulled out her ’link.
“Check this.”
She showed him the killer holding up the fake cop card and smirking.
“Arrogant bastard poser.”
“He installed a remote on the canister, so he could release the gas once Rossi was in and secured. And eyes and ears. He could watch him die on the in-dash.”
Nodding, Feeney snagged a couple of candied almonds from the crooked bowl on his desk. “Making sure, maybe. More likely enjoying the show. You gotta connect somewhere. Does Roarke know Rossi?”
He might’ve been captain of EDD, but Feeney still thought like a murder cop.
“Not offhand. He’s checking.”
“Something’s gotta be there. Or the asshole wants notoriety. Get the Icove cop, the Red Horse cop on the chase.”
“Shit. Just shit.”
Now he smiled. “It’s a damn good vid. The wife’s reading Nadine’s new book. She’s liking it. Could be as simple and stupid as that. Figuring he’ll get himself in a book or vid.”
“Yeah, yeah. I’m going to check with Nadine, see if he’s contacted her or tried to.”
“She’d let you know if he had.”
“She would, but—”
“Cover those bases. What kind of gas?”
“Something Dickhead called phosphine. Colorless,” she began.
“Now, that’s something I haven’t heard of in a hell of a time.”
“You know what it is?”
“Got banned right after the Urbans over here—pretty sure. And mostly because some hotheads, mostly on the other side, used it here and there. Killed themselves as often as not. Bioweapons, supposed to be off the table. But you’ll have hotheads.”
“The head sweeper said the canister they found was dated 2024.”
“Yeah, that was the thick of it. An old canister.” Considering, Feeney picked up the bowl, offered it to Eve.
She just shook her head.
“Might be stockpiles somewhere. Not supposed to be, but not supposed to don’t mean dick. Military hordes. The just-in-case crap. But… They got better, more efficient shit like that. It’s old-school.”
“Rossi was almost eighty, and he did some tech work for the Underground in Europe.”
“Old-school. Might be something to look at.”
“And I will.”
“You do that, and we’ll keep running. If we hit, you’ll be the first.”
Eve left, and thought Feeney knew as well as she did if they hadn’t hit by now, the odds dwindled.
She started to catch a glide when her comm signaled with an order to report to the commander’s office.
Word got around, she thought as she changed direction. And Whitney might sit behind a desk, but he had his ear to the ground.
When she arrived, Whitney’s admin waved her straight into the office.
Whitney didn’t sit behind his desk, but stood at the windows with his sweeping view of the city he served. Broad-shouldered in a slate-gray suit, his hands clasped behind his back, he only nodded when Eve said, “Commander.”
“Part of being a cop is finding yourself a target. Or being taunted. And still, I dislike when one of my cops finds themselves in that position.”
He turned then, his wide, dark face set, his dark eyes hard.
“Phosphine.”
“Yes, sir. Berenski identified the substance. Spooner and her team—”
“I’ve been in contact with both.”
“Yes, sir.”
“What do you know, Lieutenant?”
“The victim was an Italian citizen, married—long-term—four adult children, grandchildren. He retired a few years ago from the security company, Rome-based, where he worked since 2027. He has no criminal record, and hasn’t traveled to New York in over twenty years.
“Prior to his employment, he served as a cyber tech for the Underground in Europe. There’s little to no additional data on that.”
Thoughtfully, Whitney nodded. “Cyber techs were valuable tools, key players in the Urbans. If he was any good, and I assume so, he would have made sure there was little to no data. Even after the wars, some key players were targeted, some assassinated.”
“I believe his killer is a professional. Whether this is his personal mission or he’s working for someone, he’s a pro.”
“The card.”
“Not NYPSD issued, but close. The message might be cryptic, sir, but it’s still clear. Rossi was part of a group, and likely from his time during the Urbans, as the use of this particular gas indicates. Code name seems the most likely.”
“Agreed. Feeney had one.”
“Sir?”
“Unofficially. A lot of us who fought through that ended up with names. He was Hound. He could always catch the scent. God, we were young.”
She caught a wistfulness, rarely heard, in Whitney’s voice.
“Young and fearless. In any case, that sort of name was common enough.”
“If it has to do with the Urbans, Commander, it’s a long time to wait.”
“A very long time. People scatter. Feeney and I stayed in New York, on the job, but people scatter.”
“Rossi didn’t. His killer knew where to find him, and what to say to get him here. An oath, he told his wife he’d taken an oath. And that might also connect to the Urbans.
“People went to prison,” she added, “some for a long time.”
“They did. But many sentences were commuted in the forties. It’s something to look at.”
“Three others—according to the message—are dead already. Fawn, Hawk, Rabbit. Rossi might not have been the first, just the latest. I’ll run like crimes. He may have used the same method, but—”
“He may tailor his kill to the victim,” Whitney concluded.
“Yes, sir. Or, it’s been a lot of years. And it was war. So the others maybe died in the wars, or from natural causes since. Without names…”
“And the widow?”
“I don’t think he told her anything, or as little as possible.”
“That wouldn’t be unusual. He was older, had family. He’d spare them the details to protect them, and himself. I want daily updates on this one, Dallas. If he has a stockpile of that gas in the city, we need to find him. Find it.”
“Understood. His widow is on her way here. I’ll talk to her again. She may know something she doesn’t understand she knows.”
“Keep me updated, and watch your six.”
“Yes, sir, I’ll do both.” She walked to the door, then decided not to resist. “Did you have a code name, Commander?”
He smiled and meant it. “Lightning. I could move fast in those days.”
She didn’t know war, she thought as she worked her way back to Homicide.
She knew battle and the risks of it, understood tactics, strategy, sacrifice, and blood spilled.
But she didn’t know war.
However long ago it had been, Feeney did, Whitney did. They’d lived it and survived it. They’d built their lives, their families, their careers despite it.
Maybe, in some ways, because of it.
Now she wondered, however long ago it had been, if Giovanni Rossi, who’d lived it, survived it, building his life, family, career because of or despite it, was yet another victim of war.