Though the theory didn't gel for her, Eve decided she'd need to go back to the hotel and take a close look at who'd stayed in the rooms under Darlene's care for the last several weeks.

She stopped by her skinny window, watched the morning insanity. Sky and street traffic were vicious. An airbus lumbered by, jammed port to port with commuters who didn't have the luxury or the good sense to work out of their homes. A one-man traffic cam hovered with a scissor snap of blades as the rush hour was analyzed, reported, and broadcast to those already suffering through it.

The media needed to fill airtime with something, she supposed. She'd already ignored over a half dozen calls from reporters hoping for a comment or break on the murder. Until she was pushed into giving a statement by her commander, she was leaving the media spin to Roarke.

No one did it better.

She heard the unmistakable sound of cop shoes slapping against ancient linoleum, and continued to stare out her window.

"Sir?"

"There's a woman on this airtram out here with a lap full of flowers. Where the hell is she going with all those flowers?"

"It's coming up on Mother's Day, Lieutenant. Could be paying her duty call a little early."

"Hmmm. I want to run the boyfriend, Peabody. Barry Collins. If we swing with this being a hired job, somebody's footing the bill. I don't think a bellman's got the wherewithal for Yost's fee, but it could be he's the connection to someone who does."

"Yost?"

"Oh, sorry. You're not up-to-date." She corrected that oversight with her back to the room and her eyes on the sky.

"Captain Feeney's coming in on the investigation? Are you going to pull in McNab?"

Eve glanced over her shoulder. Peabody was working hard to look casual, but that square, earnest face wasn't fashioned for bluffing. "Not so long ago if I'd hinted about pulling McNab into an investigation, you'd have whined and bitched."

"No, sir. I'd have started to whine and bitch, then you'd have slapped me down. After that I'd have whined and bitched mentally." She broke into a grin. "Anyway, times change. McNab and I get along better now, mostly since we're having sex. Except…"

"Oh, don't. Don't tell me stuff about it."

"I was just going to say he's been acting a little weird."

"If you look up McNab in the dictionary, weird is the common definition."

"Different weird," Peabody corrected, but filed that little gem away to use on him at the first opportunity. "He's… nice. Really nice. Sort of sweet and attentive. He brings me flowers. I think he's stealing them out of the park, but still. And just a few days ago, he took me to the movies. A chick flick I'd made noises about wanting to see. He hated it, and made sure I knew it after, but he sprang for the admission and everything."

"Oh, man."

"So anyway, I think – " Peabody stopped, snorted out a laugh as her cool-eyed and courageous lieutenant let out a short shriek and stuck her fingers in her ears.

"I can't hear you. I don't want to hear you. I'm not going to hear you. Go do the run on Barry Collins. Now. That's an order."

Peabody simply moved her mouth.

"What?"

"I said, 'Yes, sir,'" Peabody explained when Eve unplugged her ears. She walked to the door, judged her timing. "I think he's setting me up for something," she said and fled.

"I'll set you up," Eve muttered and dropped behind her desk. "I'd like to set both of you up, then drop-kick your asses." Since she was in the mood to kick someone's, she called the lab and harassed the chief tech over verifying the DNA.

By the time she met with Feeney, she had conclusive DNA evidence that the man who had raped and murdered Darlene French was Sylvester Yost.

When she told him, he nodded, sat on her desk, and took his habitual bag of nuts from the sagging pocket of his wrinkled suit. "Never doubted it. I ran a scan for like crimes. Nothing in the past seven, eight months. He's been on vacation."

"Or somebody didn't want the bodies found. Any indication that he ever acts on his own? Personal reasons?"

"Nope." Feeney crunched on a nut. "Pattern's for profit. I've got McNab running the interplanetary and off planet scan. Might find something there."

"You're bringing McNab in?"

Her tone had him lifting his eyebrows. "Yeah. You got a problem with him?"

"No, no. He does good work." Even as she spoke she drummed her fingers on the desk. "It's just this thing with him and Peabody."

Feeney hunched his shoulders. "I don't want to think about that."

"Well, me neither." But if she was going to suffer, so was he. "He took her to a girl movie."

"What?" Feeney paled, and the nut currently in his mouth almost rolled off his tongue. "He went to a skirt movie? Took her?"

"That's what I said."

"Ah, Christ." He got off the desk, took a quick turn around the room on short, bandy legs. "That's it, you know. That's the finish. Boy's sunk. Next thing you know he'll be picking her flowers."

"Already done."

"Don't tell me this shit, Dallas." He turned back, basset hound eyes pleading. "Don't put this business in my brain. Isn't it bad enough I know they're, you know, getting naked together?"

"Nobody listens to me about this." She nodded, pleased to have found a like mind. "Roarke thinks it's sweet."

"He doesn't have to work with them, does he?" Feeney said, firing up. "He doesn't have to do the job knowing there's winking and tickling and Jesus Christ in heaven knows what going on. I thought she had her sights on that slick-faced LC, Monroe."

"She's juggling them."

Feeney peeled back his lips, sat again, offered Dallas the bag of nuts. "Women."

"Yeah, what is with them?" Feeling considerably better, she ate a handful. "So, I've got Peabody running the boyfriend. I don't think we're going to find anything, but once we have his data I'll swing over and interview him. Right now, I'm dodging the media. That's for Roarke to deal with. I'm going back to the crime scene, do some poking around the hotel. I expect the tox report on French within an hour. I figure it's going to be clean, but you never know about people."

"Especially female people," he muttered, still brooding.

"Yeah. French's parents divorced about eight years back. He's Harry D. French, currently living in the Bronx with his second wife. You got time to snip off that thread and take a look at his data? If it was a professional hit, maybe it was payback to him for something."

"I'll run him now. The mother?"

"Sherry Tides French. I ran her last night. Manages a damn candy store at the Newark Transpo Center. Whistle clean. I can't see it coming down through her."

She tossed him back his nuts, rose, and plucked her jacket from its hook. "Since you've got McNab, how about having him run the wire? Let's see if we can find out where he buys it. The lab analysis should be coming through before midday."

"Yeah, I'll put him on it, keep him busy. Keep his mind out of his pants."

"There you go." Eve shrugged into her jacket and headed out.

Eve's first stop was the hotel manager. She requested disc copies of guest records, records of current hotel personnel, and any employee who'd been terminated or had quit in the past year.

Before she could begin her song and dance about aiding the police in a homicide investigation, the possibility of a warrant, she was handed a sealed file containing everything she'd asked for.

She was told that the staff had been instructed by Roarke to give her full cooperation and any data she requested.

"That was easy," Peabody commented as they took the elevator to the forty-sixth floor.