Obsession in Death (In Death #40)(59)

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 last 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 f*ck 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 f*ck alone in my studio when the * who zapped me interrupted me. I should’ve thrown the f*cker 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 f*cking 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 f*cker 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, f*ck a f*cking 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.”