Judgment in Death

"He'd been drinking. My hunch is he'd been drinking with somebody. Just like Kohli. Taking a meet in his ride maybe, having a drink. He gets sloppy, gets drugged, gets dead."

"Yeah, most likely. You did good putting McNab on the traffic scans. He'll do the job."

"I've got him and Peabody in my home office at eight. Can you come in on it?"

He looked at her, smiled his sorrowful basset-hound smile. "I thought I already was."

– =O=-***-=O=-

It was nearly four when she got home, and a soft spring rain had started to fall. In the dark she showered off the greasiness of the night. Resting her forehead on the tiles until she stopped smelling blood and bile.

She set her wrist alarm for five. She meant to hit at Lewis again, and that meant another trip to Central in just over an hour. For that hour, she promised herself she'd sleep.

She climbed into bed, grateful for Roarke's warmth. He'd be awake, she thought. Even if he'd slept before she got home, he slept like a cat and would have sensed her.

But he didn't turn to her as he usually did, didn't reach out or say her name to help her slip into comfort.

She closed her eyes, willed her mind to blank and her body to sleep.

And when she woke an hour later, she was alone.

She was out in her car, nearly ready to pull out, when Peabody ran out of the house behind her.

"Nearly missed you."

"Missed me? What are you doing here?"

"I bunked here last night. Me and McNab." In a bedroom, she thought, she'd dream about for the rest of her life. "We brought the traffic discs back here. Roarke said it'd be easier to do that instead of ru

"Roarke said?"

"Well, yeah." She settled into the passenger's seat, strapped in. "He rode along with us to pick up the discs, then he'd called for a car, so we drove back here with him and got to work."

"Who got to work?"

Peabody's brain had engaged enough now to catch the edginess in Eve's tone. She'd have squirmed if it hadn't been so undignified. "Well, me and McNab… and Roarke. He's done some tech consults with us before, so I didn't think anything of it. Are we in trouble?"

"No. What would be the point?"

There was a weariness in the answer Peabody didn't like. "We broke off about three." She infused her voice with cheer as they headed down the drive. "I never slept in a gel bed before. It's like sleeping on a cloud, except I guess you'd fall through a cloud. McNab was snoring like a cargo tram, but I fell out about two seconds after I hit the bed anyway. Are you mad at Roarke?" she blurted out.

"No." But he's mad at me. Still. "Did you spot Mills's vehicle on the disc?"

"Oh, man, I can't believe I didn't tell you. Yeah, we got it. Passed the toll through the e-pass at twenty-eighteen. You'd swear he was just sleeping until you enhance and see the blood."

"The driver, Peabody?"

"That's the not-so-good news. There was no driver. McNab said you'd need to go over the in-dash computer, but it looks like it was on auto."

"He programmed it." She hadn't thought of that. Very slick, very confident. Took Mills out somewhere else, then programmed the auto. If it ran into a snag and there was nobody in the vehicle to correct, what did he care?

"Yeah, that's what we came to. McNab started calling it the Meteor of Death. You know, it was a Meteor model," Peabody said lamely. "Gets to be that late, you start making stupid jokes, I guess."

"You need a code to program a police unit. You need a code, or you need clearance. It'll have security override to keep it from being boosted, even by electronic-savvy car-jackers."

"Yeah, Roarke said." Peabody yawned comfortably. "But if you know what you're doing, it can be finessed."

He'd know, Eve thought sourly. "If it was finessed, it'll show." She snagged her 'link, called Feeney, and asked him to go down to vehicle impound and run the test personally.

"If it doesn't show," she said, thinking out loud as she swung into Central's garage, "he had the code or clearance."

"He couldn't have had clearance, Dallas, that would make him…"

"Another cop. That's right."

Peabody goggled at her. "You don't really think-"

"Listen to me. Murder investigation doesn't just start with a body. It starts with a list, with potentials, with angles. You close the case by cutting down that list, narrowing the potentials, working the angles. You take that, the evidence, the story, the scene, the victim, and the killer. And you put it together as many different ways as you have to, until it fits.

"You keep this to yourself," Eve added. "You don't say anything. But if we put it together and it fits a cop, then we deal with it."

"Yeah, okay. A lot of this one's making me kind of sick."

"I know it." Eve pushed out of the car. "Call in, have Lewis brought up to interview."

– =O=-***-=O=-

She fueled herself with coffee, took her life in her hands and bought what was reputed to be a cherry danish from vending on the Interview level. It tasted more like cherry-flavored glue over sawdust, but it was something in her stomach. She strolled into Interview, carrying an oversized mug of her own-or Roarke's own-coffee because she knew the smell of it could make a grown man beg. She settled down, all smiles, while Peabody took up her post by the door and glowered. She set the recorder, read in the current data.

"Morning, Lewis. Beautiful day out there."

"I heard it's raining."

"Hey, don't you know the rain's good for the flowers? So how'd you sleep?"

"I slept just fine."

She smiled again, sipped from her mug. He had circles layering the circles under his eyes. She doubted he'd gotten much more sleep than she had. "Well, as we were saying when last we met-"

"I don't have to say dick to you without my lawyer."

"Did I ask you to say dick? Peabody, replay the record and verify that I at no time requested that the subject say dick."

"That shit don't work on me. I got nothing to say. I'm sticking with silence. It's one of my civil rights."

"You hold onto those civil rights, Lewis, while you can. They don't count for a whole hell of a lot on Penal Station Omega. That's where I'm sending you. I'm going to make it my mission in life to put you in one of their smaller concrete cages. So you stick with that silence, and I'll do the talking. Conspiracy to kidnap a police officer."

"You can't prove that. We never touched you."

"Four armed men in two vehicles, pursuing poor little me, at high rates of speed, over the state line. You shouldn't have gone over the state line, ace. I can make that federal, and my guess is the FBI would just love a shot at you. With your record, the concealeds are enough to shoot you on the next transit to Omega. Add the illegals."

"I don't use no drugs."

"They were in the vehicle you were driving. That was another mistake. You know, if you'd been a passenger, you might have had a better chance to cut back on that hard time. But being the driver, the driver with concealeds, with illegals, that makes you my favorite patsy. Ricker's not even going to wave bye-bye when you're strapped in the prison transport."

"I got nothing to say."

"Yeah, I heard that." But he was starting to sweat. "I bet the lawyer's made you promises. I bet I can list them right off for you. You'll do some time, but you'll be compensated. They'll work the politics and get you into a nice, cushy facility. Five years, seven tops. And you walk out a rich man. I bet that's real close."

She could see by the worry in Lewis's eyes that it was more than close. It was bull's-eye. "Of course, he's a lying sack of shit, and I think you're smart enough to have figured that out during the night. Once you're in, you're in, and if you're unhappy with the arrangement and make noises, one of your upstanding fellow inmates is going to get a message. Poison sprinkled in your rehydrated mashed potatoes. A shiv in the kidneys during your single hour a day in the yard. An accident in the showers where you slip on the soap and break your neck. You won't know where it's coming from until you're dead."