Portrait in Death (In Death #16)(55)

"Yeah, that's true." He rubbed his hands over his face, then dropped them on the table. "I didn't kill those kids. That girl with the magic smile, this boy with the magic eyes. I'd never put those lights out." He leaned forward. "Just from an artistic standpoint-what would that smile be like in five years, or those eyes in ten. I'd want to know, to see, to capture. And personally, I don't get murder. Why kill people when you can just ignore them?"

Mirroring his move, she leaned toward him. "What about those lights? Wouldn't you want them for your own? Take them while they're young, innocent. Brilliant. Pull them in, through the lens, into yourself. Then they're always yours."

He stared, blinked twice. "You gotta be f**king kidding me. Where do you get that kind of woo-woo crap?"

Despite the horror of the situation, she let out a laugh. "I like you, Hastings. I'm not sure what that says about me. We're going through your records again, to see if we find the shots you took of Kenby Sulu."

"Why don't you just move in, bring the freaking family? Your pet dog."

"I've got a cat. I've got you scheduled for Truth Testing in about twenty minutes. I'll have an officer escort you to a waiting area."

"That's it?"

"For now, that's it. Do you have any questions or statements you wish to make at this time, on record."

"Yeah, I got a question. I got a prize-winning question for you, Dallas. Am I going to have to wonder who's next? Am I going to have to ask myself whose picture I took who's going to end up dead?"

"I don't have the answer to that. Interview end."

***

"You believe him." Peabody slid into the car beside Eve. "Even without the Truth Test."

"I believe him. He's connected, but not involved. And he'll know the face of the next target. He'll recognize it." And it would cost him, Eve thought. She'd seen what it was already costing him on that ugly face of his.

"The killer is someone he knows, or at least someone who knows him and his work. Someone who admires it, or envies it... or thinks their own is superior."

She toyed with that angle as she pulled out of the garage. "Somebody who hasn't been able to achieve the same sort of commercial or critical success."

"A competitor."

"Maybe. Or maybe someone who's too artistic, too above commercialism. He wants acknowledgment, otherwise, he'd be keeping the images for himself. But he sends them to the media."

She played back pieces of the text the killer sent to Nadine.

Such light! Such strong light. It coats me. It feeds me. He was brilliant, this clever young man with the dancer's build and the artist's soul. Now he is me. What he was lives forever in me.

Light again, Eve mused, then shadows.

There will be no shadows in them now. No shadows to smother the light. This is my gift to them. Theirs to me. And when it's done, when it's complete, our gift to humanity.

"He wants the world to know what he's doing. Artistically," Eve continued. "Hastings, or at least Hastings's work, is one of his springboards. We question everyone who's worked with or for Hastings over the last year."

Peabody pulled out her pad, keyed in, scrolled down the list. "That's going to take awhile. The guy's not kidding about going through assistants like toilet paper. Then you add in the staff, and turnover in the retail end, the models and stylists, and so on. You want to start at the top?"

"For now. But we start back at the data club. The transmission to Nadine was sent from there, both times. It's a link."

***

There was a lively lunch crowd jammed at tables and booths, heavy on the students, Eve decided. Lots of them gathered in groups or going solo over data and sandwiches.

She spotted Steve Audrey at the bar, working two-handed to fill orders on trendy iced drinks and coffee. He acknowledged her with a little head bob.

"Summer session has them pouring in midday." He slid something frothy and blue into waiting hands, then wiped his own on the bar rag tucked in his waistband. "Getcha something cold?"

"I wouldn't mind a Blue Meanie." Peabody spoke fast, knowing her lieutenant.

"Coming up." He pumped at levers. "What can I do for you, Lieutenant?"

"Take a break."

"I just came on an hour ago. I'm not due for a break until-"

"Take one now."

He flipped the slush machine, grabbed a glass. "Hold on. Mitz, need you to take over for five. Can't take more than five," he told Eve as he poured the blue slush into a tall, skinny glass for Peabody. "I'll get iced otherwise."

"Five'll do. Is there anyplace in here that's quiet?"

"Not this time of day." He scanned the crowd, used his chin to point. "Grab that privacy booth in the back, to the right. Give me a minute to fill these other orders."

Eve wound through, Peabody, slurping Blue Meanie, in her wake. Students, she noted, treated the club like a safari and came in loaded with bags and satchels.

There was no bag or satchel in Kenby's locker at Lincoln Center.

She stepped over, stepped around, shoved aside, and reached the booth at the same time a pair of college boys in track shirts leaped into the chairs.