“One doesn’t rush genius, Dallas.” He picked up a skull saw, set it to whirl.
Eve often wondered why anyone chose this particular line of work, or how they could be so cheerful when going about it. At least the air in the room was cool, she thought and wandered over to study the offerings of the little fridgie. She settled for a tube of ginger ale before walking back to Morris.
“What do you—”
“Ssh!”
She scowled, but subsided. Morris was usually chatty when he worked. In this case he went about the job in silence, referring to the inside of Cogburn’s skull, to the computer imagery on the screen beside the table.
She studied it herself, but saw nothing but shapes and colors.
“You do a medical search on this guy?”
“Yeah. He hasn’t been in for any sort of work or check in a couple of years. Nothing popped.”
“Oh yeah, something popped. His brain, and no standard stunner did this damage. No tumor that I can see. No clotting. If it was an embolism there should be . . . What we’ve got is severe intercranial pressure. His brain’s massively swollen.”
“Preexisting?”
“I can’t tell, not yet. This is going to take time. Fascinating. Pop’s just what this brain did. Like an overinflated balloon. I can tell you that in my opinion this wasn’t done by any weapon. It’s internal.”
“Medical then.”
“I’m not going to confirm that. I’m going to run some tests.” He shooed her away. “I’ll contact you when I have something solid.”
“Give me something.”
“I can tell you it appears this guy’s brain was in serious condition, an ongoing condition prior to any act by your officer last evening. What happened here didn’t happen as a result of a stun. It didn’t happen if he’d stuck a police issue laser in the guy’s ear and blasted away. I can’t say if the stun caused some sort of chain reaction that led to early termination. But from the looks of this brain, this guy would’ve been dead within an hour. I’ll let you know when I figure out how and why. Now go and let me work.”
Eve bypassed the seal on Cogburn’s apartment. The stench, the stale, trapped heat punched like a dirty fist when she opened the door.
“God. That’s foul.”
“Oh yeah.” Peabody turned her head, sucked in what she imagined was her last easy breath, then followed Eve inside.
“Go ahead and open the window while we’re in here. It’s got to be better than working in a closed box.”
“What are we looking for?”
“Morris’s prelim is leaning toward preexisting condition. We may find something in here to verify that, to indicate he was self-medicating. The place looks like he was off, sick. That’s what struck me from the first. He’s a creep, but a tidy, organized creep. Keeps his nest neat ordinarily. But the last several days, he’s falling down on the domestic front. Keeping up with his business though. You’re sick, you’re hot, you’re irritable. Neighbor hassles you, you crack. Makes better sense.”
“But, well, it doesn’t really matter why Cogburn had batting practice on his neighbor.”
“It always matters why,” Eve answered. “Ralph Wooster’s dead, and Cogburn’s paid for it. But it matters why.”
She opened drawers she’d opened and searched the day before. “Maybe he had a hard-on for Wooster all along. Maybe he wanted to shag Ralph’s woman, or owed him money. And now he’s feeling like shit and old Ralph’s hammering on his door and yelling at him.”
She crouched down, shined a penlight deep into the recesses of a cupboard. “Point is, something made him snap, go postal. Could be his brain was frying. Morris said he was a dead man.”
“Even so, Trueheart’s in Testing.” Peabody glanced at her wrist unit. “Or just coming out of it. He’ll have to face IAB whether or not Cogburn had a preexisting.”
“Yeah, but he’ll feel better if it comes out he gave the guy the standard and acceptable stuns, and a preexisting was the root or cause of death. We get him that, he won’t get the mandatory thirty-day vacation.”
She stayed crouched, frowning into space. “Anyway, I don’t like how it feels. Just don’t like it.”
“What’s that song you’re humming?”
Eve stopped, cursed herself, straightened. “I don’t know. Damn Morris. Let’s knock on doors.”