“He’s with the medical examiner now. I’ll contact you as soon as you’re cleared for that. Do you have someone who can go with you?”
“I’ll go with her. No, Lissy, I’ll go with you,” Elizabeth insisted when Lissette teared up again and shook her head. “You just sit for a minute while I walk Lieutenant Dallas and Detective Peabody out. Sit right here, I’ll just be a minute.”
She moved quickly, and purposefully, not stopping until they’d reached an intersection in the maze. “How was Craig murdered?”
“I didn’t say he was.”
Elizabeth turned, looked dead into Eve’s eyes. “I know who you are. I keep up with who’s who in New York. Lieutenant Eve Dallas, Homicide.”
“I don’t have any information to give you at this time. Mr. Foster’s death is under investigation.”
“That’s bullshit. Just bullshit. That girl just lost the love of her life. Like that!” Elizabeth snapped her fingers. “She needs answers.”
“She’ll have them, as soon as I do. How well did you know him?”
“I met him a number of times. He’d come in every now and then, and Lissy would bring him to company parties and events. Sweet boy. Dopey in love. Bright. He struck me as bright, like Lissy is. Two bright young people getting started with their life, their careers. You’re bright, too, from everything I’ve read, heard, or seen of you. You get those answers for Lissy. You get her that much to hold on to.”
“That’s the idea.”
3
EVE LOOKED TO FIND THE FIRST OF THOSE ANSWERS at the morgue. The air always smelled just a little too sweet there, like a careless whore who’d used perfume instead of soap to disguise some unpleasant personal odor. Tiles-floor and walls-were an unrelieved white, pristine and sterile.
There was a vending alcove where staff or visitors could order their choice of refreshment, though Eve imagined many who passed by would prefer something stronger than the muddy soy coffee or sparkling soft drinks.
She strode down the white-tiled corridor where, behind thick doors, death lay in sealed drawers or on slabs waiting for the right questions to be asked.
She pushed through the doors of an autopsy room to see Chief Medical Examiner Morris already at work to the wicked rhythm of what she thought might be Dixieland jazz. His sealed hands were bloody to the wrists as he lifted Craig Foster’s liver from his body to the scale.
“Ah, why don’t I go score you a Pepsi.” Peabody was already taking a step back. “Thirsty work. Be right back.”
Ignoring her, Eve continued into the room. Morris glanced up, his eyes behind his microgoggles canny and faintly amused. “She still queezes when I’m cutting.”
“Some never get past it.” When had she? Eve wondered. Too long ago to remember. “You’re getting to him quickly. Appreciate it.”
“I always enjoy working on your dead, and feel you enjoy me having my hands in them. What’s wrong with us?”
“It’s a sick old world. How about the tox?”
“Music off,” he ordered. “I assumed you’d want that straight away, and put a red flag on it. Still snowing?”
“Yeah, it’s crap out there.”
“Personally, I enjoy the snow.” He worked smoothly, weighing the liver, taking a small sample of it. He wore a sleek black suit under his protective smock, with a silver shirt that shimmered as he moved. His dark hair was in one tightly coiled braid, looped at the neck and twined with silver cord.
Eve had often wondered how he managed it.
“Want a look?” He put the sample on a slide under his scope, gestured to the screen. “The tox confirms poisoning. Ricin, very concentrated, very lethal. Very quick in this case.”
“Ricin? That’s from beans or something, right?”
“And you win the trip for two to Puerto Vallarta. Castor beans, to be precise. Ricin’s made from the mash after processing. It was used as a laxative once upon a time.”
She thought of the state of the body, the crime scene. “It sure as hell worked.”
“Superbly. His liver and kidneys failed, and there was internal bleeding. He’d have had severe cramping, rapid heartbeat, nausea, very likely seizures.” Morris studied the screen as Eve did. “Ricin dust was used-and is still used on occasion-in bioterrorism. Injection of ricin was a favored assassination method before we discovered handier ways.”
“Your all-purpose poison.”
“Very versatile. The lab will process, but I can tell you it appears he drank it-in his hot chocolate.”
“His wife made the chocolate.”
“Ah. I love domestically inclined females.”
“I don’t see her for it. Married a handful of months, no obvious motive. And she copped to making it without a blink.”
“Marriages, even new ones, can be a terrorist camp.”
“Damn right, but she’s not popping for me. Yet anyway.”
“Good-looking young man,” Morris commented. “Athletic build and, I’d say, a harmonic homogeny of races.”
“Harmonic homogeny.” Eve shook her head. “You kill me. He was a teacher-history, private school, Upper West Side. Left his lunch in his classroom, habitually. Ate at his desk Mondays, habitually. No security cameras in the classrooms or corridors. Private schools aren’t required to have them. Wouldn’t have been hard for anybody to doctor his drink. What we’re missing at this point is why anyone would. Guy’s coming off as a nice, harmless mensch.”
“Someone, I’d say, didn’t like your mensch. This kind of poisoning isn’t just lethal, it’s extremely painful.” Hands deft as a violinist’s, Morris removed the heart. “He didn’t live long after he ingested it, but while he did, he suffered a great deal.”
She looked back at the body. What did you do, Craig, to piss somebody off this much? “His wife wants to see him. She’s notifying his parents, and I assume they will, too.”
“After nine this evening. I’ll have him prepared for viewing.”
“I’ll let them know.” She frowned back at Morris. “Where the hell do you get castor beans?”
He only smiled. “I’m sure you’ll find out.”
Peabody, slightly shamefaced, loitered by Vending. “Before you say anything, here’s a nice cold tube of Pepsi. And I put my time to good use. I’ve started runs on the staff members at Sarah Childand verified life insurance policies on both the vic and his wife. Vic gets his through work bennies. Fifty thousand, with the wife as beneficiary.”
“Pretty piddly motive.” Eve took the tube, pleased that it was, indeed, nice and cold. “We’ll hit their financials, see if she had any major debts. Maybe she’s the gambler, or the one with an illegals habit.”
“But you don’t think so.”
“No, I don’t think so.” Eve cracked the tube, swigged as they walked. “Unless there’s more money somewhere, the fifty doesn’t do it for me. And if there was marital discord, let’s say, a spouse generally goes for contact, for the personal. This was nasty, but remote. He pissed somebody off.”
Peabody rewound her scarf, replaced her gloves as they hit the doors and the cold exploded like an ice boomer. “Rejected lover, colleagues in competition.”
“We’ll want to look closer at Mirri Hallywell.”
“Parents of a student who he disciplined, or who wasn’t doing well in his class.”
“Jesus.” Eve jammed her hands in her pockets, and discovered she’d lost yet another pair of gloves. “Who kills because their kid gets a big doughnut in a history class?”
“Parents are weird and dangerous creatures. And I worked up another theory. Maybe it was a mistake.”
“It was ricin poisoning, and Morris’s take is that the dose was intense and quickly lethal.”
“See, what I mean is, maybe one of his students was upset with him.” Peabody mimed a sulky face. “I’ll fix that meanie Mr. Foster. Doctors his drink thinking he’ll maybe get sick. Oops.”
“Not entirely stupid.” They climbed into the vehicle, where both hissed out the breath the blustery cold had them holding.
“Jesus, Jesus, why is there February?” Eve demanded. “February should be eliminated altogether for the good of mankind.”