Imitation in Death (3 page)

"She spoke to you recently, about her upgrade."

"Denied. She has-had-another year's probation. It's mandatory after her arrests and addiction. Her rehab went well, though I suspect she'd found a substitute for the Push she was hooked on."

"Vodka. Two bottles in her flop."

"Well. It's legal, but it violates her parole requirements for upgrade. Not that it matters now," Tressa rubbed her hands over her eyes and simply sighed. "Not that it matters," she repeated. "She couldn't think of anything but getting back uptown. Hated working the streets, but at the same time never considered, not seriously, any alternative profession."

"Did she have any regulars you know of?"

"No. She once had quite an extensive client list, exclusive men and women. She was licensed for both. But, to my knowledge, no one followed her downtown. I believe she would've told me, as it would've boosted her ego."

"Her supplier?"

"She wouldn't give a name, not even to me. But she swore there had been no contact since her release. I believed her."

"In your opinion, did she hold back the name because she was afraid?"

"In mine, she considered it a matter of ethics. She'd been an LC -nearly half her life. A good LC is discreet and considers her clients' privacy sacred, much as a doctor or a priest. She considered this along the same lines. I suspect her supplier was also a client, but that's just a hunch."

"She gave no indication to you during your last sessions that she was concerned, worried, afraid of anything or anyone?"

"No. Just impatient to get her old life back."

"How often did she come in?"

"Every two weeks, per her parole requirements. She never missed. She had her regular medicals, was always available for random testing. She was cooperative in every way. Lieutenant, she was an average woman, a little lost and out of her element. She was not street savvy as she'd been accustomed to a more select clientele and routine. She enjoyed nice things, worried about her appearance, complained about the rate restrictions at her license level. She didn't socialize any longer because she was embarrassed by her circumstances, and because she felt those in her current economic circle were beneath her."

Tressa pressed her fingers to her lips a moment. "I'm sorry. I'm trying not to be upset, not to personalize it, but I can't help it. One of the reasons I was no good out there. I liked her, and wanted to help her. I don't know who could've done this to her. Just another random act, on one of the weaker. Just a whore, after all."

Her voice threatened to break, so she cleared her throat, drew air through her nose. "A lot of people still think that way, you and I both know it. They come to me beaten and misused, humiliated and battered. Some give it up, some handle themselves, some rise to a different level and live almost like royalty. And some are tossed into the gutter. It's a dangerous profession. Cops, emergency and health workers, prostitutes. Dangerous professions with a high mortality rate.

"She wanted her old life back," Tressa said. "And it killed her

Chapter 2

'She stopped by the morgue. It was another chance, Eve thought, for the victim to tell her something. Without any real friends, known enemies, associates, family, Jacie Wooton was presenting a picture of a solitary woman in a physical contact occupation. One who considered her body her greatest asset and had chosen to use it to attain the good life.

Eve needed to find out what that body would tell her about the killer.

Halfway down the corridor of the dead house, Eve paused. "Find a seat," she told Peabody. "I want you to contact and harass the lab guys. Plead, whine, threaten, whatever works, but push them on tracking the stationery."

"I can handle it. Going in. I'm not going to lose it again."

She was already pale, Eve noted. Already seeing it once more-the alley, the blood, the gore. She'd stand up, Eve was sure of it, but at a price. The price didn't have to be paid, not here and now.

"I'm not saying you can't handle it; I'm saying I need the source of the stationery. The killer leaves something behind,.we follow up on it. Find a seat, do the job."

Without giving Peabody a chance to debate, Eve strode down the hall and through the double doors where the body was waiting.

She'd expected Morris, the chief medical examiner, to take this one, and wasn't disappointed. He worked alone, as he often did, suited up in clear protective gear over a blue tunic and skin-pants.

His long hair was corded back in a shiny ponytail and covered with a cap to prevent contamination of the body. There was a medallion, something in silver with a deep red stone around his neck. His hands were bloody, and his handsome, somewhat exotic face set in stone.

He often played music while he worked, but today the room was silent but for the quiet hum of machines and the spooky whirl of his laser scalpel.

