mall country or planetoid, it seemed only fair.
“Then let’s get moving.”
He knew how to stay out of the way when it suited him. He also knew how to observe. What Roarke saw when they arrived at the park were a number of black-and-whites, a small army of uniforms and crime scene techs.
The media people who had a nose for this sort of thing were there, firmly blocked by part of that army. The barricades had been erected, and like the media and the civilian gawkers, he would have to make his observations from behind them.
“If you get bored,” Eve told him, “just take off. I’ll make my own way back.”
“I’m not easily bored.”
He watched her now, observed her now. His cop. The wind kicked at her long black coat, one she’d need as this first day of March was proving as brutal as the rest of 2060 had been. She hooked her badge on her belt, though he wondered how anyone could mistake her for anything other than a cop, and one with authority.
Tall and rangy, she moved to the barricades in strong strides. Her hair, short and brown, fluttered a little in that same wind—a wind that carried the scent of the river.
He watched her face, the way those whiskey-colored eyes tracked, the way her mouth—that had been so soft and warm on his—firmed. The lights played over her face, shifting those angles and planes.
She looked back at him, very briefly. Then she moved on, moved through the barricades to do what, he supposed, she’d been born to do.
She strode through the uniforms and techs. Some recognized her; some simply recognized what Roarke had. Authority. When she was approached by one of the uniforms, she stopped, brushed her coat back to tap her badge.
“Sir. I was ordered to look out for you, to escort you. My partner and I were first on scene.”
“Okay.” She gave him a quick once-over. On the young side, cut as clean as a military band. His cheeks were pink from the cold. His voice said native New Yorker, heading toward Brooklyn. “What have we got?”
“Sir. I was ordered to let you see for yourself.”
“That so?” She scanned the badge on his thick uniform coat. “All right, Newkirk, let’s go see for myself.”
She gauged the ground covered, studied the line of trees and shrubs. It appeared the scene was well secured, locked tight. Not only from the land side, she noted as she glimpsed the river. The water cops were out, barricading the riverbank.
She felt a cold line of anticipation up her spine. Whatever this was, it was major.
The lights the techs had set up washed white over the shadows. Through them, she saw Morris coming toward her. Major, she thought again, for the chief medical examiner to be called on scene. And she saw it in his face, the tightness of concern.
“Dallas. They said you were on scene.”
“They didn’t say you were.”
“I was nearby, out with friends. A little blues club over on Bleecker.”
Which explained the boots, she supposed. The black and silver pattern she assumed had once belonged to some reptile wasn’t the sort of thing a man would normally sport on a crime scene. Not even the stylish Morris.
His long black coat blew back to reveal a cherry-red lining. Under it, he wore black pants, black turtleneck—extreme casual wear for him. His long, dark hair was slicked back into a tail, bound top and tip with silver bands.
“The commander called you in,” she said.
“He did. I haven’t touched the body yet—visual only. I was waiting for you.”
She didn’t ask why. She understood she was meant to form her own conclusions without any outside data. “With us, Newkirk,” she ordered, and walked toward the lights.
It might have been a sheet of ice or snow. From a distance, it might appear to be. And from a distance, the body arranged on it might appear to be artful—a model for some edgy shoot.
But she knew what it was, even from a distance, and the line of cold up her spine took on teeth.
Her eyes met Morris’s. But they said nothing.
It wasn’t ice, or snow. She wasn’t a model or a piece of art.