Portrait in Death (In Death #16)(45)

"Is there any reason, after more than a year in Homicide, you feel unable to question a suspect without the primary holding your hand?"

"No, sir." Now her face went bright pink. "It's just that you always-I haven't-" She swallowed hard under Eve's bland stare, then squared her shoulders. "I'll take Catstevens, Lieutenant."

"Fine. When you've finished, contact me for further orders."

"Yes, sir. I appreciate you trusting me with this."

"Good. Don't screw up." She turned her back on Peabody, mentally crossing her fingers to wish her aide luck, then sauntered over to Hastings.

Her gut told her the lead was here, and Peabody would get nothing more out of the assignment than some solid field experience.

She leaned back against the windowsill, crossed her feet at the ankles. "It's a pisser, isn't it, having strangers put their fingers all over your stuff." She waited a beat while he simply stared through her. "We can cut a lot of the crap if you tell me how you know Rachel Howard."

"I never said I knew her. Seen her face somewhere. That's not a freaking crime."

"You take pictures of her?"

"Might have."

"Here, in the studio."

His brows drew together. Eve saw him struggle to think back. "No."

"She's never been up here?"

"How the hell do I know?" His voice boomed out again, ripe with frustration. "People bring people up here. Christ knows why. I hire a model or a group, and they just have to bring somebody along. Mostly I kick their asses back out, but every once in a while I'm in a good mood." He smiled thinly. "I try not to let that happen often."

"You make decent money with the imaging?"

Now he sneered. "You make decent money as a cop?"

"Hell, no. So you do it because you do it." She hooked her thumbs in her pockets, finding herself intrigued by him. "And you take images of people, even when you don't particularly like the breed." Now, she nodded. "I can relate to that. But what we have here's a pretty young girl. Men usually find a use for pretty young girls."

His color came up. "I don't muck around with the college set. For Christ's sake, I'm forty years old, what do I want with some skinny coed? I use LCs for sex. It's clean, professional, and there's no baggage. I don't like personal connections."

He's playing me, Eve thought with some amusement. "Yeah, they sure complicate things."

"I like faces." He muttered it. "I can sit here right now thinking you're a pain in the ass cop who's royally screwed up my day, but I like your face. I can hate your guts and still like your face."

"I don't know what the hell to think about yours."

Now he snorted. "Don't come much uglier. But there's a beauty in that." He looked down at his hands a moment, then blew out a windy sigh. "I never killed that girl. Never killed anyone. I like to think of ways to kill people who irritate me. Throwing them off high buildings, boiling them in oil, locking them in a dark room with live snakes, that kind of thing. It gets me through the day."

"You're a piece of work, Hastings."

"We all are. That face. That girl's face. Harmless. You know what makes people such pricks, Lieutenant Dallas?"

"They destroy the harmless."

"Yeah, they do."

"Lieutenant!" McNab waved a hand with his eyes still onscreen. "Found her."

She crossed over, studied the screen. She spotted Rachel instantly, though she was in a group of other young people. Dressed up, fussy dresses, with flowers in the background. Some sort of formal party, she imagined. Probably a wedding.

Rachel had her arm around another girl, her own head thrown back as the photo caught her in a bright, delighted laugh.

"Hastings." Eve motioned him over. "Who, what, where, and when?" she demanded.

"That's it!" His shoulder bumped McNab as he maneuvered to study the full screen, and nearly knocked the lightweight EDD man out of his chair. "I knew I'd seen that face. What is this, what is this? Yeah, the Morelli-Desoto wedding, in January. See it's labeled. There are more-"

"Don't touch the keyboard," Eve snapped. "McNab, enlarge and print the image. You've got more of her, Hastings?"

"I got the whole fricking wedding. Part of the package is I keep them for a year so people can take their time selecting. And Aunt Jane or Grandma Whoosits can come around six months later and order some. There're more of the girl there, and some I took of just her because of that face."

"McNab, run through, select any images of the victim. Enlarge and print."

He scrolled through, giving the commands. Eve saw portions of the wedding unfold-the bride and groom, the family portraits, the candids. Young people, old people, friends and relatives.

"That's the lot, Dallas."

"No. No, it's not," Hastings interrupted before Eve could speak. "I took more. I told you I took more of her, and some other faces that interested me. Subfile on this disc. Faces. They're under Faces."

McNab called it up. Eve noted Hastings hadn't bothered with the bride or groom here. There was a portrait of an old, old woman, a dreamy smile almost lost in the wrinkled map of her face. A child with icing ringing his mouth. Another, surprisingly tender, of a little girl in her party dress, fast asleep across a chair.