“No, darling, you reduce them to quivering puddles of fear and awe, but this seemed quicker and cleaner.”
“He recognized you anyway. I saw it. You don’t own the damn place, do you?”
“I don’t, no.” He glanced around the spacious gold and white lobby, turned to the elevators. “Pity. It’s quite nice.”
“Next time I want the quivering and the awe.”
He let her step in the elevator first, so he could give her a light pat on the ass. “Next time.”
A house droid met them at the door of an elegant little foyer with a lush grape arbor, complete with rustic stone benches, cleverly painted on its walls and ceiling. The droid, sober in a simple gray dress and low heels, requested identification.
Eve held out her badge, watched the droid scan it.
“Please come in. Mrs. Bittmore and Ms. Brigham are in the living area.”
The area couldn’t be called spacious, but it hit those elegant notes again with the play of light-colored fabrics against walls the color of good burgundy. Art leaned toward the old world with classy depictions of misty forests, quiet lakes, blooming meadows.
Two women rose from a wheat-colored love seat backed by a pair of glass doors and a short terrace—then the view of the great park.
The older one stepped forward. Tiffany Bittmore had allowed her hair to go white, but Eve decided the decision had elements of vanity as the perfect sweep of it resulted in the same sort of classy elegance as the decor.
Her eyes might have been a dreamy shade of blue, but they held a sharp shrewdness. Her face, dewy and smooth despite her years, wouldn’t have been called beautiful, but arresting.
The curve of her lips did nothing to soften the stiletto blades of her cheekbones.
“Lieutenant Dallas, it’s a pleasure to meet you. And, Roarke, another pleasure. Your reputations and deeds precede you.”
“As do yours,” Roarke returned, with a charm he could wear like a silk tie. “It’s truly an honor, Mrs. Bittmore.”
“The gods gifted you with looks designed to stop women’s hearts. I’d have drooled over this one,” she told Eve, “back in my day.”
“I’ve learned to step around the puddles.”
With a laugh, Mrs. Bittmore gave Eve a friendly slap on the arm. “I think I’ll like you. Come meet the light of my life, then we’ll have some coffee. I’ve read The Icove Agenda and seen the vid, which I rarely do, so I know you’ve a fondness for real coffee. Clarissa?”
“Yes, ma’am, I’ll see to it right away.” The droid eased out of the room.
“My granddaughter, Seraphim.”
“It is a pleasure. It would be more of one, I’m sure, if we hadn’t heard the media bulletin.” She offered her hand, a woman with her grandmother’s eyes in a softer, less dramatic face. “I contacted HPCCY when we did, and spoke briefly with Philadelphia. She told me you’d been in to see her, and Nash.”
“You work at HPCCY, and were a resident of The Sanctuary,” Eve began.
“Please, let’s sit.” Mrs. Bittmore gestured to chairs. “This is a horrible thing, and it’s distressing for Seraphim.”
“I might’ve known some of them,” Seraphim said before she lowered to the love seat. “I almost certainly had to know some of them. The report didn’t give any names.”
“They didn’t have any to give.” Eve debated a moment, which angle to play first. She took out her ’link, brought up one of the ID photos. “Is she familiar?”
“Oh Lord.” Seraphim took a deep breath, then reached for the ’link, and the photo of Linh Penbroke. “It was years ago, but I think I’d remember her. She’s so pretty. I don’t. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this girl before. But I lived in The Sanctuary for months. So many came and went . . . Still, I think I’d remember this face.”
“Okay.” Eve took back the ’link, brought up the second image. “How about her?”
“Oh! It’s Shelby. Yes, I remember this girl. Shelby . . . I don’t know if I knew her last name. She was in residence with me. A year or so younger, I think, but years tougher. She scored me zoner. Sorry, Gamma,” she added with a glance toward her grandmother.
“It was long ago.”
“The first few weeks I was there, I was really only looking for a place to sleep. I didn’t have any intention of getting clean, or changing my attitude, just paid lip service to all that.”
