Page 75 of Obsession in Death

“Contact Peabody, Detective Delia.” Eve pushed away from the desk as she spoke. “I’m on my way.”

She cut it off before Dispatch acknowledged. “Hastings—photographer—asshole, hell of a temper. I looked at him, you remember, summer before last.”

“Portrait murders—I thought of them that way,” Roarke added as they rushed down the steps.

She hadn’t asked if he intended to go with her—a waste of both their time.

“Right. Turned out the killer had been, briefly, one of his assistants. He goes through them like—”

“You go through sparring droids?” Roarke suggested as he got their coats.

“Something like that. I kicked him in the balls when he came at me—first time I saw him. Interrupted his work. His zone, he called it. He had a lot of uncomplimentary things to say about that, and me.”

The wind caught her as she stepped outside, still dragging on her coat. And she hissed when the car wasn’t there.

“I’ve sent for it,” Roarke told her. “Give it a moment—and put this on.”

She grabbed the scarf rather than argue. “He’s a big guy,” Eve speculated. “Maybe the stun didn’t take him out, maybe he got a piece. And maybe I should know better than to speculate.”

She jumped into the passenger seat of a burly All-Terrain in gunmetal gray before it fully stopped.

“Retail area on ground level,” she remembered. “Offices and portrait-gallery-type thing on two, studio on three—that’s where I dropped him—and he lives on four. They’d have been closed—not speculation, basic deduction. Narrow iron steps, exterior—more like fire escape. No outside glide or elevator. You’d have to walk up those dark stairs. Good cover from the street. Portography. Yeah, that’s what he calls it. Portography.”

“A photographer, particularly a portographer, should have an eye for faces—the details.”

“You’d think. There’s a lot right behind the place,” Eve told him, and guided him there.

•••

The uniform must have been watching for her as he pulled open the door on the studio level as Eve—feeling a little like a lizard climbing a rock—climbed the last of the open iron steps.

“Sorry, Lieutenant, Hastings just told us there’s an inside access from the street.”

“Done now.”

“He took a hard jolt, Lieutenant. It happened down here, but we’ve got him upstairs in his apartment to keep this area secure. The MTs cleared him, but they recommended he go in for observation. He won’t budge.”

“Stunner?”

“Yes, sir, along with a mild concussion from cracking his head on the floor when he dropped. He’s a lot more pissed off than hurt.”

“He’s always pissed off,” Eve said, and walked past the uniform and up the stairs, where Hastings sat on a black sofa drinking what looked like a couple fingers of whiskey, straight up.

None of his portraits graced the white walls. Maybe he got tired of looking at faces, having them look at him. Instead he’d fashioned a kind of gallery of black-and-white cityscapes, empty benches, storefronts, alleyways.

Another time, she’d have found them interesting and appealing. But another time she might not have netted a live witness.

Potentially two, she thought, as a long-legged blonde with a half mile of glossy hair curled beside Hastings on the sofa. The plush white robe she wore was so big on her she might have been swallowed by a polar bear.

She sipped brandy from an oversized snifter.

Hastings gave Eve a hard stare out of his tiny, mud-colored eyes. “Bitch cop.” He took a deep drink. “What the hell kind of city are you running when a man can’t even do a night’s work in his own house without getting attacked?”

“My crime-fighting signal for this building’s on the fritz. Who are you?” she asked the blonde.

“Matilda Zebler. I was here when it happened.”

Eve waited a beat, arched her eyebrows. “Working late tonight, Hastings?”