The In Death Collection, Books 16-20

by J. D. Robb

  Eve found Leeanne Browning at her apartment. The professor wore a long red shirt over a black skinsuit, and had her hair bundled back in a braid.

  “Lieutenant Dallas. Officer. You just caught me. Angie and I were about to head out.” She gestured them inside as she spoke. “We’re going to spend a few hours working in Central Park. The heat brings out all sorts of interesting characters.”

  “Including us,” Angie said, hauling a large toolbox into the room.

  Leeanne laughed, low and lusty. “Oh, absolutely including us. What can we do for you?”

  “I have some questions.”

  “All right. Let’s sit down and try to answer them. Is this about poor Rachel? There’s a memorial service for her tomorrow evening.”

  “Yes, I know. I’d like you to look at these. Do you recognize the subject?”

  Leeanne took the image of Kenby, standing in front of Juilliard. “No.” While Eve watched her face, Leeanne pursed her lips. “No,” she said again. “I don’t think he’s one of mine. I’d remember this face. Striking face.”

  “Good form,” Angie added, leaning over the back of the sofa. “Nice, graceful body type.”

  “An excellent study. Very well done. The same, isn’t it?” Leeanne asked. “It’s the same portrait artist. Is this handsome young man dead?”

  “How about this one?” Eve offered the picture of the dance troupe.

  “Ah, a dancer. Of course. He’s built like one, isn’t he?” She made a small sound, a little breath of distress. “No, he’s not familiar to me. None of them are. But this isn’t the same photographer, is it?”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Different style, technique. Such drama, and a wonderful use of shadows here. Of course, you’d want drama in this study, but . . . It seems to me that whoever took this dance study is more experienced, more trained, or simply more talented. Both, by my critique. Actually, at a guess, I’d say this was a Hastings.”

  Intrigued, Eve sat back. “You can look at a photo and identify the photographer.”

  “Certainly, if the artist has a distinct style. Of course, a clever student or fan could copy it very well, digital manipulation and so on. But this first isn’t what I’d call a stylistic homage.”

  Setting them side-by-side, she studied them again. “No. It’s very distinct and different. Two artists, interested in the same subject, and seeing it through different perspectives.”

  “Do you know Hastings, personally?”

  “Yes. Not well, I doubt anyone does. Such a temperamental soul. But I use his work quite often in class, and he’s allowed me, with some considerable persuasion, to conduct some workshops for my students in his studio over the years.”

  “She had to pay him out of pocket,” Angie chimed in. She was still leaning over the sofa, with her chin nearly resting on Leeanne’s shoulder. “Hastings likes his money.”

  “That’s true.” Leeanne’s tone was cheerful. “When it comes to his art, he doesn’t compromise, but he’s firm on making a profit. His store, his commercial work, his time.”

  Eve began to play another angle in her head. “Any of your students ever work for him as models or assistants?”

  “Oh yeah,” Leeanne answered with a chuckle. “And most had a maxibus full of complaints afterward. He’s rude, impatient, cheap, violent. But they learned, I can promise you that.”

  “I’d like the names.”

  “My God, Lieutenant, I’ve been sending students to Hastings for more than five years.”

  “I’d like the names,” Eve repeated. “All you have on record, or in your memory. What about this one?” She held out the death photo.

  “Oh.” Her hand lifted, linked with Angie’s. “Macabre, horrible. Brilliant. He’s getting better at his work.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “So stark. It’s meant to be. Death Dances. That’s what I’d call it. The use of shadow and light here. The fact that he chose black-and-white, the fluid pose of the body. He could have done more with the face—yes, untapped potential there—but overall it’s brilliant. And terrible.”

  “You often choose black-and-white. Most of your book is dedicated to the art of black-and-white photography and imaging.”

  With a look of surprise, Leeanne glanced up again. “You’ve read my book?”

  “I’ve looked it over. There’s a great deal about light—the exploitation of it, the building or taking of it, the filtering of it. The absence of it.”

