"You're such a joker, Morris."
"Anything to brighten your day. The abdomen wound was cause of death. Wound was caused by a laser scalpel, again wielded with considerable skill. The victim was anesthetized prior to death. In this case, the wound was left unsealed, and the victim bled out. Her liver was removed. She had herself a ripe case of cancer, which had certainly affected that particular organ. She's had some treatment for it. There was some scarring that's typical with an advanced stage, but there was some nice pink tissue as well. The treatment was slowing down the progress, fighting the fight. She might, with regular and continued care, have beaten it back."
"The incision—does it match the others?"
"It's clean and it's perfect. He wasn't in a hurry when he cut. In my opinion, it's the same pair of hands. But the rest doesn't match. There wasn't any pride in this one, and she wasn't going to die. She had a good shot of living another ten years, maybe more."
"Okay. Thanks."
She sat back, closed her eyes to help all the new data shift through her mind. And opened them again to see Webster in her doorway.
"Sorry to disturb your nap."
"What do you want, Webster? You keep showing up, I'm going to have to call my advocate."
"Wouldn't be a bad idea. You got another complaint against you."
"It's bogus. Have you run the voice prints?" The temper she'd managed to lock away beat viciously for freedom. "Goddamn it, Webster, you know me. I don't make crank calls."
She pushed herself out of her chair. Until that moment, she hadn't realized just how much rage she'd been chaining down. It roared through her, ripped at her throat until, for lack of something better, she grabbed an empty coffee mug off her desk and heaved it against the wall.
Webster stood, lips pursed, nodded toward the
shards. "Feel better?"
"Some, yeah," she replied.
"We'll be running the voice prints, Dallas, and I don't expect them to match. I do know you. You're a direct, in-the-face kind of woman. Wimpy 'link threats aren't your style. But you've got a problem with her, and don't minimize it. She's screaming about your treatment of her on the crime scene this morning."
"It's on record. You screen it, then talk to me."
"I'm going to," he said wearily. "I'm going through channels on this, step by step, because it'll work better for you. Now I see you've ordered a search and scan on her. That doesn't look good."
"It applies to a case. It's not personal. I ordered one on Trueheart, too."
"Why?"
Her eyes went flat and cool. "I can't answer that. IAB has nothing to do with my dead files, and I've been ordered to keep all data pertaining on a need-to-know. I'm Code Five per Whitney's orders."
"You're just going to make this harder on yourself."
"I'm doing my job, Webster."
"I'm doing mine, Dallas. Fucking A," he muttered, and jammed his hands in his pockets. "Bowers just went to the media."
"About me? For Christ's sake."
"It was quite a little rant. She's claiming departmental cover-up, all kinds of happy shit. Your name tends to bump ratings, and this story's going to be all over the screen by dinnertime."
"There is no story."
"You are the story," Webster corrected. "Hotshot homicide cop, the cop who took down one of the country's top politicians a year ago. The cop who married the richest son of a bitch on or off planet—who also happens to have a very shadowy past. You're ratings, Dallas, and one way or the other, the media's going to run with this."
"That's not my problem." But her throat was tight and her stomach uneasy.
"It's the department's problem. Questions are going to be asked and need to be answered. You're going to have to figure out when and how to make a statement to defuse this situation."
"Damn it, Webster, I'm in a media block. I can't talk to them because too much of it touches on my investigation."