by J. D. Robb
Ugly man. Ugly, disrespectful man. You’ll be dead soon.
“Sorry, sir. Just delivering this package.”
“Can you read, fuckhead? Sign says No Goddamn Asshole Deliveries!”
“Sorry.” Reach into the pocket, slow, careful. “They’re closed below, and it’s stamped Urgent. Are you Dirk Hastings?”
“Fuck me!”
“You just have to sign, and I’ll be out of your way. Listen, it’s really freaking cold.”
“Then get an inside job.” Hastings started to reach for the box. The killer stepped to the side, easing over the threshold, drew the stunner.
It struck mid-body, made the muddy little eyes pop wide, and the big body shake before it fell back.
The bigger they are, ha ha.
Perfect.
Only have to drag him farther into the studio. Take that time, this time. Plenty of tape in the kit. Big guy though, strong guy. Don’t be stupid. Don’t let him come all the way back.
The killer crouched, started to grip the unconscious Hastings under the arms.
“Hey, Dirk, baby? What was that racket? Listen, I got us a bottle of—”
The tall, half-naked blonde stopped on her skip down the steps, and her perfect red mouth formed a wide O. Just before the screaming started.
Panicked, the killer swung up with the stunner, and the blonde heaved the bottle of pinot noir. The stun went wide; the bottle crashed like a thunderbolt against the wall. Glass and wine flew as the blonde turned, still screaming, and ran back upstairs with the speed of a gazelle.
“I’m calling the cops!” she shouted back. “I’ve got my ’link and I’m calling the cops. And I’ve got a knife! A really big knife! You’d better run, you bastard!”
Tears of frustration blurred the vision as the killer grabbed the box, took one quick glance at failure. And ran.
At her desk, Eve studied Yancy’s latest sketch. Like Misty Polinsky, Mason had described a narrow face. The scarf still blocked the lower part of the face, but with this one, she got the shape of the nose, the style of wraparound sunshades, and a hint of the top lip.
She agreed with Yancy’s notes. If Mason was accurate—and Yancy believed he was—that hint indicated a wide mouth, on the thin side, at least on the top lip.
Like putting a frigging puzzle together, she thought, when most of the pieces were missing.
Yancy had extrapolated, using probability percentages and merging both sketches. With that he’d given her seven most likely faces, filling in features.
Still too nondescript for facial recognition match, and far too vague for her to say, with any confidence, if any of them seemed familiar.
So it wouldn’t be the face, not for now, she decided. She had to count on the words. A quick glance at the time told her it was too soon to nag Roarke about any progress there.
Instead, she opened Carmichael and Santiago’s first report.
“Holy shit.”
She sat back, stared, repeated, “Holy shit.”
“My timing’s good,” Roarke said as he walked in.
“Over two thousand people who applied to law enforcement and were denied—for various reasons—or washed out sent me communication over the past two years.”
“And that surprises you?”
“Well, yeah. Don’t they have better things to do—that’s one. The estimate is about fifteen percent of them figured I could pull some strings and get them in after all. First, just no. And second, why would I? Nearly nine hundred contacted me more than once, and a full three hundred and seventy-three live in the New York area.
“And I got seventy-eight requests for sex, ninety-three if you count the ones who had sex with me in their dreams or in another dimension, and nine marriage proposals.”
“Having sex with someone who’s not me in an alternate dimension is grounds for divorce.”
“In one case we were dragons. Golden dragons who had sex in mid-flight over a sea the color of port wine.”
“And still.” He sat on the corner of her desk. “You are in a very real sense a—” He checked the word celebrity.
No point making her head explode.
“Public figure,” he amended. “People will fantasize, and the majority of the time a little fantasizing is healthy and creative.”
“Dragon sex,” Eve repeated.
“It’s creative,” he pointed out. “Should I tell you about my correspondence?”
“You get stuff like this? Of course you get stuff like this,” she said before he could answer. “You’ve probably had dragon sex in every dimension.”