“You were so angry,” her grandmother added.
“Oh, I was pissed at everyone and everything.” She gave a soft, almost wondering laugh, kissed Tiffany’s cheek. “Especially you because you just wouldn’t give up on me.”
“Never.”
“So I went to the sessions, did the assignments—because I got a bed and food out of it. I figured they—the Joneses—were suckers, and I snuck illegals, alcohol, whatever I could when I wanted. But it wasn’t as easy as I’d assumed, because they weren’t suckers. I traded a beaded bracelet I had for the zoner. Everybody knew Shelby could get whatever you wanted, smuggle it in, if you gave her something she liked, and a little time.”
Seraphim paused when the droid brought in the coffee, and left just as quietly as she’d come.
“The staff didn’t know?” Eve asked Seraphim.
“She was very clever. No, canny’s a better word. Shelby was very canny. She got caught for minor things a time or two—and looking back, looking back not only as an adult but as a therapist, she very likely let herself get caught. Minor things were expected, and the punishments easy to get through. We outnumbered the staff probably ten to one easily back then. They were doing what they could to keep us safe, off the streets, out of sex trades, to help us. But to us, a lot of us? They were just marks.”
“What about a carpenter’s helper? Jon Clipperton.”
“I don’t remember his name, and may not have known it, but I remember the man Brodie brought with him a few times, in those last weeks we were in that building. Some men look at you,” she said to Eve, “and you know they’re seeing you naked. Sometimes that’s okay, you’re seeing them naked, too. And other times it’s insulting. Or it’s worse. I was young, but I’d been on the street awhile. I knew the way he looked at me and some of the other girls. And it wasn’t okay.”
“Did he do more than look?”
“I don’t know. I think he got some beer to Shelby, but she never said. We weren’t tight. I was, to her, an occasional customer. How did they die?”
“I can’t answer that yet. Did you ever go back inside that building after you’d changed locations?”
“No. I never wanted to go back there. I changed, before the move. Things changed for me, a transition. The talk therapy I paid lip service to so I’d get that bed, food, it began to get through, even though I resisted. Philadelphia worked with me one-on-one—whether I wanted her to or not and despite the blocks I put up, she began to get through the anger and self-hatred. She finally convinced me to speak to Gamma—my grandmother.”
“And you donated a building, and funds to the Joneses.”
“I did,” Mrs. Bittmore confirmed. “I can’t say they saved Seraphim’s life, but they helped her come home, they helped her discover who she really was.”
Tiffany patted Seraphim’s knee as she sipped her coffee. “They were doing their work in an inadequate space in a subpar building, and couldn’t afford the loan on that building much less proper maintenance, repair, the right staff. They’d given Seraphim a chance. I gave them one.”
“Ms. Brigham, you said Clipperton gave you a bad feeling. Was there anyone else who gave you that kind of feeling, or made you uneasy?”
“Some of the boys who came and went. You’d learn who to avoid. Lieutenant, we were a house of addicts and emotionally damaged children. Some of us, as I was for a time, were just looking for a free ride and a way to score. If the staff found illegals, alcohol, or weapons, they we
re confiscated. No one was ever asked to leave, not while I was in residence. That was the point. It was a sanctuary, and the risk of that is giving safe harbor to those who want trouble. But the benefits outweigh that risk. They saved me, or put me on a path where I could save myself. I’m far from the only one.”
“Does anyone stick out? Anyone you can think of who had reason to cause Shelby harm?”
“She scared the hell out of me, and a lot of others,” Seraphim said with a hint of a smile. “I thought I could handle myself. The arrogance of youth, the few months I’d spent on the street, most of that high. But even at my worst, I wouldn’t have taken her on. She had enemies, no question, but they tended to give her a wide berth. She could fight. I saw her take down another girl who probably had twenty pounds on her, and wasn’t a wilter. But Shelby was just fierce.”
