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Blood on her hands at eight years of age. Is that why she’d become a cop? Was she constantly trying to wash away that blood with rules and law and what some still called justice?
“Sir? Dallas?” Peabody laid a hand on Eve’s shoulder and jumped when Eve jolted. “Sorry. Are you all right?”
“No.” Eve pressed her fingers to her eyes. The discussion over dessert had troubled her more than she’d realized. “Just a headache.”
“I’ve got some departmental-issue painkillers.”
“No.” Eve was afraid of drugs, even officially sanctioned doses. “It’ll back off. I’m running out of ideas on the Fitzhugh case. Feeney fed me all known data on the kid on Olympus. I can’t find any correlation between him and Fitzhugh or the senator. I’ve got nothing but piddly shit to hang on Leanore and Arthur. I can request truth detection, but I won’t get it. I’m not going to be able to keep it open more than another twenty-four hours.”
“You still think they’re connected?”
“I want them to be connected, and that’s a different thing. I haven’t exactly given you an impressive lift on with your first assignment as my permanent aide.”
“Being your permanent aide is the best thing that ever happened to me.” Peabody flushed a little. “I’d be grateful if we got stuck shoveling through inactives for the next six months. You’d still be training me.”
Eve leaned back in her chair. “You’re easily satisfied, Peabody.”
Peabody shifted her gaze until her eyes met Eve’s. “No, sir, I’m not. When I don’t get the best, I get real cranky.”
Eve laughed, dragged a hand through her hair. “You sucking up, Officer?”
“No, sir. If I was sucking up, I’d make some personal observation, such as marriage obviously agrees with you, Lieutenant. You’ve never looked lovelier.” Peabody smiled a little when Eve snorted. “That’s how you’d know I was sucking up.”
“So noted.” Eve considered a moment, then cocked her head. “Didn’t you tell me your family are Free-Agers?”
Peabody didn’t roll her eyes, but she wanted to. “Yes, sir.”
“Cops don’t usually spring from Free-Agers. Artists, farmers, the occasional scientist, lots of craft workers.”
“I didn’t like weaving mats.”
“Can you?”
“If held at laser point.”
“So, what? Your family pissed you off and you decided to break the mold, go into a field dramatically removed from pacifism?”
“No, sir.” Puzzled at the line of questioning, Peabody shrugged. “My family’s great. We’re still pretty tight. They’re not going to understand what I do or want to do, but they never tried to block me. I just wanted to be a cop, the same way my brother wanted to be a carpenter and my sister a farmer. One of the strongest tenets of Free-Ageism is self-expression.”
“But you don’t fit the genetic code,” Eve muttered and drummed her fingers on her desk. “You don’t fit. Heredity and environment, gene patterns—they all should have influenced you differently.”
“The bad guys wished I had been,” Peabody said soberly. “But I’m here, keeping our city safe.”
“If you get an urge to weave a mat—”
“You’ll be the first to know.”
Eve’s unit beeped twice, signaling incoming data. “Additional autopsy report on the kid.” Eve gestured for Peabody to come closer. “List any abnormal brain pattern,” she ordered.
Microscopic abnormality, right cerebral hemisphere, frontal lobe, left quadrant. Unexplained. Further research and testing under way.
“Well, well, I think we just caught a break. Display visual of frontal lobe and abnormality.” The cross section of the brain popped on screen. “There.” A quick surge of excitement churned in her belly as Eve tapped the screen. “That shadow—pinprick. See it?”
“Barely.” Peabody leaned closer until she was all but cheek to cheek with Eve. “Looks like a flaw on the display.”
“No, a flaw in the brain. Increase quadrant six, twenty percent.”
The picture shifted, and the section with the shadow filled the screen. “More of a burn than a hole, isn’t it?” Eve said half to herself. “Hardly there, but what kind of damage, what kind of influence would it have on behavior, personality, decision making?”
