'Hey Lanie, you feeling better?'

Lanie swung out of the back of the coroner's van, kit in hand as she walked with Esposito towards the apartment building holding a fresh customer for her lab. She didn't like having to wear flats now, though they were good for her back. It meant instead of being only a head tilt away from looking Esposito in the eye, she actually had to crane her neck now, but at least they were Steve Madden ballet slippers with adorable buckles at the toes.

'Much. Went to the doctor's, said I should feel better soon, just take my vitamins and eat right.' She rolled her tongue over her teeth, not liking the aftertaste of lying-by-omission. But thankfully, Esposito was a professional-minded guy and just nodded.

'Good to hear. You gave us a real scare last week.'

'I didn't mean to,' she apologized as they took the stairs up to the appropriate floor, into the crime scene. The victim was in the kitchen, face down, her blood spattering the pristine white tiles like a grotesque Jackson Pollock painting. Lanie blew out a breath, focused on keeping her inhalation even as Esposito ran through the important details.

'Victim is Kendra Santiago, twenty-nine, of this residence according to her driver's license. She didn't show for work today, so her office-mate called the boyfriend, boyfriend used his keys and found her like this.'

'Right.' Lanie set her kit down to pull on her latex gloves and do her preliminary exam on scene. The smell, at least was better this time, though Lanie still felt slightly queasy. She liked to attribute it to the caffeine withdrawal she was starting to experience - no coffee wake-ups anymore, just soothing herbal teas or decaf Starbucks. As she did her work, she let out an audible sniff.

'You wearing Meredeth's perfume to work, Esposito?'

'I borrowed her car for work this morning, since my ride's in the shop for a brake job, why?'

'That fancy French stuff of hers, I can smell it on you.'

Esposito wrinkled his brow as he sniffed at himself a little. 'Well it is her car, probably just picked it up sitting in there with the heat on. Going to cool down tonight from what I hear.'

'Don't make small talk while you hover, it's creepy and it weirds me out.' Lanie prodded Miss Santiago with her liver thermometer. 'Besides, I can tell you your girl died like this and hasn't been moved.'

'COD?'

'I'll run a full work-up at the lab but I'm guessing exsanguination from those punctures in her back. Take a look up here.' Lanie crouched, shifted on the balls of her feet to move the victim's hairline out of the way. 'These red splotches are pressure points, which means she was subdued manually and since there's no defensive wounds, she was probably out like a light when she was stabbed.'

'So she's in her kitchen, when someone comes in behind her, puts her in a choke-hold and when she's down, puts a dozen or so holes in her back.'

'Eight, by my count.' Lanie blinked hard as she felt a little light headed when she stood back up. 'And from body temperature and lividity, this young lady shuffled off the mortal coil between one and two-thirty this morning.'

'Shuffled off the mortal coil?' Esposito repeated, trying not to laugh at his friend.

'Dave's a Shakespeare nut, he made me watch Hamlet with Laurence Olivier last night.' Lanie shook her head. 'At least make it something good if it's a black and white, like The Maltese Falcon or Gaslight.'

As one of the uniforms summoned Esposito, Lanie was left alone with the body and her thoughts, which naturally drifted to her baby. Would it turn out like her, loving a grisly and gruesome Poe murder mystery or be a little more refined like his or her father in terms of literature, digging the Bard's treasure trove and reading things like The Twelfth Night and King Lear for fun? Or would their child be a techie who believed books were a thing of the past, using the latest gadget from Apple for trash-rock music twenty-four seven?

She was lost in her own thoughts she didn't even notice Ryan appear until she heard his sunny greeting.

'There's our superstar, all bright and shiny and keeping her Cheerios in her digestive tract this morning,' he teased her, crouching down to get a look at the body. At least, that's what Ryan knew it would looking like as he furtively dipped his hand into the pocket of his pea coat.

'Here.' He passed her two rolls of Pep-O-Mint Life Savers. 'Jenny told me these were a God-send when she had nausea, said the mint was really soothing on a bubbly-tummy. And this way, you just look like a sugar fiend.'

'Thanks.' Touched at his sweetness, Lanie tucked one roll into each of her jacket pockets. 'And thanks again for your discretion.'

Ryan shrugged good-naturedly. 'It's not my place to tell them anything. Your body, your-' he mouthed the word baby silently '-your call.'

'I'm going to tell them soon, I've just needed some time for me to get used to the whole idea.' Lanie pressed a fisted hand to her mouth, which had Ryan worrying.

'You gonna spew?'

