In Death 17 - Imitation in Death

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 him-, self, 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, Caimichael.. "
     
     
"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. 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."
     
     
"Jacie Wooton was an LC."
     
     
"Who's'
     
     
"Wooton. The woman who was murdered in Chinatown."
     
     
"It has nothing to do with me." More composed now, he waved it all away with his uninjured hand. "I also