“Animals, mythical and otherwise, are standards. Food is also quite popular as seduction or sexual kink. Combinations of the two can be inventive.”
He only smiled when she stared at him. “It can make for entertaining reading when you’ve time for it.”
“People are deeply disturbed. I’m giving the ones here who live in the area priority, the ones involving sex, hit the bottom. Sex doesn’t seem to be a major player here. Maybe we can check on the comp lab, see the status.”
“Give it another thirty,” Roarke began, “we can—”
He broke off as her communicator signaled.
She pulled it out, stared at it for a moment. “Hell,” she murmured. “Dallas.”
“Dispatch, Dallas, Lieutenant Eve, report to 358 West One Hundred and Eighth Street, fourth level. See officers on scene regarding assault.”
“Assault?” Eve repeated, already on her feet. “The victim is alive?”
“The victim, Hastings, Dirk, sustained minor injuries. Probable connection to your current investigation is ninety-eight-point-three.”
“Contact Peabody, Detective Delia.” Eve pushed away from the desk as she spoke. “I’m on my way.”
She cut it off before Dispatch acknowledged. “Hastings—photographer—asshole, hell of a temper. I looked at him, you remember, summer before last.”
“Portrait murders—I thought of them that way,” Roarke added as they rushed down the steps.
She hadn’t asked if he intended to go with her—a waste of both their time.
“Right. Turned out the killer had been, briefly, one of his assistants. He goes through them like—”
“You go through sparring droids?” Roarke suggested as he got their coats.
“Something like that. I kicked him in the balls when he came at me—first time I saw him. Interrupted his work. His zone, he called it. He had a lot of uncomplimentary things to say about that, and me.”
The wind caught her as she stepped outside, still dragging on her coat. And she hissed when the car wasn’t there.
“I’ve sent for it,” Roarke told her. “Give it a moment—and put this on.”
She grabbed the scarf rather than argue. “He’s a big guy,” Eve speculated. “Maybe the stun didn’t take him out, maybe he got a piece. And maybe I should know better than to speculate.”
She jumped into the passenger seat of a burly All-Terrain in gunmetal gray before it fully stopped.
“Retail area on ground level,” she remembered. “Offices and portrait-gallery-type thing on two, studio on three—that’s where I dropped him—and he lives on four. They’d have been closed—not speculation, basic deduction. Narrow iron steps, exterior—more like fire escape. No outside glide or elevator. You’d have to walk up those dark stairs. Good cover from the street. Portography. Yeah, that’s what he calls it. Portography.”
“A photographer, particularly a portographer, should have an eye for faces—the details.”
“You’d think. There’s a lot right behind the place,” Eve told him, and guided him there.
• • •
The uniform must have been watching for her as he pulled open the door on the studio level as Eve—feeling a little like a lizard climbing a rock—climbed the la
st of the open iron steps.
“Sorry, Lieutenant, Hastings just told us there’s an inside access from the street.”
“Done now.”
“He took a hard jolt, Lieutenant. It happened down here, but we’ve got him upstairs in his apartment to keep this area secure. The MTs cleared him, but they recommended he go in for observation. He won’t budge.”
“Stunner?”
“Yes, sir, along with a mild concussion from cracking his head on the floor when he dropped. He’s a lot more pissed off than hurt.”
“He’s always pissed off,” Eve said, and walked past the uniform and up the stairs, where Hastings sat on a black sofa drinking what looked like a couple fingers of whiskey, straight up.
None of his portraits graced the white walls. Maybe he got tired of looking at faces, having them look at him. Instead he’d fashioned a kind of gallery of black-and-white cityscapes, empty benches, storefronts, alleyways.
Another time, she’d have found them interesting and appealing. But another time she might not have netted a live witness.
Potentially two, she thought, as a long-legged blonde with a half mile of glossy hair curled beside Hastings on the sofa. The plush white robe she wore was so big on her she might have been swallowed by a polar bear.
