In Death 16 - Portrait in Death

emptied, of maxibuses belching. Of the air-trams and buses beginning their early run across the sick white sky.
     
     
The dog walkers came out with their braces of canines, and the joggers who preferred the sidewalks to the parks or the health clubs.
     
     
Glide-carts opened for business, and pumped out their greasy steam.
     
     
She watched the dead wagon pull away with its burden of a young man with long, graceful limbs and a minute hole in his heart.
     
     
And she watched the Channel 75 van pull up.
     
     
"I've got the next of kin, Lieutenant." Peabody stepped up beside her, and with Eve watched Nadine step out of the van. "And when I checked I learned that the victim's parents have already reported him missing."
     
     
And she would have to tell them he'd been found.
     
     
"Let me deal with this," she said and crossed to Nadine.
     
     
"I'd have contacted you," Nadine began, "but the station got the report of the body, and that cops were on scene. I had to figure one of those cops was you."
     
     
"Because?"
     
     
"Because I got another note, and more pictures. It came through my station unit at six a.m. He's a young man, Asian mix. Very slim, very attractive. Another student, I'd have to say, as the candid shot puts him at Juilliard. I recognized it. Who the hell is killing these kids, Dallas?"
     
     
Eve shook her head. "I'll give you a stand-up, here and now, Nadine. Then I'm going to ask you to send the crew away, give me the transmission, then come into Central. I have a stop to make, but I'll be in as soon as I can. I'm going to ask you not to talk to anyone about what you received this morning. I'll give you everything I can."
     
     
"Let's set it up." She signalled her crew. "Dallas, I'll do anything I can to help you stop him. But that doesn't mean I don't want the entire story, exclusive, once you have."
     
     
"I'll give you what I can when I can." A headache was waking up behind her eyes. "Let's get this done," she added with a glance at the time. "I'm on the clock."
     
     
***
     
     
Eve sat in the Sulu living area of their gracious uptown home at twenty after seven on a sticky summer morning, and watched two people dissolve under the shock of losing their only child.
     
     
"There could be a mistake." Lily Sulu, a tall, slender woman who'd passed her build onto her son, sat clasping her husband's hand. "Kenby hasn't come home, but there could be a mistake. He's only nineteen, you see. He's very smart, and very strong. There could be a mistake."
     
     
"I'm very sorry, Mrs. Sulu. There is no mistake. Your son was positively identified."
     
     
"But he's only nineteen."
     
     
"Lily." Chang Sulu's eyes were dark, as his son's had been dark. They glistened now as he stared at Eve, as tears slid down his cheeks. "How could this have happened to our son? Who would do this to our son? He harmed no one."
     
     
"I don't have the answers for you, but I will have. I need you to help me get those answers. When was the last time you saw Kenby?"
     
     
"Yesterday, in the morning. We had breakfast." Chang turned his head, and the look he sent his wife ripped at Eve's heart. "We had breakfast together, and you said: 'Finish your juice, Kenby. It's good for you.'"
     
     
Lily's face seemed to break apart. As tears flooded it, her body shook, and the sounds she made were more whimpers than wails.
     
     
"Is there someone I can call for you?" Eve asked.
     
     
"No. No." Chang held his wife and rocked, and now his gaze clung to Eve's face. "We had breakfast together," he repeated. "And he went to class. Early class. He is a dancer, like his mother. He left before seven. I left for work perhaps an hour later. I am an engineer with the Teckron firm. Lily is now a choreographer and is working on a play. She left home at the same time as myself."
     
     
"Where would Kenby go after his early class?"
     
     
"More classes. He had a full schedule at Juilliard. He would be there until five, then have some dinner before he went to work. He worked three nights a week at the Metropolitan Opera House, as an usher. We expected him home by midnight, perhaps twelve-thirty. We didn't worry. He's responsible. We went to bed. But Lily woke in the night, and the light we leave on for him was still lit. She checked, and when she saw he hadn't come home, woke me. We called his friends first, then we called the police."
     
     
"I'd like to have the name and addresses of his friends, his teachers, the people