J Robb - Imitation in Death

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She hunkered down at Central and used the exercise of clearing her desk to let her thoughts brew. She forwarded a dozen messages and demands from reporters to the media liaison, and happily forgot about them. She imagined there was a press conference in her future, but she didn’t have to think about it now.

She caught up on paperwork as much as she ever caught up on paperwork, then made some calls of her own.

She took out the notes, reread them, searching for a rhythm, phrasing, word uses, anything that clicked with the speech patterns of the people on her list.

It wasn’t his voice, she thought again. Deliberately not his voice. He assumes and mimics and becomes. Who did he become when he wrote the notes?

Her desk ‘link signaled an incoming, and wanting to avoid reporters she waited for the transmission location to flash on. When she read Feeney,CaptainRyan, EDD, she answered.

“You work fast,” she said.

“Kid, I’m a frigging rocket. Got a pop might be your guy. Case is cold.Vic was a fifty-three-year-old female. Schoolteacher. Found strangled in her apartment by a sister. Cooked for a few days first. Raped with a piece of statuary, which he also used to bash her over the head. Strangled with a pair of those pantyhose you people wear. Tied in a bow under the chin.”

“Bingo. How cold and where?”

“Went downJune of last year,Boston. I’ll send you all the particulars. No note with this one, and he smashed her head and face pretty good with the statue. ME report says she was already on the way out when he strangled her.”

“Practice makes perfect.”

“Could be. I got another with enough clicks to make me wonder. Six months beforeBoston, out in New L.A. Fifty-six-year-oldvic. This one was a squatter though, and that doesn’t fit. But somebody did her in her flop, raped her with a ball bat, smashed her up with it before he strangled her with her own scarf. Got a bow there, too, which is what pulled it.”

“Follows, doesn’t it? A squatter’s an easy hit. Not tough to get to, and nobody cares too much. It’d be a good place to perfect your technique.”

“My thinking. I’ll send these to you. Haven’t got any hits on the mutilation. Plenty of slash and gash in the good old U.S. of A., but nothing that hums along with your guy. I’m widening to international.”

“Thanks, Feeney. You got some vacation time coming, don’t you?”

His mournful face drooped. “Wife’s nagging my ass red about putting in for a week. Frigging holiday brochures all over the damn house. Thinks we should rent some big beach house or some shit, take the whole damn family. Kids, grandkids.”

“How about Bimini?”

“Who?”

“Where, Feeney.”

“Oh. Bimini. What about it?”

“Roarke’s got a place there, big house, staffed. Beach, waterfall, blah blah. I can clear it with him, have your whole damn family fly down on one of his transports. Interested?”

“Jesus Christ, I go home and tell the wife we’re taking the whole herd to Bimini for a week, she’ll keel over. Shit, yeah, I’m interested, but we don’t have to play payback.”

“I’m not playing. Place is just sitting there. He flipped a deal toPeabody and McNab a while back, so I figure I can flip one to you. Especially since I’m going to ask you to keep an eye on things when I do some out-of-town work.”

“Sounds like I’m getting the shiny end of the deal. Data coming through.”

She read it through, and felt that quick little buzz in the blood. A cop buzz. She was looking at his work. Practice strokes. Not that sort of thing that merited a signature, she thought, but a building of style and skill he preferred not to add to his credits.

He’d have been sloppier, less cautious. There’d have been mistakes, and though the trail was cold, she might still find a shadow of them.

She took the time to organize the data before taking it toWhitney for her pitch.

With her commander’s go-ahead under her belt, she made tracks back to Homicide, already formulating her next pitch in her head. She breezed through the bullpen, givingBaxter a with-me signal when he called out her name.

“So, you get a look at the guy she’s boinking on the side?”

“She’s not boinking a guy on the side.”

The rushEve was still riding on drained. “Gotta be. Damn it,Baxter, she had big, secret affair written all over her. I could almost smell the sex.”

“Please, you’re giving me a woody. I’m just going to have some of your coffee and calm myself down.”

“If you couldn’t keep a tail on her-”

“I kept a tail on her.” He ordered up an enormous mug, two sugars, splash of cream. Taking it, he leaned back against her filing cabinet to enjoy the first jolt. “Goddamn, this is coffee. Speaking of tails, which you were, the blonde had a superior one.”

“Take your woody and your idiot brain out of my office. She’s screwing somebody on the side.”

“Did I say she wasn’t?” He smiled, sipped again, and wiggled his eyebrows atEve over the rim. “She just ain’t driving a stick.”

“She’s… Oh. Well, well, well, this is interesting.” She lowered to the corner of her desk, thought it through. “Not just a side dish, a girl side dish. That has to be a real pisser for a guy.”

“And the dish was prime. Tall, lanky, black, and beautiful. The kind you just want to start slurping on from the toes up. Waste from my point of view-two superior examples of the species, and they’re sliding all over each other. Of course, thinking about them sliding all over each other is entertaining. I had a good time with that, and have to thank you for the duty.”

“You’re a sick perv.”

“And proud of it.”

“Do you think you could defer your lesbian fantasies until you give me a report?”

“I’ve already had the fantasies, and plan to have them again, but I can postpone the next act. Your girl left the office,twelve forty-five, and caught a cab. Proceeded uptown to the Silby Hotel on Park. Went straight into the lobby, where her date was waiting. Hot side dish later identified asSerenaUnger through detective’s charm, skill, and the fifty he passed the desk clerk.”

“Fifty? Shit,Baxter.”

“Hey, classy joint, classy bribe. Unger had pre-registered. Both subjects proceeded to an elevator, which was, to the detective’s great joy, glass-sided. In this way he was able to use his keen observation techniques to watch them exchange a big, sloppy wet one on the way up to the fourteenth floor. They entered room1405, where they remained, engaged in activities the detective was sadly unable to witness, until fourteen hundred. At which timeJuliettaGates exited the room, and the hotel, procuring another cab. She returned to her place of employment with what the detective believed was a satisfied smile on her face.”

“You run Unger?”

“Had Trueheart do it while we waited for the lunchtime quickie to run its course. She’s a fashion designer. Thirty-two, single. No criminal. Currently employed with Mirandi’s second label arm. They’re New York-based.”

“Question: Your woman cheats on you with another woman. Better or worse than her diddling with a guy?”

“Oh, worse. Bad enough she’s playing you, but she’s doing it without a dick, which means she doesn’t think too much of your equipment. It’s a guy, you can maybe rationalize it some. You know, he took advantage of her, or she had a moment of weakness.”

“Took advantage of her.” Eve snorted. “Men are really sad and simple.”

“Please, a boy needs his illusions. Anyway, it’s another skirt, she had to go looking, and she had to go looking for something you don’t have. Makes you a double loser.”