J Robb - Imitation in Death

“Sunday?”

“Mmm.” He topped off her wine, figuring she’d need it. “The cookout atDr.Mira ’s. It’s been a very long time since I attended something I suppose would be termed a kind of family picnic. I hope there’s potato salad.”

She picked up her wine, drank deep. “She talked to you. You said yes.”

“Of course. We should take a bottle of wine or I wonder if beer’s more appropriate.” Enjoying himself, he lifted an eyebrow. “What do you think?”

“I can’t think. I don’t know about this stuff. I’ve never been to a cookout. I don’t understand the ritual. If we’re both off on Sunday, we could just stay home, in bed. Have sweaty sex all day.”

“Hmm. Sex or potato salad. You’ve hit me at two basic levels.” Then he laughed at her, and passed her half a roll he’d already buttered. “Eve, it’s a simple family gathering. She wants you there because you’re important to her. We’ll sit around and talk about, I don’t know, baseball or some such thing. We’ll eat too much and enjoy ourselves. And you’ll have the chance to meet her family. Then we’ll come home and have sweaty sex.”

She scowled at the roll. “It just makes me nervous, that’s all. You like having conversations with strangers. I don’t get that about you.”

“You have conversations with strangers all the time,” he pointed out. “You just call them suspects.”

Defeated, she filled her mouth with bread.

“Now, why don’t we talk about something that won’t make you nervous? Tell me about the case.”

There was a lovely twilight outside the windows, and candles flickering prettily on the table. Wine sparkled in crystal and silver gleamed. And her mind, she realized, kept slipping back to a hacked body in a cold drawer at the morgue. “It’s not exactly dinner conversation.”

“Not for normal people. But it works for us. The media reports were sketchy.”

“I’m not going to be able to keep them that way if and when he hits again. I ducked reporters all day, but I’m going to have to give them something tomorrow to stem the appetite. She was an LC, bumped down to street level because of some illegals busts. She seemed to be clean now, though I’d still like to find her supplier just to knot that thread.”

“A down-on-her-luck LC shouldn’t have the media slathering very long.”

“No, it won’t be who, it’ll be how that gets them drooling. He took her in an alley. The way it looked, she went in to do the job. He faced her to the wall, slit her throat. Even from behind, he couldn’t have avoided all the blood spatter.”

She picked up her wine again, staring into it rather than drinking. “Then he laid her out, across the alley floor.Morris thinks a laser scalpel. He cut her pelvis out, took the whole works. You could all but swim in the blood.”

She drank now, let out a breath. There was something about blood, she thought, the scent of death blood. Once you smelled it, you never completely got it out of your system.

“Clean job, though, almost surgical. Had to have a bag to take it away in, had to work fairly quickly, had to clean himself up before he walked back out again. Even down there, that time of night, somebody’s going to notice a guy covered in blood.”

“And no one did.”

“No.” They’d check again, she thought. And again. But odds were they’d come up zero. “See no evil, hear no evil, speak all you want as long as it doesn’t put you in the mix. He didn’t know her, I’m almost sure. Otherwise, he’d have gone for the face some. That’s what they do. Thrill crime, lust driven. Woman hater.Peabody got dog-sick, and spent a good part of the day kicking herself about it.”

He thought of what the victim, what the alley must have looked like and rubbed a hand overEve ’s. “Have you ever? Gotten sick?”

“Not on-scene. It’s like saying you did more than I can take, more than I can handle, and I can’t stand over this body and look at what you did. But sometimes, later, it comes back on you. Middle of the night mostly. Then you get sick.”

She drank now. “Anyway… he left a note, addressed to me. Don’t freak,” she said when she felt his fingers tighten over her hand. “It’s professional rather than personal. He’s admired my work, wanted to give me a chance to see his. He wanted me on this one, an ego thing. I’ve had two very hot cases this summer, with wall-to-wall media attention. He wants that sort of buzz.”

His fingers stayed over hers. “What did it say?”

“Just that-cocky. He signed itJack.”

“Emulating the Ripper then.”

“You save me a lot of steps when you get it. Yeah, the choice of victim, the location, the method, even the note to a cop. Too much of it’s already leaked to the media, and if they get their teeth in it, it’s going to be a frenzy. I want to shut him down fast, before the panic. Been working with the note-the paper.”

“What’s unique about it?”

“Unrecycled, very pricey, manufactured inEngland, sold exclusively inEurope. Do you manufacture unrecycled paper products?”

“Roarke Industries is green. Just our little contribution to environmental responsibility, which also earns a healthy tax break in most markets.” He ignored the server droid who came to clear the plates and bring out small dessert parfaits and coffee.

“Where’s the paper taking you?”

“I’m focusing onLondon outlets first, playing the Ripper angle. I’ve got a couple of celebs, a politician type, a retired financier, and the asshole lover of some actress named Pepper.”

“PepperFranklin?”

“Yeah, she strikes me as straight up, but the guy…” She trailed off, narrowing her eyes as Roarke scooped up a spoonful of parfait. “You know her.”

“Mmm. This is very nice, refreshing.”

“You banged her.”

Though his lips twitched he managed to maintain a sober expression as he sampled more parfait. “That’s a very unattractive term. I prefer saying we had a brief and mature relationship, which included the occasional banging.”

“I should’ve known. She’s just your type.”

“Is she?” he queried.

“Gorgeous, elegant, sophisticated sex.”

“Darling.” He sat back to sip his coffee. “How conceited of you. Not that you aren’t all those things, and more.”

“I’m not talking about me.” She scowled at him a moment, then went to work on the parfait. “I should have figured her for one of your formers the minute I saw the portrait.”

“Ah, she still has that, does she? TheTitania portrait?”

She shoveled parfait in her mouth. “You’re going to tell me you gave it to her.”

“As what you might call a parting gift.”

“What, like on a game show?”

His laughter was rich and full of fun. “If you like. How is she? I haven’t seen her in,Christ, seven or eight years, I suppose.”

“She’s dandy.” Watching him, she licked her spoon. “But her taste in men has seriously declined.”

“Why, thank you.” He grabbed her hand, kissed it. “While mine, in women, has seriously improved.”

She wouldn’t have minded working up a good head of jealousy steam, to see what it felt like. But it just didn’t work for her. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. She’s hooked up with a guy namedLeoFortney. Operator. He’s got operator all over him, and a couple of pops, including sexual assault.”

“Doesn’t sound like Pepper’s usual fare. Is he your prime suspect?”

“He’s number one right now, though he was home in bed during the time involved. She’s corroborating, but since she was sleeping, I’m not putting much weight there. Plus, he lied, said they went nighty-night together, and she said different before she realized she’d be blowing it for him. Still, she struck me as a straight shooter.” She paused, waited.