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“The doctor is in session. She has a meeting directly after, followed by a consult. Her day is booked, Lieutenant.”
“Five minutes. Twelve dead girls and I need five minutes.”
“I’ll get back to you when I find five minutes.”
Eve bared her teeth at the screen as it went blank. “Who doesn’t have five fucking minutes? You’d think I was asking for an audience with God.”
“Mira is her god,” Peabody pointed out. “And Nash Jones is also in session. Shivitz passed me to his assistant who said she’ll have him contact me as soon as he’s free. But also said his day was crowded.”
“He’ll just have to make room.”
Since without Nash Jones or Mira she had five minutes, Eve detoured to DeWinter’s lab.
• • •
She heard someone shouting as she walked in. Her hand went to the butt of her weapon, then released it again when she recognized elation rather than fear or violence.
From the other direction she heard what sounded like a muffled explosion, followed by hysterical laughter.
“What kind of madhouse is this?”
“I think it’s kind of icy.” Peabody peered through glass walls, craned her neck to see over equipment. “But maybe you have to lean toward nerd to think it.”
“You have to be neck-deep in nerd to think it. Like nerd quicksand. And why is it called quick anyway? In the vids people and unfortunate animals just sink slowly.”
“Actually, you wouldn’t sink but float, unless you struggle.”
Eve glanced to the left where some nerd—sex not quite apparent in the baggy lab coat and behind the fly-eye microgoggles—looked up from examining a jawbone.
“What?”
“Quicksand’s just ordinary sand that’s saturated with water to the point it can’t support weight, and it’s usually only a few feet deep. The grains lose their friction, being saturated. But if you can, just float on it because your body’s less dense than the quicksand.”
“Okay, good to know. Next time I fall into some, I’ll remember that.”
“But if the mixture contains clay, that’s a problem. The clay acts as a gel, so if you fell into it, the force would cause the gel to liquefy and bond the clay particles together.”
The lab rat slapped one palm on the other. A good look at the hands determined male lab rat for Eve.
“You could sink pretty deep. Then the force needed to pull you out would be about the same as to lift a car or small truck. The trick is to wiggle out, as the motion lets water seep in, so you’re back to floating.”
“Okay then. I’m going to have to write all that down. Just in case.”
To avoid more quicksand data, she got moving. “How do people know that stuff? Why do people know that stuff?”
“Science,” Peabody said. “You can’t live without it.”
Eve started to argue, then remembered she was on her way to nag a scientist.
DeWinter wore the same weird little microgoggles, but her lab coat would never be called baggy. Today’s was hot pink and matched her skyscraper ankle boots.
“I wondered if you’d make your way here today,”
she said without looking up from the bones on her steel table. “This is our last victim. COD remains the same. I put her age again between twelve and fourteen. Closer to fourteen, I believe, as there are signs of malnutrition. Her teeth indicate she had little professional dental care. Six cavities, apparently untreated, and two lost teeth, several others chipped or broken. Her right wrist had been broken in early childhood, probably around the age of five. It healed poorly, and likely troubled her.”
Eve stepped in, studied the bones.
“A more recent injury here. Hairline fracture, left ankle. Probably incurred a week to ten days prior to her death.”
