Dark in Death (In Death 46)

“Give me the tube of Pepsi I ordered.”

It shat one out.

Your account has been charged for one tube of Pepsi. Pepsi, the choice of generations!

That would be Harcove’s account, Eve thought as the machine spouted off its hype and warnings.

Two notations of inappropriate language and one threat of vandalism have been added to your file.

“Yeah.” Eve cracked the tube. “Add this: You can bite me.”

Eve walked into Homicide. “Peabody!”

When Peabody looked up, Eve tossed the tube of cream soda.

“Hey, thanks.”

“Thank Detective Clint Harcove.”

“Who’s that?”

“I have no idea. Progress?”

“I washed out on my usual shops, but I got some direction from the manager of one I use a lot. How’d it go with Flash?”

Eve took a moment to drink some Harcove Pepsi. “Skank.”

“Told you.”

“Bad-attitude skank with a heavy side of asshole, but I got under her skin by the end of it. She’s warned, she has the description of the unsub, and claims she’s going home to sleep. As she hadn’t yet reached the hungover, strung-out stage of her night’s binge, that I believe.”

“You’ve got another coming in. At least she said she’d give us five on her way to a recording session. She claims she’s putting a band together that blows your skin off. Shanna K. Just the initial for the last name because, she says, labels limit expression.”

“Can’t wait.”

“And Nadine’s on her way.”

“Good.”

Eve wrote up the interview with Loxie. Went out again to repeat the routine with Shanna K.

Shanna didn’t call her a bitch, listened with wide eyes heavily lashed in magenta, smiled with lips outlined in tiny, tiny sparkles.

And dismissed everything Eve told her, as she claimed people only killed other people when they’d run afoul of each other in a past life. As she herself had undergone reincarnate cleansing, she was therefore absolved of all past-life transgressions.

Still Eve pressed, pushed, went so far as to wipe the sparkle smile away by shoving photos of the DBs across the table.

By the end she figured if she hadn’t put the fear of reincarnated gods into Shanna K, she’d put the fear of Dallas into her.

That would have to do.

On the way back she caught it. The siren’s perfume. The aroma of sin.

Chocolate.

Nadine stood in her bullpen, laughing with Santiago as every cop in the place scarfed down brownies. Any cop currently in the field, using the john, or doing their damn job trying to save some reincarnated skank’s life would be dead out of luck, brownie-wise.

She noted Nadine had, as instructed, brought a camera, and the woman appeared to be reading the division motto posted over the break-room door with interest.