The In Death Collection, Books 16-20

by J. D. Robb

  “He’s using you as a conduit. If he has anything more to say, he’ll go through you. You authorize the tracer, or I impound the unit—and I can impound you, too, Nadine.”

  She waited a beat while Nadine’s head snapped up. “Material witness, police protection, and so forth. I’m tempted to do it because I like you. I like you breathing.”

  “He’s not coming after me.”

  “Maybe not. But psychopaths sometimes become annoyed with their tools. I’m banking on you taking care of yourself. I’ve got a call in to Mira. If she indicates there’s a chance he’ll turn on you, I’ll have you wrapped up and packed away before you can freshen your lipdye for a one-on-one.”

  “Try it.”

  “Oh, I’ll do it.” Seated, Eve stretched out her legs. “I didn’t ask you to be my friend, you know. Just worked out that way. Now you have to live with it.”

  “Shit.” With her foxy face sulky, she drummed her fingers on the arm of the chair. Then the corner of her mouth twitched. “I like you, too, for some insane reason.”

  “Good, now we’re all cozy. You get your picture taken lately? Professionally?”

  Nadine glanced down at the photos Eve had set on the desk. “We get them taken every year at the station. Publicity shots for viewers, and for posters they have framed in the Green Room.”

  “Who takes them?”

  “I’ll find out. What’s the connection between Howard and Sulu, other than the photographs?”

  “I’ll find out.” Eve jerked a thumb at her doorway. “McNab’s waiting to go to 75 with you, install the trace.”

  “Damn sure of yourself.”

  “That’s right.” She studied her boots as Nadine rose to leave, then she swiveled in her chair. “You’re banging that suit?”

  “Generally, I make him take off the suit before we bang, as you so romantically put it.”

  “Whatever. What I mean is, you know about men.”

  One perfect eyebrow lifted as Nadine turned. “Enough to be baffled, fascinated, and annoyed by the species. Why? Trouble in paradise?”

  Eve opened her mouth, then firmly closed it again. “No. It’s nothing.” She waved Nadine away, then swiveled back to write her report. She’d let Hastings stew for a while before heading into interview. And make sure she had her own head clear before she questioned him.

  She spent several minutes scrolling through the names of customers who’d registered purchases of high-end cameras over the last twelve months.

  Could go back beyond that, she thought. And the killer might not have registered the equipment. Might not have worried about the whole warranty deal.

  Still, she cross-referenced, looking for a link to the names on her victim and suspect list.

  But her mind wouldn’t stick to the point.

  She hissed out a breath, kicked out with her foot, and slapped her door closed. She shut down the temptation to contact Roarke. She’d left him a memo, hadn’t she? She didn’t have all the rules of the marriage game aligned, but she was damned sure it was his turn to make the call.

  Instead, she called someone she felt had a good handle on the rules of the road.

  “Mavis.”

  Her friend’s pixie face was slack, and naked as a child’s. The hair was still streaked and decorated with bells. They jingled softly as Mavis snuggled into the pillow.

  “Huh? Timezit?”

  “Uh . . . I don’t know. Morning.”

  “Ugh. Morning. Whassamatter?”

  “Nothing. Sorry. Go back to sleep.”

  “ ’Sokay.” Mavis opened one eye, blue as a berry. “Summerset?”

  “No, no, he’s coming along.” At least she figured he was. She hadn’t checked. Was it her turn to check? How was she supposed to keep up, for God’s sake? “Maybe you’re going by there today?”

  “Gonna. Poor thing. Trina and I are going by, maybe give him a face and hair treatment. Whatcha think?”

  The grin spread. Maybe it was a little evil, but the image of Summerset caught in Trina’s enhancement web was so beautiful. It almost brought a tear to Eve’s eye. “Great. Great idea. Just what he needs.”

  “You okay? Something’s up. I can tell.”

  “It’s nothing.”

  “I’m awake.” On a huge yawn, Mavis shifted, and the ’link screen showed the mountain that was Leonardo snoring softly beside her. “Tell me.”