  “Without light, there is no image and the tone of the light determines the tone of the image. How it’s used, how the artist manipulates it or sees it, will be a part of his skill. Wait just a moment.”

  She rose and hurried out of the room.

  “You suspect her.” Angie straightened, studying Eve. “How can you? Leeanne would never harm anyone, much less a child. She isn’t capable of evil.”

  “Part of my job is asking questions.”

  Angie nodded, and coming around the sofa sat across from Eve. “Your job weighs on you. It puts pity in your eyes when you look at death.” She turned the portrait of Kenby over. “It doesn’t stay there, not in your eyes. But I think it stays inside you.”

  “He doesn’t need my pity anymore.”

  “No, I suppose not,” Angie replied as Leeanne came back in carrying a small box.

  “Hey, it’s a pinhole camera.” Peabody blurted it out, then flushed a little at her own outburst. “My uncle had one, showed me how to make one when I was a kid.”

  Eve was studying the odd little box and said simply, “Free-Ager,” by way of explanation.

  “Ah, yes. This is a very old technique.” Leeanne set the box on a table, removed a bit of tape, then aimed the tiny hole that had been shielded beneath it toward Eve. “A handmade box, the photographic paper inside, the light outside with the pinhole as the lens that captures that light, and the image. I’d like you to keep still,” she told Eve.

  “That box is taking my picture.”

  “Yes. It’s the light, you see, that creates the miracle here. I ask each of my students to make a pinhole camera like this, and to experiment with it. Those that don’t understand the miracle, well, they may go on to take good pictures, but they’ll never create art. It isn’t all technology and tools, you see. It isn’t all equipment and manipulation. The core is the light, and what it sees. What we see through it.”

  “What we take out of it?” Eve asked, watching her. “What we absorb from it?”

  “Perhaps. While some primitive cultures feared that the camera, by reproducing their image, stole their souls, others believed that it gave them a kind of immortality. We have, in many ways, blended those two beliefs. Certainly, we immortalize with imaging, we steal moments of time and hold them. And we take something from each subject, each time. That moment again, that thought, that mood, that light. It will never be exactly the same again. Not even a second afterward. It’s gone—and it’s preserved, forever, in the photograph. There’s power in that.”

  “There’s no thought, no mood, no light in a photograph of the dead.”

  “Ah, but there is. The artist’s. Death, most certainly death, would be a defining moment. Here, let’s see what we’ve got.”

  She covered the hole on the box again, then slid out a sheet of paper. On it, Eve’s image was reproduced, almost like a pale pencil sketch.

  “The light etches the image, burns it into the paper, and preserves it. The light,” she said, handing the paper to Eve, “is the tool, the magic. The soul.”

  “She’s really interesting,” Peabody commented. “I bet she’s a terrific teacher.”

  “And as someone who knows how to manipulate images, she had the skill to dick with the security discs on her building, shift the time stamp. Her alibi, therefore, has holes. So we give her, potentially, opportunity. Means—she clicks there. Method, another click. Give me motive.”

  “Well, I don’t . . .”

  “Set aside the fact you like her.
” Eve merged into traffic. “What’s her motive for selecting, stalking, and killing two attractive college students?”

  “Art. It all deals with art.”

  “Deeper, Peabody.”

  “Okay.” She wanted to take off her cap, scratch her head, but resisted. “Controlling the subject? Controlling the art in order to create?”

  “On one level,” Eve agreed. “Control, creation, and the accolades that result. The attention, anyway, the recognition. In this case we have a teacher. She instructs, she gives her knowledge, her skill, her experience, and others take it and go on to become what she hasn’t. She’s written a couple of books, published some images, but she isn’t considered an artist, is she? She’s considered a teacher.”

  “It’s a very respected, and often under-appreciated vocation. You’re a really good teacher, for instance.”

  “I don’t teach anybody. Train maybe, but that’s different.”

  “I wouldn’t have the shot at a gold shield, not this soon, if you hadn’t taught me.”