She paused a moment. “My anger,” she said slowly, “I see now, again as an adult, as a therapist, paled beside hers.”
“Who did she hang with?”
“Ah . . . there were a couple of girls, and a boy. Let me think.” As she sipped coffee, Seraphim rubbed at her temple as if to stir up the memory. “DeLonna—skinny black girl,” Seraphim continued, closing her eyes. “She could sing. Yes, yes, I remember her. She had an incredible voice, a true gift. And another girl who was Missy or Mikki. I think Mikki. A bit plump, hard eyes. And a boy everybody called T-Bone. Smart, a little spooky. He’d just drift around like smoke. He’d steal your molars and you wouldn’t know it. Old burn marks on his arms—he covered some with tats, but you could see, and a scar down his cheek.
“They weren’t always together, but they hung together more than not, and more than any of them did with anyone else.”
“Did anyone on the staff have trouble with Shelby, or these others? Did anyone threaten them to your knowledge?”
“They were in trouble often, and I’d say, with Shelby in particular, it was a constant battleground with the staff. It’s frustrating and difficult work, Lieutenant, full of conflict and struggle. And incredibly rewarding. I would imagine you often feel the same about yours.”
“I guess I would. Do you know anything about a Jubal Craine? His daughter, Leah, was a resident.”
“I knew Leah. She was quiet, kept her head down, not only stayed out of trouble, but tried to be invisible, if you understand me.”
“Yeah, I do.”
“I remember her, very well, because she was, in essence, my transition.”
“How was that?” Eve asked.
“We were in a class. I can’t remember what class, but we had to put in a certain number of hours a week on educational requirements. We were in a class when I heard him—Leah’s father. He was shouting, raging really, shouting her name, telling her she better get her lazy ass out there. Shouting at the staff. She went sheet white, I remember that. I can still see the look on her face. First the terror, the kind I’d never felt, then the resignation, which was almost worse. I remember all that, and the way she just got up, no protests, no pleas, and walked out.”
Seraphim put her coffee down, gripped her hands in her lap. “It was the saddest thing I’d ever seen, the way she just stood up, walked away. I remember that moment because I thought of the things Philadelphia and I talked about in one-to-ones. I thought of how scary it was on the street when you’re broke and hungry, cold, and when you hear stories about rapes and beatings. And I started thinking how Leah didn’t have anybody outside The Sanctuary but this man who was shouting how he was going to whip the sass out of her, and that sort of thing. I thought of Gamma, and how she’d never hurt me. Not ever. And I started thinking I wanted to have somebody who’d take care of me, who’d protect me. That I did have somebody. And Leah didn’t.
“They had to give her to him, you see. He was the legal guardian, and she wouldn’t say he hurt her. She just said she’d go home with him.”
“Poor thing,” Mrs. Bittmore murmured.
“The next time I saw her was months later.”
“She came back?” Eve demanded.
“I don’t know, actually. I saw her on the street. I was shopping with a friend. Gamma trusted me—I trusted me by then. Or had started to. I saw Leah getting on a bus. I nearly called out, but I’m ashamed to say I didn’t want my friend to know I knew this girl with her torn jacket and bruised face. So I didn’t call out. But she looked at me. For just a moment we looked at each other.”
Tears shimmered in Seraphim’s eyes. “She smiled at me. Then she got on the bus, and I never saw her again. But I did think, even then, I thought: She got away. At least she got away from him again.”
“I was told he came back, too.”
“I didn’t know that. I must have been home by then. He wouldn’t have found her at The Sanctuary. She didn’t go back there, at least not while I was there—and, honestly, I believe she was smart and scared enough not to go back to where he’d found her. It wasn’t long after I went home, to my grandmother, that they changed locations.”
“I had the building,” Mrs. Bittmore explained. “And when I went back to thank Philadelphia and Nash, the others, I’d already made arrangements to donate it, if they wanted it. I’d done my due diligence,” she said with a sharp smile. “So I knew they were legitimate. I asked if they’d be willing to let my lawyers and money people study their books and records, and they were. We were satisfied. I had my granddaughter back. I was more than satisfied. You never told me about this girl. This Leah.”
