In Death 21 - Origin in Death

I met with Nadine and gave her everything." She poked a spoon into the oatmeal, lifted it, let the goop dribble out again. "I disobeyed a direct order, a priority order, and am prepared to lie through my teeth about it. I'm dragging my heels to give Avril Icove time to figure out how to disengage the bracelets, get the kids, and poof. And hoping they'll give me Deena's location, or at least the location or locations of operations."
    "If you continue to beat yourself up over it, we're going to start the day with a fight after all."
    "I've got no right to make decisions based on emotion, to circumvent orders, ignore my duty."
    "You're wrong, Eve, on so many counts. First, you're not making this decision based on emotion, or not solely. You're basing it on instinct, experience, and your bone-deep sense of justice."
    "Cops don't make the rules."
    "Bollocks. You may not write them, but you edit them every day, to suit the situation. You have to because if the law, the rules, the spirit of them doesn't adjust and flex, it dies."
    She'd told herself essentially the same a dozen times already. "I didn't tell Peabody all of this, but some. And I said I didn't think I'd have been able to play this the way I am, even five years ago. She said I would have."
    "Our Peabody is astute. Do you remember the day I met you?" He reached in his pocket, took out the gray button that had come off the only suit she'd owned before he'd blasted into her life. He rubbed it between his fingers as he watched her.
    "You struggled then, with procedure, the book of it. But you had then, and always had, I think, a clear sense of justice. Those two things will always be true. You'll struggle, and you'll see. It's what makes you as much as that badge makes you. Never in my life have I known anyone who has such a basic dislike of people, yet has such unstinting and bottomless compassion for them. Eat your oatmeal."
    She took a bite. "It could be worse."
    "I've got a 'link conference shortly, and there's a list of messages on your desk."
    "Messages?"
    "Three from Nadine, with increasing impatience. She demands you contact her regarding confirmation of information she had on Icove- plural-his connection with Brookhollow, and a further connection to Evelyn Samuels's murder in New Hampshire."
    "She's right on schedule."
    "There's another from Feeney. He's back from New Hampshire and has a report for you. He was circumspect, as I assume your Code Blue demands."
    "Good."
    "Commander Whitney wants your report, oral and written, by noon."
    "You in the market to make admin?"
    He smiled, rose. "Some of Ireland will be arriving around two, which, I'm annoyed to admit, makes me nervous. If you're delayed, I'll explain."
    She ate, she dressed. Then she picked up her badge and got to work.
    She met with Feeney first. In her office, with the door shut. She filled him in on everything, excluding her meeting with Nadine. Should she get busted for that, she'd go down alone.
    "Three of them. Doesn't even seem that weird anymore." Feeney munched nuts. "Plays right in with what we found at the schools. Got the records."
    He tapped the discs he'd already dumped on Eve's desk. "They ran two systems. One neat and tidy for your audits and checks. Had it fronting the second. Every student given a code number, and the code labeling the testing, the adjustments-"
    "Adjustments? Such as?"
    "Surgeries. Sculpting. They did some of that crap on eight-year-olds. Sons of bitches. Your basic eye fixes, hearing checks, disease control, that's all on the front, but you got the other on the coded. 'Enhanced intelligence training,' they called some of it. Subliminal instruction, visual and audio. Students earmarked for LC status or what they called 'partnerships' got their advanced sex education. And here's a kicker."
    He paused to slurp down coffee. "Deena isn't the only one who ran."
    "There are others who got out, the ones who dropped off the data screens?"
    "Yeah. Files on their rogues. Got more than a dozen who poofed, after graduation, after 'placement' She's the only one who got out of the school, but she's not the only one they lost track of. They started implanting the new ones, at birth, with an internal homer. That's after Deena slipped the knot. They've implanted all the current students, too. That was Samuels's brainstorm, and from her notes and records, it was an addition she didn't share with the Icoves."
    "Why?"
    "She figured they were too close-having one in the family,