"I agree, and there's no one who'd like to nail Ricker more than I would. But his connection to Kohli is tenuous at best. I can't see your angle on it."

"I'm working it" was all she would say. She thought of Webster, the hints, but she wasn't ready to talk about it.

"Dallas, Ricker can't be your personal vendetta."

"He's not. Let me work it through, Commander."

"It's your investigation. But watch your step. If Ricker was the trigger on Kohli, he won't hesitate to point at you. From what you've told me, he has more reason to."

"I get in his face enough, he'll make a mistake. I won't make one."

She went around with the lawyers, one for each of the men she'd brought in. They were, she thought, slime in five-thousand-dollar suits. They knew every trick. But they were going to have a hard time weaseling around the fact she had everything on record.

"Records," the head slime named Canarde said, with a lift of his perfectly manicured fingers, "you alone had possession of. You have no corroboration that the discs were not manufactured or tampered with for the purpose of harassing my client."

"What was your client doing riding my back bumper from Connecticut to New York?"

"It isn't against the law to drive a public road, Lieutenant."

She simply flipped back, tapped her finger on the file. "Carrying concealed and banned weapons."

"My client claims you planted those weapons."

Eve shifted her gaze toward the client, a man of about two hundred and fifty pounds with hands like hams and a face only a mother could love-if she were seriously nearsighted. As yet, he hadn't opened his mouth.

"I must've been pretty busy. So your client, who apparently has been struck mute, purports that I just happened to be carrying four self-charging hand lasers and a couple of long-scoped flame rifles in my police unit, with the hopes that some innocent civilian might come along and I could frame him. Seeing as, what, I didn't like his face?"

"My client has no knowledge of your motives."

"Your client is a piece of shit who's been down this road before. Assault and battery, carrying concealeds, assault with a deadly, possession with intent. You're not standing for some choirboy, Canarde. With what we've got on him, he goes in, and he stays in. My best guess is twenty-five, hard time with no parole option, off-planet penal colony. Never been on an off-planet facility, have you, pal?"

Eve showed her teeth in a smile. "They make the cages here look like suites at The Palace."

"Police harassment and intimidation is expected," Canarde said smoothly. "My client has nothing more to say."

"Yeah, he's been a real chatterbox up till now. You going to let Ricker make you the sacrificial lamb here? You think he's worried about the twenty-five you'll do in a cage?"

"Lieutenant Dallas," Canarde interrupted, but Eve kept her eyes on the man, saw the faintest shadow of worry in his eyes.

"I don't want you, Lewis. You want to save yourself, you want to deal with me. Who sent you after me today? Say the name, and I cut you out of the herd."

"This interview is over." Canarde got to his feet.

"Is it over, Lewis? You want it over? You want to start your first night of twenty-five in a cage? Does he pay you enough, can anyone pay you enough to make you swallow sitting in a hole twenty hours every day for twenty-five years, with a slab for a bed, with security cams watching you piss in a steel toilet? No luxuries off-planet, Lewis. The idea isn't rehabilitation, no matter what the politicians say. It's punishment."

"Be quiet, Mr. Lewis. I have ended this interview, Lieutenant, and demand my client's right to a hearing."

"Yeah, he'll get his hearing." She rose. "You're a sap, Lewis, if you think this mouth in a pricey suit's standing for you."

"I got nothing to say. To cops or cunts." Lewis looked up, sneered. But Eve saw the glitter of fear in his eyes.

"I guess that counts me out altogether." Eve signaled to the guard. "Take this sack of shit to his hole. Sleep tight, Lewis. I won't tell you to sleep, Canarde," she said as she walked out. "I hear sharks don't."

She rounded the corner, slipped down a hall, and through a door where Whitney and Peabody stood in observation.

"The hearings are set for tomorrow. Starting at nine," Whitney told her. "Canarde and his team put on the pressure to get them in."

"Fine, our boys'll still spend the night in a cell. I want to sweat Lewis again, before the hearing. We can push his hearing to the end of the group, give me some time with him tomorrow morning. He's the one who'll crack."

"Agreed. You've never visited an off-planet rehabilitation center, have you, Lieutenant?"

"No, sir. But I've heard they're gutters."

"Worse. Lewis will have heard, too. Keep playing that note. Go home," he added. "Get some sleep."

"If I'd been in there," Peabody said when they were alone, "I'd've rolled over on my mother. Could he really cop twenty-five off-planet?"

"Oh yeah. You don't mess with a cop. The system frowns severely on it. He knows it, too. He's going to be thinking about it tonight. Thinking hard. I want you back here at six-thirty. I want to hit him again early. You can stand in, look mean and heartless."

"I love doing that. Are you going home?" she asked, knowing how often her lieutenant sent her off and stayed on the job herself.

"Yeah. Yeah, I am. After rubbing shoulders with that bunch, I want a shower. Six-thirty, Peabody."

"Yes, sir."

– =O=-***-=O=-

She'd missed dinner and wasn't pleased to discover the candy thief who'd targeted her as patsy had found her newest stash. She had to settle for an apple someone had foolishly left in the squad's friggie.

Still, it filled the hole so that by the time she got home she was more interested in a long, hot shower than a meal. She was slightly disappointed that Summerset didn't slide into the foyer on her arrival so they could have their evening pissing match.

Shower first, she decided, jogging up the stairs. Then she'd track Roarke down. The shower would give her time to figure out just how much of her day she wanted to share with him.

Editing Ricker out of it, for the time being, seemed like the best path to marital harmony.

When she stepped into the bedroom, she saw the flowers first. It was difficult to miss them as there was a four-foot spread of them dead center of the room and the scent was sweet enough to hurt her teeth.

It took another moment to realize the flowers had long, skinny legs in black trousers.

Summerset. The shower could wait.

"For me? Gee, you shouldn't have. If you don't try harder to control your passion for me, Roarke's going to fire your bony ass and make my life complete."

"Your humor," the flowers said in a dry, faintly Slavic voice, "eludes me as usual. This obnoxious and overstated arrangement just arrived by private messenger."

"Watch the cat," she began as Summerset stepped forward and Galahad strolled in his path. To her surprise and reluctant admiration, Summerset neatly sidestepped, avoided Galahad's tail by a, well, a cat hair, and neatly set the enormous bouquet on the wide table in the sitting area.

Galahad leaped up, sniffed at it, then padded over to butt his head on Summerset's leg.

"The flowers are for you," Summerset said, and since she was looking, ignored the cat. "And as of now, they become your problem."

"Who sent them? They're not Roarke's style."

"Certainly not." Summerset sniffed, a great deal as Galahad had done, and eyed the elaborate arrangement with distaste. "Perhaps one of your felonious acquaintances considers it a suitable bribe."

"Yeah, right." She snatched out the card, ripped it open, then snarled in a manner that had the cat leaping down and standing between Summerset's legs. "Ricker, that son of a bitch."