"That I can agree with."
"Now, tell me, Dr. Mira, what is your opinion of DNA harvesting?"
"Oh, well now…" Happily, Mira settled down for a lively busman's holiday.
At her desk unit, Eve juggled the data she'd compiled on Fitzhugh, Mathias, and Pearly. She could find no link, no common ground. The only real correlation between the three was the fact that none of them had exhibited any suicidal tendencies before the fact.
"Probability the subject cases are related?" Eve demanded.
Working. Probability five point two percent.
"In other words, zip." Eve blew out a breath, scowling automatically when an airbus rumbled by, rattling her stingy window. "Probability of homicide in the matter of Fitzhugh using currently known data."
With currently known data, probability of homicide is eight point three percent.
"Give it up, Dallas," she told herself in a mutter. "Let it go."
Deliberately, she swiveled in her chair, watching the air traffic clog the sky outside her window. Predestination. Fate. Genetic imprint. If she were to believe in any of that, what was the point of her job – or her life, for that matter? If there was no choice, no changing, why struggle to save lives or stand for the dead when the struggle failed?
If it was all physiologically coded, had she simply followed the pattern by coming to New York, fighting her way out of the dark to make something decent out of herself? And had it been a smear on that code that had blocked out those early years of her life, that continued to shadow bits and pieces of it even now?
And could that code kick in, at any given moment, and make her a reflection of the monster who had been her father?
She knew nothing of her other blood kin. Her mother was a blank. If she had siblings, aunts, uncles, or grandparents, they were all lost in that dark void in her memory. She had no one to base her genetic code on but the man who had beaten and raped her throughout childhood until in terror and pain she had struck back.
And killed.
Blood on her hands at eight years of age. Is that why she'd become a cop? Was she constantly trying to wash away that blood with rules and law and what some still called justice?
"Sir? Dallas?" Peabody laid a hand on Eve's shoulder and jumped when Eve jolted. "Sorry. Are you all right?"
"No." Eve pressed her fingers to her eyes. The discussion over dessert had troubled her more than she'd realized. "Just a headache."
"I've got some departmental-issue painkillers."
"No." Eve was afraid of drugs, even officially sanctioned doses. "It'll back off. I'm running out of ideas on the Fitzhugh case. Feeney fed me all known data on the kid on Olympus. I can't find any correlation between him and Fitzhugh or the senator. I've got nothing but piddly shit to hang on Leanore and Arthur. I can request truth detection, but I won't get it. I'm not going to be able to keep it open more than another twenty-four hours."
"You still think they're connected?"
"I want them to be connected, and that's a different thing. I haven't exactly given you an impressive lift off with your first assignment as my permanent aide."
"Being your permanent aide is the best thing that ever happened to me." Peabody flushed a little. "I'd be grateful if we got stuck shoveling through inactives for the next six months. You'd still be training me."
Eve leaned back in her chair. "You're easily satisfied, Peabody."
Peabody shifted her gaze until her eyes met Eve's. "No, sir, I'm not. When I don't get the best, I get real cranky."
Eve laughed, dragged a hand through her hair. "You sucking up, Officer?"
"No, sir. If I was sucking up, I'd make some personal observation, such as marriage obviously agrees with you, Lieutenant. You've never looked lovelier." Peabody smiled a little when Eve snorted. "That's how you'd know I was sucking up."
"So noted." Eve considered a moment, then cocked her head. "Didn't you tell me your family are Free-Agers?"
Peabody didn't roll her eyes, but she wanted to. "Yes, sir."
"Cops don't usually spring from Free-Agers. Artists, farmers, the occasional scientist, lots of craft workers."
"I didn't like weaving mats."
"Can you?"
"If held at laser point."
"So, what? Your family pissed you off and you decided to break the mold, go into a field dramatically removed from pacifism?"
"No, sir." Puzzled at the line of questioning, Peabody shrugged. "My family's great. We're still pretty tight. They're not going to understand what I do or want to do, but they never tried to block me. I just wanted to be a cop, the same way my brother wanted to be a carpenter and my sister a farmer. One of the strongest tenets of Free-Ageism is self-expression."
"But you don't fit the genetic code," Eve muttered and drummed her fingers on her desk. "You don't fit. Heredity and environment, gene patterns – they all should have influenced you differently."
"The bad guys wished I had been," Peabody said soberly. "But I'm here, keeping our city safe."
"If you get an urge to weave a mat – "
"You'll be the first to know."
Eve's unit beeped twice, signaling incoming data. "Additional autopsy report on the kid." Eve gestured for Peabody to come closer. "List any abnormal brain pattern," she ordered.
Microscopic abnormality, right cerebral hemisphere, frontal lobe, left quadrant. Unexplained. Further research and testing under way.
"Well, well, I think we just caught a break. Display visual of frontal lobe and abnormality." The cross section of the brain popped on screen. "There." A quick surge of excitement churned in her belly as Eve tapped the screen. "That shadow – pinprick. See it?"
"Barely." Peabody leaned closer until she was all but cheek to cheek with Eve. "Looks like a flaw on the display."
"No, a flaw in the brain. Increase quadrant six, twenty percent."
The picture shifted, and the section with the shadow filled the screen. "More of a burn than a hole, isn't it?" Eve said half to herself. "Hardly there, but what kind of damage, what kind of influence would it have on behavior, personality, decision making?"
"I pretty well dumped my required Abnormal Physiology at the Academy." Peabody moved her sturdy shoulders. "I did better in Psych, better yet in Tactics. This is over my head."
"Mine, too," Eve admitted. "But it's a link, our first one. Computer, cross section of brain abnormality, Fitzhugh, file one two eight seven one. Split screen with current display."
The screen jittered, went to fuzzy gray. Eve swore, smacked it with the heel of her hand, and bumped out a shaky image blurred across the center.
"Son of a bitch. Son of a bitch. This cheap shit we have to use around here. It's a wonder we can close a case on jaywalking. Download all data, you bastard, on disc."
"Maybe if you sent this unit into Maintenance," Peabody suggested and received a snarl.
"It was supposed to be overhauled while I was away. The fuckers in Maintenance have their fingers up their butts. I'm going to run this through one of Roarke's units." She caught Peabody's lifted brow and tapped her foot as she waited for the wheezy machine to download. "You got a problem with that, Officer?"
"No, sir." Peabody tucked her tongue in her cheek and decided against mentioning the series of codes Eve was about to break. "No problem here."
"Fine. Get to work on the red tape and get me the brain scan of the senator for comparison."
Peabody's smug little smile fell away. "You want me to bump heads with East Washington?"
"Your head's hard enough to handle it." Eve ejected the disc and pocketed it. "Call me when you get it. The minute you get it."
"Yes, sir. If we get a link there, we're going to need an expert analyst."
"Yeah." Eve thought of Reeanna. "I might just have one. Get moving, Peabody."