Concealed in Death (6 page)

Quilla shrugged. “I could write about it. You don’t have to tell me, I’ll find out. Like I said, I can research. But if you figure Ms. J or Mr. J killed them, you’re not much of a fucking cop.”

“Why is that?”

“They’re too holy. And sure, some people play like they’re holy, and they’ll stick a hand down your pants first chance they get.” Now Quilla stuck her hands in the kangaroo pocket of her hoodie. “But they’re not playing at it.”

“How old are you?” Peabody wondered.

“Sixteen.”

Eve cocked her head. “Maybe you will be. In a couple years.”

The girl tossed her colorful hair in a kind of head shrug. “A year and a half, so what? Doesn’t mean I don’t know what I know. Writers gotta observe, a lot. Those two are complete PITAs, but they couldn’t kill a bunch of girls. That’s what I’m saying. All you gotta do is squint, and you can see the halos.” She circled her finger over her head.

“Didn’t notice that myself. Why do you care what we think about the Joneses?”

“No skin off my ass. I’m just saying. I gotta get back.” Another eye roll. “I don’t get outdoor privileges until I complete my ‘educational assignments and domestic tasks.’” She parroted the words, giving them a prissy edge. “But I’ll be watching, so you should ask me when you want to know something.”

She took a couple running steps, vaulted back over the fence. “I can write it up,” she said again. “I can write it as good as the reporter wrote up the Icove shit, but with a different angle. Because I’m like them. I’m like the dead girls.”

She cut toward the bench, veered back, disappeared back inside.

“What do you think?” Peabody asked.

“A lot, but first I think most every group of kids has at least one decent geek. If they’ve got one skilled enough to jam reasonably good security, it’s a good bet the group at The Sanctuary had one who could get in and out of the crappy security there. Food for thought.”

She started to walk around to the driver’s side. “And what the hell does that mean? Why would you serve food for thoughts, and what kind of food? If you serve spinach, do you get healthy thoughts? If it’s ice cream and candy, is it fun thoughts? Why do we say stupid sayings?”

“They’re in our idiom?”

“Idioms for idiots,” Eve muttered, and slid behind the wheel. “Let’s go harass DeWinter.”

“I’m game, but can I have some food for my thoughts? They’re pretty hungry, and I know this deli that’s not too far from here.”

“Of course you do.”

Peabody narrowed her eyes. “Is that a dig on my appetite?”

Eve only smiled. “Consider it food for thought.”

Eve rarely visited what was now DeWinter’s sector of the lab, but she remembered how to make her way through the maze—the down glides, through corridors, past check-ins and security stations to a wide set of reinforced glass doors—and a final security check.

The ample, two-level space held a honeycomb of labs, testing areas, machines, and equipment. Techs, rats, and supervisors, walked from area to area or worked at counters, behind more glass. They dressed in lab coats, protective gear, street clothes—and in one case what Eve was fairly sure were pajamas.

Someone, somewhere played music. She felt as much as heard the throbbing beat pumping against the walls. Unsure, she aimed right, glanced through an open door where a woman with dark skin, an upsweep of silver hair, and a snowy white lab coat appeared to be performing an autopsy on a really big rat.

She lifted her gory scalpel, gave a friendly nod. “NYPSD, right? Supposed to expect you. Are you looking for Doc D?”

“If that’s DeWinter, yeah.”

“Up the steps, make a left, then a right, then her lab’s straight ahead. Do you need me to show you?”

“I think we can find it, thanks. Why are you cutting up the rat?”

“To find out if he and his pals ate this guy’s face off, and when. We got rat turds to analyze, too. The fun never ends.”

“Sounds like a party.” And one she’d be happy to miss, Eve thought as she headed for the steps.

“You see a lot of terrible things when you’re a cop,” Peabody said.

“And there’s always worse things tomorrow.”

“Yeah, but I’d still rather do the job than cut open a rat to look for pieces of somebody’s face.”

“I’m not going to disagree.” She turned left past another lab where a clear jar of maggots wiggled obscenely, turned right past another area—where the music banged—holding computers, what she thought was a holo-station, monitors, and a large board covered with sketches of faces.

Then straight ahead where she saw bright lights, steel tables, more equipment, and shelves holding various skeletal parts.

Closer—and farther from the music—she heard voices. DeWinter’s, and another much more familiar to her.

She stepped to the opening where the glass pocket doors tucked into the walls and saw DeWinter hip-to-hip with Chief Medical Examiner Morris.

She wore her body-skimming black, and Morris one of his steel gray suits. He’d paired it with a shirt a click or two lighter, had his inky hair in a single long braid.

Together they made a glossy plate of high fashion as they studied the white skeleton on the silver table.

A second skeleton rested on a second table; monitors displayed various individual bones.

Morris fixed microgoggles over his dark, slanted eyes to study the arm bone DeWinter lifted from the table.

“Yes,” he said, “I agree.”

Then his gaze lifted up, met Eve’s. He smiled.

“Dallas. Peabody. Welcome to the Bone Room.”

“Morris. I didn’t know you’d be here.”

“Garnet and I agreed it would be more useful to consult here. You’ve met, I’m told.”

“Yeah.” Eve stepped in, nodded to DeWinter. “What have you got?”

“I’ve started on the first two found. Remains One and Two. We recorded them, cleaned them, recorded again, and began the examine and analysis. Li and I agree the injuries to the remains were sustained much earlier than TOD. Some months prior, some years. Remains Two’s injury pattern is consistent with a pattern throughout childhood of physical abuse, beginning, we believe, with this broken tibia near the age of two.”

