Page 57 of Obsession in Death

She pulled out her communicator. “Check with the diner on the twenty-seventh. No point moving the vehicle, and it’s just a couple blocks west. You can work off more double-chunk.”

“Don’t say the words! Even the words add to my ass.”

“Walk it off. I’m going to reach out to the uniforms from last night’s arrest.”

Eve leaned on the car, put a hail out to either Officer Rhodes or Officer Willis.

She spent the next ten minutes hunched against the cold, discussing the incident and Mason Tobias. When she spotted Peabody quick-walking back, pink coat flapping at her knees, she got into the car, hit the temp control, then started the engine.

“Alibi holds,” Peabody said. “Why does there have to be winter for so long? I got you a hammy pocket.”

“A what?”

“It’s fake ham and a non-dairy product pretending to be cheese smooshed inside a bread-like substance. I ate mine—low-cal version—on the way back. It could have been worse. Plus.” She dug into her pocket, pulled out a small, crinkly bag. “Soy chips. I can’t eat them after the you-know-what, but if you eat them and I have a couple it’s not really eating any.”

“Because you’re just going to hold them?”

“No, I’m going to eat them, but it’s not really eating them because they’re yours. No one with ten percent—max—body fat is allowed to question my logic. He worked his shift—straight through until eight. I’ve got a couple waitresses, a cook, and the manager vouching. Did you talk to the responding officers?”

“Both of them, and both felt Mason’s response last night—this morning, actually—was appropriate. They both know him, and have told him to mind his own in the past. They’ve busted him for trespassing when he followed a suspected bad guy into an apartment building. Cherry Pie’s a stripper, and I know that must be a shock. The bad guy in this case was some schmuck who tailed her from the club, wanting some free—and decided to rough her up, try for her purse.”

“Mason’s not our guy.”

“Doesn’t look like it.” But Eve glanced in the rearview after she pulled into traffic. “Still. He was calm, and controlled. If you cut out the sense he’d never do real violence, real crime, he hits a lot of the marks on Mira’s profile.”

She swung by the lab, more for form than expectations. And picking up nothing new, moved on to the morgue.

She spotted Morris in the tunnel, swiping a chart for one of the white coats. He wore a suit caught somewhere between red and orange—the boldest color she’d seen him wear since the death of Detective Coltraine, the woman he’d loved.

“Dallas, Peabody.” He gestured to Vending. “Can I buy you both some terrible coffee substitute?”

“Pass, thanks.”

“Is that hot chocolate anything remotely resembling hot chocolate?” Peabody wondered.

“It may inhabit the same continent, if not country.”

“I’ll risk it. I’ve completely blown my pre–New Year’s resolution today on diet and nutrition. Might as well finish it off.”

When she started to dig in her pockets, Morris brushed her arm. “Allow me.” Morris input his code, and they all watched an anemic stream of beige pour into a biodegradable cup.

“Well.” Peabody took it out of the slot. “It’s hot, so that’s half there.”

“Good luck with that. So, Ledo.” Morris gestured again, and they started down the tunnel. “Without his untimely end, he might have had another five or six years in him if he’d remained on the same course. Considerable liver and kidney damage from substance abuse. Ocular degeneration from the same. Bones and teeth show signs of very poor nutrition, and indeed his last meal was fried noodles and brew that was more chemicals than barley.

“His tox screen,” Morris continued as they went through his double doors, “showed a cocktail of funk, go-smoke, and downs. Enough downs his killer didn’t need to stun him. He’d have been out for another six hours regardless.”

“Couldn’t know that—unless the killer witnessed him ingesting.” Eve approached the body, studied the stun marks, the deep, jagged hole left by the cue. “Even then, why change routine, why take the chance? Careful, cautious, thorough.”

“The blow to the cheekbone was hard enough to fracture it, and likely came from above. Standing, straddling him. Right to left.”

“Most likely right-handed then, as we determined in Bastwick’s case.”

“Most likely. And the killing blow, again from above. Straight down, with force. The break on the cue was fresh.”

“Yeah, saw that, confirmed at the lab.”

“I picked several splinters out of the wound. Another message, I’m told.”

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