Remember When

charred bones on a table. "I thought this was Bax's case."
    "It is. We may have a connected. He's on his way in."
    "Okay by me. I haven't gotten to her yet."
    He brought up the file, scanned it as he pulled out his protective gear. "Didn't come in until Sunday, and I had the day off-fond, fond memory. You guys get Sundays off?"
    "Now and again."
    "Something about sleeping in on a Sunday morning, or sleeping off Saturday night until Sunday afternoon. But Monday always comes." He snapped on his cap. "Been backed up since I clocked in Monday morning. Got no flag on here from Bax saying she matches a missing persons. Still little Jane Doe," he said and glanced back toward the body on the table. "No way to print her, obviously. We'll send the dental off for a search."
    "What do we know?"
    He called up more data on the screen. "Female between twenty-three and twenty-five. Five feet three inches tall, a hundred and twenty pounds. That's approximate from the virtual reconstruct, which is as far as we've got. That's just prelim check-in data."
    "You got time to take a look at her now?"
    "Sure. Let me set up."
    "Want some coffee?"
    He looked at her with love. "Oh, Mommy."
    Appreciating him, she waved Peabody back and went out to Vending herself.
    She ordered three, black.
    "Love of my life, we can't keep meeting like this."
    She didn't even turn. "Bite me, Baxter."
    "I do, nightly, in my dreams. I'll take one of those."
    Reminding herself he'd come in at her request, she programmed for a fourth, then glanced back.
    "Trueheart?"
    "I'll have a lemon fizz if it's all the same to you, Lieutenant. Thank you."
    He looked like the lemon-fizz type with his clean-cut, boyish face. Adorable, Peabody had called him, and it wasn't possible to deny it. An all-American boy, cute as a button-whatever the hell that meant-in his summer blues.
    Beside him, Baxter was slick and smooth and cagey. Good-looking, but with an edge to him. He had a fondness for a well-cut suit and a well-endowed female.
    They were good cops, both of them, Eve thought. And tucking the earnest Trueheart in as the smart-ass Baxter's aide had been one of her better ideas.
    "To the dead," Baxter said, and tapped his coffee cup lightly to Eve's. "What do you want with our Jane?"
    "She might connect to one of mine. Foster's doing her workup right now."
    "Let me help you with those, Lieutenant." Trueheart took his fizz and one of the coffees.
    Eve briefed them on the way back to the exam room.
    "Whether she's your maid or not, somebody wanted her dead real bad," Baxter commented.
    "Skull cracked, broken bones. Had to be dead, or at least blessedly unconscious, when he lit her up. He didn't kill her where he lit her. It was dump and fry. We coordinated with Missing Persons on the prelim data and came up goose egg. Been canvassing the area all day. Nobody saw anything, heard anything, knew anything. Guy who made the nine-one-one saw the fire from his window but not the source. Statement goes it was too hot to sleep, and he was going to go sit out on the fire escape. Saw the flames, called it in. Call came through at oh-three-sixteen. Fire department responded, arrived on scene at oh-three-twenty-gotta give those guys points for speed. She was still burning."
    "Couldn't've lit her up too much earlier."
    Foster glanced up as they came in. "Thanks, Lieutenant, just set it down over there. Hey, Bax, hanging low?"
    "Low and long, baby, low and long."
    Foster continued to run the scanner over the body. "Broken right index finger. That's an old break. Early childhood. Between five and seven. Scanned the teeth already. Running them in the national bank for a match. This one? The skull injury?"
    Eve nodded, stepped closer.
    "You got severe trauma here. Ubiquitous blunt instrument, most likely. Bat maybe, or a pipe.
    Skull's fractured. She's got three broken ribs, a fractured tibia, jawbone. Somebody wailed on this girl. She was dead before he poured the gas on her. That's a blessing."
    "He didn't kill her where he dumped her," Baxter commented. "We found a blood trail from the street. Not a lot of blood. She must've bled a hell of a lot more where he beat her."
    "From the angle of the breaks-see on screen here?" Foster nodded toward it, and the enhanced images in blues and reds. "It looks like he hit the leg first. Did that while she was standing. When she went down, he went for the ribs, the face. The skull was the coup de grace. She was probably unconscious when he bashed her head