“No. I felt ashamed, I suppose, that I hadn’t gone up to her, spoken to her.”
“We could look for her, find where she is now.”
“Leave that to me,” Eve advised. “Thank you,” she said as she rose. “You’ve been very helpful.”
“Have I?” Seraphim rose as well. “You must have already known Shelby’s name.”
“You gave me a better picture of her.”
“Any one of them could have been me. Any one of the twelve. I’ll do anything I can to help you.”
“I may take you up on that.”
Eve rolled it around as they rode down to the lobby. “She’s lucky she had someone to go home to. Not the money, the privilege, but somebody who didn’t give up on her, and wanted her.”
“Too many aren’t lucky.” He had been, Roarke thought. Summerset had taken him in—some bloodied street rat—and for reasons he didn’t understand to this day, had wanted him.
“Should I look for Leah Craine?”
Eve glanced at him. “I wouldn’t mind knowing where she is. We can hope she’s not in DeWinter’s lab.”
“She got away,” Roarke said, and because he could picture that terrible resignation too well, he wanted to believe she’d stayed away. And safe. “We’ll have some faith she made a life for herself.”
“Data’s better than faith.”
“Such a cop.”
“Yeah, and since I am I want to take a pass at Clipperton before we call it.”
Anticipating it, Roarke took her hand, gave her arm a playful little swing. “I do enjoy intimidating drunk gits in the evening.”
“If Brigham’s right, he scored booze for a minor, and maybe got sex in return with said minor. He might’ve done it more than once, might’ve developed a sick little relationship there.”
“Which leads to him murdering her and eleven others.”
Eve checked her notes, rattled off the address before she got into the car. “She was a fighter, a badass. Had a rep for it, and had what sounds like a little crew. But they tell me there’s no violence according to her bones, near TOD. All injuries well before that. You don’t kill a scrapper without leaving some marks.”
“Unless the scrapper trusts you.”
“That’s right. Maybe you get said scrapper drunk, take her out during her payment. Smother her maybe, or maybe you scored something more than some brew and she ends up ODing on yo
u. Now what the fuck do you do?”
“Build a wall to hide the body?”
“Stupid, extreme, but . . . where’d the other kids come from? That’s a question.”
“Why kill all the others? If it did start with this Shelby, why kill eleven more?”
“Every serial killer has to start somewhere. There’s always going to be a first. He killed the one, thought, ‘Wow, that was fun, let’s do it again.”
She tapped her fingers on her thigh as Roarke drove. “He knew this victim, and had to know some of the others. He had to have access to this victim to get her the brew. He knew the building, he had the tools and know-how to build the walls. The Fines may say, Yeah, he’s a dick but he wouldn’t kill anybody. People who know killers rarely think they know a killer.”
She pulled out her PPC. “He’s had some bumps, mostly alcohol-related. D&D, disturbing the peace, vandalism, destruction of property. And two hits for sexual misconduct. Pleaded down on all, did a little soft time, some community service, some court-ordered therapy.”
“The rap sheet of a dick.”
“Dicks kill as much as anyone.”
“I do try to keep mine nonviolent.”
The smirk that crossed her face felt good. “It’s got some punch.”
“Thanks, darling. I’d love to punch you later.”
“You always want to punch me.”
“That’s love for you.”
Amused, she angled her head, studied him. “Maybe I’ll punch you back.”
“Here’s hoping.”
“And here’s something else on the dick—not yours, the carpenter’s helper dick. His listed address is less than three blocks from my crime scene. Which leads me to ask what in the hell are you planning to do with that dump?”
“It won’t be a dump when it’s done.”
“Okay, what are you planning to do with what won’t be a dump?”
“I thought we’d create something to connect with Dochas.”
The abuse shelter he’d built, she thought. And the place he’d first learned about his mother.