In Death 17 - Imitation in Death

thought again. Deliberately, not his voice. He assumes and mimics and becomes. Who did he become when he.wrote the notes?
     
     
Her desk 'link signaled an incoming, and wanting to avoid reporters she waited for the transmission location to flash on.
     
     
When she read Feeney, Captain Ryan, EDD, she answered.
     
     
"You work fast," she said.
     
     
"Kid, I'm a frigging rocket. Got a pop might be your guy. Case is cold. Vic was a fifty-three year-old female. Schoolteacher. Found strangled in her apartment by a sister. Cooked for a few days first. Raped with a piece of statuary, which he also used to bash -her over the head. Strangled with a pair of those panty hose you people wear. Tied in a bow under the chin."
     
     
"Bingo. How cold and where?"
     
     
"Went down June of last year, Boston. I'll send you all the particulars.' No note with this one, and he smashed her head and face pretty good with the statue. ME report says she was already on the way out when he strangled her."
     
     
"Practice makes perfect."
     
     
"Could be. I got another with enough clicks to make me wonder. Six months before Boston, out in New L.A. Fiftysix-year-old vic. This one was a squatter though, and that doesn't fit. But somebody did her in her flop, raped her with a ball bat, smashed her up with it before he strangled her with her own scarf. Got a bow there, too, which is what pulled it."
     
     
"Follows, doesn't it? A squatter's an easy hit. Not tough to get to, and nobody cares too muck. It'd be a good place to perfect your technique."
     
     
"My thinking. I'll send these to you. Haven't got any hits on the mutilation. Plenty of slash and gash in the good old U.S. of A., but nothing that hums along with your guy. I'm widening to international.".
     
     
"Thanks, Feeney. You got some vacation time coming, don't you?"
     
     
His mournful face drooped. "Wife's nagging my ass red about putting in for a week. Frigging holiday brochures all over the damn house. Thinks we should rent some big beach house or some shit, take the whole damn family. Kids, grandkids."
     
     
"How about Bimini?"
     
     
"Who?"
     
     
"Where, Feeney."
     
     
"Oh. Bimini. What about it?"
     
     
"Roarke's got a place there, big house, staffed. Beach, waterfall, blah blab. I can clear it with him, have your whole damn family fly down on one of his transports: Interested?"
     
     
"Jesus Christ, I go home and tell the wife we're taking the whole herd to Bimini for a week, she'll keel over. Shit, yeah, I'm interested, but we don't have to play payback."
     
     
"I'm not playing. Place is just sitting there. He flipped a deal to Peabody and McNab awhile back, so I figure I can flip one to you. Especially since I'm going to ask you to keep an eye on things when I do some out-of-town work."

 
     
"Sounds like I'm getting the shiny end of the deal. Data coming through."
     
     
She read it through, and felt that quick little buzz in the blood. A cop buzz. She was looking att his work. Practice strokes. Not that sort of thing that merited a signature, she thought, but a building of style and skill he preferred not to add to his credits.
     
     
He'd have been sloppier, less cautious. There'd have been mistakes, and though the trail was cold, she might still find a shadow of them.
     
     
She took the time to organize the data before taking it to Whitney for her pitch.
     
     
With her commander's go-ahead under her belt, she made tracks back to Homicide, already formulating her next pitch in her head. She breezed through the bull pen, giving Baxter a with-me signal when he called out her name.
     
     
"So, you get a look at the guy she's boinking on the side?"
     
     
"She's not boinking a guy on the side."
     
     
The rush Eve was still riding on drained. "Gotta be. Damn. it, Baxter, she had big, secret affair written all over her. I could almost smell the sex."
     
     
"Please, you're giving me a woody. I'm just going to have some of your coffee and calm myself down."
     
     
"If you couldn't keep a tail on her-"
     
     
"I.kept a tail on her." He ordered up an enormous mug, two sugars, splash of cream. Taking it, he leaned back against her filing cabinet to enjoy the first jolt. "Goddamn, this is coffee. Speaking of tails, which you were, the blonde had a superior one."
     
     
"Take your woody and your idiot brain out of my office. She's screwing somebody on the side."
     
     
"Did I say she wasn't?" He smiled, sipped again, and wiggled his eyebrows at