Portrait in Death (In Death #16)(79)

"Good night." She stared at the blank screen, wishing she could just reach through it and haul him back to where he belonged.

***

The computer was just detailing her matches when Peabody and McNab strolled in. "Summerset's fine," Peabody told her. "He gets the skin cast off tomorrow and can start walking for short periods."

"Picture me doing handsprings. Matthew Brady, Ansel Adams, Jimmy Olsen, Luis Javert. Who are these guys?"

"Jimmy Olsen, cub reporter, the Daily Planet" McNab supplied.

"You know him?"

"Superman, Dallas. You've got to get more exposure to pop culture. Comics, graphic novels, vids, games, toys. See, Superman's this superhero from the planet Krypton who's sent to Earth as a baby, and-"

"Just the highlights, McNab."

"He disguises himself as mild-mannered reporter Clark Kent and comes to Metropolis to work at the Daily Planet, a newspaper. Jimmy Olsen's one of the characters, a young reporter and photographer."

"Photographer, check. And the other two?"

McNab shrugged his bony shoulders. "Got me."

"Ansel Adams was a photographer," Peabody supplied. "My father's got some of his prints. Nature stuff, powerful."

"And Matthew Brady." She went to the computer for that one. "Another photographer. Three for three. No other matches in family names, street address. And behind door number two?"

Her eyes went flat and hard. "We've got a winner. Not Luis but Henri Javert, photographer, primarily known for his portraits of the dead. Came to popularity early this century in Paris. Though Shadow Imagery, as this art form was termed, went quickly out of fashion, his work is considered the best of the style. Examples of his work can be viewed at the Louvre in Paris, the Image Museum in London, and the International Center of Photography in New York.

"McNab, get me everything you can on Henri Javert."

"On it."

"Peabody, there's a couple dozen matches here for Luis. Trim it down. Children," she said with a fierce grin, "we've got his scent."

***

She worked until she thought her eyes would bleed, worked long after she'd sent Peabody and McNab off to do whatever they were going to do on the gel bed.

When her thoughts began to blur as well as her vision, she crawled into the sleep chair for a few hours down. She didn't want another night alone in the big bed.

And still the dreams found her, and tugged her with icy hands from exhaustion to nightmare.

The room was familiar. Terrifyingly so. That hideous room in Dallas where the air was brutally cold and the light was washed with dirty red. She knew it was a dream and fought to will herself out of it. But she could already smell the blood-on her hands, on the knife clutched in them, splattered on the floor, seeping out of him.

She could smell his death, and the vision of it-of what she'd done, what she'd become to save herself-was etched on her mind.

Her arm screamed with pain. The child's arm in the dream, the woman's who was trapped in it. It was burning hot where he'd snapped the bone, burning cold up to the shoulder, down to the fingertips that dripped with red.

She would wash it off. That's what she had done then, that's what she would do now. Wash off the blood, wash away the death in the cold water.

She moved slowly, like an old woman, wincing at the sting between her legs, blocking out the reason for it.

It smelled metallic-the water, the blood-how could she know? She was only eight.

He'd beaten her again. He'd come home, not quite drunk enough to leave her be. So he'd beaten her again, raped her again, broken her again. But this time she'd stopped him.

The knife had stopped him.

She could go now, away from the cold, away from this room, away from him.

"You never get away, and you know it."

She looked up. There was a mirror over the sink. She could see her face in it-thin, white, eyes dark with shock and pain-and the face behind it.

So beautiful, with those magic blue eyes, the silky black hair, that full mouth. Like a picture in a book.

Roarke. She knew him. She loved him. He'd come with her to Dallas, and now he'd take her away. When she turned to him she wasn't a child anymore, but a woman. And still, the man who'd been her father lay bloody between them.

"I don't want to stay here. I need to go home now. I'm so glad you're here to take me home."

"You've done Richie in, haven't you?"

"He hurt me. He wouldn't stop hurting me."

"Well now, a father has to hurt the child now and again to teach them some respect." He crouched, and taking a grip on her father's hair, lifted the head to examine it. "I knew him, you know. Wheeled some deals. We're two of a kind."

"No, you're nothing like him. You never met him."

Those blue eyes sparked with something that made her stomach clutch like a fist. "I don't like being called a liar by a woman."

"Roarke-"

He picked up the knife, rose slowly. "You've got the wrong Roarke. I'm Patrick Roarke." Smiling, smiling, he turned the knife in his hand as he stepped toward her. "And I think it's time you learned a little respect for fatherhood."

She woke with the scream trapped in her throat, and sweat pouring off her like blood.