Concealed in Death

  She sat back, hissed. “I’ve got nothing.”

  “You know that’s not true, you’re just disappointed you couldn’t set this one’s dick on fire. You’ve eliminated, or certainly bumped down several people on your suspect list. And more, you have the names of two girls.”

  “I didn’t have a hell of a lot to do with that part.”

  “Is that it?” He glanced at her as he turned through the gates that opened to home.

  “I don’t know.” She shoved her fingers through her hair. “It’s not going to be,” she said. “It’s just not going to be. I’m not a scientist. I can’t look at bones and figure out who they were. It’s stupid to resent getting that data from another source. An expert.”

  “And you’re not stupid, even shallowly and insincerely.”

  That made her laugh a little. “I’m not stupid, and those girls deserve having every resource I can tap on this.”

  She looked at the house, the wonderful sweep of it, the towers and turrets, the countless windows. And thought of young girls—herself among them—who lived or had lived in cramped dorms, shared dingy bathrooms, who yearned for freedom and dreamed of somehow making their own.

  Too many never made it.

  “Too many never made it,” she said out loud.

  “Let me tell you about one who did.”

  When he pulled to a stop, she looked over at him. “What? Who?”

  “Leah Craine. Leah Lorenzo now. She married nineteen months ago—a firefighter with a large Italian family. They’re expecting their first child in the spring. She’s a teacher—elementary school level. They live in Queens.”

  “You found her while I was dealing with the moron.”

  “I did. She made it, and from all appearances, has built a solid and happy life. Will you interview her?”

  She sat for a moment, just sat. “If I have to. Otherwise I’d like to leave her alone. But . . . you might send her information to Seraphim Brigham.”

  “I already did.”

  “Okay.” He’d waited, she realized, waited to tell her the good until after she’d finished her frustrated rant. Points for him. Big ones.

  “Are you going to show me your plans for that dump you bought? How you’re going to turn it around?”

  “I can, of course.”

  When they got out of the car, he took her hand. “I asked myself today what might have happened if I hadn’t bought that place. Those girls might have been there years yet. Then I thought, no, not at all. It was meant to be now, and me, and you.”

  “You’re awfully damn Irish sometimes.”

  “Meant to be,” he said with a shrug. “We know those children, and aren’t so far from being them once. So we’ll neither of us stop until we find who they are, what happened to them, and who took the rest of their lives from them.”

  “Whoever did it walked away from it for fifteen years.”

  “And now?”

  “We’re going to take the rest of his life away from him by putting him in a cage.”

  She stepped inside where Summerset, the scarecrow in a black suit, and their fat cat, Galahad, waited.

  She’d walked out of the big, airy foyer that morning. Now she walked into Christmas. The scent of pine and cinnamon, the pretty dazzle of little lights roping up the banister, the clever arrangement of those big plants—what were they?—poinsettias into a pretty white tree.

  And the twinkle, now that she paid attention, from the front parlor where a quick peek showed her the massive tree stood fully dressed in lights and sparkle.

  “Where are the elves?”

  “Gone for the day, I expect,” Roarke told her. “They’ll be back tomorrow to do the exterior.”

  “You might have seen some of them if you’d arrived home in anywhere near a timely fashion.”

  Eve gave Summerset a stony stare. “We’ve been out sledding and drinking brandy and discussing what not to get you for Christmas. Nothing but fun for us.”

  “Yet all that fun has done little to improve your mood or manner.”

  “Ah, the warmth of homecomings.” Roarke shook his head, started to shrug out of his coat as the cat pranced over to rub against his legs and Eve’s. “Always such a pleasure.”

  “I didn’t start—” Eve broke off, yanked out her signaling ’link. “They have another face,” she said, dashing up the stairs as she called for the image.

  “Twelve, the media said.”

  Roarke nodded at Summerset. “Yes. No more than children.”

  “There are ugly pieces to the puzzle of the world.”

  “She’ll find them, put them where they belong.”

  “I’ve no doubt. It’s a cold night. There’s beef bourguignonne on the menu. Some red meat would do both of you more good than the pizza she’ll think of first.”

  “I’ll see to it. Thanks.”

  When he got to Eve’s office Roarke found she already had the reconstruction image on screen.

  Younger, he thought. This girl seemed younger than the other two.

  “I’m going to run her against the list I have from Higher Power. If she was registered there, it’ll be quicker than a broad Missing Persons search.”

  “Go ahead. I can set up your board for you. I know how you prefer it,” he said before she could object.

  “Okay, thanks. It’ll save time.”

  He went to work as did she. Dinner, he thought, would wait a bit longer.

  They’d put the little tree by her window, he noted. The one he’d ordered as it was simple and traditional, and his wife often thought herself both. Though she was far from either on most levels.

  A simple, traditional woman wouldn’t spend her evening searching for the names of dead girls. She wouldn’t work herself to exhaustion—body, mind, heart—to find who’d killed them.

