“Yes.”
“You’ve been very kind. Please be vigilant in your duty.”
When they went out, Eve looked at Peabody. “The odds of finding anything in here are slim to none. But let’s be fucking vigilant in our duty.”
When they left, Eve drew in the noise, the chaos, the clashing colors of New York like breath, and found herself grateful she’d parked blocks away.
“Morgue next, then the lab. Meanwhile let’s pin down this Dr. Ponti or Ponto from Unger, and get the sheet on the abuse reports.”
“On that.” Peabody pulled out her PPC. “You know how just a couple weeks ago we’re looking for who killed a rapist asshole fucker?”
“I recall.”
“I think we’ve got what you could call his opposite in Kent Abner. And as hard as it was to push through a rapist asshole fucker’s murder, this is harder.”
“They’re all hard. They’re supposed to be. We’re going to stop in this bakery just up here.”
“Oh, come on, man. Apple turnover. Loose pants.”
“Louise said Abner would sometimes bring pastries or flowers into the clinic. Let’s check and see if there’s anything there. We’re going to need to hit the clinic, too, talk to the staff, go through his records.”
“Yeah. Dr. Milo Ponti—resident at Unger, in ER. Early forties, married two years, no offspring. Wife’s a surgical nurse at Unger. Went to Columbia Medical, lives Lower West. No criminal.”
“We’ll make him another stop. Bakery.”
“We could split a turnover. If you split one, you’re basically not even having one. Because it’s half. When you cut calories in half, it’s a good thing. In fact…” Peabody warmed to the theme. “It’s an admirable thing.”
“What if I don’t want a turnover?”
“It’s half, so it’s not a turnover. It’s practically a minus-over. Besides, who doesn’t want all that yum, or half the yum?”
“Why is it a turnover anyway? Why isn’t it just a hand pie?”
“You turn over the pastry,” Peabody said as she opened the door to the bakery, “to keep the apple goodness inside. Oh, smell that.”
Eve did, and decided she could choke down half a hand pie.
The first thing she noticed after the scents of glory was the black armband on the sleeve of the white tunic the counter girl wore.
Word had spread.
They hit the bakery, the gym, a local market. Peabody, showing great restraint, waited until they got back in the car before unwrapping her half of the turnover.
“You know,” she said as she took the first tiny bite (make it last), “I hope when I die—say, a hundred years from now, in my sleep, after having wild, steaming sex with McNab—people who worked with me, or knew me, think half as much of me as the people who worked with or knew Abner think of him.”
“At least one person didn’t share those feelings.”
Eve polished off her half in three careless bites as she drove toward the morgue.
“None of the people we talked to along his route, none of the people the uniforms talked to in the canvass remember seeing anyone around the residence who didn’t belong in the neighborhood—or at least no one who seemed off or made repeated visits.”
“And nobody recognized the ID shots you showed them of Ponti or the parents Abner reported.”
“They’re still our best bets at the moment.”
“We’ve got a doctor, and I lean there right now because it seems like a doctor would know more about poisons, and might be able to access something like this.”
“Whatever this is,” Eve muttered, “but that’s a point.”
“We have a city maintenance worker who figured he would knock his wife and kid around when he felt like it.” Another tiny bite for Peabody. “Somebody in a uniform—people don’t look twice.”
“Another point. And we’ve got a junior executive who from his ID shot would blend right into the neighborhood. That one didn’t do time—good lawyers—but he had to go through six months’ mandatory counseling, the mother of the kid sued for full custody and limited, supervised visitations, and got it. That could piss you off.”
Peabody took another tiny bite of turnover. “Five years ago, though, a long time to stew about it. And the last one’s longer ago yet, fifteen years.”
“And he spent two of those years in a cage. We talk to all of them.”
But for now, she wanted to hear what Morris could tell her, and what the dead had told Morris.
Peabody managed to finish her turnover before they started down the white tunnel. Eve caught the scent of something stronger, deeper than the usual mix of industrial cleaner, disinfectant, and death.
And found the doors to Morris’s theater locked with a RESTRICTED sign posted.
She pressed the buzzer, felt a hard knock of relief when she saw Morris through the porthole glass, heard the locks release.
“Your timing’s impeccable,” he told them. “I’ve just now cleared the room and the body.”
His voice came tinny through the breathing apparatus on his full hazmat suit, but he gestured them in.
“Give me a minute to lose the gear.”
“How long have you been at it?”
“We needed to close the body off—protocol—before we opened him. And keep him in a controlled area during the autopsy. I was able to start on him last evening.”
Morris removed the headgear, placed it in a tub. “There were several tests to run—protocol again—before I could take a look inside.”
As he stripped off the rest, Eve noted rather than one of his excellent suits, he wore a T-shirt, sweatpants. He’d drawn his long, dark hair back in a tail.
“You’ve been here all night.”
“Controlled area,” he repeated. “I keep clothes on hand for such events. Protocol also requires a two-hour break for sleep. A slab’s comfortable enough with a gel mattress.”
He smiled at them, but his eyes looked tired.
“I’ll be glad for a shower, some decent coffee, some breakfast.”
“Peabody.”
“On it.”
“Oh, don’t bother with that,” Morris began, but Peabody was already out the door. “Well, I appreciate it.”
“I’ve had plenty of all-nighters, but didn’t grab a nap on a slab.”
“It is my home away from home, after all.”
Now Eve walked to the body—closed now with Morris’s long, precise stitches. “What can you tell me?”
“The lab will tell you more, but the good doctor suffered a painful death—quick and painful—via a toxin I’m unable to confidently identify. There’s no evidence he ingested it, or that it entered his bloodstream through injection or through touch. He inhaled it—it was airborne. And that, of course, added time to the control protocol.”
Morris gestured to a counter where sealed, labeled containers held various internal pieces of Kent Abner.
“I believe you have a nerve agent. His nervous system was destroyed, as were his lungs, his kidneys, his liver, his intestines. He suffered a massive stroke, internal burns as well as the burns on both thumbs. His esophagus was scorched from the inside.