“Whatever you need from me.”
She nodded, then turned and shoved Peabody’s knee.
“Huh? What?” Peabody jerked upright, blinked. “I was thinking.”
“Yeah, I always drool and snore when I’m lost in thought.”
“Drool?” Mortified, Peabody wiped at her mouth. “I wasn’t drooling.”
“You’ve got one hour in the crib.”
“No, I’m okay.” Peabody climbed out, blinked her eyes wide as if to show she was alert. “Just nodded off for a minute.”
“An hour.” Eve strode toward the elevator. “Take it, then report to the conference room. I’ll need you to help me set up.”
“You don’t have to get pissed just because I dropped out for a couple minutes.”
“If I was pissed I’d be kicking your ass instead of giving you an hour down. And you don’t want to argue with me when I’m jonesing for coffee. Take the hour. You’re going to need it.”
When the doors opened, Eve stepped off with Roarke, then turned, jabbed a finger at Peabody’s sulky face. “That hour starts now.”
Roarke waited until the doors closed. “You could use an hour yourself.”
“I could use coffee more.”
“And food.”
She slid her eyes up to his. “If you start nagging me about eating and sleeping, I’m booting you off my team.”
“If I didn’t nag you about eating and sleeping, you’d do precious little of either. What’s in your office AutoChef?”
“Coffee,” she said, and yearned for it.
“I’ll meet you there shortly.” When he turned and headed in the opposite direction, she only scowled after him.
Still, if he was off doing whatever, it would be easier for her to write her initial report, call in the members of her team.
She passed through the bullpen. It was nearly change of shift. In her office, she went straight for the coffee, then stood where she was and drank the first half of the first cup.
There hadn’t been real coffee to wake up her blood the first time around, she remembered. Instead of a cramped office, she’d had a cramped desk in the bullpen. She hadn’t been in charge then; Feeney had. She knew that was weigh
ing on him, knew he was remembering all the steps, all the fizzled leads, the dead ends. All the bodies.
It needed to be remembered. It all needed to be remembered, so it didn’t happen again.
She sat at her desk, shot out transmissions to Baxter and to Jenkinson, with orders for them to notify their respective aides and partners, and report.
She mercilessly dumped their caseloads on other detectives.
There would, she knew, be some extensive bitching and moaning in the bullpen, very shortly.
She ordered up the cold-case files from nine years before—including Mira’s initial profile—sent out the request for the files and reports on the other cases, yet unsolved, that matched the MO.
She contacted the lab and pushed for any and all results, left a clipped voice mail for the chief lab tech, Dick Berenski.
And with a second cup of coffee on her desk, began to write her report.
She was fine-tuning it when Roarke came in. He set an insulated bowl on her desk, handed her a toss-away spoon. “Eat.”