  As difficult, as frustrating, as painful as it sometimes was, he thanked God he hadn’t fallen for a simple, traditional woman.

  “I’ve got her.”

  He stopped what he was doing to look at the wall screen. She’d split it, putting the images of the reconstruction and the ID photo of a minor female side by side.

  “Yes, you found her. Only twelve years old?”

  “That’s according to her ID. I’m checking background and Missing Persons.”

  Lupa Dison, he read. It listed a New York address several blocks north of the building where she’d been found, and her guardian as her aunt, Rosetta Vega.

  Tragic eyes, he thought. How did someone so young earn such tragic eyes?

  “Missing Persons filed by the aunt. It’s looking like her parents were both killed in an accident, the mother’s sister—the only living relative in the States—named as guardian.

  “A scatter of maternal relatives in Mexico.”

  As she continued to scan data, Roarke went to the wall unit for a bottle of wine.

  “Okay, okay, the aunt worked as a maid for the Faremont Hotel, West Side. She was mugged on the way home from work, badly beaten, sliced up some, too. Had to spend a few weeks in the hospital and in rehab. She requested the kid be registered at The Sanctuary; she knew someone who’d had a kid in there. Court granted the temporary stay. She goes in, comes out, goes back home. And three weeks later, goes missing. Missing on September seventeenth. Five days after Linh Penbroke.”

  “Lured back.”

  “Could be. She went missing fifteen days after The Sanctuary changed locations. The place was empty. She’d never been in any trouble, neither had the aunt. Running the aunt for current data now.”

  “She wasn’t a runaway,” Roarke said. “Troubled, yes, but by the loss of her parents.” There, he thought, the reason for the tragic eyes.

  “The aunt’s married. Ten years to a Juan Delagio. She’s now head housekeeper, day shift, at the Antoine Hotel, tony East
Side employment now. She’s on the East Side, too, not an especially tony area, but a decent one.”

  “That’s one of mine—the hotel.”

  “Well, we couldn’t get around that for long.” Eve glanced up. “Do you know her?”

  “I don’t, but I can get a full employment record from the manager.”

  “Not yet anyway. She and Juan have three kids. He’s on the job, out of the two-two-six.” She swung to her ’link, then frowned at the glass of wine Roarke set in front of her.

  “I’ll see about dinner,” he said.

  “But I—”

  “We’ll eat, and we’ll sort through all this while we do.”

  “Fine, okay. Fine. This is Lieutenant Dallas out of Central,” she began as Roarke walked back down to the kitchen and the AutoChef.

  When he came back in she was talking to someone—he assumed whoever had caught the Missing Persons case—taking notes.

  He left her to it, used the little table to set down the meal.

  “Appreciate it,” she said. “And yeah, I’ll keep you in the loop on her.”

  She clicked off, frowned at the wine again. But this time she picked it up, sampled.

  “I caught the detective who headed the investigation. She’s got a solid memory. She said she remembered this one especially as her daughter was the same age at the time.”

  “Come eat, and tell me.”

  She thought how much easier a slice of pizza would’ve been since she could’ve kept working while she chowed it down. But still, reviewing what she had with him couldn’t be considered a waste of time.

  She went over, sat across from him. “Another reason she remembers is she and the aunt keep in touch. At least once a year one of them contacts the other, just to touch base. What I get is the kid was pretty shattered when her parents were killed, but it helped some she was tight with the aunt. They got counseling, and the kid seemed to be coming along.”

  “It must be crushing, even with a close family member able and willing to care for you, to lose both parents that way.”

  “Had to go to a new school, too, as the aunt didn’t have enough money to move and keep her where she’d been. But according to the aunt, and the detective believed her, still does, the kid was doing better. Then about a week or so before she went missing, she started coming home late from school. The aunt had to work, but she had a neighbor keep an eye out for Lupa, and she started coming in just before her aunt was due home.

  “This is really good,” she said after another bite.

  “Thanks. I slaved over the AutoChef for minutes.”

  Grinning, she ate some more. “When the aunt called her on it, the kid claimed she was just hanging with her new friends, doing her homework with them. But she was evasive, and the aunt didn’t push. Felt she needed some room. Then one day she didn’t come home at all.”

  “From all you said, she doesn’t sound like a runaway.”

  “I don’t think she ran away. I think she was lured or enticed into that building, killed there. I think, most likely, those few days before she poofed, she met the killer, or someone who connected her to him. She—the kid—started asking a lot of God questions.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You know, how come God this, or why doesn’t God that. They’re pretty serious Catholics, according to the primary, but during the investigation, they found she’d been reading about alternative religions and—what would you call them? Philosophies? Using the house comp, as they could only afford the one, late at night after the aunt was in bed.”

  “It doesn’t seem unusual behavior for a young girl, especially one who’d suffered a major loss.”

  “No, but I think about that higher power stuff, and I wonder. It’s another possible connection to HPCCY.”

