Concealed in Death (12 page)

She glanced over to the sitting area where the screen ran its financial reports on mute. “Been up long?”

“A bit.”

“I better catch up. Thanks for the coffee service.” She rolled Galahad over, gave his pudge of a belly a rub, then slid out of bed.

When she stepped out of the shower, warm from the drying tube and the cashmere robe, she found him on his pocket ’link with two covered plates and a pot of coffee on the table—and the stream of numbers and symbols still scrolling by on screen.

The man was the god of multitasking, she thought.

She sat beside him, cautiously lifted the dome over the plate. Then did a little butt-on-cushion dance when she found thick slices of French toast and a pretty bowl of mixed berries instead of the oatmeal she’d feared.

She popped a raspberry, poured more coffee—and he ended transmission.

“I thought a morning mind fuck deserved the French toast.”

“It might be worth waking up with one every day. Did you just buy a solar system?”

“Just a minor planet.” He passed her the syrup, watched her drown the bread. “Actually, just a quick conference with Caro, some schedule juggling.”

His über-efficient admin could juggle schedules while balanced on a flaming ball. “You don’t need to shift your stuff around for mine.”

“I wanted a little more time this morning. You’ll be starting in your home office, I assume.”

“That’s the plan.”

“Mine’s to do the same. Things can be rescheduled further if I can be useful. We can’t resume work on the building until you close the case,” he added. “And on a less practical level, I couldn’t begin it until you close the case. These girls aren’t mine, Eve, as they’re yours. But . . .”

“You found them.”

“And need to know their names, their faces, see their killer dealt with as much as you. What we hope to accomplish in that place is to keep the young, the vulnerable, the wounded safe. Those twelve girls epitomize the purpose.”

She wanted to give him the closure, she realized, almost as much as the dead and those they’d left behind.

He wanted to build something good and strong and needed. She wanted to give him those names, so he could.

“It’s going to be someone who lived or worked there. That’s playing the odds, but they’re good odds. It’s not that big a pool. Added to it, it stopped—if DeWinter and Dickhead are right on the estimates, and the remains were all sealed in there approximately fifteen years ago. So the focus starts on someone who lived or worked there who died, relocated, or was put in a cage shortly after that time.”

“Or moved his burial grounds.”

“I thought of that.” She ate while the cat watched her with a mixture of hope and resentment. “But why? It’s working. It’s locked up, no buyers, no plans. And it symbolizes the girls. It’s where those vulnerable and wounded came. He knows how to access it, it’s familiar. Why find another place that’s not so well suited?”

“I hope you’re right about that.”

“If he had to relocate, for some reason, he would’ve found a place in his new area. But so far I haven’t found any like crimes. And damn if I think he could create another mausoleum.”

No, she thought, he didn’t pull this off a second time.

“This one basically fell into his lap,” she pointed out. “There can’t be that many opportunities like it.

“Still, there are spaces in that theory,” she admitted over a mouthful of syrupy toast. Take Lemont Frester. He’s made some money, travels all over. If he’s a sick-fuck predator he could be carrying on his sick-fuck predatory ways all over the world—and off it.”

“Happy thought.”

“I’m taking a look at him, but for anyone to pull this sort of thing off for this long? And someone like him, who puts himself in the public eye? It’s hard to swallow it. Not impossible, but it doesn’t go down easy.”

“You’ll interview him today.”

“On my list. Along with nagging DeWinter and her team, notifying Lupa Dison’s next of kin, and getting what I can there, maybe another pass through HPCCY and blah blah blah. Top of the list is ID the nine we have left. So I better get started.”

She rose to go to her closet.

“The black jean-style trousers. The snug ones,” he added, “with the black jacket, the cropped one with the leather trim and the zippers on the sleeves, black tank with a scoop neck, and the black motorcycle style boots. Wear the pants inside the boots.”

She’d paused at her closet to listen to him as he reeled off the wardrobe.

“You’re telling me to wear all black? You’re always trying to paint me up with color.”

“In this case it’ll be the lines and the textures, as well as the unrelieved black. You’ll look just a little dangerous.”