She sipped brandy from an oversized snifter.
Hastings gave Eve a hard stare out of his tiny, mud-colored eyes. “Bitch cop.” He took a deep drink. “What the hell kind of city are you running when a man can’t even do a night’s work in his own house without getting attacked?”
“My crime-fighting signal for this building’s on the fritz. Who are you?” she asked the blonde.
“Matilda Zebler. I was here when it happened.”
Eve waited a beat, arched her eyebrows. “Working late tonight, Hastings?”
“Yeah, so the fuck what? I work when I want to work.”
Didn’t make sense, Eve thought. The killer was too careful, too thorough to try for Hastings when he was with a model.
“No assistant, no hair and makeup person?”
“I was imaging, for Christ’s sake. I work the hell alone when I’m imaging.”
“But you weren’t alone.”
And to Eve’s surprise, he blushed like a young girl. “I was the fuck alone in my studio when the asshole who zapped me interrupted me. I should’ve thrown the fucker off the landing right off.”
“Dirk.” Matilda rubbed a hand over his arm in a way that told Eve she hadn’t been there for work. “Didn’t the MTs tell you to stay calm? Your system’s been whacked, baby. You have to watch your blood pressure.”
Instead of snarling at her, Hastings brooded into his whiskey. “Brought your man with you,” he muttered at Eve. “Where’s the square, sturdy face with the bowl of hair?”
“Peabody, and she’s on her way. My man is also an expert consultant, civilian. Take it from the top, Hastings.”
“I don’t know why they called you. I’ve still got a pulse.”
“Let me worry about that. From the top.”
“I was fucking working, didn’t I say?” He scrubbed a hand over his shining bald pate as if pressing his brains back in place. “Asshole hits the buzzer. Nobody uses those steps anyway, and nobody sane uses them at night. Goddamn city makes me keep them for fire code or some shit. But this fucker kept buzzing until I figured, well, there’s a death wish and I’ll oblige it.”
Beside him, Matilda smirked into her brandy, patted his knee.
“Said it was a delivery. Well, fuck a fucking delivery. Next thing I know, Matilda’s leaning over me with a kitchen knife in one hand, slapping the shit out of me with the other. Then the christing MTs are running in, and the cops, and everybody’s all over me.”
Eve tracked her eyes to Matilda. “A knife?”
“I wasn’t coming back down unarmed. I heard him running away—clattering down the steps—and I wasn’t going to leave Dirk lying there in case he came back. So as soon as I had the cops on the ’link, I grabbed the knife and came back down. And I was tapping your face.” She poked Hastings in the belly. “I took his pulse—scariest moment of my life, next to starting downstairs and seeing Dirk on the ground and that maniac coming at him. I threw the bottle of pinot noir I was bringing down at him.”
And that explained the broken bottle and pool of wine just inside the door of the studio, Eve thought.
“I think he tried to stun me. I saw him raise the stunner when I threw the bottle.”
At this Dirk took her hand, and the perpetual anger on his face died away into sick fear. “You didn’t tell me that. Jesus, Matilda.”
“I told the other police. You were busy cussing out the MTs, and yelling at me to get some clothes on. I was only wearing . . . a little,” Matilda said with a quick grin.
“You both saw this individual?”
“Since we both got eyes that’s a damn fool question,” Hastings snapped. “And I’m tired of questions. The dickwad figured to rob me, and instead had to hightail. That’s that. Now go away.”
“Dirk.”
He sighed at Matilda’s scolding tone. “Thanks for coming, now go away.” And smiled a little when Matilda laughed.
“Matilda, I want you to step into another room with Roarke, and describe the person you saw.”
“Why does she have to go with him?” Hastings demanded.
“Because you’re going to stay here and describe the person you saw, and this way neither of you will influence each other’s memory or impressions. Argue, we do it at Central. Remember Central?”
“I get zapped, and you’re threatening me?” Temper flashed, the strike of a lightning bolt. He lunged to his feet.
