Imitation in Death

“I don’t want to hear that part.”

“Right. Well, I didn’t settle down until pretty late, and was so conked I must’ve deactivated the alarm before I was fully awake. Next thing I knew it was an hour later.”

“If you got up an hour late, why are you only…” She checked her wrist unit. “Fifteen minutes behind?”

“I skipped some of my usual morning stuff. Was okay until the subway breakdown. That threw me off, and now I’ve got the jitters again.”

“You can just forget about jumping me to take your mind off them. Look, Peabody, if you’re not prepped for the exam by now, you’re not going to be.”

“That doesn’t do a lot to calm me down.” She brooded out the window as Eve drove through the gates. “I don’t want to tank. Embarrass myself, you.”

“Shut up, you’re giving me the damn jitters. You’re not going to embarrass anybody. You’re going to do your best, and it’s going to be good enough. Now pull yourself together so I can brief you on Smith before we talk to him again.”

Listening, making her own notes, Peabody shook her head. “None of this stuff is in his official biographical data, or on any of the unofficial fan sites. I don’t get it. Guy’s a total publicity hound, and he likes to go for the heartstrings. So why not play up how he came from an abusive home, overcame it, and believes in the power of love, cha-cha-cha.”

“Cha-cha-cha?” Eve repeated. “I can think of a couple reasons. First, it doesn’t fit his image. Strong, handsome, romantic male of the so-clean-I-squeak variety. Doesn’t mesh with the poverty level, physically abused son of a part-time LC-who’s still tapping him for money.”

“I get that, but you could play that angle and sell discs out the yang.”

“Yang. Does that go with cha-cha-cha?” Eve wondered. “Okay, yeah, it might make some women feel sorry for him, even respect him, and plunk down the price of a disc. But that’s not what he wants.”

“What does he want?” Peabody asked, though she thought she was begi

“It’s not money. That’s just a handy byproduct. He wants adulation, hero worship, and fantasy. He boinks young groupies because they’re less likely to be critical, and he plays to older women because they’re more forgiving.”

“And he surrounds himself with female staff because he needs to be taken care of by women, because he wasn’t taken care of by the woman who should have done so when he was a kid.”

“That’s how it shakes for me.” Eve turned a corner and swung around a maxibus that was lumbering its contingent of commuters to their hives and cubes. “The public image doesn’t want to have to overcome anything, but just to be. The man of your dreams isn’t some kid who got knocked around by his mother after she turned a trick. Or I should say, his view of the man of your dreams isn’t. He’s built himself into an image, and he has to stick with it.”

“So, theoretically, the pressure of concealing all that, his resentment, and the cycle of violence could have caused him to snap. And snapping, he killed two parts of the person who abused him. The LC and the mother.”

“Now you’re thinking.”

It was kind of like a sim, Peabody thought. She was a little slow, but she hoped she was picking her way through it. “You said a couple reasons. What’s another?”

“Another is he just wants to bury it, put it away. This isn’t relevant to his life now-that’s what he tells himself. He’s wrong, it’s always part of the whole, but it’s private. It’s one thing he doesn’t want chewed over by a lip-smacking public.”

Peabody slid her gaze toward Eve, but there was nothing to read on her lieutenant’s face. “So he could just be an abuse survivor who’s made a successful life for himself despite all the trauma and the violence.”

“You’re feeling sorry for him.”

“Yeah, maybe. Not enough to spring for a disc,” she added with a chuckle. “But maybe some. He didn’t ask to be hurt, and by the one person who should have been looking out for him most of all. I don’t know what it’s like to have a parent turn on you like that. Mine… well, you’ve met mine. My mom, she can pin your ears back with a look, but she’d never have hurt any of us. And my parents may be nonviolent New Agers, but you can believe they’d have ripped into anybody who tried to hurt us. That’s what I know,” Peabody added. “But it’s not all I know, because I’ve seen the other side. Handling double Ds before I transferred to you. Just being on the streets in uniform. And what I’ve worked on since I’ve been in Homicide.”

“Nothing wipes the All-American family image out of a cop’s head faster than their first couple of domestic disturbances.”

“One of the best reasons to be off patrol,” Peabody agreed, with feeling. “What I’m saying is I’ve seen what it can be like, and it’s toughest on the kids.”

“Everything’s always toughest on the kids. Some get over it, under it, through it. Others don’t. And another theory on Smith is he feeds on the female adulation in one part of his life-and revels in it. Meanwhile he considers them whores and bitches-and he kills them in the most vicious and theatrical way he can devise.”

“I guess that’s a pretty decent theory.”

“Either way, he’s not going to like me throwing his background up in his face. So be ready.”

Taking Eve at her word, Peabody rested a hand on her stu

They were admitted by the same woman, and walked into the same music. At least Eve thought it was the same. How could you tell, she wondered, when everything the guy sang had the same sugar rush to it?

Before they could be led into the room with floor cushions and the fluffy white kitten, Eve laid a hand on the woman’s arm. “Any place in here have actual chairs?”

Li’s mouth turned down in disapproval, but she nodded. “Of course. Come this way, please.”

She showed them into a room with wide, deep chairs done in pale gold, accented with tables of clear glass. On one table was a small fountain where blue water burbled over smooth white rocks. Another held a white box filled with white sand where some linear patterns had been drawn with, Eve assumed, the little rake that lay beside it.

The curtains were closed, but when they entered the room the rim of the tables illuminated.

“Please be comfortable.” Li gestured to the chairs. “Carmichael will be with you in just a moment.”

Ignoring her, Eve studied a mood screen. Soft pastels dripped down in this one, melting from pinks into blues into golds into pinks again. Smith’s voice crooned in the background.

“I already feel queasy,” Eve muttered. “I should’ve pressed to have him come into Central, where things are normal.”

“I heard you dislocated some mope’s jaw yesterday.” Peabody kept her face sober. “Some people don’t consider that actually normal in the day-to-day.”

“Some people don’t know diddly.” She turned back as Smith made his entrance.

“How nice to see you both again.” He made a flowing movement with his arms to indicate chairs. It had the wide sleeves of his shirt fluttering. “We’re having something cool and citrus. I hope you’ll enjoy it.”

He arranged himself in a chair as one of his staff placed a tray on a long glass table. “I’m told you’ve been trying to get in touch,” he continued as he poured liquid from pitcher to glasses. “I can’t imagine why, but must apologize for being unavailable.”

“Your rep called my commander,” Eve said. “So I imagine you have some idea.”

“Another apology forthcoming.” He picked up one of the glasses, held it in both of his handsome hands. “My agent is overprotective, which, naturally, is his job. Just the idea that the media could get wind that I’d spoken to you regarding such a terrible matter worries him. I told him I trusted you to be absolutely discreet, but…” He shrugged elegantly, sipped.