“Yeah?” She brightened right up. “I’m all about that.”

“I’ll be in my office when you’re done.”

She grabbed what he’d listed, dressed, then curious, glanced in the mirror. Damned if he hadn’t hit it again, she thought. She did look just a little dangerous.

Half hoping she had a chance to put the look to use, she went to her office.

Sitting at her desk, she called up the results of her auto-search.

She scanned the remaining sixty-three names, found four deceased within a year of the murders, and separated them as possibles.

She separated any who’d done time, with a subset for violent crime.

With all, she looked for any indication the subject had skill or interest in construction, then crossed them with the staff Peabody and Roarke had run.

“Could’ve been a team,” she said when Roarke came in. “One to kill, one to clean up, or both together. I don’t like that as much as it’s a damn long time for two people to suppress the urge to kill, and for two people to keep their mouths shut about it.”

“One or both could be dead or incarcerated.”

“Yeah, it’s an angle. Pairs like that usually have a dominant and a submissive.” She drummed her fingers. “Older, trusted staff member exploits boy’s dark side. Maybe. Maybe, but again it means keeping a secret for a long time, and two people don’t keep them very well as a rule, especially when one of them’s in a cage. Still, teamwork’s efficient. You’ve got to get the girls, kill the girls, hide the girls. It’s a lot of work.”

“It’s not work if you enjoy it.”

She looked back at her board. “No, it’s not, and he must have. You don’t keep doing something unless you like it—or are compelled—until someone, something stops you.”

She gestured to her screen where she’d put up three faces, three names. “The three chronic runaways. At least one of them. The odds again, but at least one of them is probably in DeWinter’s lab. I’m going to send them to the reconstructionist, in case it helps.”

“Why don’t you give me a portion of the male residents to look at more closely? I can do that off and on today when there’s time.”

“Okay. I’ll send you a few. If you don’t get to them, just let me know. I’ve got to get going. I contacted Peabody to have her meet me at Rosetta Vega’s. We’ll get the notification done, see if she can add anything.”

“Frester’s booked to speak at the main ballroom of the Roarke Palace Hotel this afternoon.”

Eve leveled a speculative look. “Is that so?”

“Excellent synchronicity, isn’t it? It’s a luncheon speech, the event runs from noon to two. I had no idea. I don’t get into the weeds such as event bookings, but I thought I’d check on what he might be doing while in New York, and there you are. There’s a twenty-minute question-and-answer period after his speech.”

“Handy, as I’ve got some questions. Thanks. I need to go.”

“Send me names for the girls as you get them, would you?”

“Okay.” She laid her hands on his shoulders. “Go buy that solar system.”

“I’ll see if I can squeeze it in.”

“Fair enough.” She kissed him, then strode out to tell a woman any hope she’d clung to was gone.

•   •   •

U
pscale neighborhood, Eve thought as she slid into a street-level slot. Nice, tidy townhomes, condos, glossy shops, and eateries. Dog walkers, nannies, domestics already bustled around on their early duties along with a few people in good coats, good boots on their way to work.

She caught the sugar and yeast scent from a bakery when one of the good coats slipped inside, and the chatter of kids, many in spiffy uniforms, marching along to school.

Then Peabody in her big purple coat and pink cowboy boots, clomping around the corner.

“I think it’s not as cold” was the first thing she said. “Maybe. More like frigid instead of fucking frigid. I don’t think . . .” She paused, sniffed the air like a retriever. “Do you smell that? It’s that bakery. Oh my God, do you smell that? We should—”

“You’re not going in to do a notification and interview with pastry breath.”

“More like pastry ass. I think I gained a couple pounds just standing here smelling that.”

“Then let’s save your ass and get this done.”

Eve walked up to the door of one of the pretty townhomes, rang the bell.

Instead of the usual computer security check, the door opened almost immediately in front of a pretty, attractive woman in a gray suit. “Did you forget your—oh, I’m sorry.” She brushed back her dark curly hair. “I thought you were my daughter. She’s always forgetting something when she leaves for school, so I—sorry,” she said again with another laugh. “How can I help you?”

