Imitation in Death

by J. D. Robb

  “I bet you do,” Pepper replied. “Just as I bet you deserve Roarke, too. He’s the most fascinating man I’ve ever known, just like his house, full of color and style and surprises. But he didn’t love me, and never pretended he did.”

  “And Leo does. Love you?”

  “Leo? Leo needs me. And that’s enough.”

  “I have to say, it sounds to me like you’re selling yourself short.”

  “That’s nice of you. But I’m no prize, Lieutenant. I’m selfish and demanding.” She gave a light, amused laugh. “And I like that about me. I expect to be given my own time and space when I require it, and any man in my life must understand that my work is the priority. If he does, and he’s loyal, needing me is enough. Leo’s weak, I know that,” she continued with an elegant little shrug. “Maybe I need a weak man, maybe that’s why I couldn’t hang on to Roarke for more than a few weeks. Leo suits me. And being weak, Lieutenant, is just one more reason he can’t be the man you’re looking for.”

  “Then neither of you have anything to worry about. He lied during our initial interview. Someone lies to me, I’m going to wonder why.”

  Her face softened in a way that told Eve whatever she said about need being enough, she loved Leo Fortney. “You frightened him. That’s natural, isn’t it, for someone to be frightened when they’re questioned by the police? Especially about a murder.”

  “You weren’t.”

  Pepper blew out a breath. “All right. Leo has trouble with the truth occasionally, but he’d never hurt anyone. Not seriously.”

  “Can you tell me where he was on Sunday morning?”

  Pepper’s lips firmed, and her eyes stayed direct. “I can’t. I can only tell you where he said he was, and he’s already told you that. Lieutenant, don’t you think I’d know if I was living with, sleeping with, if I were intimate with a murderer?”

  “I can’t say. You may want to tell him that if he wants to get clear of this, he can start being straight with me. As long as he . . . has trouble with the truth, I’m going to keep looking at him.”

  “I’ll talk to him.” She got to her feet. “Thanks for seeing me.”

  “No problem.” Eve walked her to the door, and opening it saw the waiting car. And her aide huffing down the drive on foot.

  “Officer . . . what was her name?” Pepper asked.

  “Peabody.”

  “Oh yes. Officer Peabody looks to have had a difficult morning already. That storm last night cooled things off a bit, but not enough. Not nearly enough yet.”

  “Last gasp of summer in New York. What else can you expect?”

  “Teach me to stay in London.” She offered her hand. “I’d still love for you and Roarke to come to the play. Just contact me anytime and I’ll arrange for seats.”

  “Soon as things cool off for me a bit, we’ll take you up on it.”

  She watched the driver get out, open the rear door of the small town limo. And waited until a breathless and sweaty Peabody rushed up the steps.

  “Sir. Sorry. Overslept, then the subway . . . breakdown. Should’ve contacted you, but didn’t realize—”

  “Inside, before you fall over with heatstroke.”

  “I think I’m a little dehydrated.” Peabody’s face was lobster red and starting to drip. “Can I have a minute? Splash some water on my face.”

  “Go. Christ, next time take a cab!” she called out as she jogged upstairs to get her jacket and what she needed for the day.

  She grabbed two bottles of water from her kitchen, and met Peabody coming out of the powder room. Her aide’s color had calmed down, her uniform was straightened, her hair neatly combed and dry again.

  “Thanks.” Peabody took the water, and glugged at the bottle to add to the water she’d slurped up in the powder room. “Hate to oversleep. I was up late studying.”

  “Didn’t I tell you that you can overstudy? You won’t do yourself any good going into the exam burned out.”

  “I just gave it a couple hours. Wanted to make up the time I took checking out apartments with McNab. I didn’t realize we had a meet with Pepper Franklin.”

  “We didn’t. She stopped by to defend Fortney.” Eve headed out the door and around to the garage. She hadn’t thought to tell one of the droids to have her car brought out in front. Summerset did it without her asking. The fact that it was the sort of detail that slipped her mind, and never slipped his, just annoyed her.

