Witness in Death

"Okay by me." Since he figured his tongue and his ears were safe again, he began to whistle with his work. "That thing's been obsolete for five years. Don't know how you managed to get anything done with it."

Her only response to that was a low, throaty growl.

When Peabody came in an hour later, Eve was sitting at her crowded desk, gri

"Whoa." Peabody came in, circled around. "Whoa squared. It's beautiful."

"Yeah. It's mine. Tomjohn Lewis, my new best friend, hooked it up for me. It listens to me, Peabody. It does what I tell it to do."

"That's great, sir. I know you'll be very happy together."

"Okay, fun's over." She picked up her coffee, jerking her thumb toward the AutoChef so Peabody knew she was welcome to a cup of her own. "I did a run-through on Draco's apartment last night."

"I didn't know you pla

"It wasn't necessary." Eve had a nasty image of the scene in Areena's apartment if Peabody had come along.

"Draco kept a stash of illegals in his penthouse. A variety pack that included nearly an ounce of pure Wild Rabbit."

"Creep."

"You bet. Also a number of inventive sex toys, some of which were out of the scope of even my wide range of experience. He had a collection of video discs, and a large percentage of them are personal sexual encounters."

"So we have a dead sexual deviant."

"The toys and the discs are personal choice, but the Rabbit shuffles him over into SD territory. It could go to motive, or motives, since they're piling up like Free-Agers at a protest rally. No offense."

"None taken."

"We've got, as potentials, ambition, personal gain, money, sex, illegals, woman or women scorned, and all-around general dislike. He enjoyed preying on women, generally pushing members of both sexes around. He had a regular illegals habit. He was also an irritating son of a bitch, and had everyone who knew him wanting to string him up by his intestines. It doesn't cut the list by much. But."

She shifted in her chair. "I started ru

"And the interviews this afternoon?"

"Go as scheduled. I'll be back in an hour, two at most." She pushed away from her desk. "If I get held up, contact the lab and nag Dickhead into verifying the illegals I sent down this morning."

"A pleasure. Bribe or threat?"

"How long have you worked with me now, Peabody?"

"Almost a year, sir."

Eve nodded as she strode out. "Long enough. Use your own judgment."

Mira's area was more civilized – Eve imagined that was the word – compared with the warrens and hives of the majority of Cop Central. A bubble of calm, she supposed, especially if you didn't know what went on behind the doors of Testing.

Eve knew, and she hoped eons passed before she was forced to step through them again.

But Mira's individual space was a world away from the depersonalizing and demoralizing cage of Testing. She favored shades of blues in her cozy scoop chairs, in the soothing ocean waves she often set on her mood screen.

Today she was dressed in one of her soft and snazzy pastel suits. A hopeful green, the color of spring leaf buds. Her hair waved back from a face of composed beauty Eve constantly admired. There were teardrop pearls at her ears that matched the single dangle on a gold-linked chain at her throat.

She was, to Eve's mind, the perfect example of gracious femininity.

"I appreciate you fitting me in this morning."

"I feel a vested interest," Mira began as she programmed her AutoChef for tea. "Being a witness. In all my years attached to the NYPSD, I've never witnessed a murder." She turned with two cups of floral-scented tea in her hand and caught the dark flicker in Eve's eyes. "Richard Draco was not a murder, Eve. It was an execution. An entirely different matter."

She took her seat, handing Eve the tea they both knew she'd barely sip. "I study murder. Murderers. I listen to them, and I analyze them. I profile them. And as a doctor, I know, understand, and respect death. But, having a murder take place right in front of my eyes, not to know it was real. Well, it's given me some bad moments. It's difficult."

"I was thinking ingenious."

"Well." A ghost of a smile curved Mira's lips. "Your viewpoint and mine come from different angles, I suppose."

"Yeah." And Eve's angle was often standing over the dead with blood on her boots. It occurred to her now she hadn't taken Mira's state of mind into consideration that night at the theater. She had simply drafted her onto the team and used her as it seemed most efficient.

"I'm sorry. I didn't think of it. I never gave you a choice."

"You had no reason to think of it. And at the time, neither did I." She shook it off, lifted her tea. "You were backstage and at work very quickly. How soon did you realize the knife was real?"

"Not soon enough to stop it. That's what counts. I've started my interviews, concentrating on the actors first."

"Yes, the crime's steeped in theatrics. The method, the timing, the staging." More comfortable with the analytical distance, Mira ran the scene in her mind. "An actor or someone who aspires or aspired to be one fits the profile. On the other hand, the murder was clean, well produced, carefully executed. Your killer is bold, Eve, but also cool-headed."

"Would they have needed to see it happen?"

"Yes, I think so. To see it, under the lights, on the stage, with the audience gasping in shock. That, in my opinion, was as important to this individual as Draco's death. The thrill of it and the ensuing act. Their own shock and horror, well rehearsed."

She considered. "It was too well staged not to have been rehearsed. Draco was touted as one of the greatest actors of our time. Killing him was one step. Replacing him, even if only in the killer's mind, was an essential second."

"You're saying it was professionally motivated."

"Yes, on one level. But it was also very personal. If we look at an actor, or an aspiring one, professional and personal motives could be easily blended."

"The only one to tangibly benefit from Draco's death, professionally, is Michael Proctor. The understudy."

"Logically, yes. Yet everyone onstage or attached to that performance benefits. The media attention, the names fixed in the minds of the public, that indelible moment in time. Isn't that what an actor aspires to? The indelible moment?"

"I don't know. I don't understand people who spend their lives being other people."

"The work, the skill, is in making the viewing audience believe they are other people. The theater is more than a job to those who do it well, who devote their life to it. It is, just as your job is to you, a way of life. And on the night Draco was murdered, the spotlight shone a little brighter for everyone in that play."

"In the play, or involved with the play. Not in the audience."

"With current data, I can't eliminate audience members, but am more inclined toward a person or persons closer to the stage." Mira set her cup aside, laid a hand over Eve's. "You're concerned about Nadine."

Eve opened her mouth, shut it again.

"Nadine's a patient, and she's very open with me. I'm fully aware of her history with the victim, and I'm fully prepared, should it become necessary, to give my professional opinion that she isn't capable of pla