“Rosetta Delagio.”

“That’s right. Actually, I have to leave for work myself in a few minutes, so—”

“I’m Lieutenant Dallas, and this is Detective Peabody.” Eve took out her badge. “NYPSD.”

The woman looked at the badge, slowly lifted her gaze back to Eve’s face. The easy laughter in her eyes died away, and what replaced it was old grief turned over fresh.

“Oh. Oh, Lupa.” She laid a hand on her heart. “It’s about Lupa, isn’t it?”

“Yes, ma’am. I’m sorry to—”

“Please, don’t. Don’t tell me out here. Come in. Please come in. We’ll sit down. I want to get my husband, and we’ll sit down. You’ll tell me what happened to Lupa.”

“All this time.” Rosetta sat in a pretty, family-cluttered living area with her hand in her husband’s.

Juan Delagio wore his winter-weight uniform squared away, his cop shoes polished. He had a striking face of sharply defined angles, set off by deep, dark-hooded eyes.

“I think I knew,” Rosetta began. “I knew because she would never run away, as some thought she had. We loved each other, and for that time, had no one but each other.”

“She stayed for a time at what was The Sanctuary.”

“Yes. It was very hard for both of us. When I was hurt, there was no one to care for her. I knew of the place from a friend, so I arranged for her to stay there. They were very kind, and tended to her for only a small donation as I couldn’t afford more. And one of the counselors brought her to see me in the hospital every day. But still, it was hard. I knew there were troubled young people there, and my Lupa was so innocent—young for her age, if you understand? But I was afraid if they took her from me, into the child protection, they might not give her back.”

“Was there a question of your guardianship?”

“No, no, but . . . I was very young myself, and not yet a citizen. So I was afraid, but I thought she would be safe at The Sanctuary, and she was. She did well there, though Ms. Jones told me Lupa had some fears as well, that I would leave her, too. We talked of it in counseling.”

“The report states that when she came back, she began to come home late, and wasn’t clear about where she’d been.”

“It wasn’t like her, the sneaking. She was an accommodating young girl. I thought maybe too much—afraid to do anything wrong or even a little bit wrong, afraid she’d be sent away. So I didn’t punish her. I should have been more firm,” she said and looked desperately at her husband.

He only shook his head, brought their joined hands to his lips.

“I said I wanted to meet her new friends, and we could have them over for pizza, or I could cook. She was evasive, just said maybe sometime. She was loving with me, and sweet, so I let it go. I thought she just wants something all of her own for a little while, and why should she sit alone in the apartment until I come home from work? She’s a good girl, and she’s making friends. Maybe it would help her with the grief. She had such grief, and still questioned why her mother and father died. Was it her fault? Had she done something? Had she not been good enough? Had
they
not been good enough?”

She glanced toward a table littered with photos. Eve picked out one of her sister—strong resemblance—young and smiling.

“For a time Lupa talked to our priest, but she still questioned, especially after I was hurt.”

“She was mugged,” Juan said. “There were two men, and they hurt her. Even when she gave them what she had without trouble, they hurt her. They cut her. You know how it can be, Lieutenant.”

“Yeah, I do.”

“A lady saw it from her window and called the police,” Rosetta continued. “Then because I was hurt, and I couldn’t come home or take care of Lupa, they had to take her. That’s when I asked for her to be placed in The Sanctuary, and it was arranged. Lupa . . .”

She broke for a moment, then steadied again. “It scared her so, when I was hurt. And made her question even more. What had she done or not done? Why did terrible things happen to those she loved and who loved her?”

“It’s pretty common,” Peabody said, “for kids of that age to see themselves as the center. I mean, good things happen because they’re good, bad things because they’re bad.”

“Yes, this was Lupa. So I thought friends, girls her own age, without such grief, would be good for her. Then, that evening, I came home from work, and she wasn’t there. I tried her ’link, but she didn’t answer. I waited and waited, I asked the neighbors, schoolmates, everyone I could think of. No one knew where she’d gone, where she was. I went to the police.”

“Mrs. Delagio.” Peabody spoke up gently when Rosetta’s voice began to quiver. “You did everything right, and you did everything right for all the right reasons.”

