"Do you know a Shawn Conroy?'' She saw it in his face before he answered, just a flicker in those dark blue eyes.

"I did, years ago in Dublin. Why?''

"Have you had any contact with him here in New York?"

"No. I haven't seen or spoken to him in about eight years."

Eve took a calming breath. "Tell me you don't own a bar called the Green Shamrock."

"All right. I don't own a bar called the Green Shamrock." Now he did smile. "Really, Eve, would I own something quite so cliched?"

Relief had the weight dropping out of her stomach. "Guess not. Ever been there?"

"Not that I recall."

"Planning any parties?"

He angled his head. "Not at the moment. Eve, is Shawn dead?"

"I don't know. I need a list of your New York properties."

He blinked. "All?"

"Shit." She pinched her nose, struggling to think clearly. "Start with the private residences, currently, unoccupied."

"That should be simple enough. Five minutes," Roarke promised and ended transmission.

"Why private residences?" Peabody wanted to know.

"Because he wants me to find it. He wants me there. He's moved quickly on this one. Why hassle with a lot of security, cameras, people. You get a private home, empty. You get in, do your work, get out."

She flipped her 'link to transmit when it beeped.

"Only three unoccupied at the moment," Roarke told her. "The first is on Greenpeace Park Drive. Number eighty-two. I'll meet you there."

"Just stay where you are."

"I'll meet you there," he repeated, and broke transmission.

Eve didn't bother swearing at him, but swung the car away from the curb. She beat him there by thirty seconds, not quite enough time for her to bypass the locks with her master code.

The long black coat he wore against the bite of wind flowed like water, snapped like a whip. He laid a hand on her shoulder, and despite her scowl kissed her lightly. "I have the code," he said and plugged it in.

The house was tall and narrow to fit the skinny lot. The ceiling soared. The windows were treated to ensure privacy and block UV rays. At the moment, security bars covered them so that the sunlight shot individual cells onto the polished tile floors.

Eve drew her weapon, gestured Peabody to the left. "You're with me," she told Roarke, and started up the curving flow of the staircase. "We're going to talk about this later."

"Of course we are." And he wouldn't mention, now or then, the illegal nine-millimeter automatic he had in his pocket. Why distress the woman you loved with minor details?

But he kept a hand in that pocket, firm over the grip as he watched her search each room, watched those cool eyes scan corner to corner.

"Why is a place like this empty?" she wanted to know after she'd assured herself it was indeed empty.

"It won't be next week. We're renting it, furnished, primarily on the short term to off-planet businesses who don't care to have their high execs in hotels. We'll furnish staff, droid or human."

"Classy."

"We try." He smiled at Peabody as they descended the stairs. "All clear, Officer?"

"Nothing here except a couple really lucky spiders."

"Spiders?" Lifting a brow, Roarke took out his memo and plugged in a note to contact the exterminators.

"Where's the next place?" Eve asked him.

"It's only a couple of blocks. I'll lead you over."

"You could give me the code and go home."

He brushed a hand over her hair as they stepped outside. "No, I couldn't."

The second home was back off the street, tucked behind now leafless trees. Though houses crowded in on either side, residents had sacrificed their yards for privacy. Trees and shrubs formed a high fence between buildings.

Eve felt her blood begin to stir. Here, she thought, in this quiet, wealthy arena, where the houses were soundproofed and protected from prying eyes, murder would be a private business.

"He'd like this one," she said under her breath. "This would suit him. Decode it," she told Roarke, then gestured for Peabody to move to the right.

Eve shifted in front of Roarke, opened the door herself. That was all it took.

She smelled fresh death.

Shawn Conroy's luck had run out in a gorgeously appointed parlor, just off a small, elegant foyer. His blood stained the wild roses climbing over the antique rug. His arms were stretched wide as if in supplication. His palms had been nailed to the floor.

"Don't touch anything." She gripped Roarke's arm before he could step inside. "You're not to go in. You'll contaminate the scene. You give me your word you won't go in or I'll lock you outside. Peabody and I have to check the rest of the house."

"I won't go in." He turned his head, and his eyes were hot with emotions she couldn't name. "He'll be gone."

"I know. We check the house anyway. Peabody, take the back. I'll do upstairs."

There was nothing and no one, which was what she'd expected. To give herself a moment alone with Roarke, she sent Peabody out to the unit for her field kit.

"He wants it to be personal," she began.

"It is personal. I grew up with Shawn. I knew his family. His younger brother and I were of an age. We chased some of the same girls on the streets of Dublin, and made them sigh in dark alleys. He was a friend. A lifetime ago, but a friend."

"I'm sorry. I was too late."

Roarke only shook his head, and stared hard at the man who'd once been a boy with him. Another lost boy, he thought. Eve turned away, pulled out her communicator. "I have a homicide," she said.

When her hands and boots were clear sealed, she knelt in blood. She could see that death had come slowly, obscenely to Shawn Conroy. His wrists and throat had been slashed, but not deeply, not so that the blood would gush and jet and take him away quickly. He would have bled out slowly, over hours.

He was sliced, neatly, almost surgically from breastbone to crotch, again so that the pain would be hideous, and release would be slow. His right eye was gone. So was his tongue.

Her gauge told her he'd been dead less than two hours.

She had no doubt he'd died struggling to scream.

Eve stood back as the stills and videos of the body and scene were taken. Turning, she picked up the trousers that had been tossed aside. They'd been sliced off him, she noted, but the wallet remained in the back pocket.

"Victim is identified as Shawn Conroy, Irish citizen, age forty-one, residence 783 West Seventy-ninth. Contents of wallet are victim's green card and work permit, twelve dollars in credits, three photographs."

She checked the other pocket, found key cards, loose credits in the amount of three dollars and a quarter, a slip of torn paper with the address of the house where he'd died. And an enameled token with a bright green shamrock on one side and a line sketch of a fish on the other.

"Lieutenant?" The field team medic approached. "Are you finished with the body?"

"Yeah, bag him. Tell Dr. Morris I need his personal attention on this one." She slipped the wallet and the pocket contents into an evidence bag as she glanced over at Roarke. He'd said nothing, his face revealed nothing, not even to her.

Automatically, she reached for the solvent to remove the blood and sealant from her hands, then walked to him.

"Have you ever seen one of these before?"

He looked down into the bag that held what Shawn had carried with him, saw the token. "No."

She took one last scan of the scene – the obscenity in the midst of grandeur. Eyes narrowed, she cocked her head and stared thoughtfully at the small, elegant statue on a pedestal with a vase of pastel silk flowers.

A woman, she mused, carved out of white stone and wearing a long gown and veil. Not a bridal suit, but something else. Because it seemed both out of place and vaguely familiar she pointed. "What is that – the little statue there?"