  “Trained you, and let’s stay on target here. The other level is taking from the subject and seeing them as just that. A subject, not a person with a life, a family, with needs or rights. A subject, like—I don’t know—a tree. If you’ve got to cut down the tree to get what you want, well, too bad. Plenty more trees.”

  “You’re talking to a Free-Ager here.” Peabody shuddered. “Talking about indiscriminately mowing down trees hits me in a primal area.”

  “The killer isn’t killing just for the thrill of taking a life. It isn’t done with rage, or for profit. It isn’t sexual. But it is personal. It’s intimate—for the killer. This person, this specific person, has what I need, so I’ll take it. I’ll take what they have, then it becomes mine. They become mine, and the result is art. Admire me.”

  “That’s a pretty twisted route.”

  “It’s a pretty twisted mind. And a smart one, a cool one.”

  “You think it’s Professor Browning?”

  “She’s connected, so we line up the connections. Who knows her, and Hastings, and the two victims? Who had contact with all of them? Let’s find out.”

  She started at Juilliard, at the theater department. At some point in their young lives, Rachel Howard and Kenby Sulu had intersected.

  She sent Peabody off to make the rounds with the photograph of Rachel while she made her own.

  When her ’link beeped, she was standing at the back of a rehearsal hall watching a bunch of young people pretend to be various animals.

  “Dallas.”

  “Hello, Lieutenant.” Roarke’s face filled her screen, and almost immediately shifted from an easy smile to puzzlement. “Where are you? The zoo?”

  “In a manner of speaking.” Wanting to cut out some of the background noise, she stepped out into the hall. “Everything okay?”

  “Well enough. Eve, I have to go out of town for a few days.”

  “Oh.” It wasn’t unusual for him to have to buzz around the planet, or off it. The man had interests all over the developed universe. But the timing was poor. “If you could—”

  “I have to go to Ireland,” he said before she could finish. “I need to go back, and deal with this.”

  Stupid, she thought immediately. Stupid to have this blindside her. Of course he’d need to go back. “Look, okay, I can see how you’d feel that, but I’m in the middle of things here. I need to stick with this until I close the case, then I can take some time. I’ll put in for it when I get back to Central.”

  “I need to deal with this myself.”

  She opened her mouth, ordered herself to breathe before she spoke. “Right.”

  “Eve, it has to be done, and isn’t something you need to worry about. I don’t want you to worry about it, or me. I’m sorry to leave you to handle Summerset, and I’ll try to make it as quick as I can.”

  She kept her face blank, her voice even for both their sakes. “When are you leaving?”

  “Now. Immediately. Fact is, I’m on the shuttle now. I can’t tell you precisely where I’ll be—I don’t know yet. But I’ll have my personal ’link with me. You’ll be able to reach me anytime.”

  “You knew you were going.” She lowered her voice, turning her back on the corridor as students rushed by behind her. “You knew this morning.”

  “I had to see to some details first.”

  “But you’d already made up your mind to go.”

  “I had, yes.”

  “And you’re telling me like this so I can’t do anything to stop you.”

  “Eve, you wouldn’t stop me. And I won’t have to put your work in a holding pattern so you can come along and nurse me through this.”

  “Is that what you did when you went with me to Dallas? Nursed me through it?”

  Frustration ran over his face. “That was a different matter.”

  “Oh yeah, with you being a man and all, with unbreakable balls. I keep forgetting.”

  “I have to go.” He spoke coolly now. “I’ll let you know where I am as soon as I can manage, and I’ll be back in a few days. Probably sooner. You can kick my unbreakable balls then. Meanwhile, I love you. Ridiculously.”

  “Roarke—” But he’d already ended the transmission. “Damn it. Damn it.” She kicked the wall, twice.

  She marched back into the rehearsal room and vented her frustration by stalking through the slinking tigers and leaping chimps.

  The instructor was a pencil-thin woman with a high shock of blue hair. “Ah,” she said, “and here we have the lone wolf.”

  “Shut them down,” Eve ordered.

  “Class is in progress.”

