"Just get us past this thing, and stop looking so smug." Roarke simply laid his hand on the palm plate, then coded in. GOOD EVENING, ROARKE. WELCOME. HOW MAY I ASSIST YOU THIS EVENING?

"We'll be going up to the twenty-second floor. Release the elevators."

YES, SIR. ELEVATORS ARE RELEASED. PLEASE ENJOY YOUR VISIT AND THE REST OF YOUR EVENING. PLEASE LET ME KNOW IF I CAN BE OF ANY FURTHER ASSISTANCE.

"Don't you get tired of everything and everyone sucking up to you?"

Eve demanded.

"Why, no. Why should I?" He gestured her into the elevator as the mirrored doors opened soundlessly. "Twenty-second floor," he ordered. "Young could very well be out, you know."

"I'll see for myself. There's a reasonable chance he's Julianna's supplier or knows who is. I don't walk away until I talk to him."

"Would now be a good time?" Roarke asked. "Lieutenant, you know how it excites me when you snarl at me."

She stepped off on twenty-two, turned down the hall to the second door on the right. She rang the bell, kept her badge up so it could be seen through the apartment's security screen.

DOCTOR YOUNG IS NOT IN RESIDENCE AND HAS AUTHORIZED NO GUESTS TO ENTER HIS HOME IN HIS ABSENCE. MAY I TAKE A MESSAGE?

The second computerized response had Eve agitated. Without comment, she turned around and buzzed the apartment across the hall.

It was opened by a woman wearing a red lounging robe, holding a cocktail glass filled with some pale blue liquid. An entertainment screen roared out of the room behind her. "Police? What's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong, ma'am. I'm sorry to disturb you. Do you know where I can find Eli Young this evening?"

"Doctor Young?" She blinked, then looked over her shoulder. "Marty, the police are here. She wants to see Doctor Young." "Across the hall." The voice boomed out, over the shouted on-screen argument. "Would now be a good time?" Roarke asked. "Lieutenant, you know how it excites me when you snarl at me."

"I know he lives across the hall," Eve said with straining patience.

"He doesn't answer his door. Can you tell me when you last saw him?"

"Oh, several days ago, I suppose." She lifted the glass, sipped. From the glow on her face, she'd been sipping steadily for some time. "Oh, wait a minute, he's gone out of town. Could be gone a couple weeks."

"Did he mention where he was going?"

"No. Actually he didn't tell me. His niece did." "Niece," Eve repeated as her mind went on alert.

"Yes, she was coming out of his apartment the other day as I was coming in from shopping. A very nice young woman, too. She said that she'd just been visiting her uncle, and how pleased she was that he was going to travel back to visit her parents with her. In Ohio. Or Indiana. Or maybe it was Idaho." She slipped again. "A nice long visit, she said."

"What did she look like?"

"Oh, young and pretty. Brunette, short, very chic do." "Would now be a good time?" Roarke asked. "Lieutenant, you know how it excites me when you snarl at me."

Eve pulled out her PPC, called up Julianna's picture as Janet Drake.

"Does she look familiar?"

The woman angled her head, then beamed. "Why yes! That's Dr.

Young's niece. I was caught by surprise as I didn't realize he had any family at all." "Thanks." Eve stuck the PPC back in her pocket. "Do you ever watch the news media, ma'am?"

"News? With Marty it's thrillers and sports, sports and thrillers. I'm lucky if I get the screen for ten minutes a day to watch the fashion report." "You might want to take a look at it tonight. Thanks for your help."

Eve turned away from the woman's puzzled look, and switched on her recorder. "I have positive ID that prime suspect, Julianna Dunne had contact with Eli Young at this location. Subject Young does not answer, and there is suspicion of foul play. I have probable cause to enter this residence and determine the well-being of Young and/or his complicity with Julianna Dunne. With me is Roarke, owner of the building. He has agreed to this procedure, and will witness same."

"That should cover it," Roarke commented.

"Would now be a good time?" Roarke asked. "Lieutenant, you know how it excites me when you snarl at me."

Eve stepped to the door, used her master to uncode the locks.

"Recorder on," she said as she drew her weapon, a subtle warning in case Roarke had armed himself without her knowledge.

She pushed open the door to the dark.

But she didn't need the lights to smell death.

"Christ." She hissed it between her teeth as her mouth filled with the rank air. "We've got a bloater. Stay in the hall. There's nothing you can do. Lights on full," she ordered.

The lights flashed on, revealing a lavishly appointed living area, its privacy screens shut tight over a wall of windows. Young was on the sofa, and the fabric would never be the same.

He wore what might have been a robe, but as the gases inside him had expanded, and the bodily fluids leaked, it was hard to tell.

There was a bottle of brandy and a wineglass on the coffee table, and a snifter on the rug where his ringers, fat as sausages now, had dropped it. "You'll want your field kit," Roarke said.

"Yeah."

"And here." He handed her a handkerchief so she could cover her mouth and nose. "Best I can do for now."

"Thanks." She used it, staying at the doorway until he could return with her sealant, recording the scene. She pulled her communicator out of her pocket, and called it in.

She'd had sex with him first. Perhaps they'd been lovers before, but Eve thought not. Julianna had simply used her most effective method to distract a man, and then had killed him with the very poison he'd procured for her.

It was logical, clean, cold. It was Julianna.

They would find her on the building's security discs. Once at least before Pettibone's murder when she'd bought her initial supply.

She'd been a redhead then, Eve mused.

Then once again, a brunette, coming back to tie off the loose end.

Very likely, they would find transmissions on the victim's 'link from her, to her. But she wouldn't be foolish enough to have taken them at home, or on a personal 'link. They would follow it up, of course, but find the chats were made on public 'links.

He'd been dead four days. Four very nasty days. She'd strolled in, fresh from one kill, and topped herself off with another.

The body was gone now, but the air would reek of its decomposition for quite some time. Even after crews came in to clean the air, it would be there, a thin, evil underlayer.

"Lieutenant." Peabody came up behind her. "I have the security discs."

Absently, Eve took them. "I'll have copies in the file. I'll take a look at them tonight, but I don't imagine there will be any surprises.

"She came up the day after she killed Pettibone. Sporting her new hairdo, feeling fine and frisky. He let her in. Maybe they could do more business. She told him about the kill. Who better to share it with than the man who'd sold her the weapon, a man who'd be dead before she left the apartment? It would've amused her to tell him. Then she seduced him."

She stepped toward the bedroom. The linens had been stripped away, sent to the lab, but her scope had found traces of semen.

"Easy enough. I'm so wired up, so energized. All those years in prison, those lonely years. I need someone to touch me. You're the only one I can be with, the only one who knows what I'm feeling right now."

"He should've known," Peabody murmured. "Of all people, he should've known."

"Her eyes would be shining, all those lies in them. He's old enough to be her grandfather, and there she is. Young and beautiful, with that tight, smooth body. He likes them young. Younger even than she, but she's here. She lets him do whatever he wants to her, take all the time he needs. It doesn't matter to her. He's already dead.

Her mind's on the next, even as she groans and writhes and pretends to get off. Afterwards, she'll natter him. It was wonderful. Amazing.

She knows what to say, how to say it to make him feel like the fuck king of the world. She'd have researched him, too."

She turned back into the living area. "She knows he likes brandy. She poisoned the bottle while he was in the shower, or taking a piss.