“Thank you. Thank you for that. The police, they put out the alert, and they looked for her. I looked for her. Neighbors looked, people were kind. But days passed, nights passed. She never came home. I never saw her again. She would have come home if she could. I knew it even then. She must have been afraid. I hate thinking of her afraid, wanting me, wanting to come home.”

“Is there anything you remember, from looking,” Eve began, “from talking to people? Anything that sticks out?”

“Some people would say they saw her here, others they saw her there. People called the . . . what is it?”

“Tip line,” Eve supplied.

“Yes, and the police checked, but it was never Lupa. Detective Handy was so kind. We still talk now and then. I should tell her—”

“I’ve spoken with her,” Eve said.

“I’ll speak with her, too. She never stopped looking. She was my hope, even though we both knew, if she found Lupa, it would . . . it would be like this. I wrote down everything, every night for months. I have the little diaries I kept.”

“Could we have them? We’ll get them back to you.”

“Yes, of course.”

“I’ll get them.” Juan rose. “I know where you keep them. I’ll call in for you, for me. We’ll stay home today. Make arrangements.”

She murmured to him in Spanish, and for the first time her eyes filled, overflowed. He answered quietly in the same language, then left the room.

“I hadn’t met Juan when I lost Lupa. They would have loved each other. He loves her because I do, and he looked, too, long after she was gone. He knows we’ll want to have a service for her. Is it possible to . . . can I have her for a service and burial?”

“It may take a while, but I’ll see that you do.”

She nodded, knuckled at the tears. “The other girls, the girls with her, do they have family?”

“We’re working on that.”

“We are, Juan and I, fortunate. We’d help with any of the girls who are . . . alone. Is that possible?”

•   •   •

W
hen they stepped out on the sidewalk, Peabody dug in the cavernous pockets of her coat, pulled out a tissue. “Sorry.” She dabbed at her eyes, blew her nose. “I handled it until she asked if they could help bury the other victims.”

Eve said nothing until they’d gotten to the car, gotten into it.

“People mostly suck—it’s the law of averages, I figure, especially when you’re on the job. Then you cross paths with people like that. Bad shit’s happened to them, seriously bad shit, but they still come out of it decent.”

She handed off the diaries to Peabody. Old-fashioned ones, she thought. Small covered books you wrote in with pen or pencil.

“We’ll take a look through these. Maybe she put something down she didn’t realize was important at the time.”

“McNab and I could take care of one of the vics. We could swing that.”

“Peabody.”

“It’s not getting personally involved or losing objectivity,” Peabody insisted, though she knew better. “It’s being decent.”

Eve let it drop as Peabody fumbled out a fresh tissue. “We’re going to poke at DeWinter. We’ll swing by Stubacker’s last known address, see if anybody there remembers her, or has any fresh info.”

It was like crossing a border from one country to another. Shelby Ann Stubacker’s old neighborhood squatted with cheap post-Urban housing, or the crumbling remains of what had come before. Pawnshops and graffiti abounded alongside tat and piercing parlors, sex clubs and dingy-looking bars. Here people didn’t hire dog walkers, but likely had attack-programmed droid Dobermans. Instead of carrying briefcases, they’d carry shivs.

Eve used her master to bypass the locks on the reinforced door of an eight-story building in the middle of the seamy squalor.

The entranceway carried the stench of old piss and puke under the chemically piney scent of the industrial cleaner some determined soul had used to try to eradicate it.

Not a chance, Eve thought as she started up the stairs. The stench was in the building’s bones.

“She was in three-oh-five, living with her mother, and according to the records, a series of her mother’s boyfriends, when the court took her out. We’ll start there.”

Screens blared behind triple-locked doors and paper-thin walls Eve imagined a determined chemi-head could punch a fist through.

Now she smelled what she identified—due to her exposure to Bella—as soiled diapers, mixed in with the scent of whatever someone had burned for breakfast.

“I’d need a portable air filter to live here,” Peabody commented. Carefully she avoided brushing up against the wall, the sticky railing. “And a detox chamber.”