'No, just a burp.' Because she had none of the cheese and crackers she was craving handy, she made do with the Life-Savers in her pocket. When her assistants came in to zip Miss Santiago into her new black bag, Lanie snapped off her latex gloves and thumbed free a minty circle from the roll. She was just folding the foil over the end of the roll when Esposito came back in.

'Where'd you snag the candy, Doc?'

'A little get better present from me,' Ryan filled in, earning a pout from his partner.

'Kiss ass. You didn't bring me any presents when I got shot.'

'You didn't bring me any presents when I got shot, either.'

'Butch, Sundance.' Lanie shook her head, packed up her kit. 'Much as I would love to referee this one, Miss Santiago and I have a one o'clock appointment to keep at my office, so if you will excuse me, I'll update you as soon as I can.'


Back at the morgue, Lanie had scrubbed up for her procedure and had just tied on her scrub cap when the stack of surgical masks on the shelf above her sink caught her eye. It wouldn't be a total guard against vomiting but since popping a Life Save when she was wrist deep in Miss Santiago's chest cavity didn't sound all that appetizing, she cracked open the box and tied it over her face.

She'd finished her Y cut and was making her preparations to weigh the victim's heart when the wall-phone rang; a glance up revealed the winking red light going solid, meaning someone else on her floor had picked it up. Lanie went back to work and was working through the intestines as the doors swung open. Even through her filtered mask, her heightened sense of smell picked up on Beckett's distinct hand sanitizer; it was a bit of a cheat though, as Beckett's soap all came from Bath and Body Works.

'Katie, I'll be with you momentarily, just as soon as I finish up with my girl here,' she told her.

'What's up with the face-gear?' she asked, gesturing in the vicinity of her lower face.

'Doctor's orders.'

'Fair enough.' As Beckett knew Lanie worked with all kinds of weird and wonderful compounds, she was surprised the doctor didn't wear one all the time. 'So I guess you're kinda curious about why I said I'd stop in on my way to have lunch with Meredeth and Lili.'

'Not really. You never really take a day off, you just have twenty-four hour periods where you don't get paid to work.'

'Alexis sent me and Rick an email last night and...she called me Mom in it.'

Lanie's head snapped up, saw Beckett's eyes filling up. Her immediate instinct was to rush to her friend's side but she had her hands full of innards, to stroke and soothe. Instead she jerked her head. 'Come here.' When Beckett did so, Lanie leaned her temple against Beckett's shoulder. 'There, there, baby girl,' she said, making Beckett laugh a little. 'Tell Mama everything.'

'She wrote it in the subject line - Hey Mom and Dad. I read through it with him, then saw she'd only addressed it to casbeck at g-mail dot com. No added line to her bio-mom in California.'

'I don't understand why you're surprised, Kate. Alexis really looks up to you, and thinks of you as part of her family now.'

Beckett nodded, then glanced over as Esposito and Ryan wandered in. 'I'll be on my way, just wanted to tell you in person.'

'Now serving forty-one and forty-two.' Lanie addressed the two detectives, pulled her hands out of Miss Santiago. 'Not much to add from on-scene, boys, except that it is looking more and more conclusively that the stab wounds are the COD.'

'Any unusual marks, tattoos, things like that?'

'She had a tattoo of red lip prints on her right butt cheek and three earring holes in her right ear but only one in the left. You have a line on the killer through her ink?'

'Maybe.' Ryan flipped out his notebook. 'Her boyfriend said she liked getting herself pierced for fun than letting it grow over when she got bored. Could give a reason why there were no defensive wounds, she was getting a sick rush off the knife on her skin.'

'Hey, takes all kinds. I once dated a girl who didn't like me taking my shirt off when we were in bed together 'cause she like the feel of the cotton on her body. Shame, too,' Esposito said with a little flex of his muscles. 'She was missing out, which Mere never does.'

'Same horny-time, same horny-channel,' Ryan said on a laugh, rolling his eyes as his cell went off. 'Ryan. Yeah, okay. We'll meet you there. Compu-jocks got her work and home units and might have hit something in her email.'

They took off, not once mentioning her surgical mask, which didn't strike Lanie as odd. Knowing Ryan, he'd have likely said to Esposito beforehand what she'd said to Beckett - it was simply 'doctor's orders', which was accurate. When Lanie had finished her task, stripped off the mask and soiled gloves, she went into her office to take her daily pre-natal vitamin, stored in a cute little tube in her purse easily mistakable for lipstick. She stopped short when she saw the small packet of instant chicken soup and a note attached. Opening it, Lanie laughed at the message in Ryan's distinctive penmanship: 'Eat Me. I'm Good for Little Ones.'


R&R&Enjoy.