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“But if they’re doing all that in Italian – I’d want to go to an Italian opera, I think – then it’s romantic.”
“I don’t get how dying’s romantic.”
“Well, like Romeo and Juliet —”
“Double teenage suicide. Yeah, that makes my heart melt.”
Sulking a little, Peabody continued the run. “It’s romantic tragedy.”
“That’s one of those oxygons.”
“Moron.”
Eve turned her head, aimed steely eyes. “Repeat that.”
“I meant oxymoron. It’s oxymoron not gon. Sir.”
“Either way.” Eve added a shrug.
“Moving right along,” Peabody said quickly. “Chamberlin, Ethan, age sixty-two. Divorced, twice, one offspring, daughter, thirty, resides in London. He’s been the in-charge guy for eleven years, and was in-charge guy for the London Symphony Orchestra prior. Resides… huh, just two blocks south of the vic and his mother. Few bumps here and there. Destruction of personal property – busted up a viola – paid the damages. Same deal for throwing a piccolo out of the window and threatening to throw the piccolo player after the instrument. Assault, charges dropped. Another assault, suspended sentence with mandatory anger management.”
“Violence. Temper.” Eve shook her head. “That’s a run of a flash temper. This murder doesn’t read that way. But we’ll talk to him. Pull out the E names – just first for now – start quick runs. Can you do a geographical, so we have the most efficient route for interviews?”
“Totally can do. His mom seemed really sure nobody who knew him could do this.”
“His mother loved him, and figured everybody else did, too. At least one person didn’t, whether they knew him or not. So we check it out.”
A thin snow started to spit out of grumpy gray skies. Which meant, Eve knew, that at least fifty percent of the drivers currently on the road would lose a minimum of one-third of their intelligence quotient, any skill they’d previously held at operating a vehicle thereby turning what had been the standard annoying traffic into mayhem.
She bulled her way south, determined to beat the onset of insanity.
The minute she stepped into the morgue, she yanked the cap off her head, stuffed it in her pocket.
The white tunnel echoed with their footsteps – the post-holiday, frozen-tundra lull, Eve thought. It wouldn’t last.
She caught Peabody eyeing the vending machine that offered hot drinks.
“You know everything in that thing is crap.”
“Yeah, but it’s snowing a little, and when it starts to snow I start thin
king hot chocolate. Even though the strange brown liquid that machine pees out doesn’t bear much of a resemblance. Why can’t law-enforcement facilities get decent vending?”
“Because then we’d all be snuggled up with hot chocolate instead of doing the job.”
She pushed open the door to Morris’s domain.
She recognized opera – not which one, but identified the soaring tragedy in the voices, the mournful blend of instruments as some opera or other.
Morris stood over Dorian Kuper. A clear cape protected the chief ME’s plum-colored suit, and the fascinating high-planed face was unframed as he’d tied back his black hair in one of his complicated braids, twined it with silver cord.
Blood smeared his sealed hands. Kuper’s chest lay open from the Y incision.
“Giselle,” Morris said, glancing up as if seeing the music. “I was going to see it next week.”
“You’re into opera?”
“Some.” He stepped away to wash the blood and sealant from his hands. “I knew him.”