"Every now and then," he said without looking up, "I see something in here that goes beyond. Beyond the human. And we know, don't we, Dallas, that the human has an amazing capacity for cruelty to its own species? But every once in a while, I see something that takes even that one hideous step beyond."

"The throat wound killed her."

"Small mercy." Understanding, he lifted his head. His eyes behind his goggles didn't smile, as they usually did, nor did they show, any spark of fascination with his work. "She wouldn't have felt the rest that was done to her, wouldn't have known. She was comfortably dead before he butchered her."

"Was it butchery?"

"How would you define it?" He tossed, the scalpel in a tray, gestured-with one bloody hand over the mutilated body. "How the hell would you define this?"

"I don't have the words. I don't think there are any. Vicious isn't enough. Evil doesn't cover it, not really. I can't get philosophical now, Morris. That won't help her. I need to know, did he know what he was doing, or was it a hack job?"

He was breathing too fast. To steady himself, Moms yanked off his goggles, his cap, then strode over to wash the sealant and blood from his hands.

"He knew. The cuts were precise. No hesitation, no wasted motions." He stepped to a friggie, took out two bottles of water. After tossing one to Eve, he drank deeply. "Our killer knows how to color inside the lines."

"Sorry?"

"Your deprived childhood continues to fascinate me.- I need to sit a minute." He did so, scrubbed the heel of one hand between his eyebrows, up to his hairline. `This one got to me. You can't predict when or how it might happen. With all that comes through here, day after day,' this forty-one year-old woman, with her home job pedicure and the bunion on her left foot got to me."

She wasn't sure how to handle him in this mood. Going with instinct, Eve dragged over a chair, sat beside him, sipped water. He hadn't turned the recorder off, she thought. It would be up to him whether he edited it or not.

"You need a vacation, Morris."

"I hear that." He laughed a little. "I was due to leave tomorrow. Two weeks in Aruba. Sun, sea, naked women the sort who're still breathing-and a great deal of alcohol consumed out of coconut shells."

"Go."

He shook his head. "I've postponed. I want to see this one through." He looked over at her now. "Mere are some you have to see through. I knew as soon as I saw her, what had been done to her, I wouldn't be sitting on a beach tomorrow."

"I could tell you you've got good people working for you here. People who'd take good care of her, and whoever else comes in over the next couple of weeks."

She sipped the water as she studied the husk of Jacie Wooton, laid bare on a slab in a cold room.

"I could tell you that I'm going to find the son of a bitch who did this to her, and build a case that ensures he'll pay for it. I could tell you all that, and all of it would be true. But I wouldn't go either." She rested her head back against the wall. "I wouldn't go."

He mirrored her position, head resting on the wall, legs kicked out. With Jacie Wooton's butchered body on the table a few feet in front of them.

And their silence, after a moment, became companionable.

"What the hell's wrong with us, Dallas?"

"Beats me."

He closed his eyes for a moment, knowing he was settling down again. "We love the dead." When she snorted, he grinned, eyes still, closed. "And not in a sick, boink the corpse sort of way, gutter-brain. Despite whoever they were when they were alive, we love them because they were cheated and misused. The ultimate underdogs."

"I guess we're getting philosophical anyway."

"Guess we are." He did something he rarely did. He touched her. Just a pat of his hand over the back of hers. But it was, Eve realized, a kind of intimacy. An affectionate contact between comrades, and more personal than any act the victim had ever exchanged with a client.

"They come to us," Morris continued, "from babies to the doddering old, and everything between. No matter who loved them in life, we're their most intimate companions in death. And sometimes, that intimacy reaches down inside us and braids our guts like cornrows. Ah, well."

"She didn't seem to have anybody, not really, in life. From the look I got at her place, the lack of-I guess you could say sentiment-she didn't want anybody in life. So... it's you and ;me now."

