"Robb, J D - In Death 12 - Judgment In Death" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robb J D)

JUDGMENT IN DEATH
J. D. Robb
Copyright (c) 2000


The vices of authority are chiefly four: delays, corruption, roughness
and facility.
-- Francis Bacon
More things belong to marriage than four bare legs in a bed.
-- John Heywood
-=O=-***-=O=-
CHAPTER ONE
She stood in Purgatory and studied death. The blood and the gore of it,
the ferocity of its glee. It had come to this place with the willful temper of a
child, full of heat and passion and careless brutality.
Murder was rarely a tidy business. Whether it was craftily calculated or
wildly impulsive, it tended to leave a mess for others to clean up.
It was her job to wade through the debris of murder, to pick up the
pieces, see where they fit, and put together a picture of the life that had been
stolen. And through that picture to find the image of a killer.
Now, in the early hours of morning, in the hesitant spring of 2059, her
boots crunched over a jagged sea of broken glass. Her eyes, brown and cool,
scanned the scene: shattered mirrors, broken bottles, splintered wood. Wall
screens were smashed, privacy booths scarred and dented. Pricey leather and
cloth that had covered stools or the plusher seating areas had been ripped to
colorful shreds.
What had once been an upscale strip club was now a jumbled pile of
expensive garbage.
What had once been a man lay behind the wide curve of the bar. Now a
victim, sprawled in his own blood.
Lieutenant Eve Dallas crouched beside him. She was a cop, and that made
him hers.
"Male. Black. Late thirties. Massive trauma, head and body. Multiple
broken bones." She took a gauge from her field kit to take the body and ambient
temperatures. "Looks like the fractured skull would have done the job, but it
didn't stop there."
"He was beaten to pieces."
Eve acknowledged her aide's comment with a grunt. She was looking at what
was left of a well-built man in his prime, a good six-two and two hundred and
thirty pounds of what had been toned muscle.
"What do you see, Peabody?"
Automatically, Peabody shifted her stance, focused her vision. "The
victim... well, it appears the victim was struck from behind. The first blow
probably took him down, or at least dazed him. The killer followed through, with
repeated strikes. From the pattern of the blood splatter, and brain matter, he
was taken out with head shots, then beaten while down, likely unconscious. Some
of the injuries were certainly delivered postmortem. The metal bat is the
probable murder weapon and was used by someone of considerable strength,
possibly chemically induced, as the scene indicates excessive violence often
demonstrated by users of Zeus."