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“He’s been stabbed a whole bunch. It might even be more than Bickford, but it’s hard to tell. He’s missing his nose.”
“What does that say to you?”
“It’s another quiz. This time I want a grade. It says to me Billingsly won’t be sniffing around anymore. Maybe around Arianna, maybe around something else—something lab related. The note’s addressed directly to you this time, so he knows it’s our case—and that Billingsly wasn’t a popular guy around here.”
“I’d say A minus.”
“A minus?” Both insult and sulk piped through Peabody’s voice. “I want A plus.”
“For an A plus you’d need to observe, identify, and relate the teeth marks in the vic’s face and throat.”
“Teeth . . . oh jeez.” Observing and identifying them now, Peabody swallowed hard. “He ate him.”
“Just here and there. He’s accelerating,” Eve concluded. “This time blood wasn’t enough. He wanted a taste of flesh.” She scanned again, noted the open door on an empty cabinet. “Did the killer walk in on the vic, or the other way around?”
“If this is extra credit, I want a review of my earlier grade. Let me think.” To help herself do that, Peabody looked away from the body. “I can’t think why Billingsly would be here. He and Rosenthall aren’t pals, and this isn’t his area—not only sector-wise, but professionally. Maybe if Rosenthall asked him to come in—but I don’t buy it. He’s not going to do his competitor any favors. He’d come if Arianna asked him, but that puts her in this, and it just doesn’t fit well for me.”
Pausing, she made herself look at the body again. “If he came here—which, okay, obviously, he did—it was to get something on Justin, or screw with something, or poke around looking . . . Poke his nose in!”
Eve took the cloned key card and recorder out of Billingsly’s pocket. Hit Play.
“Justin Rosenthall.”
“Billingsly tried a little B&E,” Peabody commented.
“That’s an A plus.”
“Yay!”
“Billingsly keys in using the dummy card and the recorder. He’s poking around. The killer is already here—looking for something, doing something, waiting for something. Billingsly sees him, and that’s the end of Billingsly. The killer chews on him, stabs him, amputates his nose, wrecks the lab, takes time to leave the message, then boogies out. They’ve got him on disc, so we’ll be able to track his movements.”
“That’s a break.”
“For us, not for Billingsly.” Eve opened her field kit again, crouched by the body. “Let’s verify ID, get TOD.”
“If there are bite marks, they should get some saliva, and the impressions, too,” Peabody began.
“We got better.” Eve lifted Billingsly’s lifeless hand. “We got skin under the nails. Billingsly got some flesh, too.”
NINE
Eve put on microgoggles for a better look before she bagged the hand. “Tinted green flesh, so that’s our guy. We’ll get DNA.”
“And see if one of our main suspects shows some recent scratches.”
Eve looked up as Roarke came back in. “McNab’s working with Security,” he told her. “Everyone in the lab logged out, Rosenthall being the last at eleven twenty-six. The log shows Rosenthall swiping in again at twelve oh-seven, but the discs show Billingsly swiping in at that time, clearly entering alone.”
Eve held up an evidence bag. “Billingsly had a clone swipe and a recording of Rosenthall’s voice.”
“
Nosy becomes very apt. No one else entered the lab after the last log-out at eleven twenty-six except Billingsly. No one exited until your Dr. Chaos at one fifteen.”
“Well, he didn’t just materialize.”
“TOD,” Peabody announced before Roarke could comment, “twelve fifty.”
“That’s a lot of time between when Billingsly entered and TOD. It didn’t take that long to kill him. Contact the sweepers, and the ME,” Eve ordered, then, avoiding blood and debris, did another long study of the room, walked over to the break room area.