  “Shut them down.” Eve whipped out her badge. “Now.”

  “Oh damn it, not another Illegals sweep. Stop!” For a thin woman, she had a big voice, and her order shut off the din.

  Eve stepped in front of her. “I’m Lieutenant Dallas, NYPSD.” There was a communal groan at the announcement, and two students edged toward the rear doors. “Hold it! I’m not interested in what you’ve got in your pockets or your bloodstream, but anybody goes out those doors, I will be.”

  Movement stopped.

  “I have a picture. I want you to come up here, one at a time, and look at it. I want to know if you know this girl, have seen her, or have any information on her. You.” She pointed at a boy in a black unitard and baggy shorts. “Here.”

  He swaggered up. “Nope.”

  “Look at the picture, smart-ass, or this is going to turn into an Illegals sweep.”

  He smirked at her, but he looked. “Don’t know her, never seen her. Can I go, Officer?”

  “Lieutenant. No. Stand over there.” She pointed to the right wall, then gestured to a girl, also in black.

  She started up, flicking a toothy grin at the boy now lounging against the wall, as though they shared a private joke. But when she looked at the photo, the humor drained out of her face.

  “On the news. I saw her on the news. It’s that girl from Columbia who was killed. Like Kenby.”

  The murmuring started from the crowd of students, and Eve let it roll. “That’s right. Did you know Kenby?”

  “Sure. Sure I did. Everybody did. Man, oh man, this sucks so large.”

  “Have you seen this girl before?”

  Even as she shook her head, someone called out. “I have. I think.”

  Eve shifted, looked at the boy who stood with his hand raised. “Come up here. Go stand over there,” she told the girl.

  “I sort of think I saw her.” The boy wore the black uniform, and a forest of silver loops along the curve of his ear. He had a trio of matching hoops at the peak of his left eyebrow.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Mica, Mica Constantine. Kenby and I had a lot of classes together, and we hung out sometimes. We weren’t real tight, but sometimes we partied with the same group.”

  “Where did you see her?”

  “I think I saw her. When I saw her on the news reports, she
looked sort of familiar. And when Kenby—when I heard about what happened to him, like with her, I thought, hey, isn’t that the chick from the club?”

  Eve felt the vibe at the base of her spine. “What club?”

  “Make The Scene. Some of us go there sometimes, and I think I’ve seen her there. I think I remember seeing her and Kenby dancing a couple of times. I’m not absolute about it, just it seems to me.”

  “When do you think you saw them together?”

  “Not together. I mean they weren’t like a thing. I think I saw them dancing a couple of times, like last month maybe. I haven’t been to the club in a while. Only reason I remember is they looked good, you know. I’m taking this class to learn how to free up my body, how to move it. So I was watching the dancing especially, and they really moved.”

  “I bet other people noticed them.”

  “I guess.”

  When she reconnected with Peabody, they had three witnesses between them who’d seen Rachel and Kenby dancing at the club.

  “They didn’t come in together, sit together, leave together,” Eve summed up as she headed back downtown. “A few casual dances, over a few weeks in the summer, from what we have so far. No way it’s a coincidence.”

  “Someone saw them there, and that cemented it?”

  “Saw them there, or saw them at some point, somewhere else. Individually or together. They both liked to dance, so maybe they hooked up elsewhere. Both college kids. She might’ve gone to see one of his performances. Diego and Hooper both frequent the club. Odds are either or both of them saw these two together. We’ll sweep Columbia again, see if any of Rachel’s friends or classmates remembers seeing her with Kenby. Or mentioning him.”

  While Eve tugged on the next line, Roarke walked down the streets of South Dublin. The area had once been as familiar to him as his own face. There’d been changes since his youth, plenty for the good.

  The Urban Wars had crushed this part of the city, turned the projects into slums, and the streets into a battlefield. He remembered the aftermath only dimly. Most of it had been over and done before he’d been born.

  But the consequences had lasted a generation.

  Poverty and the thieves it bred still haunted this area. Hunger and the anger it fed lived here, day by day.