Origin in Death (In Death #21)(94)

"Fortified."

She wouldn't laugh. "Let's go back to the beginning. You can t se: sleep mode without telling me."

"When my wife comes home weeping from exhaustion and stress,! I'm going to see that she gets some rest." He glanced back, and there i was that steel in his eyes. The kind that warned her arguing would end in a fight. "And she's lucky I did nothing more than darken the room to see she got some." He crossed to the seating area with a bowl, set down on the table.

"Now, you'd better sit down and eat that, or we're going to start: day with one hell of a fight."

"Figured that already," she grumbled.

"And your schedule's already so full."

She came as close as she ever did to pouting when she studied oatmeal. "It's got disgusting lumps."

"It certainly doesn't. What it's got is apples and blueberries."

"Blueberries?"

"Sit down and eat them like a good girl."

"Soon as there's room in my schedule, I'm going to punch you for that." But she sat, contemplated the bowl. It looked to her as if perfectly good fruit had been buried in mush. "Technically, I've been on shift since eight. But I'm entitled by regs, unless requested otherwise by a superior, to take eight hours between duty. It was after two when I left the Icove place."

"Have you decided to become a clock watcher?"

"Peabody and McNab had put in for vacation time, starting today. I told her to go."

"Depleting your team by two." He nodded, sat. "All within the confines of regulations, all perfectly aboveboard. The pace will slow. Add the holiday and it slows more. What do you intend to do with the time ?"

"I already started doing it. I broke Code Blue. I met with Nadine and gave her everything." She poked a spoon into the oatmeal, lifted it, let the goop dribble out again. "I disobeyed a direct order, a priority order, and am prepared to lie through my teeth about it. I'm dragging my heels to give Avril Icove time to figure out how to disengage the bracelets, get the kids, and poof. And hoping they'll give me Deena's location, or at least the location or locations of operations."

"If you continue to beat yourself up over it, we're going to start the day with a fight after all."

"I've got no right to make decisions based on emotion, to circumvent orders, ignore my duty."

"You're wrong, Eve, on so many counts. First, you're not making this decision based on emotion, or not solely. You're basing it on instinct, experience, and your bone-deep sense of justice."

"Cops don't make the rules."

"Bollocks. You may not write them, but you edit them every day, to suit the situation. You have to because if the law, the rules, the spirit of them doesn't adjust and flex, it dies."

She'd told herself essentially the same a dozen times already. "I didn't tell Peabody all of this, but some. And I said I didn't think I'd have been able to play this the way I am, even five years ago. She said I would have."

"Our Peabody is astute. Do you remember the day I met you?" He reached in his pocket, took out the gray button that had come off the only suit she'd owned before he'd blasted into her life. He rubbed it between his fingers as he watched her.

"You struggled then, with procedure, the book of it. But you had then, and always had, I think, a clear sense of justice. Those two things will always be true. You'll struggle, and you'll see. It's what makes you as much as that badge makes you. Never in my life have I known anyone who has such a basic dislike of people, yet has such unstinting and bottomless compassion for them. Eat your oatmeal."

She took a bite. "It could be worse."

"I've got a 'link conference shortly, and there's a list of messages on your desk."

"Messages?"

"Three from Nadine, with increasing impatience. She demands you contact her regarding confirmation of information she had on Icove- plural-his connection with Brookhollow, and a further connection to Evelyn Samuels's murder in New Hampshire."

"She's right on schedule."

"There's another from Feeney. He's back from New Hampshire and has a report for you. He was circumspect, as I assume your Code Blue demands."

"Good."

"Commander Whitney wants your report, oral and written, by noon."

"You in the market to make admin?"

He smiled, rose. "Some of Ireland will be arriving around two, which, I'm annoyed to admit, makes me nervous. If you're delayed, I'll explain."

She ate, she dressed. Then she picked up her badge and got to work.

She met with Feeney first. In her office, with the door shut. She filled him in on everything, excluding her meeting with Nadine. Should she get busted for that, she'd go down alone.

"Three of them. Doesn't even seem that weird anymore." Feeney munched nuts. "Plays right in with what we found at the schools. Got the records."

He tapped the discs he'd already dumped on Eve's desk. "They ran two systems. One neat and tidy for your audits and checks. Had it fronting the second. Every student given a code number, and the code labeling the testing, the adjustments-"

"Adjustments? Such as?"