In Death 26 - Strangers in Death

do it this morning.”
    “That might be a good thing. Put your mind on that for a bit, let it rest on the other.”
    “Maybe. I told him some of them get by us. We can’t close them all. It burns my ass to think this one could get away from me.”
    Galahad bellied over an inch, two inches, his bicolored eyes fixed on Roarke’s plate. Roarke simply shifted his gaze, stared, and Galahad rolled onto his back to paw lazily at the air. “No one believes you’re innocent,” he said to the cat.
    “Everyone believes she is,” Eve murmured. “Hmm. What happens if somebody doesn’t?” Turning that over in her mind she ate her breakfast before Galahad made his next move.
     
    B efore her shift began, Eve sat in her office at Central with Baxter’s murder book on the Custer case. She studied the crime scene photos first, as if coming to it fresh, without the input of the ME, the sweepers, the investigator’s notes, the interviews.
    Somebody, she thought, had done a quick, hard number on one Ned Custer. The room itself looked like a typical sex flop. Cheap bed, sagging mattress where Christ knew what microscopic vermin partied in a variety of body fluids. Particleboard dresser, fly-spotted mirror, dull, yellowing floor, crappy paper drapes at the crappy little window. A bad joke of a bath with a rust-stained, wall-hung sink and a toilet where more vermin partied.
    The cliché of sex flops, she thought.
    What kind of man was Ned Custer, who needed to get his rocks off in an ugly little dump while the wife and kiddies waited at home?
    A pretty damn dead one. The slash across the throat went deep, went long. Sharp blade with some muscle behind it. And some height, she mused, checking the angle. Vic topped off at five-nine. The killer…Eve closed her eyes, put herself in the nasty room, put herself behind Custer. Had to be at least the same height, probably an inch or two taller.
    Tall for a woman then, but a lot of street whores went for high platforms and heels. Still, not a shortie.
    And no one who owned a delicate stomach. It took steel-lined to hack off a guy’s dick.
    The blood spatters and pools told the story clearly enough. The killer stepped out of the excuse for a bathroom, attacked the victim from behind. One fast slash. No hesitation. Had to get some backsplash from that kind of blood jet. More blood from the homemade castration. With no blood in the drains, the killer either exited carting the blood—no trail, so unlikely—or came out of the bathroom sealed and protected.
    Not a street whore. Not even one pumped up on illegals. Too prepared, too vicious. A whore wants to roll a mark, maybe she sticks him, but more likely she gets herself a zapper off the black market, immobilizes and cops his money and jewelry. Walks away.
    Custer was dead before he walked in that room, he just didn’t know it. Would anyone have done? she wondered. Or was it target specific?
    She dug deeper, shooting out a message for Baxter and Trueheart to report to her when they came on shift. And she made her own notes.
    She grunted at the tap on her doorjamb, then glanced up at Trueheart in his spotless uniform. “You wanted to see me, Lieutenant.”
    “Yeah. Where’s Baxter?”
    “He’s not in yet. I, um, try to get in a little before shift when I can, to look over yesterday’s work.”
    “Uh-huh.” Eager beaver, she mused. Young but steady, with a good eye. And he’d lost a lot of the green he’d had on him when she’d first seen him on scooper detail. “I’ve been looking over the Custer murder book. You and Baxter were thorough. How many cases have you caught since?”
    “Nine,” he said immediately. “Two open. Plus Custer, so that’s three open.”
    “What’s your take on this one?”
    “The vic led a dangerous kind of life, Lieutenant. He cruised the bars and the red lights, picked up his dates from low-level LCs. We talked to a lot of working girls and found a couple who remembered him. They, ah, said he liked it fast and rough—and ah, cheap.”
    “I see that. You covered the area of the crime scene, did the door to doors, hit the bars, the working girls.”
    “Nobody remembers who he went off with that night, other than a couple saying he might’ve been hooked up with a redhead. Short, straight hair—or short curly hair, depending on the wit. You know how it is.”
    “Yeah.”
    “It’s not the kind of area where people remember. The guy working the desk on the flop said maybe he’d seen her