Portrait in Death (In Death #16)(39)

There was a hideous weight on his chest, but he only nodded. "And you tell me this long, unsubstantiated story now, because..."

"I've heard of you. Made it my business to keep track of you, best I could even after I married and moved to America. I knew how you ran, much as he did. And figured those few months she was able to give you had been burned out of you, and he'd stamped himself on more than your handsome face. A bad seed, I could tell myself. You were just another bad seed, and I could comfort myself that way, and not be wakened in the middle of the night with that pretty baby crying in my dreams."

Absently, she picked up a small paperweight of clear glass shaped like a heart, and turned it over and over in her hands. "But in the last couple of years, I've heard things that made me wonder if that was so. And when Louise came to me, told me of this place, and what you meant to do with it, I took it as a sign, a sign it was time to speak of it."

She studied his face. "Maybe it's too late to make any difference to you, or to me. But I needed to say it to your face. I'll take a truth test if you want it. Or I'll resign as I said I would, and you can write me off."

He told himself he didn't believe her, not a single word. But there was pain under his heart, like a knife between the ribs. He was afraid it was truth stabbing at him. "You should understand that at least some of what you're claiming I'll be able to verify or debunk."

"I hope you'll do just that. There's one other thing. She wore a claddaugh, a silver claddaugh on her left hand-like a wedding ring, she told me, that he'd bought her when you were born. His promise that you'd be a family, in the eyes of God and man. When she came out of the bedroom, Meg Roarke was wearing Siobhan's ring. The ring that girl wouldn't take off her finger, even after he'd beaten her. The bitch was wearing it on her pinky, as her hands were too fat for it. And when she saw my eyes land on it, when she saw that I knew... she smiled."

Tears began to run down her cheeks now. "He killed her-because she left, because she came back. Because he could. And kept you, I suppose, because you were the image of him. If I hadn't pushed her so hard, had given her more time to heal. To think..."

She wiped her face, and rose to go to her desk. From a drawer she took a small photograph. "This is all I have. I took this myself of the two of you the day before she left the shelter. You should have it," she said, and handed it to him.

He looked down, saw a young girl with red hair and green eyes still bruised from a beating. She wore a simple blue shirt with that red hair falling over its shoulders. She was smiling, though her eyes were sad and tired, she was smiling, with her cheek pressed against that of her baby. A face that was still rounded and soft with innocence, but unmistakably his own.

So he was smiling as well. A bright, happy smile. And the hand that cuddled him close had a silver claddaugh on its long, delicate finger.

Chapter 8

Portography was within easy walking distance from the college, Eve noted with some interest, and had a two-tiered parking port-shared by residents and patrons-jammed between the building and its neighbor.

"Check and see if there are any security cams for the parking facility," she told Peabody. "If there are, I want the discs for the night of Howard's murder."

The sign on the lot flashed full, but Eve pulled in anyway to study the setup. And flipping on her On Duty light, parked behind an aged minitruck.

"We'll run the vehicles registered to residents and staff. See if we get anything that carries the carpet fibers." She scanned the lot, counting two vans and another truck. "Could he be this careless or this arrogant?" she wondered. "Plan it all out, then get busted because of his ride?"

"They always make mistakes, right?"

"Yeah." Eve headed to the iron steps leading down to street level. "There's always something. It's doable. Get her into the vehicle over by the college, tranq her enough to keep her quiet, drive to another parking deck. Get her inside, do it, then cart her back to the vehicle, drive downtown, dump her. And your work is done.

"Risks, lots of risks," she said more to herself now. "But if you're careful, if you're driven, you factor in the risks. That's what he does. Plans it out, plots it out. Times it. Runs computer programs, maybe, on probabilities, on routes. All the details."

"It wasn't that late when he took her," Peabody pointed out. "Between nine and nine-thirty, right? Maybe somebody noticed him coming or going."

Eve studied the street, the building, the steps and glides that serviced it, and the parking tiers. "How does he get a dead girl out of the building and into his ride? Takes his time, waits until it's late, late enough that there's not much activity on the street. Not so busy in the summer, so not too late. Not so many students hitting the clubs and cafes, and those that do are already in them by nine, for the most part. Music starts cooking at nine. You're going to be exposed for a minute or two. No way around it. But if you're quick, you're careful, and willing to risk it."

"And taking her all the way downtown puts a lot of distance between the murder scene and the dump site. It's a good plan."

"Maybe" was all Eve said as she approached the door.

The first level of Portography was sales. Cameras, supplies, gadgets that were alien to Eve, and software that made no sense to her. An employee was currently demonstrating and extolling the virtues of some sort of complex-looking, multitasking imaging unit to a customer. Another was making a sale on a jumbo box of discs.