Don’t be sad, Mommy!
Bright kid, that Rayleen. Smart, perceptive, pissy. Eve couldn’t hold the pissy against her. So Rayleen had looked up her data, her service record, her cases. Easy enough to do, Eve mused, but interesting work for a ten-year-old.
Nixie, she remembered. Nixie had been another bright, perceptive kid. Courageous kid. One who’d lost a brother, too—and her entire family, her entire world, in one horrible night.
Nixie’d been full of questions, as Rayleen seemed to be. Maybe they just popped out smarter and more full of curiosity now.
At their age, Eve had barely started real school. Had she been curious? she wondered. Maybe, maybe, but she hadn’t been one to ask questions. Not then, not for quite a while. For the first eight years of her life asking too many questions meant a fist in the face. Maybe worse.
Better to stay quiet, watch, figure it out than to ask and end up bloody.
Something was going on in that house, Eve thought. Something was just a little tilted in that perfect space. She wasn’t afraid to ask questions anymore. But she needed to figure out the right ones to ask.
She ate something that might have once wished to be chicken inside cardboard pretending to be bread. And ran a series of probabilities.
She was fishing and knew it, following various lines of logic—and one knotted string of pure instinct.
The computer told her that her instinct was crap, but that didn’t surprise her. Then she ran a hypothetical, omitting certain details, and the computer called her a genius.
“Yeah, wouldn’t that be a kick in the ass?”
She sat back. It was, of course, bullshit to run a hypothetical or probability without including known details or evidence. But she’d satisfied her curiosity.
Intrigued, she copied it all to Mira and asked for an opinion. She sent copies to her home unit, then gathered what she wanted to take home before she headed out to the bull pen and Peabody’s desk.
“I’m going to work from home.”
“It’s nearly end of shift.”
“And your point is?”
“Nothing. Nothing at all.”
“I’m swinging by the school on the way. Just want another feel of the place. Tell McNab I want individual D-and-C’s from the Straffos’ dug deep. Any shadow, any smudges, I want to know.”
“Um, day off tomorrow. Yours, mine, and ours. Valentine’s Day, too.”
“Jesus. Consider yourself on call, Detective. So be prepared to throw something over whatever embarrassing outfit you’re going to put yourself into for McNab’s perverted delight if and when I tag you.”
Peabody gave a sober nod. “I have a trench coat reserved for that purpose, sir.”
Eve considered it. “I’m forced to say: Ick. You don’t head out until you get your report written and copied to my unit here and at home. I want your notes, too. Impressions, opinions.”
“You’ve got something.”
“Dunno. Between bouts of physical expression I can’t bear thinking about, take another look at both vic’s student files—grades, discussions, parental meetings, the works.”
“And I’d be looking for?”
“Let me know when you find it,” Eve said as she strode out.
She took the glides down to the main level, cast a couple of wistful glances at the vending machine. She wanted a Pepsi, but didn’t want to interact with the damn machines.
They hated her.
Rather than squeeze onto the elevator, she jogged down the steps to the garage, pulling out her ’link as she went.
She hit Caro first, and Roarke’s ever-efficient admin sent out a warm smile. “Lieutenant, how are you?”