Holiday in Death (In Death #7)(52)

She gulped coffee, eyes narrowing. “Ears,” she said abruptly. “Would he have bothered to change the shape of his ears? How much of them show?”

She leaped to her machine, called up the program, the file, the images. “Shit, nothing, nothing, nothing. Here!” Scanning through she came up with a side view. “That’s good, that’s pretty damn good. Can you work with it?”

Feeney nibbled, considered. “Yeah, maybe. The hat covers the top of the ear, but maybe. Nice call, Dallas. It would’ve slipped by me. We’ll work feature by feature, see what jumps. It’s not going to be quick. Something this complex is going to take days. Maybe a week.”

“I need the bastard’s face.” She closed her eyes, concentrated. “We’ll go back, work the jewelry angle again, the disinfectant, the cosmetics. The tattoos were hand drawn. Maybe we can shake out something there.”

“Dallas, two-thirds of the salons and clubs in the city have freehand tattoo artists.”

“And maybe one of them knows that design.” She blew out a breath. “We’ve got two hours before the meets at Nova. Let’s do what we can.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The one thing that really irritated Peabody was that McNab was on her match list. It didn’t matter that it was most likely due to the fact that her profile and his had been altered to fit those of the victims’.

It just griped her.

She didn’t like working with him, with his ridiculous clothes, cocky grins, and know-it-all attitude, but figured she was stuck as long as Eve found him an asset.

There was no one on the force Peabody admired as much as Eve Dallas, but she figured even the smartest of smart cops could make one mistake. Eve’s, in Peabody’s opinion, was McNab.

She could see him across the snazzy little bar. He and the six-foot blonde he’d matched with were directly in her line of vision. A deliberate move on McNab’s part, Peabody imagined, just to annoy her while they worked.

If he hadn’t been there, she might have been able to enjoy the quietly elegant atmosphere. The bar had pretty silver-topped tables, pale blue privacy booths, and clever art prints of New York street scenes decorating the warm yellow walls.

Classy, she thought, glancing over at the long, shiny bar with sparkling mirrors and tuxedo-decked servers. But you’d expect classy from something that belonged to Roarke.

The padded chair where she sat was designed for comfort; the drinks were glorious. The table was equipped with hundreds of musical and video selections and individual headsets if a customer wanted entertainment while he or she waited for a friend or enjoyed a quiet, solitary drink.

Peabody was sorely tempted to try out the headset, as her first match was a blistering bore. The guy’s name was Oscar and he was a teacher who specialized in physics on at-home screens. So far, he’d mostly been interested in sucking down rippers and bad-mouthing his recent ex-wife.

She was, Peabody was told, a non-supporting, self-centered bitch who was frigid in bed. After fifteen minutes, Peabody was fully on the bitch’s side.

Still, she played the game, smiling and chatting while she crossed Oscar off her mental lists of suspects. The guy had a serious problem with alcohol, and their man was too clearheaded to spend his time with the awesome hangovers a few rippers produced.

Across the room, McNab erupted with delighted laughter that ran along Peabody’s nerve endings like a dull razor. While Oscar guzzled the last of his third ripper, she glanced over, and caught the quick, eyebrow wiggle McNab sent her.

It made her want to do something cool and mature. Like sticking out her tongue.

With great relief, she parted ways with Oscar, making vague plans to hook up again.

“When they sell iced rippers in hell,” she muttered and winced as she heard Eve’s voice in her earpiece.

“Maintain, Peabody.”

“Sir.” Peabody hissed the word, covering it by lifting her own virgin blitzer. She sighed, noting by her wrist unit that she had ten minutes before the next meet.

“Goddamn it!”

Peabody jolted when Eve’s voice exploded in her ear. “Sir?” she said again, choking.

“What the hell is he doing here? Damn it!”

Baffled, one hand sliding down to where her weapon was snug inside her left boot, Peabody scanned the room. And caught herself grinning widely as Roarke strolled in.

“Now, that’s a match made in heaven,” Peabody murmured. “Why can’t I get one of those?”

“Don’t talk to him,” Eve ordered in a snap. “You don’t know him.”

“Okay, I’ll just stare and drool, like every other woman in the place.”

She chuckled out loud at Eve’s snarling string of curses, and the couple at the next table glanced over. Peabody cleared her throat, lifted her drink again, and settled back to admire her lieutenant’s husband.

He walked by the bar, and the bartenders came to attention like soldiers on parade for the general. He stopped by a table to speak briefly with a couple. Leaned down to brush his lips over the woman’s cheek, then moved to the end of the bar to lay a friendly hand on a man’s shoulder.

Peabody wondered if he moved just that beautifully in bed, then flushed. It was a damn good thing, she decided, that the wire wasn’t transmitting her thoughts to the surveillance van.

Outside, Eve scowled at the screen that projected the view from the micro-camera in Peabody’s collar button. She watched Roarke work the room, very casual, very easy, and vowed to pound him into dust at the first opportunity.