Imitation in Death

“I take him down, give him any wiggle room in the courts and he gets off, he’ll kill someone else down the road. He won’t stop until he’s stopped. Not only because he enjoys it, he needs it, but because he’s been working toward this for a long, long time. If I screw this up, all I do is put a hitch in his stride. Once he gets his rhythm back, whoever he kills is on me. I can’t live with that.”

“All right. I understand that. But, Eve, look at me now, promise me that if he kills someone else before you’re able to stop him, you won’t feel the same way.”

She did look at him. “I wish I could,” was all she said.

– -«»--«»--«»--

Detective Sloan was a young, eager beaver who’d caught the case with his older, more experienced, and less interested partner. The partner had since retired, and Sloan was partnered with a female counterpart who’d come along for the ride for the meet with Eve.

“It was the first homicide where I was primary,” Sloan told Eve over chilled juices in a health bar. New L.A.’s version, she supposed, of the cop haunt.

The place was bright and cool, done in crisp colors and boasting a cheery wait staff who were bouncy on their feet.

Eve thanked God she lived and worked on the other coast, where waiters were appropriately surly and never felt obliged to offer you something called Pineapple-Papaya Phizz as the special of the day.

“Trent gave it to me as a training exercise,” he added.

“He gave it to you so he didn’t have to lift his fat ass off his desk chair,” the partner put in.

Sloan gri

“You’ve got a hot one back in New York with a similar MO.” The new partner’s name was Baker, and both she and Sloan were attractive, healthy specimens with sun-bleached hair. They looked more like a couple of professional surfers than cops.

Unless, Eve mused, you looked at the eyes.

“We, ah, did a little research after you contacted me,” Sloan explained. “Get a better handle on what you were looking for, and why.”

“Good, saves me time explaining myself. You could reach out on this and let me have a copy of your case files, and walk me through the steps of your investigation.”

“I can do that, and I’d like quid pro quo. My first case as primary,” Sloan added. “I’d sure like to close it.”

“We’d like to close it,” Baker corrected. “Trent cashed it on his twenty-five, plans to spend the rest of his life fishing. He’s not in this.”

“Fair enough,” Eve said.

This time when she was finished, she let Roarke pick her up. To her mind, any cops who weren’t embarrassed to be seen drinking papaya juice couldn’t blink at a fellow officer getting into a sleek little convertible. She stashed her growing bag of notes and discs behind her seat.

“I want to run by the scene, take a look at the setup.”

“We can do that.”

She gave him the address, waited until he’d programmed it into the onboard computer. “So, did you buy the Dodgers?”

“I’m afraid not, but you have only to ask.”

She leaned her head back, let her thoughts circle while he drove.

“Can’t figure out why anybody lives out here,” she said. “Just because they’ve had the big one doesn’t mean there’s not another big one just waiting to flatten them.”

“Nice breeze though,” Roarke commented. “And they’ve certainly battled back the smog and noise pollution.”

“Whole place feels like a vid, you know? Or a VR program. Too much peachy, pinky, white. Too many healthy bodies with perfect smiling faces on top of them. Creeps me.”

“And I just don’t think you ought to have palm trees waving around in the middle of a city. It’s just not right.”

“This should please you then. The building you want appears to be suitably shabby and unkempt, and the locals seem to be satisfactorily shady.”

She sat up, stifled a yawn, and looked around.

Only about half the streetlights were working, and the building itself was dead-dark. Some of the windows were riot-barred, others boarded. Several people skulked and slithered around in the shadows, and in one she spotted an illegals deal winding up.

“This is more like it.” Cheered, she stepped out of the car. “This thing got full security?”

“It’s loaded.” He put the top up, engaged locks and deflectors.

“Her flop was on the third floor. Might as well poke around since we’re here.”

“It’s always a pleasure to poke around in a condemned building where someone might stab, bludgeon, or blast us at any moment.”

“You’ve got your kind of fun, I’ve got mine.” She sca

The chemi-head in the long black jacket rocked to the balls of his feet.

“If I have to chase you, it’s going to piss me off,” Eve warned. “Then I’ll probably slip so that my foot ends up planted in your balls. Just got a question. You got the answer, it’s worth ten.”

“Don’t know nothing.”

“Then you won’t make the ten. How long you flopped around here?”

“While. Not bothering nobody.”

“Were you around when Susie Ma

“Shit. I don’t kill nobody. I don’t know nobody. Prolly the men in white done it.”

“What men in white?”

“Shit, you know. The guys from under the world. Turn themselves into rats when they want, then kill people in their sleep. Cops know. Some prolly be cops.”

“Right. Those men in white. Blow,” she told him, and started into the building.

“Where my ten?”

“Wrong answers.”

She didn’t get any right ones on her way to the third floor. Ma

Like the chemi-head outside, nobody she managed to roust inside had seen anything, knew anything, done anything.

“Wasting our time,” she said at length. “This isn’t my turf. I don’t know who to push. And if I did, I don’t know what help it would be. Living like this, people think you’ve given up. But Ma

Roarke turned her so that she faced him in the hot, filthy room. “Lieutenant, you’re tired.”

“I’m okay.”

When he simply stroked her cheek, she closed her eyes a moment. “Yeah, I’m tired. I know about places like this. A couple of times, when he ran thin, we’d flop in places like this. Hell, it might’ve been here for all I know. I don’t have all of it back.”

“You need to shut down for a bit.”

“I’ll catch some sleep in the shuttle. No point in staying out here. I probably think better in New York anyway.”

“Let’s go home then.”

“I guess I reneged on the out-of-town nookie.”

“I’ll put it on your account.”

– -«»--«»--«»--

She dozed in the shuttle as it flew over the country, and dreamed of rats who become men dressed in white. Of a man without a face who strangled her with a long white scarf, and tied it with a pretty bow under her chin.