"Diet dog, Diet Pep." The woman running the cart had a dingy CZ stud in the center of her top lip and a tattoo of the subway system on her chest. The A line veered off and disappeared under the loose gauze covering her breasts. "Reg Dog, Reg Pep, hot potatoes. Cash or credit?"

Eve shoved the limp cardboard holding the food at Peabody and dug for her tokens. "What's the damage?"

The woman poked a grimy purple-tipped finger at her console, sent it beeping. "Twenty-five."

"Shit. You blink and dogs go up." Eve poured credits into the woman's outstretched hand, grabbed a couple of wafer-thin napkins.

She worked her way back, plopped down on the bench circling the fountain in front of the law building. The panhandler beside her looked hopeful. Eve tapped her badge; he grinned, tapped the beggar's license hung around his neck.

Resigned, she dug out a five credit chip, passed it over. "Find someplace else to hustle," she ordered him, "or I'll run that license and see if it's up to date."

He said something uncomplimentary about her line of work, but he pocketed the credit and moved on, giving room to Peabody.

"Leanore doesn't like Arthur Foxx."

Peabody swallowed gamely. Diet dogs were invariably grainy. "She doesn't?"

"A high-class lawyer doesn't give that many answers unless she wants to. She fed us that Foxx was jealous, that they argued." Eve held out the scoop of greasy potatoes. After a brief internal struggle, Peabody dug in. "She wanted us to have that data."

"Still isn't much. There's nothing in Fitzhugh's records that implicates Foxx. His diary, his appointment book, his 'link logs. None of the data I scanned points the finger. Then again, none of it indicates a suicidal bent, either."

Contemplatively, Eve sucked on her tube of Pepsi, watched New York lumber by with all its noise and sweat. "We'll have to talk to Foxx again. I've got court again this afternoon. I want you to go back to Cop Central, get the door-to-door reports, nag the ME for the final autopsy. I don't know what the hang-up is there, but I want the results by end of shift. I should be out of court by three. We'll do another walk-through of Fitzhugh's apartment and see why he omitted Bastwick's little visit."

Peabody juggled food and duly programmed the duties into her day log. "What I asked before – about you not liking Fitzhugh. I just wondered if it was harder to push all the buttons when you had bad feelings about the subject."

"Cops don't have personal feelings." Then she sighed. "Bullshit. You put those feelings aside and push the buttons. That's the job. And if I happen to think a man like Fitzhugh deserved to end up bathing in his own blood, it doesn't mean I won't do what's necessary to find out how he got there."

Peabody nodded. "A lot of other cops would just file it. Self-termination. End of transmission."

"I'm not other cops, and neither are you, Peabody." She glanced over, mildly interested at the explosive crash as two taxis collided. Pedestrian and street traffic barely hitched as smoke billowed, Duraglass pinged, and two furious drivers popped like corks out of their ruined vehicles.

Eve nibbled away at her lunch as the two men pushed, shoved, and shouted imaginative obscenities. She imagined they were obscenities, anyway, since no English was exchanged. She looked up but didn't spot one of the hovering traffic copters. With a thin smile, she balled up the cardboard, rolled up the empty tube, passed them to Peabody.

"Dump these in the recycler, will you, then come back and give me a hand breaking up those two idiots."

"Sir, one of them just pulled out a bat. Should I call for backup?"

"Nope." Eve rubbed her hands together in anticipation as she rose. "I can handle it."

Eve's shoulder was still smarting when she walked out of court a couple of hours later. She imagined the cab drivers would have been released by now, which wasn't going to happen to the child killer Eve had just testified against, she thought with satisfaction. She'd be in high security lockup for the next fifty years minimum. There was some satisfaction in that.

Eve rolled her bruised shoulder. The cabbie really hadn't been swinging at her, she thought. He'd been trying to crack his opponent's head open, and she'd just gotten in the way. Still, it wasn't going to hurt her feelings that both of them would have their licenses suspended for three months.

She climbed into her car and, favoring her shoulder, put the vehicle on auto to Cop Central. Overhead, a tourist tram blatted out the standard spiel about the scales of justice.

Well, she mused, sometimes they balanced. If only for a short time. Her 'link beeped.

" Dallas."

"Dr. Morris." The medical examiner had heavy-lidded hawk eyes in a vivid shade of green, a squared-off chin that was generously stubbled, and a slicked-back mane of charcoal hair. Eve liked him. Though she was often frustrated by his lack of stellar speed, she appreciated his thoroughness.

"Have you finished the report on Fitzhugh?"

"I have a problem."

"I don't need a problem, I need the report. Can you transmit it to my office 'link? I'm on my way there."

"No, Lieutenant, you're on your way here. I have something I need to show you."

"I don't have time to come by the morgue."

"Make time," he suggested and ended the transmission.

Eve ground her teeth once. Scientists were so damned frustrating, she thought as she redirected her unit.

From the outside, the Lower Manhattan City Morgue resembled one of the beehive-structured office buildings that surrounded it. It blended, that had been the point of the redesign. Nobody liked to think of death, to have it spoil their appetite as they scooted out of work at lunchtime to grab a bite at a corner deli. Images of bodies tagged and bagged on refrigerated slabs tended to put you off your pasta salad.

Eve remembered the first time she'd stepped through the black steel doors in the rear of the building. She'd been a rookie in uniform shoulder to shoulder with two dozen other rookies in uniforms. Unlike several of her comrades, she'd seen death up close and personal before, but she'd never seen it displayed, dissected, analyzed.

There was a gallery above one of the autopsy labs and there students, rookies, and journalists or novelists with the proper credentials could witness firsthand the intricate workings of forensic pathology.

Individual monitors in each seat offered close-up views to those with the stomach for it.

Most of them didn't come back for a return trip. Many who left were carried out.

Eve had walked out on her own steam, and she'd been back, countless times since, but she never looked forward to the visits.

Her target this time wasn't what was referred to as The Theater, but Lab C, where Morris conducted most of his work. Eve passed down the white tiled corridor with its pea green floors. She could smell death there. No matter what was used to eradicate it, the sulky stink of it slid through cracks, around doorways, and it tainted the air with the grinning reminder of mortality.

Medical science had eradicated plagues, a host of diseases and conditions, extending life expectancy to an average of one hundred fifty years. Cosmetic technology had insured that a human being could live attractively for his century and a half.

You could die without wrinkles, without age spots, without aches and pains and disintegrating bones. But you were still going to die sooner or later.

For many who came here, that day was sooner.

She stopped in front of the door at Lab C, held her badge up to the security camera, and gave her name and ID number to the speaker. Her palm print was analyzed and cleared. The door slid open.