  She gestured with her spoon, then used it to dig back into the stew. “Say the kid was meeting somebody from The Sanctuary—resident or staff. Someone she knew from her time there, had a connection with. They’ve never been able to track down where she spent that time, after school, before getting home. Could be someone used that spiritual angle to hook her. Why did God do such a shitty thing? Here are some answers.”

  “She might’ve walked by the building going to school,” Roarke suggested.

  “She’s the second vic who was in residence there. It’s not going to be coincidence, it’s not going to be happenstance. She wasn’t doing illegals, no sign of that anywhere.”

  “A good girl,” Roarke put in, “with hard and sorrowful circumstances.”

  “Yeah. She went to school every day, and her grades were solid. She got counseling, both separately and with the aunt, and nobody saw her as runaway material. She and the aunt hadn’t fought. Added to all that, she took nothing with her. She had school stuff, the clothes on her back. A kid doesn’t take off without hauling some of her stuff.”

  No, Eve thought, no. A kid does what Linh did, packs up some of her things.

  “She had a little money saved—just a little bit from doing chores or errands, that kind of thing. She didn’t take it either. Nobody looked at this as a runaway once they got the ball rolling. And nobody came forward claiming to have seen anybody lurking around. I’m getting the case file, but my sense is this detective put in the time and effort, and maybe more than most would.”

  “But you have two of your victims in residence at The Sanctuary, at the same time.”

  She drank a little more wine as she considered.

  “Of the three we’ve ID’d, we have an experienced street kid, an impulse runner from a good family, and a kid from the working class who was, by all reports, well behaved and learning to cope with loss. What they have in common is age, size—and, in two, confirmed connection to the crime scene.”

  “From what you know, age and size will remain common traits.”

  “So it follows the other commonality will hold true for the twelve. It just reaffirms the killer connects to The Sanctuary, and likely HPCCY.”

  “Another resident?” Roarke suggested. “Have you considered this may have been done by another child?”

  “I’m running it around. An older kid. They took them, supposedly to eighteen, but they may have had a few that bumped over that.”

  “Letting it slide a bit,” Roarke agreed. “Maybe having those who hit the age limit but still had nothing do a bit of work around the place in exchange for room and board.”

  “They’d be the type to do that,” Eve agreed, thinking of her impression of the Joneses. “A boy. Girls that age might trust an older girl, but aren’t they pretty stupid about boys in those years?”

  “I’ve never been a teenaged girl, so I couldn’t say for certain. You were.”

  “Me? Hell, I was never stupid about boys. Until you anyway.”

  He laughed into his wine. “That’s so sweet.”

  “I had too much going on to get stupid about boys. I wouldn’t even have had sex except I was curious what was the big deal. Turned out, at least back then, it wasn’t all that big.”

  He laughed again, just enjoying her. “How old were you? I can’t believe I’ve never asked.”

  “I don’t know, about seventeen probably. Everybody else, or mostly, was banging like hammers, so I figured I should find out why. How about you?”

  He lifted his wine. “I believe I’ll take the Fifth, once again.”

  “Oh no, you don’t. It’s got to be in the marriage rules. I tell you, you tell me.”

  “Rules are so . . . confining, but all right then. About fourteen. The Dublin streets and alleys were colorful, we could say.”

  “I bet. Wait.” She lifted a finger. “Is that accounting for you finding out you’re a year younger than you thought?”

  She watched his face go blank a moment—a rare event. “Ah well. Ha.” He rose, began gathering the dishes.

  “T
hirteen? Seriously?”

  “In my circumstances, it was grow up fast or pay the price. In any case, darling, think of all the practice I had before we met.”

  She angled her head. “You really want me to think about that?”

  “Maybe not. Instead consider you’re the only one I want to be with for all the rest of my life.” He leaned over, kissed her knuckles.

  “Good save.”

  “It was indeed, and also pure truth. I’ll deal with these dishes so you can get back to it.”

  “Appreciate it.”

  She looked over at the board he’d begun. Yeah, he knew her system. She had another face to add now, and rose to add Lupa Dison to the others. She added the aunt, Rosetta Vega Delagio, as a connector, the primary investigator’s data, the time line—or what she had of it.

  Then began, systematically, adding the staff of The Sanctuary.

  “That’s considerable,” Roarke said when he joined her.

  “They all need to be run. Peabody should have started on it.” She shot him a glance. “Do you have stuff?”

  “This and that, nothing pressing.”

  Which likely meant more this and a whole bunch more of that than most people handled in a week.

  “If you’ve got time, and feel like it, you could contact her, see how far she’s gotten.”

  “And take a few off her hands?”

  “You probably shouldn’t, technically, but it would save time.”

  “And I do love poking in other people’s business. I’ve time to do a bit of it.”

  “I really want to go through the list of residents who fit the pattern. I can eliminate any I find who’re alive and well, or on record as deceased.”

  “And get a clearer idea who might be among the remaining nine.” He touched a finger to Lupa’s photo. The sad eyes. “Will you notify the aunt?”