J. D. Robb - Midnight in Death

Murder respects no traditions. It ignores sentiment. It takes no holidays.

Because murder was her business, Lieutenant Eve Dallas stood in the predawn freeze of Christmas morning coating the deerskin gloves her husband had given her only hours before with Seal-It.

The call had come in less than an hour before and less than six hours since shed closed a case that had left her shaky and exhausted. Her first Christmas with Roarke wasnt getting off to a rousing start.

Then again, it had taken a much nastier turn for Judge Harold Wainger.

His body had been dumped dead center in the ice rink at Rockefeller Center. Face up, so his glazed eyes could stare at the huge celebrational tree that was New Yorks symbol of goodwill toward men.

His body was naked and already a deep shade of blue. The thick mane of silver hair that had been his trademark had been roughly chopped off. And though his face was severely battered, she had no trouble recognizing him.

Shed sat in his courtroom dozens of times in her ten years on the force. He had been, she thought, a solid and steady man, with as much understanding of the slippery channels of the law as respect for the heart of it.

She crouched down to get a closer look at the words that had been burned deeply into his chest.

JUDGE NOT, LEST YOU BE JUDGED

She hoped the burns had been inflicted postmortem, but she doubted it.

He had been mercilessly beaten, the fingers of both hands broken. Deep wounds around his wrists and ankles indicated that hed been bound. But it hadnt been the beating or the burns that killed him.

The rope used to hang him was still around his neck, digging deep into flesh. Even that wouldnt have been quick, she decided. It didnt appear that his neck had been broken, and the burst vessels in his eyes and face signaled slow strangulation.

He wanted you alive as long as possible, she murmured. He wanted you to feel it all.

Kneeling now, she studied the handwritten note that was flapping gaily in the wind. It had been fixed over the judges groin like an obscene loincloth. The list of names had been printed in careful square block letters.

JUDGE HAROLD WAINGER

PROSECUTING ATTORNEY STEPHANIE RING

PUBLIC DEFENDER CARL NEISSAN

JUSTINE POLINSKY

DOCTOR CHARLOTTE MIRA

LIEUTENANT EVE DALLAS

Saving me for last, Dave?

She recognized the style: gleeful infliction of pain followed by a slow, torturous death. David Palmer enjoyed his work. His experiments, as hed called them when Eve had finally hunted him down three years before.

By the time shed gotten him into a cage, he had eight victims to his credit, and with them an extensive file of discs recording his work. Since then hed been serving the eight life-term sentences that Wainger had given him in a maximum-security ward for mental defectives.

But you got out, didnt you, Dave? This is your handiwork. The torture, the humiliations, the burns. Public dumping spot for the body. No copycat here. Bag him, she ordered and got wearily to her feet.

It didnt look as though the last days of December 2058 were going to be much of a party.