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“It’s mine. We’ll be using it from now on.”
“Yours, like yours?” Peabody studied the dash. “Very frosty gadgetry.”
“Use the very frosty gadgetry to map the fastest route to 509 Pearl and to ID the kind of building it is.”
Peabody made the requests. “Three-level, multi-tenant, currently vacant. Rehab pending permits. Do you want the route in-dash or on audio?”
“In-dash. I hate when it talks to you. Inside a vacant building, second floor of. It sounds lik
e the killer didn’t want the body found so fast this time. That building’s outside the Eighteenth’s turf, but not far out. Coltraine’s squad would know the terrain.”
“How about Callendar and Sisto? I need to catch up.”
Eve filled in the blanks, speeding her way downtown.
The building sat squat and sad, a gray slab generously coated with the indignity of graffiti. Windows gaped—mouths with the jagged edges of broken glass like bad teeth. A few were boarded, and more than a few of the boards tipped drunkenly. The bolt and chain on the front door had amused someone enough to take the time to hack it to pieces.
Had it been in perfect repair, it would still have been a joke.
Two black-and-whites nosed together at the curb. A couple of uniforms stood on the shallow concrete platform in front of the entrance, jawing. They broke it off when Peabody and Eve climbed out.
“Homicide,” Eve said, taking out her badge and hooking it on her belt while Peabody got field kits out of the trunk.
“DB’s on the second floor. We’re backup. First-on-scene’s inside. Place is empty—we did a sweep. Brought a coupla lights in, ’cause it’s pitch in there.”
Eve nodded, studied the chain and bolt. “These weren’t compromised tonight.”
“No, sir. We patrol here. It’s been like that a couple months anyway. Funky-junkies flopped here. Owner complained, so we ran ’em off. They just find another hole.”
It stank. Old piss, old vomit, a decade’s worth of dust and grime.
The uniforms had set one of their field lights on the first level, so shadows danced over the piles of rags, papers, and assorted debris the junkies had left behind. She imagined the missing floorboards had been fed into the rusted metal can to burn for warmth. Same with the few missing stair treads, she thought as she stepped over the gaps on her way up.
The light from her field kit shone over a nest of mice in one of the holes, the babies like skinned blobs sucking on their mother’s engorged belly. Behind her, Peabody said, “Eeuuww.”
“Don’t say ‘eeuuww,’ for God’s sake. We’re murder cops.”
“I don’t like mice. Or maybe they were rats. They could be rats. And Daddy wasn’t in there, so he’s somewhere else.” Peabody flashed her light left, right, up, down. “Waiting for a chance to run up my pants’ legs and bite me on the ass.”
“Should that occur, don’t say eeuuww. Lieutenant Dallas and Detective Peabody,” Eve called out. “Homicide.”
On the second floor, in the glare of the field light, one of the uniforms moved toward the stairs. “Officer Guilder, Lieutenant. My partner’s got the nine-one-one callers secured. You want them or the body first?”
“Body.”
“He’s over here. Couple of scavengers called it in. Nothing to scavenge in here. Whatever’s left even the junkies didn’t want, but they came in to pick through. Stated they found him when they were checking out a pile of old blankets. Thought he was sleeping at first, then figured out he was dead. Called it in.”
“Civic-minded scavengers?”
“Yeah, what’re the odds? But they come off straight to me. No weapons on them. Not even a sticker. When we responded, they directed us to the body. We recognized him from the APB, called it in.”
Guilder gestured. “There he is.”
Eve stood in the doorway of what in some dim past might have been an efficiency apartment. “Yeah, there he is.”
He sat on the filthy floor, his back to the wall. He’d been stripped, leaving the small hole and dribble of heart blood on his naked chest exposed.
Nothing left to scavenge, Eve thought. That’s the way the killer hoped it would read. She crouched down as much to study the angle of the body as what surrounded it.
