"You're prompt, doctor," she managed.
"Always, Lieutenant. Good morning, Roarke."
"Good morning." Amused at all of them, Roarke loosened his hold on Eve. "Can we offer you something? Coffee?"
"I never turn down coffee. You have an exceptional home," she added as she continued into the room.
"This place?" Eve's voice was desert dry. "It'll do until we find something bigger."
Louise laughed, set her briefcase aside. The thin light through the window caught the little gold pin on her lapel. Eve lifted a brow. "Dr. Wo had one of those on her dress last night. So did Vanderhaven."
"This." Absently, Louise lifted a hand to the pin. "Tradition. Right after the turn of the century, most medical facilities began to give a caduceus pin to doctors who'd completed their internship. I imagine a lot of them end up in a dusty drawer somewhere, but I like it."
"I'll let you get down to work." Roarke handed Louise her coffee, then glanced over at his wife. The gleam in his eye said it all. "I'll see you later, Lieutenant, and we can firm up those plans."
"Sure." Damn it, her lips were still vibrating from his. "We'll do that."
Louise waited until he'd gone through a connecting door, shut it. "I hope you won't take offense if I say that is the most beautiful man I've ever seen."
"I rarely take offense at the truth. So let's try for another. Your uncle is one of my suspects. At this time, he is on my short, and can't be eliminated. Is that going to be a problem for you?"
A line formed instantly and deeply between Louise's brows. Straight irritation, Eve decided.
"It won't be a problem because I have every confidence I'll help you eliminate him very quickly. Uncle Colin and I disagree in many areas, but he is, above all else, dedicated to insuring the quality of human life."
"That's an interesting phrase." Eve came around the desk, sat on the edge. They would have to test each other, she knew, before they could work together. "Not saving lives, maintaining them, prolonging them?"
"There are some who believe that without a level of quality, life is only pain."
"Is that your belief?"
"For me, life itself is enough, as long as suffering can be relieved."
Eve nodded, picked up her own coffee, though it had gone cold. "Most wouldn't say that Snooks, for example, was enjoying any quality of life. He was sick, he was dying, he was indigent. Ending all that for him might have been considered a mercy by some."
Louise went pale, but her eyes remained steady. "No doctor with ethics, with morals, with a belief in his oaths and his duty, would terminate a patient without consent. First do no harm. This, without question, is a promise my uncle lives by."
Eve nodded. "We'll see. I want you to take a look at the data I've accessed, then translate it for me in terms someone who didn't graduate from Harvard Medical can understand."
Louise's brows winged up. "You checked up on me."
"Did you think I wouldn't?"
"No." Once again, Louise's face relaxed into a smile. "I was certain you would. It's nice to be right."
"Then let's get started." Eve called up the data, gestured to the chair behind the monitor, then looked over as Peabody came huffing through the door. "You're late."
"Subway – " Peabody held up a hand as she struggled to catch her breath. "Running behind. Weather sucks. Sorry." She took off her snow-covered coat. "Coffee. Please. Sir."
Eve merely jerked a thumb in the direction of the AutoChef, then answered the beep of her 'link. "Dallas."
"Don't you ever check your messages?" Nadine demanded. "I've been trying to reach you since last night."
"I was out, now I'm in. What?"
"I'm officially requesting a one-on-one regarding the murders of Samuel Petrinsky and Erin Spindler. My information has you as primary on the first and replacement primary on the second."
It was a game they both knew. Tele-link logs could be checked. "The department has not yet issued a statement on either of those cases. Both are ongoing investigations."
"Which, according to my research and sources, appear to be linked. You can say nothing and I'll go on air with what I've got, or you can do some damage control by agreeing to an interview before I break the story. Up to you, Dallas."
She could have wiggled more, often would have. But she thought that was enough for the record. "I'm working at home today."
"Fine, I'll be there in twenty minutes."
"No, no cameras in my house." On that she was firm. "I'll meet you in my office at Central in an hour."
"Make it half that. I have a deadline."
"An hour, Nadine. Take it or leave it." And with that, she cut transmission. "Peabody, you work with Dr. Dimatto. I'll be back as soon as I can."
"Traffic's ugly, Lieutenant," Peabody told her, pitifully grateful she wasn't being dragged out in it again. "The road crews haven't started clearing yet."
"Just one more adventure," Eve muttered and strode out.
She thought she'd get out clean, but the foyer monitor blinked on as she reached for her jacket. "Going somewhere, Lieutenant?"
"Jesus, Roarke, why not just knock me over the head with a blunt instrument. Keeping tabs on me?"
"As often as possible. Wear your coat if you're going out. That jacket isn't warm enough for this weather."
"I'm just going into Central for a couple of hours."
"Wear the coat," he repeated, "and the gloves in the pocket. I'm sending one of the four-wheels around."
She opened her mouth, but he'd already vanished. "Nag, nag, nag," she muttered, then nearly jolted when he swam back on-screen.
"I love you, too," he said easily, and she heard his chuckle as the image faded again.
Eyes narrowed, she fingered the jacket, considered taking a stand. But she remembered just how warm and soft the coat was. It wasn't like she was going to a murder scene, so it seemed petty not to give in, just this once. She wrapped cashmere over her ancient trousers and stepped outside into the blowing snow just as a gleaming silver vehicle rolled smoothly to the base of the steps.
It was, she thought, a honey of a ride. Powerful and sturdy as a jet-tank. She climbed up and in, amused and touched to find the heat already blowing. Roarke never missed a trick. To entertain herself, she programmed it for manual, gripped the gearshift, and shot down the drive.
It rolled over several inches of snow as if she were driving on freshly scrubbed asphalt.
Traffic was snarled and nasty. More than one vehicle was tipped sideways on the street and abandoned. She counted three fender benders in the first four blocks. She steered around them easily, automatically calling the locations of the wrecks in to Dispatch on her communicator.
Even the glide-cart vendors, who would brave almost any weather to make a buck, were taking the day off. Street corners were deserted, the sky overhead too curtained with snow for her to see or hear any air traffic.
It was, she thought, like driving through one of those old glass globes where nothing moved but the snow when it was shaken free.
Clean, she thought. It wouldn't last, but just now, the city was clean, pristine, surreal. And quiet enough to make her shudder.
She felt something very close to relief after she'd parked in the garage and walked into the noise and confusion of Cop Central.
With more than a half hour to spare before the interview, she locked the door to her office – in case Nadine rushed the mark – and contacted her commander at home.
"I apologize for interrupting your free day, Commander."
"It's yours as well, if I'm not mistaken." He glanced over his shoulder. "Get your boots on, I'll be out in just a few minutes. Grandkids," he told Eve with a quick and rare smile. "We're about to have a snow war."
"I won't keep you from it, but I thought I should inform you I've agreed to a one-on-one with Nadine Furst. She contacted me this morning at home. She's dug up some data on the Petrinsky and the Spindler cases. I thought it best to draft an official statement, answer some basic questions, than to let her go on air with speculation."