Brotherhood in Death (In Death #42)(90)

“Would you be able to describe the two paintings, in more detail? The women’s faces, the ones who aren’t here. To a police artist.”

“Oh.” The bottom lip got the nibble treatment. “I don’t know.”

“Detective Yancy.” Peabody came back in, smiling and flapping a hand over her heart.

“Really?” Laurel’s lashes fluttered over eyes now sparkling with interest. “Well, maybe. Okay.”

“Great. We’ll arrange to have you taken down to work with Detective Yancy, and we appreciate the help,” Eve added.

“Could I tag Reb? He’s going to want to blow off work for this. And, honest, I’d feel better if he came with me, or met me there. He’s, you know, like my brother. Like family.”

“Sure, that’s fine.”

“Okay. I need to get dressed. Officer Tanker woke me up. Lieutenant Dallas? I don’t see how Charity could’ve done anything really wrong, except . . .”

“Except?”

“That picture she painted. Of the devil-men? I only saw it for a second, but it gave me nightmares.”

Eve walked next door with Peabody.

“No painting of women, or devil-men. Devil-men?”

“Men who looked like devils screaming as they fall into hell—with a burning house in the background.”

“That is spooky. It sounds like she was painting out her issues.”

They went inside. Like MacKensie’s the apartment struck Eve as a place abandoned. Still furnished, flowering plants on a sunny window, but no electronics. Some painting supplies, and some canvases left behind. But none matched the ones Laurel had described. No handy sketches of any of the women.

“Fuckwear.” Eve held up split crotch panties. “And a lot of it. She didn’t take it because she’s done with it.”

“She took most of the toiletries, but left some old stuff, and I’m betting she missed this.” Peabody came out with a small bottle. “Mixed in with skin creams. It’s sleeping pills—the heavy-duty, put-me-out-till-morning kind.”

“When we check her AutoChef, I’ll bet we find regular programs for soothers and over-the-counter tranqs. She was the one in the trenches, so to speak, with Senator Mira. Wearing thin,” she said again. “Sleeping pills and scary paintings. She’ll break when we find them.”

—

They repeated the process at Su’s apartment. They didn’t find an impatient neighbor or a gregarious one, but every indication Su had gone to ground with everything important to her.

“Hit building security,” Eve told Peabody. “Get the discs for the last two days. Let’s see her coming and going, and what she took when she went. It’s going to be her van, so let’s start checking on that.”

“No vehicle registered in her name. I checked that already.”

“She’s got one. We’ll check her parents’ names. Failing that, I’m going to lean on our expert civilian consultant to find aliases. She’s going to have a vehicle, and one of them owns or rents a house, a building, a place.”

While Peabody hunted up security, Eve continued on the apartment. Su had lived well, she noted. A good space in a good building, what appeared to be carefully selected furnishings. Plenty of good-quality clothes left behind—because she didn’t plan to come back.

She’d come from a stable family—or so it seemed, Eve thought. Got a top-drawer education, and had pursued a challenging career.

One that put her in a lab, Eve thought, probably working alone a great deal of the time. No sign or indication of romantic relationships.

Something happened at Yale, she thought again. Something that had put her on a path to ugly revenge. And on that path, she’d met Downing and MacKensie—and two other women, yet unidentified, if Downing’s painting carried the weight Eve believed it did.

Most likely met them in group or the crisis center.

It cycled back to rape for her money. A brotherhood of rape.

She took another pass at the apartment, this time with an eye toward hidden drawers or secret stashes.

When Peabody came back, Eve was crawling over the floor of the bedroom closet.

“Hoping to find a hidey-hole, but I got nothing.”

“I got the discs.”

“Let’s view them on the bedroom wall screen.”

Eve pushed to her feet, stepped out of the closet into the stringently neat bedroom with its simple and elegant bed—high, dark gray padded headboard, soft gray duvet, a few pillows in shades of blue.

Eve followed the urge to poke at the headboard, peer behind it. “If she had a hole, she’d have taken what was in it anyway,” she said as much to herself as Peabody.

Nodding, Peabody plugged the discs into the wall screen, cued it up.

“Full forty-eight?”

“For now, start when we came in to talk to her. We’ll view the rest back at Central.”

Peabody zipped through, slowed.

Eve watched the two of them step up to the door, into camera range, deal with door security. Into the lobby, and lobby cams, into the elevator, and those cams, and down the corridor to Su’s door.

“Speed it up some. Split it between entrance cam and the view of her floor.”

Eve watched them leave.

“I think my magic pink coat’s magically slimming.”