Portrait in Death (15 page)

More than three decades later, in the cool haven of her office, Moira shuddered. "He called me by name. Siobhan must've told him my name. Never in my life have I been so afraid as when Patrick Roarke said my name. I left. If anyone left you there, with him, it was me."

"For all you know she'd gone home, or gotten away. Harder to travel with a baby on your shoulder."

Moira leaned forward. It wasn't anger he saw on her face, or impatience. It was passion. The heat of it blasted out of him, and turned cold under his skin.

"You were her heart and her soul. Her aingeal. And do you think I didn't check? I had, at least, the belly for that. I opened the letter. They were so relieved, so happy to hear from her. Told her to come home, to come and bring you home. Asked if she needed money to get there, or wanted her brothers, or her father to come fetch the both of you. They gave her family news. How her brother Ned had married and had a son as well, and her sister Sinead was engaged."

Overcome, she reached for the lemonade again, but this time simply rubbed the bottle between her palms. "I contacted them myself, asked them to tell me when she got there. Two weeks later, I heard from them, and they're asking me, is she coming then? When is she coming? I knew she was dead."

She sat back. "I knew in my heart when I'd been in the hovel and seen you, she was dead. Murdered by his hand. I saw her death in his eyes, when he looked at me and said my name, I saw it. Her parents, and her brother Ned, they came to Dublin when I told them what I knew. They went to the police, and were shrugged off. Ned, he was set on and beaten. Badly beaten, and rocks were thrown through the windows of my flat. I was terrified. And twice I saw him walking by there, he made sure I saw him."

She pressed her lips together. "I stepped away from it. Shameful as it is, that's what I did. Records showed Patrick and Meg Roarke were man and wife, and had been for five years. No record of your birth could be produced, but the woman said the babe was hers, and there was no one to say different. No one who dared, in any case. Girls like Siobhan came and went in Dublin town all the time. She'd turn up when she was ready, and I nodded and said that was so because I was too afraid to do otherwise."

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.

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.

There were three cameras on tripods, and another held by a burly man in baggy jeans and a loose blue shirt. Two others, a tiny woman in a sleeveless black skinsuit and a young man with a tumbling crop of orange hair, looked on with expressions of concentrated concern.

Eve stepped toward the set, started to speak. The young woman turned slightly, spotted her. Shock covered her face first, and was immediately chased by horror.

If Eve hadn't seen the same look on Lucia's face, she might have drawn her weapon and spun to confront whatever terrible danger lurked at her back.

Instead, she kept moving forward, close enough to catch the guppy gulps of distress from the woman, then the choked gasp from the young man. The model met Eve's eyes with a bright glint of humor, and smirked.

"No smile!" This exploded from the man with the camera in a tone that had both assistants jumping, and the model simply relaxing her lips as she bowed her body like a long supple willow branch over the chair.

"You've got company, honey." She purred it, velvet-voiced, as she gestured with an endless and fluid arm.

He whirled, lowering his camera.

The snarl came first, and she had to admit, it was impressive. She'd never seen an actual bear, but she'd seen pictures. He had the look, and with the snarl, the sound of one.