Concealed in Death (13 page)

“That’s why you’re not the lieutenant. Dig, and while you’re digging we’ll go get all up DeWinter’s ass.”

“She’s got a really good one.”

“Jesus, Peabody.” Amazed, Eve slid out into traffic. “You checked out her ass?”

“I check out everyone’s ass. It’s a hobby.”

“Get a new one. Like . . . bird-watching or something.”

“Bird-watching? In New York?”

“You could count pigeons. It would take the rest of your life.”

“I like ass-watching.” Peabody settled herself in comfortably. “When I see one bigger than mine, it makes me feel good. When I see one smaller, it helps me resist eating a whole bunch of cookies. It’s a productive hobby, my ass-watching. And there’s no record on file rescinding the court order to remove Shelby Ann Stubacker from the home. No record of any petition filed by the mother to get her back.”

“Which means, despite the notation in her records that she was placed back in the parental home, she went missing from either The Sanctuary or the new digs. Interesting.”

“I guess Jones and Jones go back on the list.”

“They were never off. But now they bump up to the lead.”

She pushed and threaded her way through traffic, considering new angles. “Tag HPCCY, tell them we need the documentation on Shelby’s court order. We need the CPS docs, the recommendation to send her back home.”

“On that.”

While she was, Eve parked again.

“Ms. Jones says she’ll pull the files up out of storage,” Peabody said as they went inside, worked through the maze to DeWinter’s sector. “She asks if we’ve ID’d anyone else.”

“Tell her that information will be forthcoming.”

She found DeWinter—an emerald green lab coat today, open over another body-conscious dress, this one hot pink and white checkerboard.

She stood with Morris, who was just as snappily dressed in deep, dark plum. Together they studied a screen displaying indecipherable shapes—to her—in colors as bold as their wardrobes.

“It’s cause of death,” DeWinter said. “Do you agree?”

“I do.”

“What’s cause of death?” Eve demanded.

Both turned toward her so they stood with a trio of slabs, a trio of remains, between them.

“They drowned,” DeWinter said.

“Drowned.” Eve stepped in, looked down at the remains, up at the screen. “You can determine that, conclusively, from bones.”

“I can. You see on screen a sample of the diatoms I extracted from the bone marrow of the third victim identified. That would be—”

“Lupa Dison.”

“Yes. I also have similar samples from the first two victims, and the fourth. I’ll continue to conduct the procedure on all the remains. But I can conclude for the four on which I’ve conducted the tests, these girls drowned. The diatoms here reached the lungs and penetrated the alveolar wall, and the bone marrow. Comparing these samples to samples of water I took from the crime scene—”

Eve tossed up a hand to stop the flow. “You went back to the crime scene? Without notifying the primary?”

“I didn’t think it was necessary until I’d reached my conclusions, which indeed—in consultation with Dr. Morris—I have. Now, these unicellular organisms have a silica shell, and as you can see, truly gorgeous sculpturing. The aquatic diatom—”

“Stop.” Eve held up a hand again, added the other, and caught Morris grinning out of the corner of her eye. “I don’t want a science lesson. I need to know if you’ve found COD.”

DeWinter just frowned at her. “As I just said, drowning, in city water. While certain additives have changed or been deleted from the city’s water in the last fifteen years, the basic biology remains. Such as—”

“Stop there, too. City water? No chance of, say, pool water, river water, seawater?”

“No, again, aquatic diatoms—”

“Just no’s enough. The bathtub then. It’s not impossible to drown a girl in a sink, or just pour water down her throat, stick her head in the john. But with the lack of injury at or around time of death, the bathtub makes more sense. Plus, it’s right there if you want to drown a bunch of girls.”

She walked around the slabs as she worked it out.

“They’d have fought back if they could. Drowning’s a hard way to go. You’d flail around, kick, knock your elbows, try to grab whoever’s holding you under. They didn’t do that, according to what you’ve seen.”

“No, there were no fractures or other appearance of damage to the bones so far examined at or around TOD. However—”

“So he tranq’d them first. Just enough to make them go under easy. Enough so maybe he could bind their hands and feet, make it easier yet. Tranq them, maybe restrain them, then slide them in, hold their heads under. One at a time.”

She studied the remains again, brought the bathrooms of the crime scene into her head. “You can’t let one of the others see what you’re doing. So one at a time. Maybe you’ve got another on tap, but you can’t risk her coming around enough to make a fuss. When she’s out, you undress her. That’s practical, the clothes will add to the weight when they’re wet. And it’s more a thrill anyway, seeing that young, naked body. If she’s out enough, maybe you rape her first. Slip her a little Whore or Rabbit, even something a little milder, she won’t fight you.”

