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“I don’t think real coffee’s going to make Harris rise up and bite your throat.”
“Brains,” Morris corrected. “Zombies eat brains.”
“Okay, that’s just sick.”
“Well, they are zombies, after all. In any case,” he said as the foolish moment took the edge off. He glanced at the screen, at the hard data. “After the initial sadness came the gratitude. This loss isn’t mine, or yours. I think, from time to time, we have to be grateful, too.”
“I wanted to kiss Peabody on the mouth last night. I resisted, but I wanted to.”
It made him smile. “Aren’t we the softies, the murder cop and the dead doctor. Well. Someone else will just be sad this morning.”
“Not so much,” Eve told him. “She was a bitch. I haven’t talked to one person who knew her who liked her, with the exception of her mother. And I don’t know if that was ‘like’ or just shock and grief over the loss of a child.”
“Even less like our girl then. A pity for the victim, though I doubt she suffered much as, according to the results of the tox screen Carter ordered, and I’ve just reviewed, she was very drunk. Blood alcohol level point-three-two—along with some considerable traces of zoner.”
“She drank her way through the evening. She had herbals in her bag, and I found six butts on the roof. They’re at the lab. Could be she had some zoner mixed in.”
“She sounds like someone who didn’t care for her own reality very much.”
“COD?”
“Drowning. Water in the lungs. She was alive when she went in. The head wound …” He brought it up
on-screen, split it with a magnified section of the pool skirt. “It was severe enough to render her unconscious, but not fatal. Without the dunk, she’d have suffered a mild concussion, required a couple of stitches, and a blocker for the headache. Carter’s reconstruction, and I concur, indicates a fall.”
He switched data, brought up the computerized reconstruction.
“She fell or was pushed backward, struck her head on this pebbled surface. The blow would have rendered her unconscious, as I said, for several minutes. Longer, I expect, with her BAL and the zoner.”
“The way she hit, and where she hit. She couldn’t have fallen, bounced, rolled, fallen into the water. Not on her own.”
“No.”
“Could she have regained consciousness, tried to stand, and fallen in? Off her balance?”
“If she had, I’d expect to see another injury as the water was shallow. This mildly lacerated contusion on her temple is consistent, as you see on-screen, with a roll over the coping. Also, as you noted in your on-scene, her shoes had scraping at the heels. Here—”
He turned to the body again, moved down to the right hip. “Another slight contusion. That’s consistent with her initial fall, and with the sweeper’s report on where they found the blood.”
“Blood that had been washed off. It wouldn’t have been, even if she’d fallen in, splashed up water. It’s not enough, and the distance doesn’t work for that.”
“Not on Carter’s reconstruction.”
Eve saw it clearly. “So she went down, on her own or with help. She’s out cold. And when she’s out cold somebody drags her a couple of feet to the edge, then rolled her into the pool, where she drowned.”
“That’s our conclusion. This wasn’t an accidental death. It’s homicide.”
“That’s all I need.” She turned as Peabody rushed in, stopped.
“Wow. Still really weird,” she said as she stared at the body. “I think her legs are longer than mine. Why can’t my legs be longer?”
Morris stepped around the slab, walked up to her. He took her shoulders, kissed her on the mouth.
“Wow.” Peabody blinked several times. “Um, thanks. That was nice.”
“It’s very good to see you,” he said, and his eyes laughed into Eve’s when he stepped away.
“So far this is the best morning I’ve had in ever.”