  “Well, as least I know I’m not losing my mind,” Peabody managed as she quickened her pace to match Eve’s. “So much going on right now. Jesus, Dallas, we signed a lease. It’s a good space. Got an extra bedroom we can set up as a shared office, and it’s close to Central. It’s in your old building, so Mavis and Leonardo will be neighbors, and that’s mag, and it was really great of Roarke to put us on to it, but . . .”

  “But what?”

  “I signed a lease, with McNab. It’s like, huge. We’re going to be moving in together in thirty days.”

  Eve coded into the garage, waited for the doors to open. “I thought you were already cohabitating.”

  “Yeah, but informally. Real informally. He just hangs at my place most of the time. This is the real deal. I got the jitters.” She pressed a hand to her stomach as she walked to Eve’s police issue. “So I dove into studying as soon as we got back, then I got the jitters from that. Then I couldn’t sleep because of the jitters, so I jumped McNab to sort of remind myself why I’m doing this, and that took awhile because, you know, I was pretty jittery—”

  “I don’t want to hear that part.”

  “Right. Well, I didn’t settle down until pretty late, and was so conked I must’ve deactivated the alarm before I was fully awake. Next thing I knew it was an hour later.”

  “If you got up an hour late, why are you only . . .” She checked her wrist unit. “Fifteen minutes behind?”

  “I skipped some of my usual morning stuff. Was okay until the subway breakdown. That threw me off, and now I’ve got the jitters again.”

  “You can just forget about jumping me to take your mind off them. Look, Peabody, if you’re not prepped for the exam by now, you’re not going to be.”

  “That doesn’t do a lot to calm me down.” She brooded out the window as Eve drove through the gates. “I don’t want to tank. Embarrass myself, you.”

  “Shut up, you’re giving me the damn jitters. You’re not going to embarrass anybody. You’re going to do your best, and it’s going to be good enough. Now pull yourself together so I can brief you on Smith before we talk to him again.”

  Listening, making her own notes, Peabody shook her head. “None of this stuff is in his official biographical data, or on any of the unofficial fan sites. I don’t get it. Guy’s a total publicity hound, and he likes to go for the heartstrings. So why not play up how he came from an abusive home, overcame it, and believes in the power of love, cha-cha-cha.”

  “Cha-cha-cha?” Eve repeated. “I can think of a couple reasons. First, it doesn’t fit his image. Strong, handsome, romantic male of the so-clean-I-squeak variety. Doesn’t mesh with the poverty level, physically abused son of a part-time LC—who’s still tapping him for money.”

  “I get that, but you could play that angle and sell discs out the yang.”

  “Yang. Does that go with cha-cha-cha?” Eve wondered. “Okay, yeah, it might make some women feel sorry for him, even respect him, and plunk down the price of a disc. But that’s not what he wants.”

  “What does he want?” Peabody asked, though she thought she was beginning to connect the dots.

  “It’s not money. That’s just a handy by-product. He wants adulation, hero worship, and fantasy. He boinks young groupies because they’re less likely to be critical, and he plays to older women because they’re more forgiving.”

  “And he surrounds himself with female staff because he needs to be taken care of by women, because he wasn’t taken care of by the woman who should have done so when he was a kid.”

  “T
hat’s how it shakes for me.” Eve turned a corner and swung around a maxibus that was lumbering its contingent of commuters to their hives and cubes. “The public image doesn’t want to have to overcome anything, but just to be. The man of your dreams isn’t some kid who got knocked around by his mother after she turned a trick. Or I should say, his view of the man of your dreams isn’t. He’s built himself into an image, and he has to stick with it.”

  “So, theoretically, the pressure of concealing all that, his resentment, and the cycle of violence could have caused him to snap. And snapping, he killed two parts of the person who abused him. The LC and the mother.”

  “Now you’re thinking.”

  It was kind of like a sim, Peabody thought. She was a little slow, but she hoped she was picking her way through it. “You said a couple reasons. What’s another?”