She circled around the slab as she spoke, studying the bones, seeing the flesh and blood that had once covered them.

“When you’re done with her, after you’ve watched her die, you take her out, put her on the plastic. You take the restraints off so you can use them on the next girl. And you roll her up.”

Eve looked over at Morris, nodded. “That’s how I see it. He’d probably already started the false wall, easier if he’d done that. Just leave a section of the board out. He’d put her back here, in the dark, out of sight, probably tack the board up. Nobody’s going to come in, nobody but him and the next girl.”

She shifted her gaze to DeWinter. “Does that work for you, fit with your conclusions so far?”

“Yes. Yes, it does. Though there’s no way to conclude if they were restrained as there are no signs of damage from struggling against restraints on the wrists or ankles. And it’s simply not possible to determine if they were raped.”

“It’s a theory. Let me know when you’ve done that diorama test on the others.”

“Diatom.”

“Right. And let me know if you plan to revisit the crime scene. The one about a killer returning to the scene of the crime’s a cliché for a reason. See you around, Morris.”

DeWinter took a long breath when Eve and Peabody left. “That was disturbing. It’s disturbing to be walked through murder that way, as if by the murderer.”

“It’s a particular skill of hers.”

“I can see them. The victims, the dead, through their bones. I can tell how they lived, how they died. But I wouldn’t like to have their killer inside my head.”

“Putting them there helps her find them.”

“I’m very glad that’s not my job.”

“And she sees them, too, Garnet. She sees the dead, just as you and I do.”

•   •   •

E
ve saw them now, as she started out of the maze, the ones whose faces she knew.

“I hope you’re right about the tranqing,” Peabody said. “It wouldn’t have been so painful and terrifying that way.”

“Lieutenant!”

Eve stopped, looked back to see Elsie Kendrick waddling—that was the only word for it—down the wide steps to the lower-level lab.

“I’m glad I caught you. I have two more.” She offered both disc and hard copies. “I should have at least another two by the end of the day.”

“Fast work.”

“I set it on auto for a few hours last night, just bunked here.” She rubbed circles on her truly enormous belly. “I’ve never done so many from one case. I can’t get them out of my head. Would you send me their names, like you did the others? I want their names.”

“You’ll have them when we do. Good work, and thanks.”

She handed Peabody the disc as they continued out, and studied the computer-generated sketches.

“I know these two, they were on my Missing Persons search list. Pull up the file I sent you. They’re both in there.”

And two more of the pretty young girls had faces, had names.

She went back to central, to her office, to put those names and faces on her board. Both of them runaways, with LaRue Freeman fresh out of a stint at juvie for theft, and Carlie Bowen circling the foster system after being removed from an abusive home.

Their stories were all too typical, Eve thought as she scanned their files. A short, hard life with too much of it spent on the streets.

Neither of them had been registered at The Sanctuary or HPCCY.

Still, it didn’t mean they weren’t somehow connected. Street kids had networks, she thought as she began to run cross-checks. Networks could become gangs. But even on a lesser level street kids, like most kids, tended to form packs.

Both Shelby and LaRue had done time in juvie—not together, she noted, but . . . and there it was.

Both had had the same CPS caseworker. Odelle Horwitz no longer worked for CPS—nothing unusual there, Eve thought as she grabbed coffee while the current data generated.

Social workers burned out faster than a struck match.

Horwitz, age forty-two, on her second marriage, one offspring, now managed a flower shop on the Upper East Side.

Maybe she’d remember something, maybe she wouldn’t, but it was worth the contact. She turned to her ’link.

She’d ended the interview, had grabbed her coat when Baxter rapped on her doorjamb. “Got a minute, boss?”

“About that.”

He stepped in on his high-gloss shoes. The detective had a wardrobe more typical of Wall Street than Homicide, but she’d take him and his fancy suits through the door with her anytime, anywhere.

“Trueheart and I caught one yesterday, a double slice and dice in the theater district.”

“Those auditions are a bloodbath.”

He laughed. “Funny you should mention it, because it looks pretty much just like that.”

He gave her a brief outline of two actors competing for the same part in a new production. Now one of them, along with his cohab, was in the morgue.

“The other guy, his alibi’s solid. He was onstage playing Gino in a revival of
West Side Story
. Reviews are mixed, but there were a couple hundred people in the audience, plus the cast and crew who can all verify he was dancing with the Sharks at TOD.”

“There’s dancing sharks?”

He started to laugh again, then realized she wasn’t kidding. “The Sharks—and the Jets. They’re rival gangs, LT. The play’s like a
Romeo and Juliet
takeoff, but set in New York. Rival gangs, first love, violence, friendship and loyalty, singing, dancing.”

