Witness in Death (In Death #10)(42)

"So he was looking to come into a nice pile."

"Or he was a hell of a dreamer. Can't find anything on his unit to indicate he did previous scans, you know, like a hobby."

"Blackmailing a murderer might net you a nice pile."

"Or a noose," Feeney added.

"Yeah. I'm heading by the morgue to nag Morse."

"Nobody does it better," Feeney said before Eve cut him off.

CHAPTER NINE

"Ah, Lieutenant Dallas." Chief Medical Examiner Morse's dark eyes glittered behind his microgoggles. Above the serviceable lenses, his eyebrows arched in two long, slim triangles. At the peak of the left was a small, shiny silver hoop.

He snapped his fingers, held out his sealed hand, palm up. A grumbling assistant flipped a twenty-dollar credit into it. "Dallas, you never disappoint me. You see, Rochinsky, never bet against the house."

The credit disappeared into one of the pockets of his puke-green protective jumpsuit.

"Win a bet?" Eve asked.

"Oh, yes indeed. A small wager with my associate that you would show up in our happy home before five P.M."

"It's nice to be predictable." She looked down at the middle-aged, mixed-race woman currently stretched out under Morse's laser scalpel. The Y cut had already been made.

"That's not my dead guy."

"Very observant. Meet Allyanne Preen, Detective Harrison's dead gal, who was several slots ahead of yours. Licensed companion, street level. She was found stretched out in an abandoned '49 Lexus coupe, in the great automotive morgue we call long-term parking, La Guardia."

"Trouble with a John?"

"No outward signs of violence, no recent sexual encounters." He scooped out her liver, weighed and logged it.

"She's got a faint blue tinge to her skin." Eve bent down to examine the hands. "Most noticeable under the nails. Looks like an OD, probably Exotica and Jumper."

"Very good. Any time you want to switch to my side of the slab, just let me know. I can promise, we have a lot more fun around here."

"Yeah, word's out on you party animals."

"The reports of the Saint Patrick's Day celebration in the ice room were..." His eyes laughed behind his goggles. "Accurate."

"Sorry I missed it. Where's my guy? I need his tox report."

"Mmm-hmm." Morse poked at a kidney before removing it. His hands were quick and skilled and seemed to keep time to the beat of the rebel rock music playing over the speakers. "I assumed you'd be in a hurry. I gave your guy to young Finestein. He just started here last month. Has potential."

"You gave mine to some rookie?"

"We were all rookies once, Dallas. Speaking of which, where's the stalwart Peabody?"

"She's outside, doing some runs. Listen, Morse, this is a tricky one."

"So they say, all the time, every time."

"I'm betting on homicide, but it was set up to look like self-termination. I need good hands and eyes on my guy."

"I don't take on anyone without them. Relax, Dallas. Stress can kill you." Unruffled, he strolled over to a 'link, put out a call for Herbert Finestein. "He'll be right along. Rochinsky, run this young lady's internals to the lab. Start the blood work."

"Morse, I've got two bodies, and the probability is that they're linked."

"Yes, yes, but that's your area." He wandered to a detox bowl, washed the soiled sealant from his hands, ran them under the radiant heat in the drying hood. "I'll look over the boy's work, Dallas, but give him a chance."

"Yeah, yeah, fine."

Morse pulled off his goggles and mask, smiled. His black hair was intricately braided to hang down to the middle of his back. He disposed of his protective suit to reveal the stunning pink of his shirt and electric blue of his trousers.

"Nice threads," Eve said dryly. "Going to another party?"

"I'm telling you, every day's a party around here."

She imagined he habitually chose snazzy clothes to distance himself from the starkness of his job, the brutality of it. Whatever works, Eve thought. Wading through blood and gore and the misery human beings inflicted on each other on a daily basis wore on you. Without an escape valve, you'd explode.

And what was hers?

"And how's Roarke?" Morse asked.

"Good. Fine." Roarke. Yes, he was hers. Before him there had just been work. Only been work. And would she have, one day, reached the limit, felt her own soul shatter?

Hell of a thought.

"Ah, here's Finestein. Be nice," Morse murmured to Eve.

"What am I?"

"An ass-kicker," Morse said pleasantly and laid a friendly hand on her shoulder. "Herbert, Lieutenant Dallas would like an update on the DOS I assigned to you this afternoon."

"Yes, the Dead on-Scene. Quim, Linus, white male, fifty-six years. Cause of death strangulation by hanging." Finestein, a skinny mixed race with black skin and pale eyes, spoke in quick, piping tones and fiddled nervously with a small forest of pencils tucked in a breast pocket protector.

Not only a rookie, Eve thought with frustration, a nerd rookie.

"Did you want to review the body?"