  “Another is he just wants to bury it, put it away. This isn’t relevant to his life now—that’s what he tells himself. He’s wrong, it’s always part of the whole, but it’s private. It’s one thing he doesn’t want chewed over by a lip-smacking public.”

  Peabody slid her gaze toward Eve, but there was nothing to read on her lieutenant’s face. “So he could just be an abuse survivor who’s made a successful life for himself despite all the trauma and the violence.”

  “You’re feeling sorry for him.”

  “Yeah, maybe. Not enough to spring for a disc,” she added with a chuckle. “But maybe some. He didn’t ask to be hurt, and by the one person who should have been looking out for him most of all. I don’t know what it’s like to have a parent turn on you like that. Mine . . . well, you’ve met mine. My mom, she can pin your ears back with a look, but she’d never have hurt any of us. And my parents may be nonviolent New Agers, but you can believe they’d have ripped into anybody who tried to hurt us. That’s what I know,” Peabody added. “But it’s not all I know, because I’ve seen the other side. Handling double Ds before I transferred to you. Just being on the streets in uniform. And what I’ve worked on since I’ve been in Homicide.”

  “Nothing wipes the all-American family image out of a cop’s head faster than their first couple of domestic disturbances.”

  “One of the best reasons to be off patrol,” Peabody agreed, with feeling. “What I’m saying is I’ve seen what it can be like, and it’s toughest on the kids.”

  “Everything’s always toughest on the kids. Some get over it, under it, through it. Others don’t. And another theory on Smith is he feeds on the female adulation in one part of his life—and revels in it. Meanwhile he considers them whores and bitches—and he kills them in the most vicious and theatrical way he can devise.”

  “I guess that’s a pretty decent theory.”

  “Either way, he’s not going to like me throwing his background up in his face. So be ready.”

  Taking Eve at her word, Peabody rested a hand on her stunner as they walked from the vehicle to Smith’s front door. “Not that ready, Peabody. Let’s try to play nice first.”

  They were admitted by the same woman, and walked into the same music. At least Eve thought it was the same. How could you tell, she wondered, when everything the guy sang had the same sugar rush to it?

  Before they could be led into the room with floor cushions and the fluffy white kitten, Eve laid a hand on the woman’s arm. “Any place in here have actual chairs?”

  Li’s mouth turned down in disapproval, but she nodded. “Of course. Come this way, please.”

  She showed them into a room with wide, deep chairs done in pale gold, accented with tables of clear glass. On one table was a small fountain where blue water burbled over smooth white rocks. Another held a white box filled with white sand where some linear patterns had been drawn with, Eve assumed, the little rake that lay beside it.

  The curtains were closed, but when they entered the room the rim of the tables illuminated.

  “Please be comfortable.” Li gestured to the chairs. “Carmichael will be with you in just a moment.”

  Ignoring her, Eve studied a mood screen. Soft pastels dripped down in this one, melting from pinks into blues into golds into pinks again. Smith’s voice crooned in the background.

  “I already feel queasy,” Eve muttered. “I should’ve pressed to have him come into Central, where things are normal.”

  “I heard you dislocated some mope’s jaw yesterday.” Peabody kept her face sober. “Some people don’t consider that actually normal in the day to day.”

  “Some people don’t know diddly.” She turned back as Smith made his entrance.

  “How nice to see you both again.” He made a flowing movement with his arms to indicate chairs. It had the wide sleeves of his shirt fluttering. “We’re having something cool and citrus. I hope you’ll enjoy it.”

  He arranged himself in a chair as one of his staff placed a tray on a long glass table. “I’m told you’ve been trying to get in touch,” he continued as he poured liquid from pitcher to glasses. “I can’t imagine why, but must apologize for being unavailable.”

  “Your rep called my commander,” Eve said. “So I imagine you have some idea.”

  “Another apology forthcoming.” He picked up one of the glasses, held it in both of his handsome hands. “My agent is overprotective, which, naturally, is his job. Just the idea that the media could get wind that I’d spoken to you regarding such a terrible matter worries him. I told him I trusted you to be absolutely discreet, but . . .” He shrugged elegantly, sipped.

