Page 31 of Framed in Death (In Death #61)

When she finally slept, Eve slept deep.

As night slid slowly toward morning, she dreamed.

In the dream and alone, Eve walked into a gallery through air absolutely still, like a breath held. On the white, white walls, paintings hung in ornate gold frames. But they all blurred, their subjects indistinct, as if someone had wiped their hands over the canvases before the paint could dry.

She saw only vague shapes and smeared colors. She heard only the sound of her own bootsteps, echoing as she crossed the white floors.

Light flooded the spaces she walked. It seemed to soak the large rooms joined together by wide, open archways.

Like a museum empty of life.

She passed from one room to another, unsure what she was seeing or why.

She caught a glimpse of a window, wide and crystal clear. And through it, the lights and movement of New York at night streamed. On the sidewalk, LCs, almost like paintings themselves in their bold colors, strutted and strolled. The johns and janes who wanted them took their pick.

And still she heard no sound, not the street chatter, not the lives being raucously lived, not the traffic cruising by.

Only her own bootsteps echoing as she walked alone in the empty space, over pristine white floors inside pristine white walls. Then she turned toward a room as dark as the others were light.

When she stepped through, the lights sprang on, so sudden and bright, it shocked the eyes. She saw the portraits on the facing wall.

She knew them now, the Girl with the pearl, the headscarf, the Boy all in blue with ribbons on his shoes and a feathered hat in his hand. But unlike the paintings she’d studied on-screen, these had the faces of the victims.

Is this how he saw them? she wondered. Is this how he painted them?

As she watched, Leesa’s lips twisted into something between a sneer and a pout.

“I had plans,” she told Eve. “I was going to be a top level and live as large as it gets. Larger! Then he killed me, and now I’m stuck up here wearing this stupid outfit.”

“It blows hard,” Eve agreed. “Tell me something I don’t know. Or I guess it’s tell me something I haven’t figured out I know.”

“You’re the damn cop. I was just trying to make some easy money. He picked me because I was better than the rest of them on the block.”

“Oh, bullshit.” Inside the elaborate frame, Bobby turned to her. “He picked you because you fit the outfit and your face was close enough to some other dead girl.”

“What do you know about it?”

“Because he picked me for the same goddamn reasons. I fit the outfit, and my build is close enough to the dead guy who wore it. Nothing special about it. Just bad luck.”

“I was plenty special.”

“You were street level just like me, making rent, giving BJs and hand jobs. So what? I liked my life fine. I was having a good night.”

He turned to Eve with that. “A pretty good night. I was supposed to have breakfast with friends. I had friends, which is more than she ever had.”

“When you’re the best, when you’re looking down from a penthouse, you don’t need friends. And that’s where I was going, to the top!”

“Yeah, right. All I wanted was to get solid enough to move to the business of sex, right? And I’d’ve taken my friends in with me if they’d wanted. Now I’m dead, dressed up like some weird-ass doll. Maybe worse? I’m stuck up here with her, and all she does is whine and bitch, bitch and whine.”

“Fuck you, Bobby.”

“Being dead means I don’t have to fuck you, whining bitch, even if you had enough to pay me.”

“If I were alive, I wouldn’t do you for triple rate. You’re nothing special.”

On a sigh, Bobby shook his head. “You dumbass. That’s the whole damn point. We weren’t special. We just fit the stupid outfit.”

“Is this how you want to spend your time now?” Eve wondered. “Bitching at each other?”

Bobby shrugged. “Nothing much else to do. I’m hoping the next one isn’t a whiner.”

He looked over, as Eve did, to the empty frame beside him.

Then there were more, more empty frames filling the wall.

Waiting to be filled with the dead.

“I’m going to stop him.”

“Yeah? Then you’d better wake the hell up and get going on that.”

And with another shrug, Bobby shifted and held the pose.

In the dark, in the stillness, Eve woke. When she rolled to her back, the cat gave her a quick jolt by climbing onto her chest. Then sitting, staring.

“You’ve got weight, pal.” She gave his ears a scratch. “Just a dream, more weird than bad. Display time.”

5:36

“If Bobby and Leesa hadn’t decided to invade my subconscious to bitch at each other, I could’ve caught another twenty.”

Instead, she rolled the cat over, gave him one long head-to-tail stroke, then called for lights at fifty percent.

She got up, got coffee, wondered vaguely what sort of gazillion-level deal Roarke directed in his office with somebody probably somewhere on the other side of the globe.

