"She doesn't look like the sort to pop illegals, and that'd be a strange place to skin pop. He injected her with something. Tranq, maybe."
"We'll see when we get the tox screen. No violence to the body but for the puncture. There are, however, very mild ligatures at the wrists, at the left knee, on the right elbow. See here."
He picked up a second pair of microgoggles.
"Restraints?" she asked as she took the goggles. "It's a funny way to restrain someone."
"We'll discuss the fun and games of bondage another time. Take a look first."
She fit on the goggles, bent over the body. She could see them now, the faint and thin lines that showed blue through the light.
"Wires of some kind," Morris said. "Not rope."
"To pose her. He used the wires to pose her. You can see the way the wire wrapped over one wrist, under the other. He folded her hands on her knee. Yeah, crossed her legs, wired her to the chair. You can't see them in the photograph, but he'd have taken that out during imaging."
She straightened, took one of the printouts from her bag. "This jibe for you with that theory?"
Morris pushed up his goggles, scanned the image. "The positioning works. So he takes pictures of the dead. That was a custom a couple of centuries ago, and it came back into fashion early this century."
"What kind of custom?"
"To pose the dead in an attitude of peace, then take their picture. People kept them in books designed for the purpose."
"It never fails to amaze me just how sick people are."
"Oh, I don't know. It was meant to comfort and remember."
"Maybe he wants to remember her," Eve mused, "but I think more, he wants to be remembered. I want her tox screen."
"Soon, my pretty. Soon."
"She didn't fight, or wasn't able to fight. So she knew him and trusted him, or she was incapacitated. Then he transported her to wherever he took this." She slid the image back in her bag. "She was either dead already, or he killed her there-I'm betting he did it there-bandaged her so she didn't bleed through the shirt, then he posed her, took his shots. He transports her again and dumps her in a recycler across the street from where she worked."
She began to pace. "So maybe her killer's from the neighborhood. Somebody who sees her every day, develops an obsession. Not sexual, but an obsession. He takes pictures of her, follows her around. He comes into the store, and she doesn't think anything of it. She's friendly. Probably knows him by name. Either that or someone from college. Familiar face, trusted face. Maybe he offers her a ride home, or a ride to school. Either way, he's got her.
"She knew his face," she murmured, looking down at Rachel, "just as well as he knew hers."
Mildly refreshed by a spin in the detox tube at the morgue, Eve pulled up at the curb in front of Professor Browning's high-dollar building.
"I thought teachers got paid worse than cops," she commented.
"I can do a standard run on her financials."
Eve stepped out of the car, then cocked her head and her hip as the doorman rushed over.
"I'm afraid you can't leave… that here."
"That is an official vehicle. This," she added, flipping it out, "is a badge. Since I'm going in there, on police business, that stays out here."
"There's a parking facility very nearby. I'd be happy to direct you."
"What you're going to do is open the door, go inside with me, and inform Professor Browning that Lieutenant Dallas, NYPSD, is here to speak with her. After that, you can come out here and direct people to Morocco for all I care. Clear?"
It appeared to be as he scuttled to the door, coded through security. "If Professor Browning was expecting you, I should've been informed."
He was so prim and pompous about it Eve gave him a fierce grin. "You know, I've got one just like you at home. Do you guys have a club?"
He merely sniffed, and danced his fingers over a keyboard. "It's Monty, Professor. I'm sorry to disturb you, but there's a Lieutenant Dallas at the desk. She'd like clearance to come up. Yes, ma'am," he said into his earpiece. "I've seen her identification. She is accompanied by a uniformed officer. Of course, Professor."
He turned to Eve, lips so thin they could have sliced paper. "Professor Browning will see you. Please take the elevator to the fifteenth floor. You will be met."
"Thanks, Monty. How come doormen always hate me?" she asked Peabody as they moved to the elevator.
"I think they sense your disdain, like pheromones. Of course, if you told them you were married to Roarke, they'd immediately fall to their knees and worship you."
"I'd rather be feared and hated." She stepped inside. "Fifteenth floor," she ordered.
Chapter 3
The elevator opened on fifteen where a domestic droid was waiting. He had black hair slicked back over a round head, and a thin mustache over his top lip. He was dressed in a formal suit, the kind Eve had seen characters wear in some of Roarke's old videos. It had a jacket with a short front and long tails at the back, and the shirt beneath looked stiff and impossibly white.
"Lieutenant Dallas, Officer," he said in a fruity voice, heavy on the Brit. "Might I trouble you for identification?"
"Sure." Eve pulled out her badge, watched a thin red line shoot through the droid's eyes as he scanned it. "You're top-line security?"
"I am a multifunction unit, Lieutenant." With a slight bow, he offered the badge back to her. "Please follow me."
He stepped back to let them exit the elevator. There was a kind of lobby, or entrance area with white marble floor tiles, glossy antiques topped with urns that were elegant with flowers.
There was a tall white statue of a nude woman, with her head tipped back and her hands in her hair as if she were washing it. There were artfully arranged flowers at her feet.
On the walls were framed images-photographic and multi-media. Additional nudes, Eve noticed, that were more romantic than erotic. Lights of filmy draper and diffused light.
He opened another set of doors and bowed them into the apartment.
Thoughapartment. Eve mused, was a poor word for it. The living area was enormous, full of color and flowers and soft, soft fabrics. More art decorated the walls here as well.
She noted wide doorways right and left, another leading down the side of the room and calculated that Browning and Brightstar didn't live on the fifteenth floor. Theywere the fifteenth floor.
"Please be seated," the droid told them. "Professor Browning will be right with you. And might I offer you some refreshment?"
"We're fine, thanks."
"Family money," Peabody said out of the side of her mouth when they were left alone. "Both of them, but Brightstar's seriously loaded. Not Roarke loaded, but she can roll naked in it without worrying. Angela Brightstar'sthe Brightstar of Brightstar Gallery on Madison. Swank artsy joint. I went to a showing there once with Charles."
Eve stepped up to a painting that was slashes of color, lumps of texture. "How come people don't paint houses or something? You know, stuff that's real?"
"Reality is all perception."
Leeanne Browning entered. You couldn't say she came in, Eve thought. When a woman was a good six feet tall, lushly built, and draped in a glistening robe of silver, she entered.
Her hair was a long fall of sunlight to her waist, her face equally striking with its wide mouth and deeply indented top lip. Her long nose tipped up at the end, and her wide eyes were a vivid shade of purple.
Eve recognized her as the model for the white statue in the entrance area.
"Excuse my appearance." She smiled in the way a woman smiled when she knew she made an impression. "I was posing for my companion. Why don't we sit, have something cool, and you can tell me what brings the police to my door."