Purity in Death

Take a number, she thought. Too late to be protected, but you'll be served eventually.

As Eve strode down the bright white corridor of the dead, Peabody hustled beside her.

"Man, this place is always a little spooky, but this is beyond. You know how you half expect one of these bags to sit up and grab at you?"

"No. Wait out here. If one of them makes a run for it, give me a call."

"I don't think that's particularly fu

Inside Morris was busy at work, a laser scalpel mid-way through the Y cut on one of the six bodies splayed out on tables.

He wore goggles over his pleasant face, a plastic hood over his long, dark braided hair, and a clear protective coat over a natty navy blue suit.

"What's the point in having voice mail if you don't talk to it?" Eve demanded.

"A lot of unexpected company dropped in this morning, due to an airtram collision. Didn't you catch the report? Bodies dropping out of the sky like flying monkeys."

"If they could fly they wouldn't be bagged and tagged. How many?"

"Twelve dead, six injured. Some jerk in an airmini rammed it. Tram pilot managed to hold the controls most of the way down, but people panicked. Add to that the knife fight at a club that took both participants and one bystander, the Jane Doe female found stuffed in a recycler, and your everyday bashings, bludgeonings, and brutalities and we've got ourselves a full house."

"I've got a police termination with some questions. Rookie uniform stuns crazy guy, crazy guy dies. No sign of stu

"Then it didn't kill him."

"He's dead as the rest of your guests."

Morris completed his Y cut. "Only way a noncontact zap with a uniform stu

It was exactly what she'd wanted to hear. "If that's the case, it's not actually a termination by maximum force."

"Technically, no. However-"

"Technically will do. Be a pal, Morris, take a look at him. It's Trueheart."

Morris looked up and shoved the goggles up. "The kid with the peach fuzz on his face that looks like a screen ad for toothpaste?"

"That's the one. He's in Testing. IAB's next. And something doesn't hang about the way this went down. He could use a break."

"Let me look him up."

"He's over there. Number four in line." She jerked a thumb.

"Let me pull the report up."

"I can-"

"Let me read it" Morris cut her off with a wave of the hand and moved over to the data center. "Name of crazy dead guy?"

"Cogburn, Louis K."

Morris called up the field report As he read, he hummed to himself. It was some catchy little tune, vaguely familiar to her. And it started playing around in her head in a way that told her it would be stuck there for hours.

"Illegals dealer," Morris began. "Could've been over-sampling, heart or neurological damage possible. Bleeding from ears, nose, broken blood vessels in the eyes. Hmm."

He moved to the table where Louie K. was laid out, ski

"Record on," he said and began to dictate preliminary data, visual findings.

"Well, let's open him up, see what we see. You going to hang for this?"

"Yeah, if it's quick."

"One doesn't rush genius, Dallas." He picked up a skull saw, set it to whirl.

Eve often wondered why anyone chose this particular line of work, or how they could be so cheerful when going about it. At least the air in the room was cool, she thought and wandered over to study the offerings of the little fridgie. She settled for a tube of ginger ale before walking back to Morris.

"What do you-"

"Ssh!"

She scowled, but subsided. Morris was usually chatty when he worked. In this case he went about the job in silence, referring to the inside of Cogburn's skull, to the computer imagery on the screen beside the table.

She studied it herself, but saw nothing but shapes and colors.

"You do a medical search on this guy?"

"Yeah. He hasn't been in for any sort of work or check in a couple of years. Nothing popped."

"Oh yeah, something popped. His brain, and no standard stu

"Preexisting?"

"I can't tell, not yet. This is going to take time. Fascinating. Pop's just what this brain did. Like an over-inflated balloon. I can tell you that in my opinion this wasn't done by any weapon. It's internal."

"Medical then."

"I'm not going to confirm that. I'm going to run some tests." He shooed her away. "I'll contact you when I have something solid."

"Give me something."

"I can tell you it appears this guy's brain was in serious condition, an ongoing condition prior to any act by your officer last evening. What happened here didn't happen as a result of a stun. It didn't happen if he'd stuck a police issue laser in the guy's ear and blasted away. I can't say if the stun caused some sort of chain reaction that led to early termination. But from the looks of this brain, this guy would've been dead within an hour. I'll let you know when I figure out how and why. Now go and let me work."

Eve bypassed the seal on Cogburn's apartment. The stench, the stale, trapped heat punched like a dirty fist when she opened the door.

"God. That's foul."

"Oh yeah." Peabody turned her head, sucked in what she imagined was her last easy breath, then followed Eve inside.

"Go ahead and open the window while we're in here. It's got to be better than working in a closed box."

"What are we looking for?"

"Morris's prelim is leaning toward preexisting condition. We may find something in here to verify that, to indicate he was self-medicating. The place looks like he was off, sick. That's what struck me from the first. He's a creep, but a tidy, organized creep. Keeps his nest neat ordinarily. But the last several days, he's falling down on the domestic front. Keeping up with his business though. You're sick, you're hot, you're irritable. Neighbor hassles you, you crack. Makes better sense."

"But, well, it doesn't really matter why Cogburn had batting practice on his neighbor."

"It always matters why," Eve answered. "Ralph Wooster's dead, and Cogburn's paid for it. But it matters why."

She opened drawers she'd opened and searched the day before. "Maybe he had a hard-on for Wooster all along. Maybe he wanted to shag Ralph's woman, or owed him money. And now he's feeling like shit and old Ralph's hammering on his door and yelling at him."

She crouched down, shined a penlight deep into the recesses of a cupboard. "Point is, something made him snap, go postal. Could be his brain was frying. Morris said he was a dead man."

"Even so, Trueheart's in Testing." Peabody glanced at her wrist unit. "Or just coming out of it. He'll have to face IAB whether or not Cogburn had a preexisting."

"Yeah, but he'll feel better if it comes out he gave the guy the standard and acceptable stuns, and a preexisting was the root or cause of death. We get him that, he won't get the mandatory thirty-day vacation."

She stayed crouched, frowning into space. "Anyway, I don't like how it feels. Just don't like it."

"What's that song you're humming?"

Eve stopped, cursed herself, straightened. "I don't know. Damn Morris. Let's knock on doors."