“Okay. All right.”
“Thank you for finding justice for Amaryllis.”
“Don’t—”
He held up his free hand. “I need to say these things before we go back to our work, our lives. You need to let me say them.”
Feeling helpless, she stuck her hands in her pockets and said nothing.
“We deal with death, you and I, and with that death leaves grieving. We believe—or hope—that finding the answers, finding justice will help the dead, and those the dead leaves grieving. It does. Somehow it does. I no longer believe it, or hope it, but know it. I loved her, and the loss . . .”
He paused, opened the tube, drank. “Immense. But you were there for me. As a cop, and as a friend. You held my hand during those first horrible steps of grief, helped me steady myself. And by finding the answers, you gave me, and her, some peace. It’s a day to remember peace, I suppose. The job you and I do is often ugly and thankless. I need t
o thank you.”
“Okay.”
“More, Eve.” He rarely used her first name, and using it now, he closed his hand over her arm to keep her still. “Though it discomforts you.” And smiled, just a little—just enough to loosen the tightest knots in her belly. “Thank you for suggesting I speak to Father Lopez.”
“You went to see him?”
“I did. I had thought to go away, stay away until . . . Until. But there was nowhere I wanted to be, and frankly, I felt closer to her here. So I stayed, and I went to see your priest.”
She had to fight not to squirm. “He’s not mine.”
“He gave me comfort,” Morris continued over her flustered response. “He’s a man of unassailable faith, with a flexible mind and limitless compassion. He helped me with those next difficult steps, and helped me accept I’ll have more to take.”
“He’s . . . good, but not a pain in the ass about it. Much.”
Now the smile reached those dark eyes and eased more of her tension. “An excellent summary. And thank you for trusting me when I wasn’t sure I trusted myself.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Before your request came in this morning, I was going over the reasons—excuses—not to come back yet. Another week, maybe two. I wasn’t sure I was ready to be here, to face this place, to handle the work. But you asked for me. You trusted me, so what choice do I have but to trust myself?”
“She needs you.” On that single point Eve had Lopez’s unassailable faith. “Deena MacMasters needs you. You have a good team here, good people. But she needs you. She needs us.”
“Yes. So . . .” He stunned her by brushing his lips, very lightly on hers. “It’s good to see you.”
“Um. Likewise.”
He gave her arm a quick squeeze, then released it. “And where is the estimable Peabody?”
“Field work. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover.”
“Then we’ll begin. I know MacMasters, of course. He’s solid. This will have put a hole in him.”
“He’s maintaining.”
“What else is there? Her name is Deena.” He glanced at Eve, got her nod. “Sixteen-year-old female in exceptional health prior to her death. She took care of herself, and was cared for. The scan showed no prior injuries of any note, and confirms excellent nutrition. Her last meal, consumed at approximately six-thirty p.m., was pizza with a topping of peppers, mushrooms, black olives, and about six ounces of cherry fizzy. As you flagged tox, I’ve determined the barbiturate she ingested with the meal was mixed with the drink.”
“He drugged her.”
“I can’t say, only that she ingested the barb, and there are no signs of regular use of same in her scan. All to the contrary. Given her weight, and the assumption she wasn’t accustomed to taking drugs, the dose would have been enough to render her unconscious, for perhaps as much as an hour.”
“Plenty of time for him to get her upstairs, restrained, then shut down the cameras and take the discs. If he did so in that order. Plenty of time. She’d have been groggy, disoriented when she came to.”
“Yes. She ingested another dose—smaller—at about midnight.”