Page 26 of Fury In Death

“Nick Regel was first on scene. He said to say yo. Yo.”

“Yo back. I went through the Academy with his daughter.”

“So he said.”

They pushed through the doors.

Morris stood over what was left of Lawrence Chu. This morning’s music played soft. Eve decided Morris felt the victim deserved some calm after a horrendously violent storm.

In contrast, the chief ME wore a suit of bold, just shy of electric, blue under his clear protective cape. The shirt reached for the calm while the tie combined both with a metallic tone and diamond shapes.

He’d done his dark hair in a kind of braided topknot at the crown with a long tail flowing from it.

His eyes glowed green behind his microgoggles.

“Mr. Chu will take some time,” he told them. “A body might be struck by a train and have less damage.”

“Can you tell if a weapon was used?”

“You called fists and feet in your prelim, and I see nothing to contradict that. I’m a bit bloody at the moment.” Morris lifted his sealed hands. “Help yourself to a cold tube if you like.”

“I’m good, thanks.”

“I’ll grab one, if that’s okay.” Eyes averted from the slab and what lay on it, Peabody went to Morris’s mini-friggie for a tube of Diet Pepsi.

“If you see here.” As Morris leaned in toward the body, Eve stepped closer. “The shape and spread of the bruising. Pummeling, not a strike with, say, a pipe, a bat, a blunt, or a sharp. And forceful enough to break five ribs here, four here. Internal injuries? Every organ in his body was damaged.

“This break?” Morris shifted the arm. “Yank up, pressure there, force back. Snap.”

In her head she heard the snap of her own arm breaking. Just a child, fighting against Richard Troy. Father, tormenter, rapist.

Over and done, she reminded herself. Over and done.

“I can tell you that was one of the early injuries. The face? Head? Repeated, forceful blows resulting in a broken jaw, both cheekbones, the nose, the loss of five teeth—two of which the victim swallowed. Severe damage to both eyes.”

“He didn’t stop when he was dead, did he?”

“I still have work to do, but no, from where I stand the beating continued postmortem. From the condition of both hands? A heavy weight, likely the attacker’s weight, stomping down.”

Compassion radiated as Morris continued his work.

“Defensive wounds?”

“None that I’ve found. Some of the facial wounds were early in the attack, and the arm. The victim would have been debilitated and in considerable pain. At one point, again from my analysis, the attacker threw the unfortunate Mr. Chu violently against a solid object. Likely a wall. There are spinal injuries, there’s brain damage, but the attack continued, violently, long after the victim was helpless, likely unconscious, and after he was deceased.”

“Have you ever seen anything like this?” Eve wondered.

“A vehicular crash, a fall from a great height, multiple assailants with bats, clubs, as well as fists and feet. But as you believe, and I concur, a single assailant without weapons? No. No, I haven’t seen this scope of damage.”

“He had to be jacked up on something, don’t you think?” Peabody stepped cautiously closer. “Zeus, or a Zeus cocktail. It’s not just strength, it’s fury and it’s seriously mega endurance.”

“Very likely,” Morris agreed. “Jacked up and pissed off, a dangerous combination. I have a friend from medical school, big guy, strong, does mixed martial arts—for fun.”

Morris smiled a bit. “Apparently being punched and kicked and tossed around, punching and kicking and tossing someone else around is fun for some. I’ve gone to a few of his matches, and he’s very good. He couldn’t have done this. I don’t mean merely he isn’t homicidal. He couldn’t have inflicted this kind of damage without chemical assistance.”

“So we’ve got jacked up, on an as yet unknown substance, pissed off—at Chu directly and personally—knows how to break an arm, so possibly hand-to-hand training. Smart, at least smart enough to get into his target’s electronics, and careful enough to wait until he could corner the victim, alone, in a locked, soundproofed room.”

Eve paced away. “He could’ve gone after the wife, too, if he’d wanted to do more damage, if it had been a family thing, or more general. She’d have been easy. But he didn’t. But he destroyed the office. Wrecked the computer, the wall screen, knocked plaques and shit off the wall. But family photo on the desk. Should’ve been on the floor, everything else was. But it’s on the desk, facedown.”