In Death 26 - Strangers in Death

into one of her detectives.
    “Make a hole, Baxter.”
    “Need a sec.”
    “Then fall in line.” She moved through to her office with its single, stingy window, battered desk, and sagging visitor’s chair. And hit the AutoChef for coffee.
    Taking the first slug, she studied Baxter over the rim. He was slick, savvy, and smart enough to wait to have his say until she’d kicked in some caffeine. “What’s your deal?”
    “Case I caught about a couple months ago, it’s stalled.”
    “Refresh me.”
    “Guy gets his throat slashed and his works sliced off in a rent-by-the-hour flop down on Avenue D.”
    “Yeah.” She flipped through the files in her head. “Came in with a woman nobody remembers, and nobody remembers seeing said woman leaving.”
    “Maid service, and I use the term loosely, found him the next morning. Custer, Ned, age thirty-eight, worked in building maintenance for an office building downtown. Guy left a wife and two kids.”
    “Cherchez la femme,” Eve said, thinking of Peabody’s comment that morning.
    “I’ve been cherchez ing the damn femme. Got zip. Nobody remembers her—not clearly. We dug, found the bar—using that term loosely, too, where they hooked up, but other than her being a redhead with a sense she was a pro, nobody can paint her picture. Guy was a player. A little pushing with his friends and associates got that much. He screwed around regular, cruised bars and clubs once or twice a week to score—usually paying for it. The kid and I,” he continued, speaking of his aide, Officer Troy Trueheart, “we’ve put in hours trolling dumps, dives, and dens of iniquity. We’re stalled, Dallas. It’s going stone-cold.”
    “What about the wife? Did she know he was dipping strange?”
    “Yeah.” Baxter blew out a breath. “It didn’t take more than a poke to get her to cop to it. And to admit they fought about it. He tuned her up now and then, too. She copped to that, and neighbors verified.”
    “Maybe she should’ve cut his dick off.”
    “Yeah, yeah, women always go for the jewels. She didn’t though. When he didn’t come home by midnight, she tried his ’link, left messages until nearly three. TOD was about one-thirty, and we’ve got her tagging him from her home unit at one-fifteen, again at one-forty. Pissed off, crying, and nowhere near Avenue D. She’s better off, seems to me. But I hate to lose one.”
    “Hit the flop again, push the street LCs who use it, or work the bars in the neighborhood. How about transpo?”
    “No cabs letting off fares on that block, and nothing popped on the underground surveillance. We figured they hoofed it, and that’s how we zeroed in on the bar.”
    “Make the rounds again, get meaner. Any chance he was into something nastier than banging strange?”
    “Nothing’s popped. Blue-collar asshole, pissing it away on cheap brew and loose women with a nice wife and a couple of cute kids at home. The thing is, Dallas, it was a cold kill. One slice.” Baxter mimed cutting his own throat. “From behind. Then the bastard drops, but he’s still alive, according to the ME, when she cuts off his dick. She had to be freaking covered with blood, but there’s no trail, not out the door, not out the window and fire escape. Not a drop.”
    “Cleaned up after.”
    “No blood in the sink, no trace in the tap, the pipes. It reads like she came prepared, like she maybe sealed up, or changed. Like she had this in mind from the jump. I’ve knocked on women he’s known to have dicked around with, who might be pissed off, but that’s nowhere.”
    “Give it another push. I’ll take a look at the file as soon as I get a chance. Fresh eyes.”
    “Appreciate that.”
    When he left, Eve stepped over to her desk. Her ’link indicated she had eight messages. A chunk of them, she knew, would be from media hounds. A rich guy buys it in his own home, it started the trickle that often became a flood. And the details of how would leak, she knew that, too. Nobody’s finger was big enough to plug the hole in the dike when the flood was that juicy.
    “All clear?” Peabody asked from the doorway.
    “Yeah.”
    “Baxter wanted to talk about the Avenue D case? Trueheart’s run some of it by me,” Peabody continued. “Nothing’s gelling.”
    “They’ll go back around, work it again. What’ve you got for me?”
    “Benedict Forrest—whose mother really was eaten by a shark. Or severely chewed on by one. He was six at the time, and