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“Not yet. Stay on me.”
She slipped inside, soundlessly, shut the door at her back. She kept to her defensive crouch, sweeping her weapon and her gaze through the room.
Fancy furniture, ugly and overdone in her mind, a rumpled suit jacket, a half-empty bottle. Drapes drawn. Quiet.
She stepped farther into the room, but kept near the wall, guarding her own back as she circled. No one hid behind the furniture, behind the drapes. The small kitchen was empty and apparently unused.
She stepped to the doorway of the bedroom, again crouched, again sweeping her weapon. The bed was made, heaped with decorative pillows and apparently hadn’t been slept in. Her gaze moved to the closet, the firmly shut carved doors.
She sidestepped toward it, then heard the sounds from the bathroom. Quick, heavy breathing, grunts of effort, a distinctly female chuckle. It passed through her mind that Louis might be having a quick roll with the LC of his choice, and she gritted her teeth in annoyance.
But she didn’t relax her guard.
She stepped left, shifted her weight, and swung to the doorway.
The smell hit her an instant before she saw it.
“Jesus. Jesus Christ.”
“Lieutenant?” Peabody’s voice, ringing with concern, piped out of her pocket.
“Back off.” Eve leveled her weapon at the woman. “Drop the knife and back off.”
“Sending backup now. Give me your situation, Lieutenant.”
“I’ve got a homicide. Really fresh. I said back the hell off.”
The woman only smiled. She straddled Louis, or what was left of him. Blood pooled on the floor, splattered the white tiles, coated her hands and face. The stench of it, and the gore, was thick as smoke.
Louis, Eve noted, was well beyond hope. He’d been gutted and disemboweled. And he was busily being eviscerated.
“He’s already dead,” the woman said pleasantly.
“I can see that. Put down the knife.” Eve took a step closer, gesturing with the weapon. “Put it down and move away from him. Slow. Face down on the floor, hands behind your back.”
“It had to be done.” She slid her leg over the body until she was kneeling beside it, like a mourner over a grave. “Don’t you recognize me?”
“Yeah.” Even through the mask of blood, Eve had made the face. And she’d remembered the voice, the sweetness of it. “Mirium, right? First-degree witch. Now, drop the fucking knife and kiss the floor. Hands behind you.”
“All right.” Obligingly, Mirium set the knife aside, barely glancing at it when Eve trapped it under her heel, sent it skidding across the room well out of reach. “He told me to be quick. In and out. I lost track of time.”
Eve tugged her restraints from her rear pocket, snapped them in place over Mirium’s wrists. “He?”
“Chas. He said I could do this one all by myself, but to be fast.” She let out a sigh. “I guess I wasn’t fast enough.”
With her mouth thin, Eve looked down at Louis Trivane. No, she thought I wasn’t fast enough. “You copy that, Peabody?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Pick up Charles Forte for questioning. Do it personally, and take two uniforms for backup. Don’t approach him alone.”
“Affirmative. Do you have the situation under control there, Lieutenant?”
Eve stepped back from the blood running in a rivulet toward her boots. “Yeah,” she said. “I’ve got it.”
She showered and changed before the interviews. The ten minutes it took was necessary. She’d all but bathed in Louis Trivane’s blood before she’d released his body to the ME. If anyone in the lockers noticed the elegant little flower on her ass, there was no comment.
The buzz on the state of this particular crime scene had already swarmed through the station.
