Page 10 of Bonded in Death

“TOD, zero-forty-six,” she said when she inserted her gauge. “COD, ME to determine. Poison leads my pack. Slow-acting enough for him to try to get the hell out.”

“Lieutenant, a flight from Rome landed at the international station at zero-eighteen hours. Giovanni Rossi was on the manifest.”

She didn’t need to be a math whiz to figure the killer hadn’t waited long. Under a half hour from landing? Barely time to get off the shuttle, through Customs, get into the limo, and pour that glass of wine.

She picked up the wineglass, sniffed it before bagging it.

And heard the clomp of her partner’s favorite boots—pink cowboy boots Eve had been weak enough to buy for her.

“Sorry, Dallas, sorry. It took forever. Lower West is like a different world from Upper East.”

Eve glanced back.

Peabody had her red-streaked black hair in a high bouncy tail. She had a white shirt with thick pink stripes under a light blue jacket.

At least she wore sensible black pants.

“McNab with you?”

“They said vehicle, so we didn’t see the point in him coming all the way up here, then back to Central again. Do you need him?”

Eve figured Peabody’s man, and one of NYPSD’s e-detectives, could slide through the vic’s passcoded ’link in minutes. But it could wait.

“No.” She bagged the ’link, passed it to Peabody. “Passcoded. EDD will open it up.”

She held up another evidence bag, the one holding the business card. “Vic had this stuck in his fist. The killer stuck it there.”

“Your card.”

“Made to look like it. This is better paper than what we get.” She turned the bag around.

“Code, you think? Animal names. Well, a wasp isn’t an animal. And Roman numerals. Why leave you a message you wouldn’t understand? Unless—did you know the vic?”

“No. He just flew in from Rome. Look, the nine-one-one caller’s in the patrol car. Get his statement, his name, contact. Low odds he’s in this. I want to contact Morris myself. I can’t give a COD on this one. I’ll call the sweepers. We’re going to need the limo taken in, and taken apart. He rigged it. The killer rigged it to trap the victim in the back.”

“I’ll take the nine-one-one caller now.”

Eve stepped away, pulled out her ’link.

The chief medical examiner answered clothed as Roarke had been—before the suit. He wore nothing but a towel—a black one in Morris’s case—hung low on his hips.

His long black hair spilled damply down his back nearly to his waist. He had swimmer’s shoulders, and though he only operated on the dead, the hands of a surgeon.

He smiled. “So, we wake to the dead?”

“Yeah. I got a male victim—age seventy-nine, dead in the back of a stolen limo. Only visible wounds his hands—smears of blood on the privacy screen, the window. I got most of a bottle of red wine, and whatever was in the glass, and didn’t go in the vic, spilled on the floor. Vic flew in from Rome tonight.”

“A poor end to a long trip.”

“He had a facsimile of my card in his hand, and a cryptic—you gotta say cryptic—message on the back.”

She held it up for Morris to read.

“That would reach the cryptic level. So our victim would be the Wasp. One way to dispense with wasps is poison.”

“Yeah, I’m thinking, but can’t confirm. He’s otherwise known as Giovanni Rossi, out of Rome. I’ve still got some work to do here, but wanted to give you a heads-up.”

“I’ll contact the dead wagon for you, and be in-house as soon as possible.”

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