“Yeah, those street gangs are always breaking into song and dancing on their way to the next beat down.”

“I guess you’ve got to see it to get it.”

“Fine. So the competing actor’s clear. He just got lucky?”

“We’re looking hard at his boyfriend. He claims he was backstage during the performance, which would put him clear. And he’s got some cover from some people who say they saw him. But the play runs a couple hours and he could’ve slipped off. We worked out the timing. Crime scene’s a five-minute walk from the theater. Half that at a decent jog. He’s got no priors, we’ve got no murder weapon, no wits. No security on the building. It’s half a dump. But my gut, my nose—hell, my toned and manly ass—says he did it.”

“Bring him in, sweat it out of him.”

“Plan on it. I want Trueheart to take him.”

She had a lot of respect for Officer Trueheart, despite the few smudges of green still left on him. “No wits, no weapon, a reasonable alibi, and you want Trueheart to get the guy to say he sliced up two people so his boyfriend could get a part in a play?”

“It’s the lead.” Baxter smiled. “And the thing is, the guy got that look in his eye for Trueheart when we interviewed him.”

“What look?”

“The ‘I’d like to take you out to lunch, eat the main course off your hard yet sensitive abs, and have you for dessert.’”

“I didn’t need that picture in my head, Baxter.”

“You asked.”

Well, she supposed she had. “If you think Trueheart can bust him—and not because you think it’ll look good when Trueheart takes his detective’s exam next month—do it.”

“He can bust him, and it’ll look good. And it’ll boost his confidence going into the exam. It’s an all-around win.” He paused a moment, looked at her board. “You ID’d two more.”

“This morning, yeah. You keeping track?”

“We all are. And we’re all up for OT if you need it.”

“It’s appreciated. Count on me letting you know. Now go wrap this guy up.”

She walked out with him, signaled Peabody. “With me.”

“I’ve got next of kin on the last two vics. Freeman, father unknown, mother doing her second stint for assault, with a side of illegals. This one in Joliet. There’s an aunt in Queens, she’s the one who filed the report.”

“Yeah, I remember.”

“The older sister filed the one on Bowen,” Peabody added as she struggled into her puffy coat.

“Both parents have been guests of the state,” Eve continued as they made their way down to the garage. “Older sister had filed for custody when she was only eighteen. It was working its way through the system, the kid in foster.”

“The sister runs a sandwich shop with her husband.” Now the scarf—a mile of bright green, wrapping, wrapping around Peabody’s neck, then tucking into some sort of complicated twist. “Midtown spot. Two kids. Sealed juvie record on her, and a minor bump for him. They’ve been clear for about fifteen years.”

“When her kid sister went missing. We’ll talk to them, and the aunt in Queens.”

“Sandwich shop would be an efficient stop—interview, lunch, all together.”

Eve calculated the timing. “You do that. I’ll drop you off at the sister’s place on my way to check out this Frester character. You can contact the aunt, and we’ll decide if it’s worth doing a linkup with the mother. We’ll hook up back at the crime scene. I want another walk-through.”

“I’ll pick you up some takeout. What do you want?”

“Surprise me.”

The doorman at the hotel had obviously gotten the memo. He might have given a cop a little grief about leaving her vehicle in front of the grand edifice of the premier hotel, but for Roarke’s wife, he rolled out the red carpet.

It was a little bit annoying.

Still it saved time, as did her stop at the front desk—memo also received. With a security guard as escort, she breezed through the checkpoints for the ballroom event, and straight inside.

Talk about grand. The glint of crystals dripping from chandeliers that managed to look Old World and futuristic at once, the gleam of white marble with silver veining, walls smoky gray to set off the black shine of trim and cornices.

About five hundred people at her estimate sat around big round tables draped in dark gray cloth with a navy underlayer. Servers moved silent as wraiths to clear dessert plates or serve coffee, pour fizzy water into glasses.

Lemont Frester stood on the wide front stage, a huge screen behind him showing him with various luminaries from Hollywood, music, politics. Mixed in were images of him speaking to prisoners, addicts, youth groups. Or pictures of him dressed for a hike with forested mountains around him, looking pensive and pious staring out at the roll of blue seas, on the back of a white horse in some golden desert.

They all had one common link. Lemont Frester was the focus.

His voice rolled out, as ripe and fruity as a basket of oranges. He practices, she thought: the rhythm, the punch words, the gestures, the expressions, the pause for a bit of laughter or approving applause.

He wore a three-piece suit, directly between the shades of the room’s walls and table linen. She wondered if he’d had it made for just that purpose, along with the tie of pale gray chevrons on navy.