"Okay." He took-another drink, rose. "Okay." Setting the bottle aside,'he sealed his hands again, replaced his goggles. "I put a rush on the tox, for what it's worth. Liver shows some wear, alcohol abuse. But even with that, I've found no major damage or disease. Last meal of pasta about six hours premortem. She's had breast augmentation and an eye tuck, butt lift and some jaw sculpting. All good work."

"Recent?"

"No. Couple of years, at least on the ass job, and I'd judge that as the last maintenance."

"Fits. Her luck-took a turn, and she wouldn't've had the price of good body work in the last little while."

"Moving to the job most recently done on her: The killer used a thin, smooth-bladed knife, probably a scalpel for the throat cut, going left to right, downward stroke. From the angle, her chin was up, head back. He came in from behind, likely pulled her head back by her hair with his left hand, sliced with his right." Morris demonstrated, using both hands on an invisible form. "One stroke, severing the jugular."

"A lot of blood." Eve continued to study the body, but imagined Jacie Wooton alive and on her feet, face against the dingy wall of the alley. Then the jerk of the head, the quick shock of the pull, the bright pain and confusion. "Lots of gush and splash."

"A great deal. He got messy, even coming from behind. For the rest, it's one long incision." This Morris drew with a finger in the air. "Quickly, even economically done, I'd say. You can't call it neat, or surgical, but this wasn't his fast time. He's cut into flesh before. More than sims, in my opinion. He had to have dealt with flesh and blood before thus poor woman."

"Not surgical. Not a doctor then?"

"I wouldn't rule it out. He'd have been in a hurry, the light was poor, his own excitement, fear, arousal." Morris's exotic face mirrored his inner disgust. "Whatever drives this sort of... well, words fail me for once. Whatever drove him might very well have hampered his skill. He removed the female organs with, we'll say, dispatch. It's not possible to say if there was sexual contact before the removal. But from the time of death, the mutilation, there wouldn't have been time, for games as they were. done minutes apart''

"Would you peg him as a medical? MT, vet, nurse?" She paused, deliberately, cocked her head. "Pathologist?"

He gave Eve a small grin. "Possible, certainly. It took some considerable skill given the circumstances. But then again, he didn't have to concern himself about the patient's chances of survival. He needed some knowledge of anatomy, some knowledge of the tools he used on her. I would say he certainly studied, certainly practiced, but it may not have been with a medical license, and again may not have been with the goal of keeping the patient alive. I hear there was a note."

"Yeah. Addressed to me, which ensured I'd come on as primary."

"So he's made it personal."

"You could even say intimate."

"I'll have the test results and report to you as soon as I can. I want to run a few more, see if I can get a closer handle on the knives."

"Good. Take it easy, Morris."

"Oh, I just take it," he said as she started for the door. "Dallas? Thank you."

She glanced back. "Sure."

She gestured to Peabody as she headed down the corridor. "Tell me what -I want to know."

"The lab, after considerable brown-nosing by yours truly, was able to discern that the material used in the note and envelope is of a particular grade of bond. It's not even recycled, which not only shocks my Free-Ager heart, but means it had to be sold and manufactured outside of the United States and its territories. We have laws here."

Eve lifted her eyebrows as she walked back out into the heat. "I thought Free-Agers didn't believe in man-made laws of government interference in society."

"We do when it suits our purposes." Peabody slid into the car. "It's English. The paper was manufactured in Britain, and is available in only a handful of outlets around Europe."

"Not available in New York."

"No, sir. In fact, it's difficult to buy it through the Internet or mail order as we have unrecycled paper products on our banned list in this country."

"Mmm-hmm." Eve's brain clicked several steps ahead, but as Peabody was studying for her detective's exam, she thought it was a good pop-quiz question. "So how did it get from Europe to an alley in Chinatown?"

"Well, people smuggle all sorts of banned products into the States. Or use the black market. Or if you're traveling on another passport, touring or visiting the U.S., you're allowed a certain' number of personal possessions that aren't strictly kosher. You could even be a diplomat or something. But whatever, you'd have to pay the price, and it's high. That particular paper goes for twenty Euro dollars a pop. One sheet. The envelope's twelve."

"Lab boys tell you that?"