It served tidbits like organic squash blossoms and goat cheese truffles. She couldn’t see ever being hungry enough to put either in her mouth.
When she said so, outside the bar, Peabody shook her head.
“They’re pretty terrific, and the pancetta crisps are totally mag. You could make a meal.”
“You make a meal. Later. Go into Central, check out the exes, update Detective Norman, and get me a time slot with Mira. I’m going to walk the vic’s route and back before I hit the morgue.”
They split off, and Eve walked in the not-quite-warm late-spring sunshine. She saw some tourists, who never seemed to know how to actually walk on a sidewalk, several kids and babies in various pushcart things, a man walking a pair of tiny, hairless dogs who could’ve passed for large rats.
They yip-yip-yipped, darting at her boots as she passed, and the man scolded them in sugary tones.
“Now, now, Sugar and Spice, be good doggies.”
She saw well-maintained homes, tidy buildings, busy shops, restaurants with patrons sitting outside in the spring air sipping drinks or having lunch.
A few homes had front yards separated from the pedestrians by fences more ornamental than functional. Flowers bloomed or spilled out of pots on doorsteps. A team of three efficiently washed the windows on a duplex. A woman carrying a pair of market bags hurried up to the door of another.
Traffic streamed by, almost pleasantly.
It was hard to beat New York in the spring. Nothing could beat it for her at any time, but spring added some shine.
She stopped in front of the victim’s apartment again. Roy still had the privacy screens engaged. In the apartment below his, a woman sat on the windowsill, busily washing the window.
It seemed to be the day for it.
As she started back, she decided a decent vehicle parked along the route wouldn’t cause attention. A beater, now, would, but a decent ride, a clean one, who’d notice?
And the vic’s block—especially the vic’s block—would be quiet at night. Almost entirely residential, and the restaurants would be shuttered, the bakery and deli closed.
A five-minute walk at night, a couple minutes more if she’d taken it at a stroll. Less if she’d jogged it.
Home base, familiar. No worries.
And in seconds—it would only have taken seconds—everything changed.
And all because, Eve was sure of it, she’d looked just enough like someone else.
Bad Mommy.
3
Eve walked the long white tunnel of the morgue, bootsteps echoing. Her thoughts focused on the victim, and that last walk toward home. Odds were she’d been at least a little tired, and likely moving briskly.
Young, in familiar territory, heading home in the night quiet of a good neighborhood.
An easy mark for someone with a plan in place.
The questions remained: Why the plan? Why her?
She pushed through one of the doors to Morris’s domain and saw he had his sealed hands inside the chest cavity of her victim.
Music murmured, something with a lot of low-note brass and a woman singing about love lost.
He looked up, smiled. “An early start on the day for you, and a very early end for her.”
He wore a blue suit, a bold color that told her his mood hit high. He’d matched it with a shirt the color of ripe pears and a tie that blended the two tones in subtle swirls. He’d braided his long, dark hair in some complicated pattern that formed a coil at the back of his neck.
He weighed an internal organ with easy efficiency.
Eve moved closer, looked down on the body, naked and open now.
“I think her end, in a lot of ways, happened the night of May twenty-eighth.”
“The lacerations and contusions on the wrist and ankle. Some would meet that date, some are more recent. Shackled, and the cuffs would be an inch and three-quarters wide. Some other minor contusions, as you can see—the other ankle, the knees, elbows.”
“The other ankle, from banging into the shackle.”
“Yes. And the others, minor, as I said. Not consistent with violence. He didn’t beat her, and he didn’t rape her. There’s no sign of sexual assault, or consensual sex, not recent.”
Morris walked over to a sink to rinse the blood off his hands. “She’s very clean. Her hair, her body, recently and thoroughly washed—her hair styled. The makeup, as you can see, very carefully applied.”
“I think he had an image, and she was like a doll, you know?”
With a nod, Morris walked to his mini-friggie, took out a tube of Pepsi for both of them. “I do, and had the same thought. She was a form, and he used that form to create the image he wanted. Both the makeup and hairstyle are dated, as was the clothing.”