  “I’m not looking for publicity, I’m looking for a murderer.”

  “You won’t find one here. This is a place of peace and tranquillity.”

  “Peace and tranquillity.” Eve nodded, watching his face. “I’d guess that sort of thing’s important to you.”

  “Vital, as it should be to everyone. The world is a canvas, and on it is painted great beauty. All we have to do is look.”

  “Peace and tranquillity and beauty are more vital to someone who grew up without them. To a man who was systematically and regularly abused as a child. Battered and beaten. Do you pay your mother to keep quiet about it, or just to keep her away?”

  The glass in Smith’s hand shattered, and a thin line of blood dripped down his palm.

  Chapter 14

  Shards of glass hitting the floor had, in Eve’s opinion, a more interesting musical note than the continued coo of Smith’s recorded voice.

  She doubted any of his fans would recognize him now, with all the negative energy twisting his face. His bloody hand still clenched the shattered drinking glass.

  She could hear his labored breaths before he sprang to his feet. She got to her own, slowly, and prepared to deflect any assault.

  But he simply threw his head back, like a great dog about to bay, and howled out for Li.

  She came on the run, bare feet slapping the floor and filmy robes flapping the air.

  “Oh, Carmichael! Oh, you poor thing. You’re bleeding. Should I call the doctor? Should I call an ambulance?” She patted her own cheeks in rapid tat-tats.

  While tears welled in his eyes, he held out his bleeding hand. “Do something.”

  “Jesus.” Eve stepped forward, grabbed his injured hand, twisted it over to take a look at the cut. “Get a towel, some water, antiseptic, bandages. It’s not deep enough to worry the MTs.”

  “But his hands, his beautiful hands. Carmichael is an artist.”

  “Yeah, well, he’s an artist with a cut across his palm. No puncture. Peabody? Got a handkerchief?”

  “Right here, Lieutenant.”

  Taking it, Eve wrapped the cut while Li raced off, probably to call up a cosmetic surgeon.

  “Sit down, Carmichael. You’re barely scratched.”

  “You have no right, no right to come into my home and upset me this way. No right, no decency. You can’t come here, upset the balance. Threaten me.”

  “I don’t recall threatening you, and I’ve got a pretty good memory for that kind of thing. Officer Peabody, did I
threaten Mr. Smith?”

  “No, sir, you did not.”

  “You think because I live an ordered and privileged life I don’t know the darker corners.” His lips curled now, and he held his injured hand to his heart in a loose fist. “You want to extort money from me, payment to keep quiet about matters that are none of your business. Women like you always want to be paid.”

  “Women like me?”

  “You think you’re better than men. You use your wiles or your sex to control them, to suck them dry. You’re nothing but animals. Bitches and cunts. You deserve to . . .”

  “Deserve to what?” Eve prompted when he stopped himself, when she watched the war for composure rage over his face. “To suffer, to die, to pay?”

  “You won’t put words in my mouth.” He collapsed in the chair again, holding his hand by the wrist and rocking as if for comfort.

  Li rushed back in carrying a fluffy white towel, a bottle of water, and what looked to be enough bandage to wrap an entire squadron after a bloody battle.

  “Let my aide take care of it,” Eve told him. “She’s just going to mess it up, and hurt you considerably while she’s at it.”

  Smith nodded curtly, and turned his head away from Peabody and the blood.

  “Li, please go out now. Close the door.”

  “But, Carmichael . . .”

  “I want you to go.”

  She blinked at the slap in his voice and fled.

  “How did you learn about . . . her?” he asked Eve.

  “It’s my job to learn about things.”

  “It could ruin me, you know. My audience doesn’t want to know about that sort of . . . They don’t want the unseemly, the unattractive. They come to me for beauty, for romantic fantasy, not for the ugliness of reality.”

  “I’m not interested in your audience or in making any information public, until and unless it applies to my case. I told you, I’m not interested in publicity.”

  “Everyone is,” he retorted.

  “Think what you like, it doesn’t change why I’m here. Your mother was an LC. She was abusive to you.”