Too perfect a match for happenstance, which was usually bullshit anyway. And a man who’d order his wardrobe to coordinate with a speaking arena, or vice versa, had a towering ego, a tsunamic vanity.

She didn’t like him. Didn’t like the way his eyes glinted, his voice rolled, his suit matched. Didn’t like the sense that he was on the same level as one of those pay-as-you-pray evangelists who banged the good-looking faithful on the side, and scammed the money from susceptible old women.

But not liking him didn’t make him a murderer.

She listened with half an ear. He talked of not just overcoming his addictions, his flaws, what he called the dark child inside him—he’d triumphed over it. And the audience could, too. They could all lead strong, productive lives (that included world travel, Eve supposed, and fancy suits), could counsel others, even the darkest inner child, to win the desperate personal battle.

The answers, the solutions, the checklists were all handily contained in his latest book package, which included a disc compilation of homilies and highlights. And all that for the bargain price of a hundred and thirty-eight dollars, only twenty bucks more for the autographed package.

A steal, Eve thought. Oh yeah, Frester was robbing people blind, and not one of them appeared to mind a bit.

Her ’link signaled. She pulled it out, found a voice mail from Roarke, switched it to text only.

I’m between meetings, briefly, and assume you are as well. Mavis and her family will be coming over tonight for drinks and a casual dinner. It’ll do us all good. I’ve put it on your calendar, but as we both know I might as well write it on air.

Take care of my cop until I see you, then I’ll look out for her.

She had a moment of wondering why he’d asked their friends over when she was in the middle of a very ugly case, then remembered they’d talked of it the night before.

But that was then, with all the Christmas and champagne haze.

Still, she decided, it probably would do her good. Especially since Mavis had been a street kid, living on the grift for several years. An expert consultant, she decided, and immediately sent a text to her friend, asking if they could come maybe a half hour earlier and for Mavis to come up to her office.

Couple questions on a case I’m working. Street kids. Want to poke in your memory for more insight. See you tonight. Dallas.

So, she’d combine hanging with friends with work. The perfect, for her, compromise.

She did a little more multitasking while Frester took questions, sending an e-mail to Mira, with DeWinter’s findings on COD attached.

Waiting to interview a possible suspect. Question. Murder by drowning, multiple cases—very likely in the tub of The Sanctuary dorms. Not a practical method, comparatively. Possible kill thrill—hands on, face-to-face. But possibly symbolic? Washed clean maybe. Submerged. Listening to asshole speak on submerging dark inner child, makes me wonder about that angle.

Some sort of ritual maybe?

Would you explore this area, or am I going off?

Dallas

Before putting it away, Eve began the laborious—to her—process of using her ’link to order her office comp to begin researching ritual drownings and submerging.

Then she walked to the side of the ballroom to work her way down toward the stage as the time slotted for the Q&A section ran down.

A hard-eyed female security type in a snug suit that set off an impressive rack stepped in front of her. Eve merely held out her badge, returning hard eye for hard eye.

“You’re not cleared. Mr. Frester is engaged directly after this event. You’ll need to contact his first assistant or his lawyer.”

“Or I can make a cop scene right here, in the middle of said event. I bet that’ll cut into the sales of the inspirational packages.”

“I’ll need to speak directly with your superior.”

“Here and now I am my superior. Now step aside or I’ll arrest you for interfering with a police officer in the course of her duties, with a side of obstruction of justice and a sprinkle of being a pain in my ass.”

Hard eye grew harder. “We’re going to take this outside.”

She clamped a hand on Eve’s arm.

Eve smiled, toothily. “Now you’ve done it. You just added assaulting an officer to the menu of choices.”

With her free hand, Eve swung the woman toward the wall, took an elbow in the gut with enough force behind it to make her grunt. And to make her think just how much she’d enjoy knowing Big Rack Security Bitch did some time in holding.

“You’re now officially under arrest.” Eve put some force behind her own next move, and shoved the woman’s face to the wall, then grabbed the wrist of the hand that reached down for the stunner clipped to her waist.

“And it gets better and better,” she said as people at the nearby tables began to react with alarm and movement.

“Police,” Eve said clear and firm, as she yanked the woman’s arms behind her back. “You’re going to want to stay in your seats.”

The woman had some skill, or so Eve thought when she managed to shift her weight, get one arm free, and use it for a back fist Eve couldn’t quite avoid.

It glanced off her cheekbone and sent out some angry sparks of pain.

“You’re just asking for it.”

She kicked the woman’s feet out from under her, planted a knee in the small of her back, and restrained her arms behind her.

She glanced up as a beefy male security type trotted up.