Page 15 of Fury In Death

“No. Dad’s obsessive about security. His work sets that tone. Are you saying someone used it to break in?”

“We believe so, yes. Do you know of anyone who wished your father harm? Someone he argued with, someone at work he reprimanded or fired?”

“No. He was a get-along kind of guy. A let’s-find-the-solution type. When Nate and I were growing up, Mom handled the discipline. You said he was attacked, in his office here?”

“Yes.” An ER doc, Eve thought, who looked as if he’d put in a lot of tough hours. She had to give him more, and tougher. “Dr. Chu, your father was beaten, severely. The medical examiner will determine the full extent of his injuries, but I can tell you he suffered multiple broken bones, severe head and facial trauma.”

He paled slightly, but his gaze held steady on hers. “Beaten. What did they want? What did they take?”

“So far as we know at this time, they took nothing. He still had his wrist unit, cash. Evidence indicates the assailant remained inside the office for some time before and after your father’s death.”

“I need to see it.”

“Crime Scene is processing. I can’t let you go inside.”

“I don’t need to go in to see it. I’m a doctor, I don’t cringe at the sight of blood. I know the office. If something’s missing, I’ll know.”

“Just to the doorway.”

She walked with him, heard his hard indrawn breath, saw his right hand ball into a fist. Inside, the white-suited sweepers did their work in a room that smelled deeply of blood and death.

“Mother of God, my dad. Someone did this to my dad. The blood loss . . .”

Then Bradley took a breath. Another.

“There was a paperweight on his desk. Tricia made it for him. She’s a glass artist. A globe, sunset colors.”

“It looks like sunset over the water,” Eve said. “We have it.”

“I don’t know if all the photos and plaques are there, the ones he had on the wall. I don’t know why anyone would take any of them, but I can’t be sure of that.”

He turned to Eve. “This is madness. You know that. My father kept in shape, he wasn’t weak or frail. But he wasn’t a physical man. He wasn’t a fighter, but a negotiator. Still, he would have tried, anyone would. Whoever did this to him? It’s madness.”

She couldn’t argue with that.

When she finally stepped out, the night held a hint of the brisk that said fall in New York.

“I sent my car back,” Roarke told her. “I’ll drive. You take a blocker.”

“I don’t have a headache. No, really,” she said when he just looked at her. “Regel said it’s a puzzle, and he’s right. It’s the puzzle rolling around in there, not a headache.”

But she didn’t object, at all, to taking the passenger seat.

“So somebody got his security code, used it to get in through his office window, and proceeded to beat him to death. Who knew he’d be in the office at that time?”

“His wife. But you believe her.”

“Yeah, I believe her. You can’t always tell when someone’s lying. Some people are really, really good at it. But I believe her. You’re the e-man, but I’m thinking if someone could access his security code, they could access his texts.”

“You’d be right.”

He drove smoothly. Traffic had hit the point where people had settled into home or bars or restaurants, the theater, a club, so it chugged along as they headed crosstown.

“They broke in for one purpose,” Eve continued. “To kill him. Not just kill him, eradicate him. That takes a special kind of hate, of rage. Revenge hits first, but there’s also poking into something somebody doesn’t want poked into. Or, if he’d had a side piece, pathological jealousy.

“Then,” she added, “there’s his work. Something he’s working on, something someone wants for their own—or something that is their own, and he took or was taking credit for.”

No, not a headache, she thought again. Just so many pieces that might or might not fit.