Page 19 of Bonded in Death

“You’d think they’d find another way to do that.”

“Until they do.”

Eve pushed through the double doors of Morris’s theater.

He played Italian opera. Eve supposed it suited the moment.

Under his clear protective cape, the medical examiner wore a suit of pale, pale blue with a shirt of crisp white, a tie of sapphire.

He hadn’t taken his usual time with his hair, she noted—due to her contact, no doubt. So he wore it in a single high tail that streamed down his back.

The microgoggles accented the almond shape of his dark eyes.

“I think he enjoyed his last flight,” Morris began. “He had a late supper of Bolognese with rigatoni, a green salad, a sourdough roll, some cream cake. And about sixteen ounces of Cabernet. Another two ounces of Merlot less than eight minutes before TOD.”

“Poisoned?” Eve walked to the body laid out on the slab.

“No. No poison in the wine. In fact, a very fine vintage. He was gassed.”

“Gassed?”

“The lab will have to confirm and identify, but he didn’t ingest poison. He inhaled it. And he knew.”

Morris, in his gentle way, laid a hand on Rossi’s head. “He fought. His knuckles aren’t just bruised and scraped. He has some breaks. He fought hard.”

“Gassed,” Eve repeated as she studied the body. “So the passenger area was completely sealed off? And gas… through the air vents. The AC?”

“Again, that’s for others to determine. I can only tell you his mouth, his throat, his nostrils, his lungs, and so on indicate he inhaled what killed him. My findings indicate it took less than four minutes for him to lapse into unconsciousness, during which time he fought to live. In under five minutes, he lost that battle.”

Morris walked to his mini-friggie, took out the cold drinks, and passed them to Eve and Peabody.

“It would’ve been painful but brief. Otherwise, he was a healthy man for his age. A bit overweight, but not excessively. No face or body work detected, though he had some broken bones during his life, a couple offingers, a couple of ribs. Well mended. There’s a scar—you see there—along his left rib cage. A knife wound most likely.”

“I think he was a spy.”

Morris smiled at Peabody as she cracked her tube of Diet Pepsi.

“Do you? How interesting. He certainly would have lived through the Urbans, and the knife wound appears to be at least thirty years old, and carelessly tended. A field dressing perhaps.”

“Gassed,” Eve said yet again. “I’ll have the sweepers look at how that worked. A lot of trouble for a kill.”

“He was nearing eighty,” Morris said. “Overweight, likely out of shape, but strong. He would’ve had good upper body strength.”

“So the killer didn’t want to risk going head-to-head. His widow’s coming in from Rome. I’ll let you know when she gets here.”

“I’ll have him ready for her. He had good health all in all. Could’ve expected another thirty or forty years.”

“We’ll find who took those decades from him. Appreciate the quick work, Morris.”

“Your name on a card in his hand? And the cryptic message. I’d like to be updated as you progress.”

“All right. Let’s hit the lab, Peabody. Gassed,” she said yet again. “There has to be a reason to go to that kind of trouble.”

Eve rolled it over on the short drive to the lab.

“Who gasses an almost-eighty-year-old man in the back of a limo?”

“Spies.”

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