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“No. Wait out here. If one of them makes a run for it, give me a call.”
“I don’t think that’s particularly funny.” And watching the still black bags warily, Peabody took her post at the door.
Inside Morris was busy at work, a laser scalpel midway through the Y cut on one of the six bodies splayed out on tables.
He wore goggles over his pleasant face, a plastic hood over his long, dark braided hair, and a clear protective coat over a natty navy blue suit.
“What’s the point in having voice mail if you don’t talk to it?” Eve demanded.
“A lot of unexpected company dropped in this morning, due to an airtram collision. Didn’t you catch the report? Bodies dropping out of the sky like flying monkeys.”
“If they could fly they wouldn’t be bagged and tagged. How many?”
“Twelve dead, six injured. Some jerk in an airmini rammed it. Tram pilot managed to hold the controls most of the way down, but people panicked. Add to that the knife fight at a club that took both participants and one bystander, the Jane Doe female found stuffed in a recycler, and your everyday bashings, bludgeonings, and brutalities and we’ve got ourselves a full house.”
“I’ve got a police termination with some questions. Rookie unifor
m stuns crazy guy, crazy guy dies. No sign of stunner contact on vic. Stunner confiscated from officer was set on low.”
“Then it didn’t kill him.”
“He’s dead as the rest of your guests.”
Morris completed his Y cut. “Only way a noncontact zap with a uniform stunner would take out a man, crazy or not, would be if said potential crazy man had a respiratory or neurological condition of such seriousness that the electronic jolt acerbated it and led to termination.”
It was exactly what she’d wanted to hear. “If that’s the case, it’s not actually a termination by maximum force.”
“Technically, no. However—”
“Technically will do. Be a pal, Morris, take a look at him. It’s Trueheart.”
Morris looked up and shoved the goggles up. “The kid with the peach fuzz on his face that looks like a screen ad for toothpaste?”
“That’s the one. He’s in Testing. IAB’s next. And something doesn’t hang about the way this went down. He could use a break.”
“Let me look him up.”
“He’s over there. Number four in line.” She jerked a thumb.
“Let me pull the report up.”
“I can—”
“Let me read it.” Morris cut her off with a wave of the hand and moved over to the data center. “Name of crazy dead guy?”
“Cogburn, Louis K.”
Morris called up the field report. As he read, he hummed to himself. It was some catchy little tune, vaguely familiar to her. And it started playing around in her head in a way that told her it would be stuck there for hours.
“Illegals dealer,” Morris began. “Could’ve been over-sampling, heart or neurological damage possible. Bleeding from ears, nose, broken blood vessels in the eyes. Hmm.”
He moved to the table where Louie K. was laid out, skinny and naked. He refit the goggles, lowered his face so close to Louie’s it looked as though he was about to kiss the dead.
“Record on,” he said and began to dictate preliminary data, visual findings.
“Well, let’s open him up, see what we see. You going to hang for this?”
“Yeah, if it’s quick.”