A baby, maybe the one responsible for the crappy diaper smell, wailed like its feet were on fire. Some kind soul responded to the infant’s distress by banging on one of the thin walls.

“Shut that brat the fuck up!”

“Nice.” Peabody shot a hard look down the hall of the second floor. “I’d be crying, too, if I lived here. It must be absolute hell growing up in a place like this.”

She’d been in places like it—and worse—in her first eight years, so Eve could attest. It was absolute hell.

On three, she used the side of her fist to bang on the door of the Stubackers’ old apartment. It didn’t warrant any electronic security, just a peephole and a pair of grimy dead-bolt locks.

She caught the shadow at the peep, banged again. “NYPSD.” She held her badge up in plain sight. “Open the door.”

She heard the clunk and rusty slide of a riot bar, then a series of hard clicks before the door opened a few inches on a hefty security chain.

“What the hell do you want?”

What she could see of the woman’s face didn’t look promising. It still wore yesterday’s makeup, thoroughly smudged from sleep. Eve imagined the woman’s pillow resembled one of those strange abstract paintings she would never understand.

“Lieutenant Dallas, Detective Peabody. We’d like to ask you a few questions.”

“I don’t gotta talk to you unless you got a warrant. I know my rights.”

“We just have some questions about the former tenant of this apartment.”

Something sly came into the woman’s raccoon eyes. “You paying?”

“That depends on what you have to sell. Did you know the former tenant?”

“Sure. Worked with Tracy up at the club, VaVoom, back when we were dancers. So what?”

“Do you know where we can find her?”

“Haven’t seen her since she blew town. Been easy ten years back. I sublet this dump, fair and square. Got rent control on it.”

“Did you know her daughter?”

“The brat, yeah. Took off long before Tracy did. Had a mouth on her, the kid did, used to steal, too. Lift stuff in the dressing room at the club. Tracy tried to beat the wild outta her, but it didn’t take. Some kids’re born bad, and that’s that. Got so Tracy had to hide any booze or brew she might have around or the kid would drink it. Told me how she came home one night, found the kid pissed-face drunk, probably no more than ten, eleven years old, and she’s all over Tracy’s boyfriend. Tried to say he gave her the brew and got all over
her
. Kid lied every time she opened her mouth.”

“Tracy sounds like mother of the year,” Eve said coolly.

“She did the best with what she had. Kid was no good. One day Tracy comes into work with a busted lip and a shiner. Kid did it. And what happens? You people come and say Tracy abused the brat just because the kid had some bruises on her. A woman’s got to defend herself, and got a right to discipline her own.”

“Did Shelby ever come back, after she was taken out of the home?”

“Who—oh, right, that’s her name. Not that I know of, and Tracy would’ve told me. The kid was a freaking thorn in her side. They took her off, put her in some sort of group home, and that was the end of that. A few years later, Tracy took off with this guy. He played the ponies, hit pretty good on a trifecta or whatever the fuck. They took off, said they were going to live in Miami or somewhere. Never heard from her again. But I got rent control.”

“Lucky you. Did you know any of Shelby’s friends?”

“Why would I? Don’t know as she had any. Piece of work, that girl. If she comes around here like you, looking for her ma, I’ll tell her just what I think.”

Eve tried a few more questions, and realizing the well ran dry, passed the woman a twenty through the gap.

She tried a few more doors, but stepped back out with little more than she’d gone in with.

“What a horrible excuse for a human being.” Peabody dropped into the car, snapped her safety belt. “Not just the bitch on three, but the vic’s mother by all accounts. I just don’t get how a woman can treat her own kid that way. Knocking her around, neglecting her, and just walking away when . . .”

It struck her, obviously and visibly, so she cringed.

“Sorry. Sorry, Dallas.”

Eve shrugged. “At least I didn’t have about a dozen years with mine.”

“Sorry anyway.”

“The question is, if Shelby didn’t go back to her mother—the bitch of a wit could be wrong about that, so see if you can dig up any record of her being placed back here—why didn’t Jones and Jones file a Missing Persons on her?”

“I didn’t think of that.”