"I'll kick him."
"I'll consider the waiver, Lieutenant, once all data and results are in and studied."
"Thank you, sir."
Huddled in his cube, Halloway ran another series of scans on the Cogburn unit. And groused.
Play a little Crusader on your break, and you get all the shit details dumped on you. Who the hell cared about the data stored on the drive of a dead kiddie dealer's unit? What was Feeney going to do? Tattle on the pint-sized clients to their mommies?
Four hours, he thought, and popped a blocker for the vicious headache trumpeting inside his skull. Four frigging hours dicking with useless data on a useless second-rate unit all because bigshot Dallas comes begging to bigshot Feeney.
He sat back, rubbed his blurry eyes.
He couldn't get past the shield on this Purity transmission. Cogburn hadn't generated the message. That much he'd verified. It had come from outside, but so the fuck what?
Absolute Purity. Probably some sort of baby lotion.
His head was killing him. And God, it was hot in here. Damn climate control must've gone out again. Nobody did their jobs anymore. Nobody but him.
He shoved away from the desk, pushed out of his cube, desperate for water, for air.
He elbowed other cops out of his way, earned himself some inventive suggestions on self-gratification.
At the water cooler, he glugged down cup after cup as he tracked the movements of his associates.
Look at them. Like a bunch of ants in a nest. Somebody ought to do the world a favor and squash some ants.
"Hey, Halloway." McNab bounced in fresh from a field assignment. "How's it going? Heard you caught a shit detail."
"Fuck you, asshole."
Temper rolled over McNab's face, but then he noted Halloway's pallor, and the beads of sweat. "You look a little wasted. Maybe you should take a break."
Halloway downed more water. "Somebody's gonna get wasted. Get off my case before I show the rest of these dickweeds what a pansy Feeney's pet really is."
"You got a problem with me?" If so, it was a new one. To that point McNab and Halloway had flowed along smoothly. "We can take it down to the gym and work it out. See who's the pansy of EDD."
Feeney swept in, stopped by the cooler when he felt the hot wall of tension. "McNab, I want that report ten minutes ago. Halloway, you got all this time to stand around the cooler I can find more for you to do. Move it."
"Later," Halloway muttered under his breath, and stalked back to his cube with his head raging.
CHAPTER FOUR
With Peabody in tow, Eve stopped by the hospital for a followup interview with Suzanne Cohen. The woman was weepy and despondent, having discovered her affection for Ralph ran considerably deeper now that he was dead.
But she had nothing appreciable to add to the mix. Her version of the incident on the stoop followed Reenie's, as did her basic take on LouieK.
He was quiet, except for his music, and kept mostly to himself.
"Isn't that always the way?" Eve noted. "Every time you've got some guy going on a spree that ends in blood, people say he was quiet and kept to himself. Just once, I'd like to hear how he was a maniac who ate live snakes."
"There was that guy last year who bit off the heads of pigeons before he jumped off the roof of his apartment building."
"Yeah, but he only splattered himself, and we didn't catch that one. No point in trying to cheer me up with pigeon eaters." Despondent herself, Eve pulled out her beeping communicator. " Dallas."
"Thought you'd want an update," Morris began. "I'm still running tests, and results in are largely inconclusive."
"Boy, that sure perks me up."
"Patience, Dallas, patience." His face was glowing the way some people glowed when they claimed to have found Jesus, Eve thought.
"What we've got here is worthy of a write-up in medical journals across the land. This guy's brain is fascinating. Like it was under attack from the inside. But there's no tumor, no mass, no sign of disease as such."
"But there's damage. Brain damage."
"I'll say. Like someone set microscopic charges inside it. Biff, bam, boom. You know how I likened it to an overinflated balloon?"
"Yeah."
"Picture this balloon, in an enclosed space, in this case, the skull. Balloon swells, bigger, bigger. Space stays the same. It keeps pushing, expanding, but it's got no place to go. Pressure builds, builds, builds. Capillaries burst. Ping, ping, ping. Nose bleeds, ear bleeds until… Pop!"
"That's a really pretty image."
"Poor sucker had to be suffering from major headaches. The Mount Vesuvius of headaches. I've sent tissue to the lab for further analysis, and I'm calling in a neurologist."
"Would this damage have caused his sudden violent behavior?"
"I can't tell you that, not conclusively. But the pain may have pushed him over the edge. Pain's nature's warning system. Ouch, something wrong with me. Enough pain though, can drive you crazy. And, an invasive body such as a tumor in the brain can cause aberrant behavior. This brain was, unquestionably, invaded."
"By what?"
"The best I can tell you is it looks like some sort of neurological virus. Pinning that down isn't going to be quick work."
"Okay, get me what you can when you can." She clicked off. "Looks like it's moving out of the area of police problem and into medical problem. We'll close it up. Subject, suffering from as yet undiagnosed neurological disorder, assaults and kills neighbor, attacks another. Police response results in death of assailant. Trueheart's just got to hold on through the IAB bullshit."
"Are you going to let him know the guy was mostly dead before the stun?"
"Yeah, but he should handle IAB first. Whitney's right. I go standing in front of him, it makes him look weak."
"He's not, you know." Peabody smiled a little. "He's just… pure."
"Yeah, well, his purity's a little soiled now, and he'll probably be better off. We'll swing into EDD and see if they've pinned down the other Purity. I want to tie this up and put it away."
In his cube, Halloway raged and he sweated and he worked. He didn't know he was dying, but he knew, he knewdamn well he was being abused.
He couldn't remember, not exactly, why he had this old and crappy data center on his work counter. But he remembered, oh he remembered, the way Feeney had slapped at him, how Feeney had humiliated him.
And McNab, that asshole, breezing up and sneering. Laughing at him behind his back. Laughing right in his face. Why was he the one who always got the plum assignments? Those plums should go to Colleen Halloway's son, Kevin. And they would if that backstabber McNab didn't kiss Feeney's ass every chance he got.
They were holding him down, holding him back. Both of them, he thought as he swiped his forearm over his sweat-drenched face. Trying to ruin him.
They weren't going to get away with it.
God. God! He wanted to go home, go to bed. He wanted to be alone in his own place, away from this heat, away from this noise, away from the pain.
His vision blurred as he stared down into the guts of the unit Feeney had ordered him to work on.
And he saw McNab's guts spread out and gleaming under his hands.
Take it down to the gym? He let out a little snort that ended on a sob. Hell with that! Hell with them. He pushed to his feet, closed his hand over his holstered weapon. Drew it.
They'd handle this here and now. Like men.
Eve stepped into the glide. "I don't need you for this, Peabody."
"Sir, I'm your faithful aide. I feel obliged to stay close to your side."
"If you think you're coming up to EDD with me so you can play grab-ass with McNab, you're very much mistaken, faithful aide."
"The thought never crossed my mind."
"Is that so? Why are your pants on fire?"