Concealed in Death (3 page)

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 scanning 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 again 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.”

“Well. Let’s go talk to Pittsburgh and Tennessee.”

“Philadephia and Nashville.”

“Close enough.”

•   •   •

H
igher Power Cleansing Center for Youths made its base in a tidy, four-story building just below the hip edge of the East Village. The short stretch on Delancey had rejected the Village’s artistic edge, and just missed the Bowery’s late twentieth-century facelift—and the bombings, pillaging, and vandalism that had infected its neighbors during the Urbans.

Most of the buildings here were old, some rehabbed, some gentrified, others defiantly clinging to their shabby urban shells.

The whitewashed brick building boasted a tiny courtyard where a scatter of short shrubs shivered in the cold. A couple of teenagers, impervious to that cold, sat on a stone bench playing with their PPCs.

Eve passed them on the way to the front entrance. Both wore HPCCY hooded sweatshirts, sported various face and ear piercings, and identical expressions of suspicious disapproval.

Street vets already, smelling cop, she concluded.

At her steady gaze, their expressions shifted to cocky smirks, but she noted the girl—or she assumed girl—slid her hand into her companion’s.

She heard the hoarse whispers, the quick giggle (definitely female) behind her as she and Peabody climbed the trio of steps to the front door.

Security there included cam, palm plate, and swipe unit. She pressed the buzzer, over which a sign helpfully advised:
PLEASE PRESS THE BUZZER
.

“A clean and healthy day to you. How can we help?”

“Lieutenant Dallas, Detective Peabody, NYPSD. We’re here to speak with Philadelphia and Nashville Jones.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t see your names on Ms. Jones’s or Mr. Jones’s appointment books today.”

Eve pulled out her badge. “This is my appointment.”

“Of course. Would you please put your palm to the plate for verification of ID?”

Eve complied, waited for the scan.

“Thank you, Lieutenant Dallas. I’m happy to buzz you in.”

There was indeed a long buzz, followed by the clack of locks opening. Eve pushed the door open, entered a narrow lobby with an offshoot of rooms and hallways presumably to other rooms on either side, and a set of stairs jogging up.

A woman rose from a desk at the rear of the room, smiling as she crossed a buff-colored tile floor.

Matronly was the only description given her old-fashioned bubble of shoe-black hair, the dowdy pink sweater over a floral dress, the sensible shoes.

“Welcome to Higher Power Cleansing Center for Youths. I’m Matron Shivitz.”

Fits, Eve thought. “We need to speak with Jones and Jones.”

“Yes, yes, so you said. I’d love to be able to tell them what you’re here to speak to them about.”

“I bet,” Eve said and let the silence hang a moment. To the left the door held a plaque for Nashville Jones. The one to the right named his sister.

“It’s police business.”

“Of course! I’m afraid Mr. Jones is in session at this time, as is Ms. Jones. Ms. Jones should be free shortly. If you choose to wait, I’d love to bring you some tea.”

“We’ll wait. Hold the tea, thanks.”

Eve wandered deeper, looked through an open door where three kids worked comps.

“Our electronics area,” Shivitz explained. “Residents are allowed access to complete certain assignments, or research for assignments. Or if they’ve earned the privilege for free time.”

“How do they earn the privilege?”

“By completing tasks and assignments, participating in activities, earning merits through good work, kindness, generosity. And, of course, remaining clean in body and spirit.”

“How long have you worked here?”