J. Robb - Portrait In Death

"Just your little community service. You're going to have a long wait for your medal, Billy."

"Didn't figure how it hurt anybody. The customer gets a good deal, and I get the bonus. It's put my kid in a classy pre-school. You know what those cost?"

"Who rented the van?"

"See, that's the thing. People come and they go. Repeaters, you get to know, get to figure what ride they like best. This guy, I just don't remember too much. Only came by the two times, I'm pretty sure. Knew what he wanted, paid the fee, brought it back. I didn't think anything of it. White guy," he said quickly.

"Go on."

"Average-looking white guy, I don't know. Who pays attention?"

"Old, young?"

"Ah, twenty-five, thirty. 'Round there. Shorter than me, but not much. Maybe a little under six feet? Dressed neat. I mean not sloppy. Looked like an average working white guy. Could be I'd seen him around the neighborhood before. Could be. He didn't look like anybody special."

"What did he say to you?"

"Ah. Shit. Something like: 'I need to rent a van. A nice, clean one.' Probably I said something about does this look like a rental port to you-nice and polite though. Then he… yeah, yeah, I sort of remember. He pulled out the fee and deposit. All cash. And he said he'd take the gray van on the first level. I took the money, he took the code, and drove off. Brought it back about threea.m. My cousin logged it in."

His gaze shot back down, and he winced. "Damn. Damn. Is my cousin gonna get in trouble?"

"Give me your cousin's name, Billy."

"Shit. Fucking shit. Manny Johnson. He just logged it back in, Lieutenant Dallas. That's all."

"Let's go back to the guy who rented the van. See what else you remember?"

"I didn't pay enough attention. Ah, he had shades on. Dark shades, I'm thinking. And a ball cap. Maybe a ball cap? Me, I'm looking at the cash money and the threads more than anything else. He dressed neat, he had the fee. Maybe if you showed me his picture or something, I'd remember him, but I don't see how. He had on the shades and the cap, and we're doing the thing inside the port, where it's shady. He just looked like an average white guy to me."

"Average white guy," Eve repeated after the interview. "One who's killed two people. Who knew how to access a nearly untraceable vehicle to transport them, knew how to get them into said vehicle with minimal fuss, and when and where to dump the bodies without anyone noticing."

"But you did trace the vehicle," Peabody reminded her. "We can start doing a canvass, maybe we'll find someone who saw it around the universities, or the dumping sites."

"And maybe the Tooth Fairy's going to come knocking on your door tonight. We'll go there, Peabody, but first we take the van back to the garage. Average white guy lets Diego off the hook, at least for the pickup."

Too skinny, too slicked up, Billy had said when he'd looked at the printout of Diego's ID shot.

"We still got a maybe out of Billy on Hooper."

"Maybe. Maybe he was shorter, maybe he was older. Maybe he wasn't. He's not done yet, so maybe he'll come back for it. The van and the garage go under surveillance."

She checked the time. "And now, we've got a memorial to attend."

She hated memorials, that formal acknowledgment of grief. She hated the flowers and the music, the murmur of voices, the sudden bursts of weeping or laughter.

It was probably worse when the dead were young, and the end was violent. She'd been to too many memorials for violent death.

They'd laid Rachel in a glass-sided coffin-one of the trends of mourning Eve found particularly creepy. They'd put her in a dress, a blue one and probably her best, and fixed a little spray of pink roses in her hands.

She watched people file by. The parents, both looking shell-shocked and too calm. Tranq'd to get through the event. And the younger sister who simply looked ravaged and lost.

She saw students she'd questioned, the merchants from the shops near where she'd worked. Teachers, neighbors, friends.

Leeanne Browning was there, with Angela at her side. They spoke to the family, and whatever Leeanne said had tears breaking through the drugs and trickling slowly down the mother's face.

She saw faces she'd already filed away; and new ones, as she stood by searching for an average white guy. There were plenty of them that fit into the age span. Rachel, a friendly girl, had met a lot of people in her short life.

There was Hooper, neatly dressed in a suit and tie, his face somber, his shoulders straight as a soldier's. A group of what Eve assumed was his peers surrounded him the way groups tend to surround the attractive.

But when he looked around, his eyes were empty. Whatever they said didn't reach him, and he turned and walked away, through those young bodies as if they were ghosts.

He didn't look at the people, nor, she noted, did he look at the box, the clear box that held the girl he'd said he thought he might have loved.

She lifted her chin, a kind of reverse nod signal to McNab. "See where he goes," she ordered when McNab moved into place beside her. "See what he does."

"Got him."

She went back to studying the crowd, though she wished she could have been the one to step outside after Hooper, into the night. Into the air. Despite the overworked climate control the room was too warm, too close, and the smell of the flowers cloying.

She spotted Hastings across the room. As though he felt her eyes on him, he glanced toward her, then lumbered over.

"Thought I should come, that's all. Hate this kind of shit. I'm not staying."

He was embarrassed, she realized. And a little guilty.

"They shouldn't have dressed her up that way," he said after a moment. "Looks false. I'd've put her in her favorite shirt. Some old shirt she liked, given her a couple of yellow daisies to hold. Face like that, it's for daisies. Anyway…" He downed his glass of sparkling water. "Nobody asked me."

He shifted from foot to foot. "You'd better catch whoever put that kid in that glass box."

"Working on it."

She watched him go. Watched others come and go.

"He went outside," McNab reported. "Walked down to the corner and back a couple times." McNab hunched his shoulders, stuck his hands in his pockets. "Crying. Just walking up and down and crying. A group came out, gathered him up, into a car. I got the make and tag if you want me to run and pick them up."

"No." She shook her head. "No, not tonight. Pack it in. Get Peabody, and tell her she's off the clock."

"Don't have to tell me twice. I want to go somewhere people are talking about something stupid and eating lousy food. Always do after a memorial. You want to come along?"

"I'll pass. We'll pick this up again in the morning."

As the crowd thinned out, she made her way over to Feeney. "Would he come, Feeney? Would he need to see her again, like this? Or are his images enough for him?"

"I don't know. You look at it from his perspective, he got what he wanted from her, so he's done."

"Maybe, but it's like a circle, and this closes it. Something tells me he'd want to see her like this. Still, if he was here, I couldn't make him."

"Fucking average white guy." He puffed out his cheeks. She looked beat, he thought. Beat and worried and under the gun. He patted her shoulder. "What do you say we go get a beer?"

"I say, that's a damn fine idea."

"Been a while since we did this," Feeney commented.

"Guess it has." Eve sampled her beer.

By tacit agreement, they'd avoided the known cop bars. Kicking back in one of them meant somebody would stop by to shoot the shit or talk shop. Instead, they'd caught a booth in a place called The Leprechaun, a dim little bar with aspirations of simulating an Irish pub.