In Death 31 - Indulgence in Death

hours after, is go to the ex’s. Brings her freaking flowers he dug up out of a sidewalk planter deal. Dirt’s still falling off the roots.”
    “Classy guy,” Eve observed.
    “Oh, yeah.” He downed the rest of the Danish. “She won’t let him in—stripper’s got more sense—but calls it in while he’s crying and banging on the door, and dumping flower dirt all over the hallway. We get there to pick him up, and what does he do? He jumps out the freaking window end of the hall. Four flights up. Still holding the damn flowers and trailing dirt all the way.”
    He shifted to order coffee with two hits of fake sugar. “Got the luck of God ’cause he lands on a couple chemi-heads doing a deal down below—killed one of them dead, other’s smashed up good. But they broke his fall.”
    Deeply entertained, Eve shook her head. “You can’t make this shit up.”
    “Gets better,” Jenkinson told her, slurping coffee. “Now we got to chase his ass. I go down the fire escape—and let me tell you smashed chemi-heads make one hell of a mess—Reineke goes out the front. He spots him. Asshole runs through the kitchen of an all-night Chinese place, and people are yelling and tumbling like dice. This fucker is throwing shit at us, pots and food and Christ knows. Reineke slips on some moo goo something, goes down. Hell no, you can’t make this shit up, LT.”
    He grinned now, slurped more coffee. “He heads for this sex joint, but the bouncer sees this freaking blood-covered maniac coming and blocks the door. The bouncer’s built like a tank—so the asshole just bounces off him like a basketball off the rim, goes airborne for a minute and plows right into me. Jesus. Now I’ve got blood and chemi-head brains on me, and Reineke’s hauling ass over, and he’s covered with moo goo. And this asshole starts yelling police brutality. Took some restraint not to give him some.
    “Anyway.” He blew out a breath. “We’re wrapping it up.”
    Was it any wonder she loved New York?
    “Good work. Do you want me to take you off the roll?”
    “Nah. We’ll flex a couple hours, grab some sleep up in the crib once the asshole’s processed. You look at the big picture, boss? All that, over a pair of tits.”
    “Love screws you up.”
    “Fucking A.”
    She turned into the bullpen, acknowledged “heys” from cops finishing up the night tour. She walked into her office, left the door open. Detective Sergeant Moynahan had, as she’d expected, left her desk pristine. Everything was exactly as it had been when she’d walked out her office door three weeks before, except cleaner. Even her skinny window sparkled, and the air smelled vaguely—not altogether unpleasantly—like the woods she’d walked through in Ireland.
    Minus the dead body.
    She programmed coffee from her AutoChef and, with a satisfied sigh, sat at her desk to read over the reports and logs generated during her absence.
    Murder hadn’t taken a holiday during hers, she noted, but her division had run pretty smooth. She moved through closed and open cases, requests for leave, overtime, personal time, reimbursements.
    She heard the muffled clump that was Peabody’s summer air boots, and glanced up as her partner stepped into the open doorway.
    “Welcome home! How was it? Was it just mag?”
    “It was good.”
    Peabody’s square face sported a little sun-kiss, which reminded Eve her partner had taken a week off with her squeeze, Electronic Detectives Division ace McNab. She had her dark hair pulled back in a short, but jaunty tail, and wore a thin, buff-colored jacket over cargo trousers a few shades darker. Her tank matched the air boots in a bright cherry red.
    “It looks like DS Moynahan kept things oiled while I was gone.”
    “Yeah. He sure dots every ‘i,’ but he’s easy to work with. He’s solid, and he knows how to ride a desk. He steers clear of field work, but he had a good sense of how to run the ship. So, what did you get?”
    “A pile of reports.”
    “No, come on, for your anniversary. I know Roarke had to come up with something total. Come on,” Peabody insisted when Eve just sat there. “I came in early just for this. I figure we’ve got nearly five before we’re officially on the clock.”
    True enough, Eve thought, and since Peabody’s brown eyes pleaded like a puppy’s, she held up her arm, displayed the new wrist unit she wore.
    “Oh.”
    The reaction, Eve thought, was perfect. Baffled surprise, severe