In Death 04 - Rapture in Death

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.
    It was a small room, windowless and depressing, lined with equipment, beeping with computers. Some of the tools ranged neat as a surgeon's tray on the counters were barbaric enough to make the weak shudder. Saws, lasers, the glinting blades of scalpels, hoses.
    In the center of the room was a table with gutters on the side to catch fluids and run them into sterilized, airtight containers for further analysis. On the table was Fitzhugh, his naked body bearing the scars of the recent insult of a standard Y cut.
    Morris was sitting on a rolling stool in front of a monitor, face pushed close to the screen. He wore a white lab coat that fluttered to the floor. It was one of his few affectations, the coat that flapped and swirled like a highwayman's