Concealed in Death (In Death #38)(96)

She took out a card, wrote Mira’s name and contact on it.

“If you decide to do that, to dig down for it, look at it square, you contact this woman. I promise you she’s the best there is. She’ll take care because she’ll care.”

“What I told you, what I do remember, is it enough to help?”

“It is. You don’t have to give any more if you can’t.” She nudged the card closer. “This is for you, whether you talk to me again or not. Peabody’s right, you’ve made something good and strong.”

She looked up at the stars on the ceiling. “And you’ve got a nice place here.”

“You can come back sometime, have a real drink, see it at night, when it really shines.”

“I might just.”

She slid out of the booth, waited for Peabody to do the same.

“Lieutenant? They were my friends. You have to find who hurt them.”

“Working on it.”

Outside as they walked back to the car, Eve tossed Peabody a look. “Your brain’s buzzing so loud I want to swat it. Spill.”

“I’ve got more than one thing, but I guess I want to start saying you don’t usually—mostly ever—say something personal to a wit the way you did to her. About knowing what it’s like to block out something terrible, and have it come back at you anyway.”

Eve let it hang between them until they’d gotten into the car, into the warm. “It felt okay with her. Okay on my side of it, the right thing on hers. It is personal, but sometimes you use the personal to lever off the lid of something.”

“Do you still have nightmares?”

“Not like I did.” And it wasn’t as hard to think about, Eve realized as she merged into traffic. “Hardly ever. I have weird dreams, talking to the dead.”

“That’s creepy.”

“Not really, not always. And it’s useful. Just another lever. See about Nash Jones. I want him in the box, and I’ve got just the lever to pry him open.”

While Peabody tried to hook Nash Jones, Eve used the in-dash to contact Mira’s office.

Mira’s dragon peered coolly from the screen. “Lieutenant.”

“I need a few minutes with Dr. Mira.”

“The doctor is in session. She has a meeting directly after, followed by a consult. Her day is booked, Lieutenant.”

“Five minutes. Twelve dead girls and I need five minutes.”

“I’ll get back to you when I find five minutes.”

Eve bared her teeth at the screen as it went blank. “Who doesn’t have five f**king minutes? You’d think I was asking for an audience with God.”

“Mira is her god,” Peabody pointed out. “And Nash Jones is also in session. Shivitz passed me to his assistant who said she’ll have him contact me as soon as he’s free. But also said his day was crowded.”

“He’ll just have to make room.”

Since without Nash Jones or Mira she had five minutes, Eve detoured to DeWinter’s lab.

• • •

She heard someone shouting as she walked in. Her hand went to the butt of her weapon, then released it again when she recognized elation rather than fear or violence.

From the other direction she heard what sounded like a muffled explosion, followed by hysterical laughter.

“What kind of madhouse is this?”

“I think it’s kind of icy.” Peabody peered through glass walls, craned her neck to see over equipment. “But maybe you have to lean toward nerd to think it.”

“You have to be neck-deep in nerd to think it. Like nerd quicksand. And why is it called quick anyway? In the vids people and unfortunate animals just sink slowly.”

“Actually, you wouldn’t sink but float, unless you struggle.”

Eve glanced to the left where some nerd—sex not quite apparent in the baggy lab coat and behind the fly-eye microgoggles—looked up from examining a jawbone.

“What?”

“Quicksand’s just ordinary sand that’s saturated with water to the point it can’t support weight, and it’s usually only a few feet deep. The grains lose their friction, being saturated. But if you can, just float on it because your body’s less dense than the quicksand.”

“Okay, good to know. Next time I fall into some, I’ll remember that.”

“But if the mixture contains clay, that’s a problem. The clay acts as a gel, so if you fell into it, the force would cause the gel to liquefy and bond the clay particles together.”

The lab rat slapped one palm on the other. A good look at the hands determined male lab rat for Eve.

“You could sink pretty deep. Then the force needed to pull you out would be about the same as to lift a car or small truck. The trick is to wiggle out, as the motion lets water seep in, so you’re back to floating.”

“Okay then. I’m going to have to write all that down. Just in case.”

To avoid more quicksand data, she got moving. “How do people know that stuff? Why do people know that stuff?”

“Science,” Peabody said. “You can’t live without it.”

Eve started to argue, then remembered she was on her way to nag a scientist.

DeWinter wore the same weird little microgoggles, but her lab coat would never be called baggy. Today’s was hot pink and matched her skyscraper ankle boots.