Page 70 of Thankless in Death

“Damn right you will. And one mistake? Just one? He loses a paw, you lose a finger.”

He dumped the dog in her lap where Snuffy whimpered at her.

Reinhold sat at the desk, cracked his knuckles. “Let’s get started!”

EVE WENT STRAIGHT TO THE MORGUE. NO need that she could see to pull Peabody in, not for this. The investigation was better served with her partner checking out the shops they knew Reinhold had visited, and at her desk, tracking down pawnbrokers who might be slow—or reluctant—to report the purchase of items sold by a murderer.

She traveled the white tunnel as she had the day before, and thought, yeah, it was past time for luck to turn.

She found Morris with Lori Nuccio. As he often did, he’d chosen music to suit either his mood or the victim. This was light, kind of breezy, with a high, clear female voice singing hopefully about what lay behind the bend in the road.

He looked up from his work when Eve entered, ordered the music to low volume. “I’d hoped not to see you again quite so soon.”

“Same here,” she said as she joined him.

“Young. Very pretty.”

“Hard to tell now, after he messed her up.”

Morris shook his head. “No, not really. Her bone structure, coloring. There’s an ugliness to what he did here, but she shows through it.”

“She’d like to know that.” Eve lifted her shoulders, let them fall at Morris’s arched brows. “You know how it is. They get in your head, and you feel like you know.”

“Yes.”

“She mattered to him, in his own twisted way. He hated her for that. He didn’t rape her.”

“No,” Morris confirmed. “There was no sexual activity, consensual or forced.”

“He might go there with another, if he gets the chance. He orgasmed during the kill, so now he has a sexual connection—a bonus round.”

“This one’s difficult for you.”

“I don’t know why this one, especially, except we kept missing her. It’s like everything was weighted on his side. We’re trying to contact her, her neighbor’s looking out for her, and still, he gets in, does this, walks away.”

Studying the body as he did, Eve hooked her thumbs in her front pockets. “She was living cheap, you know? Padded crates, stringed beads for curtains in this little box apartment. But she kept it nice, kept herself nice, worked hard, had friends, had family. He took it all because she wouldn’t let him sponge off her anymore, do nothing anymore. Her parents are wrecked.”

She paused, pinched the bridge of her nose as if to release tension. “They told me her older sister and her spouse, their baby were all in from Ohio for Thanksgiving. They were having a big family dinner, and this one here was getting some fancy dish from the restaurant where she works.

“I don’t know why they told me all that. Sometimes they tell you things because they don’t have anything else.”

“Death’s cruel. Crueler yet at times when family traditionally gathers.”

“Yeah. And about that. They’re going to want to come in, see her. I don’t know how much you can do, considering, but they shouldn’t see her like this.”

“Don’t worry.” He touched a hand briefly to Eve’s arm. “We’ll take care of her, and them.”

“Okay. Good. So.” She had to put it away, out of her head, and do her job. “The way it pieces together, he had keys, or he’d made copies. He went in when the neighbor went out. We have him sitting in a café across the street where he had a good view of the building. It was the vic’s regular day off, and from statements she usually went out, ran errands, shopped, hooked up with a friend. When he saw the chance he went in. He’d been shopping. We’ve got him coming and going on his hotel security cams. He bought the tape, the cord. And I’m thinking another baseball bat.”

“I’d agree with that. The head injury’s consistent with a bat. It would have knocked her unconscious, but it wasn’t a killing blow.”

“Or meant to be,” Eve added.

“He used good quality cord. Strong and pliable. As you see from the ligature marks, he tied it as tightly as possible, much more than necessary to restrain her. She struggled, but it didn’t help her. The tape, also good quality. She left teeth marks and blood inside. Some of that would be from the lip, opened from a blow. He struck her with his fist.”

Morris balled his own. “In the face, in the abdomen, in the right side. There’s slight bruising around her nose, and a deeper bruising on the nipple. From pinching.”

“I missed the nose.”