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“This knot. If he took a blow here, by someone who knew how and where, it would take him down, put him out.”
Morris lifted his eyebrows. “It could, done properly. You prefer murder to overdose.”
She wished she could lay it out for him. “I’ve got questions, yeah. Why the tub? You said he had enough in him to kill him a couple of times. Look at his tracks. He’s a junkie, but he’s a junkie with experience. Why take so much of something so risky—and even if you’re an idiot, wouldn’t you want to spread out the high? He’s not in his flop, but locked in this hole instead, and it looks like he made himself a little camp there. And that says he’s hiding. So maybe somebody found him.”
“Perhaps. He’d eaten a decent enough meal, around midnight. Pizza with sardines.”
“You call that decent?”
Morris smiled. “He ate hearty, we’ll say, and washed it down with a couple beers.”
“There weren’t any takeout pizza boxes or brew bottles on scene. Maybe he ate out. We can work that. I wonder why he’d eat hearty, then a couple hours later hole up, crawl in a filthy tub, and jab himself with what he should have known, given his history, was a lethal dose.”
“So noted. I haven’t as yet made my determination, so it stands that COD is the overdose—all other injuries were nonlethal. But I cannot, at this time, with this data, determine accident, suicide, or homicide.”
“Just what I wanted to hear.”
“I believe I’ll need to do a further analysis of the wound below his left ear.”
“Couldn’t hurt.”
“You’ve something up your sleeve. Quite a nice sleeve today, I might add.”
“Just doing the job. We’ll let you get back to your brain.”
8
“HERE’S WHAT WE’RE GOING TO DO.” EVE PULLED out in front of a Rapid Cab, zoomed through a yellow light—and had Peabody gripping the chicken stick. “Are we doing in a hurry?”
“What? I had plenty of room. We’re going to update the book with Morris’s preliminary findings, copy the commander as usual. You’re going to contact Renee and inform her of those findings and tell her I need the data and files we discussed, asap.”
Hand still gripping the chicken stick, Peabody blanched. “I’m going to talk to her?”
“I’m much too busy and important to trouble myself with this kind of follow-up. That’s how she thinks. I’m going to see if Morris has a spare spine lying around you can borrow if you’re scared to speak to that high-heel-wearing, smug-ass bitch, Peabody.”
“Not scared. Uneasy. I admit to uneasy.” To prove to herself she had that spine already, she loosened her grip on the stick. “So I tell her the chief medical examiner has determined COD, but cannot, at this time, determine self-termination, accidental overdose, or homicide. Therefore, Lieutenant Dallas requests—”
“Requires,” Eve corrected.
“Lieutenant Dallas requires the data and files on the victim, as discussed. What if she balks?”
“You courteously inform her that Commander Whitney has, per procedure, been copied on all notes and files, including your lieutenant’s notification to her, the vic’s handler, and the requirement for data.”
Peabody mulled it. “Courteously adds a dig.”
“You bet it does. If she carps after that, I’ll deal with her. But she won’t,” Eve added. “She wants this to go away, and the potential of me going over her head and bringing this more fully to Whitney’s attention spotlights her.”
“Better to cooperate and keep it low-level.” Peabody’s fingers crawled back to the stick when Eve swerved around a slow-poking maxibus.
“That’s how I’d play it in her place. Next, we get everything we need for the briefing, and spend a little time at it. If she’s got feelers out, and she damn sure does, I want to be seen working this. We’ll do a run by the vic’s flop on the way to HQ.”
“Why aren’t we doing that now?”
&nb
sp; “Want to be seen—and I want to make sure her dogs have had time to go by, go through, look for anything that might tie them in.” She glanced over. “If Garnet and Bix weren’t heading to Keener’s flop when they left the squad room, you can bet your ass she tagged them and sent them there after my conversation with her.”
“But . . . If there was anything, they’d get rid of it.”