  “I don’t know. It’s probably stupid. I’m probably stupid. Something wrong with Roarke. He won’t talk about it. He shut me out, Mavis. Blasted at me out of the clear blue, then shut me out. Big-time. He didn’t come to bed, and when he talked to me, he . . . Shit.”

  Hurt and confused all over again, she dragged a hand through her hair. “Maybe, when people are together awhile they’re not all jazzed up when they see each other. That’s okay, I guess. But . . .”

  Screw the buts, she thought as her anger spiked again. “Damn it, usually he can’t keep his hands off me, usually there’s this look in his eye when I come home. It wasn’t there, not even close, and he couldn’t wait to get rid of me.”

  “You were fighting about something? You didn’t do anything to piss him off?”

  Aggrieved, she kicked at her desk. “How come it has to be me?”

  “Doesn’t.” Naked, and easy with it, Mavis sat up. “I’m just eliminating possibilities. You know, marriage is a kind of mystery, just like cop stuff. So you gotta eliminate possibilities and look for clues.”

  “Then it oughta come with a goddamn field kit,” Eve muttered.

  “He’s worried about Summerset.”

  “Yeah, but it wasn’t that. I know it wasn’t.”

  “Okay, you’d know.” Mavis ticked her head back and forth, little hair bells ringing as she considered. “Maybe it’s a work thing squeezing him.”

  “It could be, but he usually feeds on that crap. He put up this wall. It was personal.”

  “Okay.” Mavis nodded decisively. “Then you tear it down. You don’t take no for an answer. You nag and you pick and you stick until it pops out of him. Whatever it is. Girls are good at this, Dallas.”

  “I’m not good at being a girl.”

  “Sure you are. You’re your own kind of girl. Think of it as kicking his ass until he cracks. At drilling him in Interview until he confesses. Dig it out of him, then, depending on what it is, you either make him suffer or comfort him. Or fuck his brains out. You’ll know which.”

  “That doesn’t sound that hard.”

  “It’s not. Trust me. Let me know how it turns out. Since I’m awake, I think I’m going to get Leonardo revving.” She blew Eve a kiss, and signed off.

  “Okay, things to do: file report, interview suspect, harass ME and lab. Arrest homicidal maniac. Close case. Kick Roarke’s ass. Piece of cake.”

  Chapter 11

  Hastings hunched at the rickety table in Interview Room C, doing a pretty good job of looking bored. The dribbles of sweat along his temples were the only sign he was feeling the heat.

  Eve dropped into the chair across from him, flashed a big, friendly smile. “Hey. Thanks for dropping by.”

  “Kiss my white, dimpled ass.”

  “As tempting as that is, I’m afraid I’m not allowed to make such personal contact.”

  “You kicked my balls, you oughta be able to kiss my ass.”

  “Rules are rules.” She leaned back in her chair, flicked a glance at Peabody. “Peabody, why don’t you get our guest some water? It’s hot in here.”

  “I don’t mind it hot.”

  “Me neither. People go all winter bitching and whining about the cold, right, then it heats up and they bitch and whine about that. Never satisfied.”

  “People bitch and whine about every damn thing.” He took the water Peabody offered, downed the contents of the cup in one gulp. “That’s why they’re assholes.”

  “How can I argue with that? Well, enough of this cheery small talk. It’s time for the formalities. Record on. Dallas, Lieutenant Eve, and
Peabody, Officer Delia, in Interview with Hastings, Dirk, regarding Case numbers H-23987 and H-23992.” She entered the time and date, and recited the Revised Miranda. “So do you understand your rights and obligations in this matter, Hastings?”

  “I get it. Just like I get you pulled me down here, screwed up my day. You screwed up my day yesterday, and I told you what I knew. I cooperated.”

  “You’re a real cooperative individual.” She pulled copies of the photos sent to Nadine, tossed them on the table so Kenby Sulu’s image lay in front of Hastings. “Keep it up, and tell me what you know about this.”

  The chair creaked ominously as Hastings shifted his bulk. With two wide fingers he nudged first one, then the other photo closer. “I know I didn’t take these. Good images, though, except I’d’ve cropped this candid different, and punched up the light across the eyes. Kid’s got magic eyes, you want to highlight them. Had magic eyes,” Hastings corrected staring down at the death photo.

