In Death 01 - Naked in Death

building first, fifty floors of gleaming metal that knifed into the sky from a hilt of concrete. She was propositioned twice before she reached the door.
    Since this five-block area of Broadway was affectionately termed Prostitute's Walk, she wasn't surprised. She flashed her badge for the uniform guarding the entrance.
    "Lieutenant Dallas."
    "Yes, sir." He skimmed his official compu-seal over the door to keep out the curious, then led the way to the bank of elevators. "Eighteenth floor," he said when the doors swished shut behind them.
    "Fill me in, officer." Eve switched on her recorder and waited.
    "I wasn't first on the scene, lieutenant. Whatever happened upstairs is being kept upstairs. There's a badge inside waiting for you. We have a Homicide, and a Code Five in number Eighteen-oh-three."
    "Who called it in?"
    "I don't have that information."
    He stayed where he was when the elevator opened. Eve stepped out and was alone in a narrow hallway. Security cameras tilted down at her and her feet were almost soundless on the worn nap of the carpet as she approached 1803. Ignoring the handplate, she announced herself, holding her badge up to eye level for the peep cam until the door opened.
    "Dallas."
    "Feeney." She smiled, pleased to see a familiar face. Ryan Feeney was an old friend and former partner who'd traded the street for a desk and a top level position in the Electronics Detection Division. "So, they're sending computer pluckers these days."
    "They wanted brass, and the best." His lips curved in his wide, rumpled face, but his eyes remained sober. He was a small, stubby man with small, stubby hands and rust-colored hair. "You look beat."
    "Rough night."
    "So I heard." He offered her one of the sugared nuts from the bag he habitually carried, studying her, and measuring if she was up to what was waiting in the bedroom beyond.
    She was young for her rank, barely thirty, with wide brown eyes that had never had a chance to be naive. Her doe-brown hair was cropped short, for convenience rather than style, but suited her triangular face with its razor-edge cheekbones and slight dent in the chin.
    She was tall, rangy, with a tendency to look thin, but Feeney knew there were solid muscles beneath the leather jacket. More, there was a brain, and a heart.
    "This one's going to be touchy, Dallas."
    "I picked that up already. Who's the victim?"
    "Sharon DeBlass, granddaughter of Senator DeBlass."
    Neither meant anything to her. "Politics isn't my forte, Feeney."
    "The gentleman from Virginia, extreme right, old money. The granddaughter took a sharp left a few years back, moved to New York, and became a licensed companion."
    "She was a hooker." Dallas glanced around the apartment. It was furnished in obsessive modern -- glass and thin chrome, signed holograms on the walls, recessed bar in bold red. The wide mood screen behind the bar bled with mixing and merging shapes and colors in cool pastels.
    Neat as a virgin, Eve mused, and cold as a whore. "No surprise, given her choice of real estate."
    "Politics makes it delicate. Victim was twenty-four, Caucasian female. She bought it in bed."
    Eve only lifted a brow. "Seems poetic, since she'd been bought there. How'd she die?"
    "That's the next problem. I want you to see for yourself."
    As they crossed the room, each took out a slim container, sprayed their hands front and back to seal in oils and fingerprints. At the doorway, Eve sprayed the bottom of her boots to slicken them so that she would pick up no fibers, stray hairs, or skin.
    Eve was already wary. Under normal circumstances there would have been two other investigators on a homicide scene, with recorders for sound and pictures. Forensics would have been waiting with their usual snarly impatience to sweep the scene.
    The fact that only Feeney had been assigned with her meant that there were a lot of eggshells to be walked over.
    "Security cameras in the lobby, elevator, and hallways," Eve commented.
    "I've already tagged the discs." Feeney opened the bedroom door and let her enter first.
    It wasn't pretty. Death rarely was a peaceful, religious experience to Eve's mind. It was the nasty end, indifferent to saint and sinner. But this was shocking, like a stage deliberately set to offend.
    The bed was huge, slicked with what appeared to be genuine satin sheets the color of ripe peaches. Small, soft focused spotlights were trained on its center where the naked woman was cupped in the gentle dip of the floating