Concealed in Death

  “Anyway,” she said, pushing that aside for now. “They’ll seal the place up until we clear it, and I can’t say how long that’ll take.”

  “It’s not a concern of mine. I want to know their names.”

  She nodded, understanding. “So do I. We’ll find them, and we’ll find out what happened to them. And we’ll find who did it to them.”

  “You’re the expert.” He pressed a kiss to her forehead before she could evade, because he needed to. “I’ll see you at home.”

  She skirted around the hood of her car, slid in behind the wheel. And there let out one long breath. “Jesus Christ.”

  Beside her, Peabody let out one of her own. “I can’t get past them being kids. I know we have to, but I can’t get past the fact a dozen kids were wrapped up and dumped in there like garbage.”

  “You don’t have to get past it. You use it.” Eve pulled out, wove through traffic. “But I don’t think it was like garbage, not to the killer.”

  “What then?”

  “I don’t know, not yet. The way they were wrapped, the way he spread them out through the building, stacked some of them together. Does any of that mean something? We’ll bring Mira in on this,” she said, referring to New York Police and Security Department’s top profiler and shrink. “And we start working, straight off, with the data Roarke has on the building. We dog this DeWinter like hungry hounds.”

  “Did you see her boots?” Peabody’s dark eyes rolled like a woman in the throes of ecstasy. “They were like butter. And the dress? The cut, the material, and the really cute little buttons running all the way down the back?”

  “Who wears butter boots and cute little buttons to a crime scene?”

  “It all looked really good on her. And the coat was totally mag. Not mag like yours, a more girlie kind of mag.”

  “My coat’s serviceable, practical.”

  “And magic,” Peabody added as it was lined with sheer body armor. “But still. Plus I got from Dawson she’s like a bone genius. I think he’s got a crush on her, which I get because she looks amazing, but he says she can find more answers in a finger bone than a lot of lab rats can in a whole body.”

  “Let’s hope he’s right because we’ve got nothing but bones, a handful of cheap jewelry, and a building nobody apparently gave two shits about for years.”

  “Wall material,” Peabody added. “Lab rats may be able to date some of the gyp board, the studs. Maybe even the plastic.”

  “There’s that. Cheap,” Eve considered. “The plastic looked cheap to me. The kind you buy by the big-ass roll to toss over things you don’t want to get wet, or throw down on a floor when you’re painting or whatever, then just dump. Same with the wallboard. Not much of an investment, but decent enough work—carpentry work—so nobody poked at the walls before this.”

  “So the killer had some construction skills.”

  “Enough to construct walls nobody looked at and thought: What the hell is that doing there? That blended in. But why the hell hide bodies there? Why not find a better way to dispose of them? Ditch or hide the bodies—taking them out and burying them’s easier—but hide them because you don’t want them found. They might connect to you. But you’ve got to have easy access to the building, so that connects to you. Yet you keep the bodies there.”

  “To keep them close?”

  “Maybe you want to visit them.”

  “That’s just more sick.”

  “The world’s full of sick,” Eve said, and contemplated on just that as she drove into Central.

  She zipped into her slot in the garage. No IDs, no faces, no names—but that didn’t mean they didn’t dig in hard.

  “I’m going to start the book and board,” she said, striding to the elevator. “You take whatever data Roarke’s sent on the building itself, the history of it, get more.” She stepped into the elevator. “I want to know everything there is to know about its use: who used it, who owned it, worked in it, lived in it. Primarily post-Urbans, but not exclusively.”

  “I’m all over it.”

  “We take the probability DeWinter’s on-scene estimate’s close, and the time line that’s most likely—” She broke off to shift over when more people piled into the car. “We start at fifteen years, after the building was shut down. But we need to know who had a connection to it or interest in it prior, and after.”

  The next time the doors opened, two uniforms hauled in a very fragrant sidewalk sleeper. Eve opted out, Peabody in her wake, and headed for the glide up.

  “She seemed to know her stuff, and not just fashion-wise.”

  “We’re going to find out.” She hopped off the glide, continued to Homicide. “Everything, Peabody,” she repeated. And she’d do a little digging on Dr. Garnet DeWinter.

  She stepped into the bullpen and the clashing scents of really bad coffee, processed sugar, and industrial-strength cleaner. The smells of home.

  Detectives manned ’links and comps at their desks, uniforms did the same in their cubes. She noted the empty desks of Detective Baxter and his trainee, Officer Trueheart. Remembered after a quick mental search that they’d both be in court.

  She split off from Peabody, shrugging out of her coat as she made the short jog into her office. There, in her small space with its single narrow window, sat her AutoChef with the perk of real coffee, most excellent coffee, thanks to Roarke.

  She tossed her coat on her excuse of a visitor’s chair. The ass-numbing chair, plus coat, should discourage visitors. Then she programmed coffee, dropped down at her desk.

  She wrote her report first, copying her commander and Dr. Mira, adding a request for a consult to Mira’s copy.

  Then she tagged crime scene photos to her board. Twelve remains, she thought.

  Young girls, who if DeWinter’s gauge was accurate, would be adult women now, close to her own age. Women with jobs, careers, families, histories, lovers, friends.