  “What were you up to last night, Hastings?”

  He kept his gaze on the photos, staring at death posed in a dance. “I worked, I ate, I slept.”

  “Alone?”

  “I’d had enough of people. I took shots of this kid. Dancer. Dance troupe. No, shit, not pros. Students. I took shots of him. What a face. It’s the eyes. Good bones, good form, but it’s all about the eyes in this face. I took shots of him,” he repeated and looked at Eve. “Just like the girl. What the hell’s going on?”

  “Tell me.”

  “I don’t freaking know!” He shoved back, so violently, so abruptly, that Peabody’s hand went to her weapon. Lingered there even when Eve shook her head.

  Hastings surged around the room, a big bear in a small cage. “This is crazy, that’s what it is. Fucking lunatic. I took that kid’s picture . . . where was it, where was it? Juilliard. Juilliard. Buncha puffed-up drama queens, but it pays the freaking bills. And the kid had that face. So I singled him out for a few shots. When was it? Spring. April, maybe May. How the hell do I know?”

  He dropped back in the chair, squeezed his shiny bald head between his hands. “Christ. Christ.”

  “Did you bring him to your studio?”

  “No. Gave him a card though. Told him if he wanted to earn some extra money modeling, to get in touch. He was easy in front of the lens, I remember. Not everybody is. He said maybe he would, and maybe I could do some individual pub shots for him.”

  “Did he get in touch?”

  “No, not with me. Don’t know if he called the studio. Lucia handles that crap. I never saw him again.”

  “Did you work with anyone on the Juilliard shoot?”

  “Yeah. I don’t know who. Some idiot or other.”

  “The same idiot or other who was with you when you did the wedding in January, the shots of Rachel Howard?”

  “Not likely. They don’t stick that long.” He managed a thin smile. “I’m temperamental.”

  “You don’t say? Who has access to your disc files?”

  “Nobody. Nobody should, but I guess anybody who comes through and knows what they’re doing.” He moved his shoulders. “I don’t pay attention. I never had to pay attention.”

  He shoved the photos back at Eve. “I didn’t call a lawyer.”

  “So noted. Why is that, Hastings?”

  “Because this pisses me off. Plus, I hate lawyers.”

  “You hate everybody.”

  “Yeah, that’s true.” He rubbed his hands over his face, then dropped them on the table. “I didn’t kill those kids. That girl with the magic smile, this boy with the magic eyes. I’d never put those lights out.” He leaned forward. “Just from an artistic standpoint—what would that smile be like in five years, or those eyes in ten. I’d want to know, to see, to capture. And personally, I don’t get murder. Why kill people when you can just ignore them?”

  Mirroring his move, she leaned toward him. “What about those lights? Wouldn’t you want them for your own? Take them while they’re young, innocent. Brilliant. Pull them in, through the lens, into yourself. Then they’re always yours.”

  He stared, blinked twice. “You gotta be fucking kidding me. Where do you get that kind of woo-woo crap?”

  Despite the horror of the situation, she let out a laugh. “I like you, Hastings. I’m not sure what that says about me. We’re going through your records again, to see if we find the shots you took of Kenby Sulu.”

  “Why don’t you just move in, bring the freaking family? Your pet dog.”

  “I’ve got a cat. I’ve got you scheduled for Truth Testing in about twenty minutes. I’ll have an officer escort you to a waiting area.”

  “That’s it?”

  “For now, that’s it. Do you have any questions or statements you wish to make at this time, on record.”

  “Yeah, I got a question. I got a prize-winning question for you, Dallas. Am I going to have to wonder who’s next? Am I going to have to ask myself whose picture I took who’s going to end up dead?”

  “I don’t have the answer to that. Interview end.”

  “You believe him.” Peabody slid into the car beside Eve. “Even without the Truth Test.”

  “I believe him. He’s connected, but not involved. And he’ll know the face of the next target. He’ll recognize it.” And it would cost him, Eve thought. She’d seen what it was already costing him on that ugly face of his.

  “The killer is someone he knows, or at least someone who knows him and his work. Someone who admires it, or envies it . . . or thinks their own is superior.”