Then she decided to take that twenty in the pool doing laps.

Staring at the communicator on the table beside the bed, she wondered if she could will it to stay silent. Since she couldn’t, she walked over, picked it up, and took it with her.

She rode the elevator down to the tropical wonder with its crystal-blue water. Then she stripped off her nightshirt.

And dived.

For one moment she let the water take her, let the cool silkiness surround her and smooth away the rough spots from the dream. Then she cut through it, a sharp blade bent on speed. At the wall, she rolled, pushed off, and struck out again.

After ten hard laps, she slowed and varied her strokes for another ten.

Then, breathless, muscles loose, she floated for two more precious minutes.

When she came back upstairs, the cat sprawled and slept, the lights remained at fifty.

Long meeting this morning, she thought, and topped off her swim with a hot, steamy shower. She came out to find the lights on full, breakfast already under warming domes, and the cat sprawled over Roarke’s lap.

“There she is. You’re officially displaced.” He nudged Galahad to the floor. “And you look reasonably rested as well. Come sit, eat.”

She sat, lifted a dome to a full Irish.

“That’s a way to start the day.”

“If you have another long one, you’ll need the good start. You were up a bit early,” he added as he poured her coffee.

“I had a dream that told me I’d better. Not a nightmare,” she said quickly.

“You’ll tell me about it.”

As they ate, she told him.

“It’s not really weird to have victims talking to me that way, but paintings?

They were like talking paintings, not weird as much as straight-out creepy.

But interesting. Like horror-vid creepy and interesting.

I mean sometimes you’ll look at a painting of somebody and imagine it talking. But you don’t expect it.”

He rubbed a hand on her thigh. “Disturbing.”

“Yeah, put creepy and interesting together, you get disturbing. So was the way they bitched at each other.”

“From what you know of them, it’s unlikely they’d have been friendly in life.”

“Highly unlikely,” she agreed, and eyed Galahad as he eyed her when she ate some bacon.

“They were in the same line of work, but they approached it and life in completely different ways. He had friends and family, she didn’t.

And clearly, she didn’t want them. For him, it was a business, and he made deals, made contacts.

For her, it was a way to beat back the competition and end up in a penthouse.

“But…”

“But.” He buttered a triangle of toast, passed it to her. “What did you learn from it you didn’t think you knew?”

“They were both for hire, and that made them easy pickings. That’s been clear.

But first, they fit the costumes—or close enough.

Since the costumes are custom, have to be, he needed them to fit.

It couldn’t be the other way around. I mean he didn’t pick them, then have the costumes made.

For all he knew, they’d have moved on by the time the outfits were finished, or they’d turn him down.

Too many variables for it to work that way, and he plans too well for all those variables. ”

She bit into the toast, and wondered why it always tasted better when he buttered it up.

“Second? He took the money back. I hadn’t given that much thought before, and still don’t know if it matters.

It all matters,” she corrected. “I can’t see either of them leaving their spot without a down payment.

A substantial one. They’re not going to just say sure, and drive off with some john, then put a couple hours in wearing a costume unless they had the cash in hand. ”

Roarke pointed a warning at the casually approaching Galahad, who sat, turned his back, and began to wash.

“And neither had that cash—or any at all?”

“None. Which tells me he kept whatever they’d earned before he hired them, too. And it’s not the money, Roarke. The costumes cost a hell of a lot more, but he left those.”

“To prove he’s—what would it be?—a master of details as well as a gifted artist.”

“Exactly. Most likely they’d have kept the money on them. They weren’t hired for sex, and they’re not going to leave their take somewhere he might try to snatch it back. But he took the time to remove it, all of it.”

“What does that tell you?”

“They get nothing from him because they are nothing to him. The money’s his. Whatever they brought with them, it’s his. I’m betting he’s the type who, as a kid, when somebody else had a toy he wanted and he couldn’t have, he busted it. Culver and Ren, just objects that suited his requirements.

“And yet.”

“He killed them with his hands.”

Since he poured her more coffee, she didn’t mention that was cop thinking.

“And that matters. He dosed them first—that’s cowardice, but it’s also making sure. Then he used his hands to kill, and face-to-face. What he took from them—the life people told him his paintings lacked?”

“Transferred to the art,” Roarke concluded.

“Okay, Jesus, I didn’t say it the first time, but don’t blame me if you think like a cop. A good one, too.”