Obsession in Death (In Death #40)(94)

“Tits aren’t the only reason women get hit on or draw attention.”

“No indeed, but they rank high. She’s unlikely to be visually compelling. A pleasant enough face, most likely. As real beauty or someone overtly unattractive also draws attention. So… Computer, display image two.”

Acknowledged. Displaying image two.

“Okay.” Eve nodded, would have pushed up if Roarke hadn’t held her in place.

The same body, face, coloring, hair, but wearing a dull gray suit, a little drab, a little dowdy, Eve supposed. And the sassy woman in the trashy underwear became ordinary.

“You wouldn’t look twice at her on the street,” Eve stated. “She’d blend into the scenery.”

“And now. Computer, display image three.”

Acknowledged. Displaying image three.

This time the image wore a bulky brown jacket, brown trousers, ski cap, boots.

“Yes!” Again, she started to push up, and again he kept her snuggled on his lap. “Come on. I’ve got to move.”

“Don’t I get a reward?”

She craned around, looked into those wild, amused eyes. “You got pie.”

“The pie’s nice, but the work, if I say so myself, is superior.”

She couldn’t argue, so she clamped her hands on his face, covered his mouth with hers, let some of the excitement of having a face – a strong potential – fire up the kiss.

“That’s more like it,” Roarke decided, and let her go.

“I’m going to send this to the wits, and to everyone on the list of potential targets. Ordinary sort of face, nothing stands out especially, but if it’s close, if it is, and you had this in your head, you’d recognize her.”

She turned to him. “Can you do a side-by-side, put the shades, the scarf on her? This image, just those additions.”

“Of course.”

In seconds, he had the dual images, split screen.

“It feels right, feels close.”

She closed her eyes, froze the moment when she’d looked across the street – the distance, the big bus lumbering away from the stop.

Take the bus away, all the vehicles, she ordered herself. Just her. Just you, just her, facing each other. She fixed the moment in her mind, one isolated instant, then opened her eyes.

“The face is broader – still narrow, but not quite this narrow. Can you…” She trailed off as he was already making the adjustment. “Not that much, a little… Yeah, that’s better. Long legs, right on that. The coat today was down at her knees, but there was some length between the coat and the boots.”

She closed her eyes again, tried to bring it back. The chase, tried to edit out all the people, the noise, the movement.

“She kept the box under her arm. Can’t say what was in it, can’t judge the weight, but she kept it tucked in, like a running back with the ball heading toward the goal. Shoving with the other hand,” Eve added, making the motion herself. “Pushing, shoving, elbow jabbing, but never slowing down. Focused. Okay.”

She opened her eyes again, turned. “She knew that restaurant. Goddamn it, that wasn’t just luck. She was hauling her ass right there, knows the neighborhood, knew she could jump in there, make that end run toward the kitchen and out. She’s been in there before.”

“Scoping out Mavis’s area?”

“That, sure, that. But she’s been in that place, knew the setup. No need to know that to scope out Mavis. We’ll get the image over there, show the owners, the staff. Maybe somebody knows her.”

She came back for her coffee.

“You lived there,” Roarke pointed out. “In that building, only a couple blocks away from that restaurant.”

“It wasn’t there, not with those people when I… She’s tuned into me. That’s my old neighborhood. I got that place because it was close enough to Central to make it smooth. Not a long haul to the morgue, to the lab.”

“Why wouldn’t she do the same?” Roarke proposed. “If she works in any of those facilities, or wishes she did, if she’s obsessed with you, why not live in the same area you did? Walk the same sidewalks, eat and drink and shop where you did.”

“She could’ve run into the Chinese place, but it has a different setup – it’s narrow and it doesn’t have that little alley off the back like the bar. She had enough of a lead to keep going, and yeah, yeah, get across the next intersection, maybe gain some distance if I got hung up with the traffic again. But she swung around that corner, never hesitated. She aimed for it.”

She sat on the desk. “Plug it in, will you? You’re faster. Narrow the search. Let’s see if we can find somebody who meets this basic description who lives within a six-block radius of my old building.”

“It’s a lot of ground,” he told her as he made the adjustments. “And unlikely to get quick results.”

“Results works well enough for now. I’m going to use the auxiliary, get the image out.”

“Take your pie,” he suggested.

19

Some risks were worth taking. It was a matter of principle.

The delivery-person gear that had served so well wouldn’t do now. But with some adjustments, the same ploy would work.

The peacoat – ordinary, simple. Not quite as bulky as the brown, and a bit shorter, but it would serve. The navy cap with earflaps and bill, pulled low, but with just a little hair from the short wig straggling out beneath it – a dull dark brown bought months before, and with cash. Still, it paid to seal it, and to remember to take care before removing it during the real work.