"I heard about it when I was in school. Mostly urban legend shit."

"And most of it was urban legend shit."

"Did it kill her? An OD?"

"Not by itself. The combination with alcohol was dangerous, but not fatal. But our hero went overboard. Half the amount he slipped her would've been enough to ensure her full cooperation. What she had in her would, most likely, have kept her under for eight, maybe ten hours. And she'd wake up with the mother of all hangovers. Headache, vomiting, the shakes, blackouts, lost time. It would take up to seventy-two hours to purge her system."

It made Eve sick to think it. "She was spared that, too. How?"

"He gave her too much. It would make her lethargic. I'm assuming he wanted a more active fuck because he doctored the last glass of wine with a little cocktail of aneminiphine-colax-B. Wild Rabbit."

"Covered his bases, didn't he?" she said quietly.

"It bombards the nervous and respiratory systems, and hers was already compromised. The combination overtaxed her heart. It gave out on her within twenty minutes of ingestion. She'd have been too doped by the earlier doses of Whore to know what was happening."

"Could she have taken it willingly at that point?"

Gently, Morris lifted the sheet over Bryna's face. "After the first ounce of inhibition blocker, nothing this girl did was willing."

"He drugged her, he raped her, and the combination killed her," Eve said. "Then he tossed her out the window like a used doll in an attempt to cover up what happened."

"In my esteemed and renowned medical opinion, that's the scenario."

"Now make my day, Morris, and tell me he left sperm in her. Tell me you got his DNA."

Morris's face went bright as a boy's. "Oh yeah, I got it. You bring him in, Dallas, and I'll help you lock the cage."

"Sick bastard creep ought to have his balls scooped off with a rusty spoon."

Eve settled back in her car. "Don't hold back, Peabody. Tell me how you really feel."

"Goddamn it, Dallas, it got to me in there, looking at her on that slab, remembering how pretty she was, how excited when she called her pal about going out to meet this fuckhead. Thinking she was meeting someone romantic and, damn it, nice. Someone nice and the whole time he's planning to…"

"Fuck her to death? I don't know that he planned that going in, but that's how it worked out. Could be we get him on Murder One, using the illegals as the murder weapon. More likely, it's going to Second Degree. And don't blow your cortex, Peabody, we wrap him on that, add in the sexual assault and his attempt to dispose of the evidence, he's not going to see daylight again."

"It's not enough." She shifted in her seat, appalling them both because there were tears in her eyes. "Sometimes it doesn't seem to be enough."

Eve stared through the windshield to give them both time for Peabody to pull herself together. A pack of kids, sprung from school, were cruising over the crosswalk on airboards, wreaking havoc on the bipeds they wove through.

There was something painfully innocent, painfully alive about the flash and color of them, a half a block away from a house of dead.

"It's enough," Eve said, "because it's what we can do. Our job is to stand for Bryna Bankhead and bring in the man who killed her. After that…" She remembered her session in court, the defense attorney's slippery twist on the law. "After that, we trust the system to give her justice, and we put it away. You don't put it away, they pile up. The dead pile up," she added when Peabody stared at her, "until you can't see past them, and you can't do the job."

"Do you put it away? Can you?"

It was a question Eve tried not to ask herself – and asked herself too often. "A lot of murder cops, they've only got so many years in them. So many dead. Then it starts eating at them until they're used up. I can't do anything else but this, so it's not going to use me up." She let out a long breath. "But in a perfect world, we'd have the rusty spoon option."

"When I started working with you, I thought Homicide was the most important thing I could do. It's been about a year now. I still think that."

"Okay." She jammed her way into traffic like a battering ram. "I need to make a stop down at the Canal Street Clinic. Let's see if the boys in EDD have made any progress."

She used the in-dash 'link to contact Feeney's office, and felt Peabody stiffen when McNab's pretty face appeared on-screen.

"Hey, Lieutenant." Eve watched his gaze shift over, saw his lips stretch into a smile every bit as stiff as Peabody 's shoulders. " Peabody."

"I need your captain," Eve told him.

"He just stepped out."

"Tell him to tag me as soon as he comes back."

"Hold it, hold it, hold it." His face filled the screen as he leaned in. "Don't eject till you hear the tune. The captain put me on your electronic account search."

Eve punched her vehicle through a narrow opening, switched lanes, and gained half a block. "Pretty basic e-work for a hotshot, isn't it?"

"Yeah, well, it got bumped up to hotshot level when the tech ran into some snags. Your cyber-Casanova put in some blocks and walls. I scaled them, being a hotshot, and came up with an address."

"Are you going to stop bragging long enough to give it to me?"

"I would, Lieutenant, but you'd be wasting your time. Address is in the Carpathian Mountains."

"Where the hell is that?"

"Mountain range, Eastern Europe. I know," McNab said, with a frisky toss of his long blond ponytail, "because I looked it up. And before you ask me what the hell our perp's doing on a mountain in Eastern Europe, he's not. It's a dummy. Address is bogus as my cousin Sheila's tits."

"It doesn't sound like you scaled a wall to me, McNab."

" Dallas, I scaled a fucking mountain here. I got a bounce from the fake address, and I'm following the echo. Should have it nailed in another hour."

"Then don't talk to me until you set down the hammer. And McNab? Any guy who knows anything about his cousin's tits is a perv."

She broke transmission on his hoot of laughter. "He may be irritating," Eve said to Peabody, "but he's good. He'll nail it. And if it's taking him this long, that tells me our suspect is an above-average hacker. He protected himself going in, which in court will be, to overuse an image, another nail in his coffin."

She glanced at Peabody 's profile. "Don't sulk."

"I'm not sulking."

Hissing, Eve flipped down the passenger visor so the mirror dropped down. "Look at your face. You want him to know you get bent when you have to deal with him? Snag a little pride, Peabody."

Studying herself, Peabody saw sulk move into pout mode at Eve's words. She flipped the visor back up. "I was just thinking, that's all."

Eve made the swing onto Canal, pitching through its bazaarlike sector where the offerings were plentiful and cheap and the Black Market did the lion's share of business. Tourists were routinely scammed, then they filed complaints against shops that changed venues more often and with greater efficiency than a tent circus.

Then again, Eve figured if you were stupid enough to believe you could buy a Rolex for the same price as a large pizza, you deserved the skinning.

Within a few blocks, the carnival gave way to the dumping ground for the homeless and the disenfranchised. Sidewalk sleepers erected their boxes and tents in pitiful little communities of despair. Those with beggar's licenses, and many without them, wandered across town to shill enough credit tokens to buy a bottle of home brew to get them through another night.

Those who didn't make it through the night would be transported to the morgue by the NYPSD unit not-so-affectionately known as the Sidewalk Scoopers.