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“It seems kind of silly when I’m standing right here.”

“By the numbers.”

After the brief exchange Eve tossed her ’link to McNab. “Do your geek thing, then get down to Central—business as usual.”

“I can give you a lift partway, Ian,” Roarke said from the doorway.

“Iced. Give me a shake first.”

“I’ll go with you,” Peabody told him, “get the ’links when you’ve done your magic. Meet you downstairs, Dallas. Thanks for everything, Roarke. Totally everything.”

“Don’t take him all the way,” Eve began when Peabody followed McNab out of the room.

“It’s not my first time being sneaky.” Roarke stepped to her to trace a finger down the dent in her chin. “I could beat you in a sneaky face-off.”

“Probably.”

“His respect for his predecessor weighs on your commander.”

“Yeah, I got that. But he doesn’t like the daughter. Didn’t even before this. Sometimes that apple and the tree thing? Sometimes it does. Fall far.”

Understanding she thought of herself and perhaps him as well, as much as Renee Oberman, he cupped her face, touched his lips to hers. “Sometimes the apple makes the deliberate choice to fall as far as possible. For good or ill, Eve.”

“And sometimes it was rotten before it fell. And that’s enough about fruit. I have to go find a dead junkie.”

“Happily, this time I don’t.” He kissed her again. “Mind the live ones.”

“Maybe I’ll try your prime move.” And she walked out sort of hoping she could.

Once they were in her vehicle Eve ran it through again with Peabody. “We’re going by the book. Sealed up, record on. Following a tip. We’ll clear the first level before we move up. We don’t know the vic by anything but Juicy until we ID him. Keep your recorder off me when I remove the eyes Roarke put over the bathroom doorway.”

“Got it.”

“We work the body and the scene exactly as we’d work any body and scene, and that’s why we’re going to give some weight to homicide. Regardless, it’s a suspicious, unattended death, and in my department we don’t brush that off because the vic is a loser chemi-head with a sheet.”

“Damn straight. I was nervous with the commander.”

“He came at you hard because IAB’s going to come hard, and when we take her down, the defense is going to come hard.”

“I got that, too.” Peabody fiddled with her rainbow sunshades but didn’t put them on. “And I got that there’s going to be other cops who look at me like a traitor.”

“She’s the traitor, Peabody.”

“I know. But I have to be ready for it. So whenever it comes at me, I’m going to see myself in that shower stall, and I’m going to think, ‘Fuck you.’”

“It’s a good thought. Time to set up the next step.” She used her pocket ’link to contact Webster.

“Well, good morning, Dallas.”

While his attractive face filled the screen she heard the sounds of traffic. “Where are you?”

“Walking to work on this fine summer day. Why?”

“Got company?”

“A few million New Yorkers.” He sipped from a go-cup of coffee, but she saw his eyes change. Flatten. “No company.”

“I need a meet. Remember where we met during a little federal matter?”

“I remember.”

“There. In two hours. You’ll need to take this as personal time.”

“I’ve got a boss, Dallas.”

“So does he, and so does his boss. This comes from the big chair, Webster. If you don’t want it, I’ll tag another rat.”

“Funny. Two hours.” He clicked off.

“Tag Crack,” Eve ordered Peabody. “Tell him I need him to have his place open in a couple hours.”

“You want me to tag a giant sex club owner at this hour of the morning, knowing I’ll be waking him up?”

“Find your spine, Peabody,” Eve suggested.

The neighborhood looked worse in the daylight, Eve decided, when every stain, every smear showed in sharp relief. A sad little convenience store sagged near the corner, papered with warnings.

NO CASH ON PREMISES!

MONITORED BY ON GUARD!

DROID OPERATORS ONLY!

A handful of people moved along the sidewalk, heads down, going about their business while it was too early for most thugs and toughs and troublemakers to hassle them.

“It’s a hard life here,” Peabody commented. “A couple blocks away, it’s different, but here it’s hard and mean. If you’re born here, how do you get out?”

Eve thought of Roarke, a child, navigating the violent Dublin alley-ways where hard and mean would have been a holiday. “Hook or crook,” she murmured.

After parking, engaging all alarms and her On Duty light, Eve got her field kit out of the trunk. “Curtain up. Record on. Let’s seal up.” She tossed Peabody the can of Seal-It. “In case this turns out to be something other than a waste of time.”

Peabody obeyed, tossed the can back. “We could’ve had some uniforms check it out.”

“My tip. No point in wasting the resources until we take a look.” She pulled out her master as they approached the building. “It doesn’t look like anyone’s lived in this place during this century, but see here—that’s a new lock. Nobody’s bothered to bust it yet.”

“Looks like that’s it for security. No cams, no pads.”

“If it had them, they’re long gone. Dallas, Lieutenant Eve, and Peabody, Detective Delia, bypassing lock, entering premises to validate or refute report of a body by a confidential informant.”

She bypassed, drew her weapon. Then eased the door open. “Now, that’s a lovely stench. If this is the flight of the wild goose, that weasel’s going to get a serious scolding. Weapon and light, Peabody. Let’s start clearing.”

As she had hours before with Roarke, she swept the first level.

“This was probably a nice place once,” Peabody commented. “You can see some of the original flooring and plasterwork.”

“Sure. It’s a real fixer-upper. Level one clear,” she said for the record. “Crap, these steps better hold. If you fall through, I’m not hauling you out.”

“I believe that’s a comment on my weight. I may file an official complaint.”

Eve snorted out a laugh. “You do that. God, the smell just gets better. It’s like a shit pile bouquet perfumed with ... crap.”

“Shit is crap.”

“For Christ’s sake, Peabody, you’ve worked Homicide long enough you should be able to smell a DB even through this. Weasel said in the tub. Clear as you go,” she ordered, and sweeping areas made her way back to the ruined bathroom. “This must be Juicy.”

“I guess you owe the weasel an apology.”

“He’ll get his twenty.” Eve approached the tub. “Swimming in puke. An exaggeration, but close enough. Let’s ID him, call it in.”

“Dallas, it’s bad in here. If we don’t want to spend an hour in the sanitizer, we should put on protective gear.”

“Got a point.” Eve stepped back, and as Peabody bent to remove the cover-ups from the kit, reached up and behind her for the cam Roarke had positioned. She slid it into her pocket, disengaged, then took out her communicator.

“Dallas, Lieutenant Eve.”

Dispatch, Dallas acknowledged.

She reported the body, the location, the situation, requested uniforms to assist. Done, she unsealed the protective wrap Peabody offered her.

As before, Eve used her pad for ID. “Victim is identified as Keener, Rickie, age twenty-seven. Mixed race male, five feet and nine inches, one hundred and thirty pounds. Brown and brown. Vic is curled in a broken bathtub, empty needle syringe is in the tub with him. Other illegals paraphernalia also in evidence.”

“TOD’s coming in at oh four hundred yesterday, Dallas. It’s reading approximate due to time lag and ambient conditions.”

“ME to confirm TOD.”

Peabody said what she believed she’d have said if they’d come across the body by a tip. “It looks like an OD. You can see his track marks. He went old school, but it’s not his first trip to Neverland.”

“Why the tub? There was a mattress in the next room, what could loosely be called a bed. He’s got bruising, a scraped elbow.”