The In Death Collection Books 16-20 - J. D. Robb [239]
“I’m not looking for publicity, I’m looking for a murderer.”
“You won’t find one here. This is a place of peace and tranquillity.”
“Peace and tranquillity.” Eve nodded, watching his face. “I’d guess that sort of thing’s important to you.”
“Vital, as it should be to everyone. The world is a canvas, and on it is painted great beauty. All we have to do is look.”
“Peace and tranquillity and beauty are more vital to someone who grew up without them. To a man who was systematically and regularly abused as a child. Battered and beaten. Do you pay your mother to keep quiet about it, or just to keep her away?”
The glass in Smith’s hand shattered, and a thin line of blood dripped down his palm.
Chapter 14
Shards of glass hitting the floor had, in Eve’s opinion, a more interesting musical note than the continued coo of Smith’s recorded voice.
She doubted any of his fans would recognize him now, with all the negative energy twisting his face. His bloody hand still clenched the shattered drinking glass.
She could hear his labored breaths before he sprang to his feet. She got to her own, slowly, and prepared to deflect any assault.
But he simply threw his head back, like a great dog about to bay, and howled out for Li.
She came on the run, bare feet slapping the floor and filmy robes flapping the air.
“Oh, Carmichael! Oh, you poor thing. You’re bleeding. Should I call the doctor? Should I call an ambulance?” She patted her own cheeks in rapid tat-tats.
While tears welled in his eyes, he held out his bleeding hand. “Do something.”
“Jesus.” Eve stepped forward, grabbed his injured hand, twisted it over to take a look at the cut. “Get a towel, some water, antiseptic, bandages. It’s not deep enough to worry the MTs.”
“But his hands, his beautiful hands. Carmichael is an artist.”
“Yeah, well, he’s an artist with a cut across his palm. No puncture. Peabody? Got a handkerchief?”
“Right here, Lieutenant.”
Taking it, Eve wrapped the cut while Li raced off, probably to call up a cosmetic surgeon.
“Sit down, Carmichael. You’re barely scratched.”
“You have no right, no right to come into my home and upset me this way. No right, no decency. You can’t come here, upset the balance. Threaten me.”
“I don’t recall threatening you, and I’ve got a pretty good memory for that kind of thing. Officer Peabody, did I threaten Mr. Smith?”
“No, sir, you did not.”
“You think because I live an ordered and privileged life I don’t know the darker corners.” His lips curled now, and he held his injured hand to his heart in a loose fist. “You want to extort money from me, payment to keep quiet about matters that are none of your business. Women like you always want to be paid.”
“Women like me?”
“You think you’re better than men. You use your wiles or your sex to control them, to suck them dry. You’re nothing but animals. Bitches and cunts. You deserve to . . .”
“Deserve to what?” Eve prompted when he stopped himself, when she watched the war for composure rage over his face. “To suffer, to die, to pay?”
“You won’t put words in my mouth.” He collapsed in the chair again, holding his hand by the wrist and rocking as if for comfort.
Li rushed back in carrying a fluffy white towel, a bottle of water, and what looked to be enough bandage to wrap an entire squadron after a bloody battle.
“Let my aide take care of it,” Eve told him. “She’s just going to mess it up, and hurt you considerably while she’s at it.”
Smith nodded curtly, and turned his head away from Peabody and the blood.
“Li, please go out now. Close the door.”
“But, Carmichael . . .”
“I want you to go.”
She blinked at the slap in his voice and fled.
“How did you learn about . . . her?” he asked Eve.
“It’s my job to learn about things.”
“It could ruin me, you know. My audience doesn’t want to know about that sort of . . . They don’t want the unseemly, the unattractive. They come to me for beauty, for romantic fantasy, not for the ugliness of reality.”
“I’m not interested in your audience or in making any information public, until and unless it applies to my case.