"You'll need a twenty man task force to hit all the Irish pubs in New York," McNab said easily, then turned back to his work.

"You just worry about the trace," Eve ordered. "Peabody, run the names and locations for the bars. The uniform back yet with the discs from the Towers?"

"He's en route."

"Fine, have the bars broken down geographically. I'll take the south and west, you take north and east." Even as Peabody left, Eve turned to McNab. "I need something fast."

"It's not going to be fast." His boyish face was grim with purpose now. "I've already gone down a couple of layers. There's nothing. I'm running a scattershot trace on the last transmission that came through. It takes time, but it's the best way to trace through a jam."

"Make it take less time," she snapped. "And contact me as soon as you break through."

He rolled his eyes behind her back as she strode out. "Women," he muttered. "Always wanting a miracle."

Eve hit a dozen bars as she worked her way down to the medical examiner's building. She found two bar owners and three crew who lived above or behind the business. As she pulled her unit into a third-level parking space at the ME's, she called up Peabody.

"Status?"

"I've got two possibles so far, and my uniform's going to smell like smoke and whiskey for the next six months." Peabody grimaced. "Neither of my possibles claims to have known Thomas Brennen or to have an enemy in the world."

"Yeah, I'm getting the same line. Keep at it. We're running out of time."

Eve took the stairs down, then coded herself into security. She avoided the discreet, flower-laden waiting area and moved straight into the morgue.

The air there was cold, and carried the sly underlayer of death. The doors might have been steel and sealed, but death always found a way to make its presence known.

She'd left Brennen in Autopsy Room B, and since it was unlikely he'd taken himself off anywhere, she approached the security panel, holding up her badge for the scan.