  Who’d stolen all that from them? And why?

  “Computer, search and list any and all Missing Persons reports, New York area, for females between twelve and sixteen years. Subjects not found. Search parameters 2045 through 2050.”

  Acknowledge. Searching . . .

  That would take a while, she thought.

  And it took time to kill a dozen girls, barring group slaughter, mass poisoning, or the like. She didn’t see that here. A mass killing would have resulted, most logically, in a mass grave, not scattered hiding places.

  So one or two, possibly three at a time, with the added burden of concealment.

  A closed or abandoned building would afford the time, the privacy needed. Nail down the TODs, then find who had opportunity and access—and the necessary skills to build the walls.

  It grated a little, she could admit it, to depend on someone else to determine TOD—someone not within her usual team. But she studied the board, and reminded herself those girls, who would never have jobs, lovers, families, demanded she work with anyone who could provide answers.

  But that didn’t mean she shouldn’t find out just who that anyone was.

  She did a quick run on DeWinter.

  Age thirty-seven, single, no marriage, one offspring—female, age ten. No official cohab on record. Born Arlington, Virginia, both parents living, both long-term cohabs, both scientists. No siblings.

  The educations listing ran endlessly, and okay, Eve thought, were pretty damn impressive. She had doctorates in both physical and biological anthropology, both from Boston University of Medicine—where she sometimes served as a guest lecturer—master’s degrees in a handful of other related areas like forensic DNA, toxicology. She’d worked in a number of facilities, most recently The Foundry in East Washington where she’d headed a nine-person department of lab rats.

  Earned the price of her fancy coat and boots on the lecture circuit, Eve deduced, after scann
ing the list—and consulting on digs and projects all over the world. That list ran from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe.

  Arrested twice, Eve noted. Once at a protest rally against rain forest development, and once for . . . stealing a dog.

  Who stole a dog?

  Both times she pleaded guilty, paid a fine, and did the required community service.

  Interesting.

  She’d started to look more deeply into the criminal charges when Mira knocked on her doorjamb.

  “That was fast.” Automatically, Eve rose.

  “I was on an outside consult and read your report on the way in. I thought I’d come by before I went to my office.”

  “I appreciate it.”

  “Those are your victims.”

  Mira walked to the board.

  Eve didn’t think of Mira as a fashion plate. She thought of her as classy. The pale peach dress and matching jacket set off Mira’s sweep of sable hair, the soft blue eyes. The sparkle of little gold beads around her neck echoed in eardrops, and both the peach and gold merged in a swirling pattern on the shoes with their needle-thin heels.

  Eve could never quite figure out how some women managed to match and merge that way.

  “Twelve young girls,” Mira murmured.

  “We’re waiting for data to ID them.”

  “Yes. You’re working with Garnet DeWinter.”

  “Apparently.”

  “I know her a little. An interesting woman, and unquestionably brilliant.”

  “I keep hearing the second part. She stole a dog.”

  “What?” Mira’s eyebrows lifted in surprise, then knitted in curiosity. “Whose dog? Why?”

  “I don’t know. I just did a run on her. She’s got an arrest for stealing a dog.”

  “That’s . . . odd. In any case, her reputation in her field is exemplary. She’ll help you find out who they were. May I sit?”

  “Oh, yeah. Let me . . .” There were visitors and there were visitors. Eve scooped the coat off the chair, then gestured to her desk. “Take that one. This one’s brutal.”

  “I’m aware.” And because she was, Mira took the desk chair.

  “Do you want some of that tea of yours? Or coffee?”

  “No, thanks. I—oh, I love the sketch.”

  Rising again, Mira walked over to admire the sketch of Eve, in full kick-ass mode.

  “Yeah, it’s good. Ah, Nixie Swisher did it for a school project or assignment. Something.”

  Little Nixie, who’d survived, by chance, luck, fate, the brutal and bloody home invasion that had killed her entire family.

  “It’s wonderful. I didn’t realize she was so talented.”

  “I think she got an assist from Richard.”

  “Regardless, it’s excellent, and captures you. She’d be so pleased you put it in here.”

  “I told her I would on Thanksgiving, when she gave it to me. Anyway, it reminds me. Even when the worst happens, when you think you can’t take another step you can. You can survive.”

  “I only saw her briefly when Richard and Elizabeth brought the children to New York, but I could see she’s done more than survive. She’s begun to thrive.”

  She turned away, glanced at the board again. “They never will.”

  “No. The preliminary indicates the victims cross ethnic lines,which means it’s unlikely they shared coloring or facial resemblance. That leaves age and possibly body type as physical links. My first instinct,” Eve continued as Mira sat again, “at this point, is the ages of the victims were more important to their killer.”

  “Young, probably not fully developed physically or sexually.”

  “And small in stature, which would indicate even those who may hit the top of the age scale may have, and likely did, appear younger. Again, on the preliminary, there was no sign of violence immediately before death. Any sign of it was well before death, and healed.”

