Portrait in Death (In Death #16)(40)

Two small screens recorded all the activity in the store from different angles, and invited customers to: click here for instant self-portrait! Try out the user-friendly Podiak Image Master. On sale! Only $225.99.

There was bright and annoying music tinkling out of the demonstrator. The proud owner of the Podiak Image Master could scroll through a menu of musical choices already loaded on, or record favorites to serve as the score to the family's home vids or stills.

Eve was idly wondering why anyone would want irritatingly happy tunes dancing all over their pictures when Peabody clicked.

"I just wanted to see," she explained. "I don't have any pictures of us." She snatched the printout. "Look. Aren't we cute?"

"Fucking adorable. Put that thing away." She pointed toward the skinny elevator, and the sign announcing the Portography Gallery on Level Two, the Studio on Three.

"Let's take a look upstairs."

"I'm going to put this in my cube," Peabody said as she tucked the printout away. "I can make you a copy. Maybe Roarke would like to have one."

"He knows what I look like." She stepped off on the second level.

There were faces and bodies lining the walls. Young, old, groups. Babies. Young girls in toe shoes, boys with sports gear. Family portraits, artsy shots of nude men and women, even several examples of family pets.

All were framed in thin silver.

To Eve, it was like having a hundred pair of eyes staring. She shook off the feeling and tried to judge if any of the images reminded her of the style used in photographing Rachel Howard.

"Good afternoon." A woman in New York black with a short, straight fringe of white hair stepped around a display wall. "Are you interested in a portrait?"

Eve took out her badge. "Who took these shots?"

"I'm sorry. Is there some sort of trouble?"

"I'm investigating the death of a Columbia student."

"Oh, yes. I heard about that. A young girl, wasn't it? Horrible. I'm afraid I don't understand how the gallery relates to your investigation."

"That's the purpose of investigating. To find out what relates. Miss?"

"Oh, Duberry. Lucia Duberry. I'm the manager here."

"Dallas, Lieutenant Eve. I'm the primary here." She drew Rachel's photo out of her bag. "Did she ever come in?"

"Pretty girl. I don't recall seeing her here. But we do get browsers, and some of the students wander up to look around. I may not have noticed her."

"What do you think about the photograph itself?"

"Well, it's an excellent study, strong composition. You look, immediately think-as I did-pretty girl. Then you think friendly and young. Fresh is another word that comes to mind, because the pose is so easy and unstudied. Was she a photography student, or a model?"

"No. But she took an Imaging class. She might have bought supplies here."

"Well, we can certainly check on that. Would you like me to call downstairs and have one of the clerks check the receipts?"

"Yes. For Rachel Howard-let's try for over the last two months."

"It shouldn't take long." She went back around the wall, and as Eve followed she saw there was a kind of cube setup, using the display walls as barriers.

Lucia went to the 'link on a small, glossy desk, and contacted the sales floor, giving them the instructions.

"Can I get you anything while you wait? Some spring water perhaps?"

"No, thanks," Eve said before Peabody could open her mouth. "This building-commercial and residential space-has use of the parking deck next door?"

"Yes. Our building and four others."

"Security cams?"

"No. There used to be, but someone was always jamming them or zapping them, until it was more cost prohibitive to continually repair than to put up with a few parking poachers."

"The owner lives upstairs?"

"Hastings has the fourth floor for his living quarters, and his studio on three."

"Is he around today?"

"Oh yes. He has a session in studio right now."

"Any of this stuff his work?"

"All of it. Hastings is very, very talented."

"I'll need to talk to him. Peabody, come up after you've got the data from Sales."

"Oh, but-he's working," Lucia protested.

"Me, too." Eve started toward the elevator with Lucia, now animated, clipping after her. "But Hastings is in a session. He can't be disturbed."

"Wanna bet?" She glanced down when Lucia clamped a hand on her arm. "You really don't want to do that."

The tone, utterly flat, had Lucia snatching her hand back again. "If you could just wait until he's finished-"

"No." Eve stepped on the elevator. "Level Three," she ordered, and watched the horrified Lucia until the doors whispered closed.

She stepped off again into a blast of high-tech music that pumped, hot as summer, into the white-walled studio. Equipment-lights, filters, fans, gauzy screens-was centered around a staged area where a buck-naked model draped herself, in various athletic positions, over a huge red chair.

The model was black, and Eve's estimate put her at six feet tall. She was lean as a greyhound, and appeared to have joints made of jelly.