Obsession in Death (In Death #40)(58)

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.

12

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 – *, 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.”