Matilda said, “Dirk!” in the tone that reminded Eve of her endurance coach from the Academy.
He rumbled like a volcano about to erupt, then hissed. Then sat.
“I’m the one who got zapped,” he muttered.
“And she’s the one trying to find out who and why,” Matilda reminded him.
“Some lowlife scumbag looking to rob me. What good’s she going to do?”
“If I thought this was armed robbery, would I be here? Murder cop,” Eve said.
“You see any dead people?” Hastings was on his feet again, then his eyes widened. He sat again, but this time put a protective arm around the blonde. “You think somebody wants to kill me? For what?”
“How many people have you thrown something at, or threatened to skin alive, boil in acid, toss out the window—just for instance—since the last time I saw you?”
“I don’t keep a ledger on it.”
“Right. Ms. Zebler, if you don’t mind?”
“Sure.” She took a long breath. “I didn’t think it was robbery. It didn’t feel like it. Dirk, behave, please.”
She took his face in both her hands, kissed him lightly. “For me.” When she got to her feet, Roarke offered a hand.
“I’ve admired your work,” he said.
“Thanks. We’ve almost met a couple times,” she began, causing Eve to lift her brows again as Roarke led her off.
Now Eve sat. “How long have you and Matilda been involved?”
“None of your business.”
“I wouldn’t give a rat’s ass if it wasn’t my business. How long? Two people are dead,” she said flatly. “You were going to be the third. If things had gone different, maybe Matilda would’ve been the bonus round.”
“What the fuck for? Anybody comes near her, I’ll rip out their throat and stuff their head in the hole.”
“Nice. I’m working on what the fuck for. How long?”
“Eighteen days. You don’t have to say what’s somebody who looks like her doing with somebody who looks like me.”
“You may have a face a mother would have a hard time loving, Dirk, but you make up for it wi
th your cheerful, outgoing personality and sparkling charm.”
“Shit.” He huffed. He puffed. “We’re keeping it quiet, okay? It’s personal. It’s . . . new, and it’s personal. The media gets hold of it, they’ll hound her on it.”
“Who is she?”
Dirk rolled his eyes. “Christ, you live in a cave? Matilda. Über-model. And more than a face, a body. She started her own line of hair and face enhancements—she’s not just the public face of it, she runs it. She’s got brains. And balls,” he said quietly, looking over at the carving knife. “I’m not going to let anything happen to her, whatever I got to do. That includes beating whoever’s trying to kill me to a bloody pulp then setting fire to what’s left of them.”
“Why don’t you start doing what you have to do by describing this person?”
He closed his eyes.
She saw then the pallor, and the dark circles under the eyes. Taking a solid stun could wear out the system, leave you exhausted and raw. Shaky and sick.
She ought to know.
“You’d be better off with a protein drink than the alcohol.”
“Kiss my flabby white ass,” he said, but without heat. “About your height, maybe an inch or two taller. Brown coat, scarf—brown, too—wrapped around the neck, up around the lower part of the face. Voice was muffled with it. I thought about ripping it off, strangling her with it.”
Eve’s spine went rigid. “Her?”
“Yeah, I think. Brown eyes—something in the eyes looked female to me. Looked . . . like yours, now that I think of it. Maybe I got my brain sideways from the stun, and since I’m looking at yours, I’m putting them there.”
He shook his head. “I was pretty steamed, seeing—you know, red—and not paying attention. I wasn’t framing a portrait of an asshole delivery girl.”
“Faces are your business,” Eve pointed out, nudging his ego.
“Yeah, yeah. Brain’s sideways,” he said again, closed his eyes again. “Narrow face, narrow nose, early to mid-thirties at a guess. A lot of bulk, but thinking . . . a lot of bulk was maybe the coat, whatever she had on under it. Not so much her, I think. Brown ski cap, pulled low. Couldn’t see any hair. Good skin, soft-looking skin. Says female to me. Soft, creamy brown, café au lait—heavier on the lait.”