"Chicago," he repeated, eyes narrowing. "You okay?"
"Yeah, yeah." But she stared down the long tube of the garage to where Peabody waited patiently at their vehicle. "Can you get Peabody the name of the primary on it, the necessary data? I'll have her contact CPSD for the files and status."
"Sure, no problem. Maybe you should eat something, kid. You look sick."
"I'm fine. Tell McNab I said good work, and keep at it."
"Trouble, sir?"
"No." Eve crossed to her car, uncoded, and climbed in. "We got another one in Chicago. Feeney's going to send you the details. Put out a request to the primary and his division head for a copy of appropriate data. Copy to the commander. Do it by the book, but do it fast."
"Unlike some," Peabody said primly, "I know all the pages. How come a jerk like Rosswell makes detective?"
"Because life," Eve said with feeling, "often sucks."
• • • •
Life definitely sucked for the patients at the Canal Street Clinic. The place was jammed with the suffering, the hopeless, and the dying.
A woman with a battered face breast-fed an infant while a toddle
r sat at her feet and wailed. Someone hacked wetly, monotonously. A half dozen street LCs sat glassy-eyed and bored, waiting for their regulation checkup to clear them for the night's work.
Eve waded her way through to the window where the nurse on duty manned a desk. "Enter your data on the proper form," she began, the edge of tedium flattening her voice. "Don't forget your medical card number, personal ID, and current address."
For an answer, Eve took out her badge and held it up to the reinforced glass. "Who's in charge?"
The nurse's eyes, gray and bored, flicked over the badge. "That would be Dr. Dimatto today. She's with a patient."
"Is there an office back there, a private room?"
"If you want to call it that." When Eve simply angled her head, the nurse, annoyed, released the coded lock on the door.
With obvious reluctance, she shuffled in the lead down a short hallway. As they slipped through the door, Peabody glanced over her shoulder. "I've never been in a place like this before."
"Consider yourself lucky." Eve had spent plenty of time in such places. A ward of the state didn't rate private health care or upscale clinics.
At the nurse's gesture, she stepped into a box-sized room the doctors on rotation used for an office. Two chairs, a desk barely bigger than a packing crate, and equipment, Eve mused, glancing at the computer system, even worse than what she was reduced to using at Central.
The office didn't boast a window, but someone had tried to brighten it up with a couple of art posters and a struggling green vine in a chipped pot.
And there, on a wall shelf, tucked between a teetering stack of medical discs and a model of the human body, was a small bouquet of paper flowers.
"Snooks," Eve murmured. "He used this place."
"Sir?"
"His flowers." Eve picked them from the shelf. "He liked someone here enough to give them, and someone cared enough to keep them. Peabody, we just got our connection."
She was still holding the flowers when the door burst open. The woman who strode in was young, tiny, with the white coat of her profession slung over a baggy sweater and faded jeans. Her hair was short and even more ragged that Eve's. Still, its honeycomb color set off the pretty rose-and-cream face.
Her eyes were the color of storms, and her voice was just as threatening.
"You've got three minutes. I've got patients waiting, and a badge doesn't mean dick in here."
Eve arched a brow. The opening would have irritated her under most circumstances, but she noted the shadows of fatigue under the gray eyes and the stiffness of posture that was a defense against it.
She'd worked until exhaustion often enough to recognize the signs and sympathize with them.