  She toyed with that angle as she pulled out of the garage. “Somebody who hasn’t been able to achieve the same sort of commercial or critical success.”

  “A competitor.”

  “Maybe. Or maybe someone who’s too artistic, too above commercialism. He wants acknowledgment, otherwise, he’d be keeping the images for himself. But he sends them to the media.”

  She played back pieces of the text the killer sent to Nadine.

  Such light! Such strong light. It coats me. It feeds me. He was brilliant, this clever young man with the dancer’s build and the artist’s soul. Now he is me. What he was lives forever in me.

  Light again, Eve mused, then shadows.

  There will be no shadows in them now. No shadows to smother the light. This is my gift to them. Theirs to me. And when it’s done, when it’s complete, our gift to humanity.

  “He wants the world to know what he’s doing. Artistically,” Eve continued. “Hastings, or at least Hastings’s work, is one of his springboards. We question everyone who’s worked with or for Hastings over the last year.”

  Peabody pulled out her pad, keyed in, scrolled down the list. “That’s going to take awhile. The guy’s not kidding about going through assistants like toilet paper. Then you add in the staff, and turnover in the retail end, the models and stylists, and so on. You want to start at the top?”

  “For now. But we start back at the data club. The transmission to Nadine was sent from there, both times. It’s a link.”

  There was a lively lunch crowd jammed at tables and booths, heavy on the students, Eve decided. Lots of them gathered in groups or going solo over data and sandwiches.

  She spotted Steve Audrey at the bar, working two-handed to fill orders on trendy iced drinks and coffee. He acknowledged her with a little head bob.

  “Summer session has them pouring in midday.” He slid something frothy and blue into waiting hands, then wiped his own on the bar rag tucked in his waistband. “Getcha something cold?”

  “I wouldn’t mind a Blue Meanie.” Peabody spoke fast, knowing her lieutenant.

  “Coming up.” He pumped at levers. “What can I do for you, Lieutenant?”

  “Take a break.”

  “I just came on an hour ago. I’m not due for a break until—”

  “Take one now.”

  He flipped the slush machine, grabbed a glass. “Hold on. Mitz, need you to take over for five. Can’t take more than five,�
� he told Eve as he poured the blue slush into a tall, skinny glass for Peabody. “I’ll get iced otherwise.”

  “Five’ll do. Is there anyplace in here that’s quiet?”

  “Not this time of day.” He scanned the crowd, used his chin to point. “Grab that privacy booth in the back, to the right. Give me a minute to fill these other orders.”

  Eve wound through, Peabody, slurping Blue Meanie, in her wake. Students, she noted, treated the club like a safari and came in loaded with bags and satchels.

  There was no bag or satchel in Kenby’s locker at Lincoln Center.

  She stepped over, stepped around, shoved aside, and reached the booth at the same time a pair of college boys in track shirts leaped into the chairs.

  They looked up at her and grinned. “You lose. We’re younger and faster.”

  “I’m older and I’ve got a badge.” She flipped it out and grinned back. “Maybe I should have a look through your backpacks, then brighten everyone’s day with a quick cavity search.”

  They scrambled up and away.

  “They are fast,” Peabody noted.

  “Yeah, but I don’t need some pussy drink to be mean.”

  Peabody slurped again. “It’s very refreshing, and contrary to its name puts me in a very amenable mood. Or maybe that has something to do with the cavity search McNab and I performed on each other last night.”

  Eve slapped at the cheek muscle that twitched. “Thank God I haven’t had any lunch. I’d have lost it.”

  “I think it’s nice we’re both having regular sex. It keeps us in rhythm.”

  “Shut up, shut up.”

  “Can’t help it. I’m happy.”

  “I can fix that.”

  With another frosty drink in his hand, Steve dropped down next to Peabody. He sucked through the straw stuck in the pale green foam. “Okay, we got five.” He hit the button that closed the clear bubble around the booth. “Ah.” He smiled into the silence as he drew on the straw. “Excellent.”

  “What do you know about the transmission sent from here this morning?”

  His eyes popped open. “Huh? Again?”

  “EDD’s been here. They impounded the unit, talked to the day manager.”