  “Yes, I saw in the preliminary prior abuse suspected on several of the victims. Young girls already used to violence,” Mira said, “don’t trust easily. Given the nature of the building during the most probable time frame, they, or some of them, might have been runaways.”

  “I’ve started a search using Missing Persons reports. It’s—” Eve glanced over when her computer signaled. “That should be it. Computer, number of results.”

  Three hundred seventy-four unresolved reports on subjects fitting the criteria.

  “So many,” Mira said, but from her expression, the number didn’t surprise her any more than it did Eve.

  “Some of those are kids who poofed—of their own accord. Slid through the cracks, got themselves new ID.”

  “Some,” Mira agreed, “but not most.”

  “No, not most. It’s possible we’ll find our vics among these. Certainly we should find some of them. Then again, not every parent or guardian bothers to file a report when a kid goes missing. Plenty are just fine with it if a kid takes off.”

  “You didn’t run.”

  “No.” There were few Eve felt comfortable speaking to about her past. Mira was one. “Not from Troy.” Not from the father who’d beaten her, raped her, tormented her. “It never occurred to me I could. Maybe if I’d had exposure to other kids, to the outside, it would have.”

  “They kept you confined, separated, Richard Troy, Stella, so the confinement, the abuse, all of it was your normal. How could you know, especially at eight, it was anything but?”

  “Are you worried about me, with them?” Eve gestured to the board.

  “Only a little. It’s always harder when it’s children, for anyone who works with death. It will be harder on you considering they’re young girls—a few years older than you were, and some of them abused, most likely by parents or guardians. Then someone ended their lives. Perhaps more than one person.”

  “It’s a consideration.”

  “You escaped and survived, they didn’t. So yes, it’ll be hard on you. But I can’t think of anyone more suited to stand for them. With only gender and approximate age, it’s not possible to give you a solid profile. The fact that there was no clothing found may indicate sexual assault, or an attempt to humiliate, or trophies. Any number of reasons. Cause of death will help, as could the victims’ histories once identified. Anything you’re able to give me will help.”

  Mira paused a moment. “He had skills, and he planned. He had to access both the building and the material, and find the girls. That takes planning. These weren’t impulse kills, even if the first might have been. The remains show no physical signs of torture or violence, though there may have been emotional torture. None of them were hidden alone?”

  “No.”

  “Not alone, but in pairs or small groups. It might be he didn’t want them to be alone. He wrapped them, a kind of shroud. And built them a kind of crypt. It shows respect.”

  “Twisted.”

  “Oh yes, but a respect for them. Runaways, abused girls, buried—in his way—in a building with a history of offering shelter to orphans. That’s an interesting connection.”

  Mira rose. “I’ll let you get back to work.” She glanced back to the board again. “They’ve waited a long time to be found, to have some hope of justice.”

  “There might be others. Did the killer stop with these twelve, or even begin with them? Why stop? We’ll look at known predators who were killed, died, or incarcerated around the time of the last victim—once we have that. But, too many aren’t known. Still, we’ll look for like crimes, known predators. A lot of times girls this age run in packs, right?”

  Mira smiled. “They do.”

  “So it’s likely one or more of the vics had friends, maybe were friends. It’s possible we’ll find someone who was friends with a vic, and saw or heard something. We don’t have names, yet, but we have lines to tug.”

  She sat aga
in when Mira left, looked at the list of missing girls.

  And began to tug.

  She’d eliminated a handful—too tall to match the recovered remains—when Peabody poked in.

  “I’ve got a couple names.”

  “I’ve got hundreds.”

  Confused, Peabody looked at the screen. “Oh, missing girls. Man, that’s just sad. But I’ve got a couple of names associated with the building during the time in question. Philadelphia Jones, Nashville Jones—siblings. They ran a youth halfway house/rehab center in the building, according to what Roarke dug up, from May of 2041 to September of 2045. They moved to another facility, one donated to them by a Tiffany Brigham Bittmore. They’re still there, heading up the Higher Power Cleansing Center for Youths.”

  “First, who names somebody after a city?”

  “They have a sister, Selma—I’m thinking Alabama—who lives in Australia, and had a brother, Montclair, who died shortly after they switched buildings. He was on a missionary trip to Africa, and got mostly eaten by a lion.”

  “Huh. That’s something you don’t hear every day.”

  “I’ve decided being eaten alive by anything is my last choice of causes of death.”

  “What’s first choice?”

  “Kicking it at two hundred and twenty, minutes after being sexually satisfied by my thirty-five-year-old Spanish lover, and his twin brother.”

  “There’s something to be said for that,” Eve decided. “Who owned the building during the Joneses’ time?”

  “They did, sort of. In that they struggled to pay a mortgage on it, and the bills that come with a decrepit building in New York. They defaulted, and the bank took it over, eventually. Then the bank eventually sold it. I’ve got that name, too, but it’s looking like this little company bought it with the idea of pulling in investors so they could rehab it into a handful of fancy apartments. That fell through, and they eventually sold it at a loss to the group Roarke bought it from, who also lost money on the deal.”

  “Bad luck building.”

  Peabody looked at the board, the crime scene photos. “It sure as hell seems like it.”