“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 tranquility.”

“Peace and tranquility.” 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 tranquility 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.

Chapter14

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.OfficerPeabody, did I threatenMr.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.”

Smithnodded curtly, and turned his head away fromPeabody 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 askedEve.

“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. I told you, I’m not interested in publicity.”

“Everyone is,” he retorted.

“Think what you like, it doesn’t change why I’m here. Your mother was an LC. She was abusive to you.”

“Yes.”

“You support her, financially.”

“As long as she’s taken care of, she stays away, and out of my life. She’s smart enough to know that coming forward, selling her story, might net her some quick money, but it would kill the golden goose. If my income suffers, so does hers. I explained this to her, very carefully, before the first payment was made.”

“Your relationship with your mother is adversarial.”

“We don’t have a relationship. I prefer not to think of the connection. It unbalances my chi.”

“JacieWootonwas an LC.”

“Who?”

“Wooton. The woman who was murdered inChinatown.”

“It has nothing to do with me.” More composed now, he waved it all away with his uninjured hand. “I also choose not to dwell on the darker shades of the world.”

“A second woman was murdered on Sunday. The mother of a grown son.”

He flashed her a look now, and there was a hint of fear in it. “That doesn’t have anything to do with me, either. I survived violence. I don’t perpetuate it.”

“Victims of abuse often become abusive. Children who were beaten often become violent adults. Sometimes a killer is born, sometimes he is made. A woman hurt you, a woman who had control over you, authority over you. She hurt you for years when you were helpless to stop her. How do you make her pay for that pain, for that humiliation, for all the years you lived in fear?”

“I don’t! She’ll never pay. Her type never pays. She wins, again and again. Every time I send her money, she wins again.” Tears tracked down his cheeks now. “She wins because you’re standing there pushing her into my head again. My life is not an illusion because I made it. I created it. I won’t let you come into it and try to shatter it, to smear it.”

Empathy rolled into her stomach. His words, the passion behind them, could have been her own. “You have a home here, and one in London.”

“Yes, yes, yes! What of it?” He jerked his hand, and glanced down at the tug of Peabody’s. When his gaze landed on the bloody cloth, his face went white as bone.

“Go away. Can’t you go away?”

“Tell me where you were Sunday morning.”

“I don’t know. How can I remember everything? I have people to take care of me. I’m entitled to be taken care of. I give pleasure. I take pleasure. I deserve it.”

“Sunday morning, Carmichael, between eight and noon.”

“Here. Right here. Sleeping, meditating, detoxifying. I can’t live with stress. I need my quiet times.”

“Were you alone?”

“I’m never alone. She’s in every closet, under every bed, waiting in the next room to strike out. I lock her away, but it doesn’t mean she isn’t waiting.”

She hurt, looking at him. Understanding the words, she hurt. “Did you leave the house on Sunday morning?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Did you know Lois Gregg?”

“I know so many people. So many women. They love me. Women love me because I’m perfect. Because I don’t threaten them. Because they don’t know that I know what they are under it all.”

“Did you kill Lois Gregg?”

“I have nothing more to say to you. I’m going to call my attorneys now. I want you to leave my home. Li!” He put his injured hand behind his back as he rose, swaying a little. He stepped carefully to the side, away from the blood-smeared towel.

“Li, make them go away,” he ordered, as she hurried into the room again. “Make them leave. I have to lie down now. I don’t feel well. I need my quiet room.”