In Death 07 - Holiday in Death

want to ask, or do you want me to just do it and tell you after it's done?"
    She blew out a breath. "I'll ask." She jammed her hands in her pockets as she did. "You can dig beneath the surface of what Holloway put on record. You can find out in hours what it would take Feeney days. He can't cut the corners you can. I don't have days. I don't want this bastard to give me another body to be bagged."
    "I'll call you when I have something."
    He was making it simple, and that only made it worse. "I'll transmit his file when I get into Central," she began, then shut her mouth firmly when he grinned.
    "No point in wasting time when I can get it myself." Leaning down, he kissed her. "I enjoy helping you."
    "You just like screwing CompuGuard and running illegal programs."
    "There is that added benefit." He laid his hands on her shoulders, rubbed briefly at the tension there. "If you work until you fall on your face, I'm going to be annoyed."
    "I'm still standing. I need the car and I don't have time to take you back home."
    "I think I can manage to get there." He kissed her again before starting toward the door. "Oh, by the way, Lieutenant, you have an appointment with Trina at six tonight. She and Mavis will come to the house."
    "Oh, for Christ's sake."
    "I'll entertain them if you're running a bit late." Ignoring her next curse, he slipped outside.
    She ended with a hiss, then gathered her field kit, called to Peabody, and sealed the scene. "I want to run the hair and fiber to the lab and light a fire under Dickhead," she said as they climbed into her vehicle. "We'll push the ME, too, though I don't think we're going to find out anything from the postmortem that we don't already know."
    She slid a sidelong glance at her aide as she drove. "It's going to be a long day, Peabody. You might want to take some approved ups to get through. You can requisition some Alert-All."
    "I'm okay."
    "I need you sharp. I want you transformed and under by nine. You have to pull off your bit with Piper. We'll hold the release of Holloway's name as long as possible."
    "I know what to do." Peabody stared out the window, watching the night sweep by. There was a lone glide-cart on the corner at Ninth, the operator warming himself in the steam from his grill.
    "I'm not sorry I broke his goddamn nose," she said abruptly. "I thought I would be. I thought when I saw him there, saw what had been done to him, that I'd be sorry."
    "One doesn't have anything to do with the other."
    "I thought it would. I thought it should. I was afraid to go in that room. But once I was in there, doing the job, I didn't feel all the stuff I thought I would."
    "You're a cop. A good one."
    "I don't want to be the kind who stops feeling." She turned her head, studied Eve's profile. "You're not. They're not just slabs to you, they're people. I don't want to stop remembering they're people."
    Eve glanced right and left as she approached a red light, then seeing her way clear, breezed through it. "You wouldn't be working with me if I thought you would."
    Peabody took a long, slow breath and felt her stomach settle. "Thanks."
    "Since you're grateful, contact Dickhead. Tell him I want his skinny ass in the lab within the hour."
    Peabody grimaced, shifted in her seat. "I don't know if I'm that grateful."
    "Make the call, Peabody. If he balks, I'll take over and bribe him with a case of Roarke's Irish beer. Dickie's got a weakness for it."
    It took two cases and a threat to tie his tongue around his neck, but at three a.m. Dickie was in his labcoat and testing hair and fiber.
    Eve paced the lab, barking into her communicator as the assistant ME claimed a holiday backup on autopsies. "Look, you little drone, I can call Commander Whitney and fry your ass. This is Priority One. You want me to let it drop to the media that my investigation was delayed because some AME wanted to read his Christmas cards instead of doing a cut?"
    "Come on, Dallas, I'm working a double. I got stiffs stacked like bricks in the drawers here."
    "Put my brick on the table and have the report to me by oh six hundred or I'm coming over there and I'm going to show you what a Y cut feels like."
    She cut transmission and turned around. "Gimme, Dickie."
    "Don't crowd me, Dallas. You don't scare me. I don't see no Priority One tab on this evidence."
    "There will be by nine." She walked over and gave his hair a hard quick yank. "I haven't had my fucking coffee, Dickie. You don't want to mess with me here."
    "Jeez,