Would the bone snap, Eve wondered, such a young bone? Hers had six more years of growth before Richard Troy snapped it like a thin twig.

“A comparative analysis of the skull sutures and epiphyseal fusion sets Remains One at thirteen years of age, Remains Two the same. I can give you their weight. One between ninety-five and a hundred pounds, two between one-oh-five and one-ten. Both, as stated on site, are female. Li?”

“We’ll draw DNA from the bones and run that. It will take some time. Much less if we’re able to get a facial match, and test blood relatives. We’re also running a variety of tests that should help us determine COD, will give us some data on the health and nutrition of the victims, and may even give us the general area where they grew up.”

“From the bones.”

He smiled again. “I’m a flesh-and-blood man myself, but yes, a great deal of information can be gleaned from bones.”

“Our age, our sex, how we moved, our facial structure, how we ate, and often what we did for a living. It’s in the bones,” DeWinter claimed. “Victim One led a healthier and less traumatic life than Two. Her single injury is most likely the result of a childhood accident. A fall from a bike, a tree limb. It’s cleanly and well healed, and was surely professionally treated. Her teeth are straight and even, and were, again, professionally treated, most likely on a regular and routine basis, while Two’s are crooked, contain four cavities.

“Though it’s only based on best probability, I would say One grew up in a middle-class or above household, while Two lived nearer poverty level, or below.”

“The toes.” Morris gestured. “You see how they’re slightly curled, slightly overlapped?”

“From shoving them into shoes that were too small.”

DeWinter beamed at her. “Exactly! Poverty or neglect, and likely both.”

“This is helpful, but I need faces. I need names. Cause of death.”

“And you’ll have them. Elsie may have something for us. Elsie Kendrick does our facial reconstruction, and will very likely be faster than the DNA extraction.”

“Faster’s what I’m after. Can you tell when they died—from the bones?”

“Yes, within a reasonable span. They’ve been working on determining the age of the wall, the materials, in Berenski’s area.”

Dick Berenski, Eve thought, known as Dickhead for a reason, would get the work done. It also occurred to her that he’d likely been sitting in a pool of drool since he’d gotten a load of DeWinter.

“Give me a range.”

“Given the method and material used to wrap them, the variance in temperature inside the building seasonally, the—”

“Just a range,” Eve repeated.

“There are factors,” DeWinter insisted, just a little on the testy side. “My initial analyses indicate a range of fifteen to twenty years. Berenski’s initial tests indicate twelve to fifteen.”

“That’s good enough. It’s going to be on the low side of yours, the high side of his.”

“We haven’t yet determined—”

“It’s what makes sense. The last tenants vacated fifteen years ago last September, and that opens opportunity. At least some of these vics are going to connect to that last tenant—a shelter for kids—runaways and wards of court. It’s what fits.”

“It does.” Morris nodded. “You’ll find, Garnet, Dallas excels at finding the fit.”

“All well and good, and most certainly possible. But TOD is yet to be verified by the science.”

“You go ahead and verify,” Eve invited. “And if it’s not right about fifteen years, let me know. Where’s the reconstructionist?”

“I’ll take you. I’m having more tables brought in,” DeWinter continued as she started out. “I feel it will be helpful to have them all in one space as we continue the work.”

She turned into the music. “Elsie! How can you think with this so loud?”

“It helps me think. Mute music.” Elsie levered herself out of a chair, set the sketchbook and pencil she held aside. She wore her blue-streaked blond hair in dozens of thin braids that ended in tiny beads. She looked about sixteen in an ankle-skimming dress swirling with color, if you overlooked the fact that she was hugely pregnant.

“How are the twins?”

“Active.” Elsie rubbed her belly the way Eve had observed pregnant women did.

“Sit.”

“No, I’ve got to move around, too.”

“But not overdo.”

“Don’t say overdue!”

“How far along are you?” Peabody asked.

“Oh, I’m sorry. Detective Peabody, Lieutenant Dallas, Elsie Kendrick.”

“Welcome. I’m at thirty-three weeks, four days. I’m going to start counting hours soon. I feel like I’m carrying a couple of small, frisky ponies.” She pressed a hand to the side of her belly. “Wow. With really strong hooves. It’s taken me a while to get started, so sorry right off. Hormones, I guess. Reconstructing little girls. Mine are both girls. I had to have a little meltdown first.”

“Children always hit harder,” Morris said.

“Boy, don’t they? I was just finishing the first sketch. I always do a sketch, kind of a tribute, after a reconstruct. Let me show you the first girl.”

“Victim One?” Eve asked.

“Yeah, Garnet said to start in numerical.” She moved to the holo-table, tapped buttons. I got a ninety-six and change probability on her, so this should be close. It’ll be close enough for a match run.”

The hologram shimmered on.

Slim face, deep gold skin, dark Asian eyes, a short wedge of straight dark hair, full lips, strong nose, softly curved chin.

A pretty girl, Eve thought, with the potential of true beauty that would never be realized.

“Her racial profile weighed more heavily Asian, so I went with the probability of straight hair. Her facial bones and structure were both fine and even. Excellent bones. I added the nose stud, as Garnet said you found one, but I can take it out.”

“It doesn’t matter. This is good, really good. We need a copy. We’ll start running for a match.”

“We’re working on establishing TOD. It’s tricky to get a real pinpoint on that.”

“Fifteen years—in that area,” Eve said. “If you can narrow it more, it’ll help, but we’re reasonably sure of that. You said this one likely came from a solid middle-class or better.” Eve turned to DeWinter. “Had good health, good medical care. So it’s probable we’ll find a Missing Persons on her. What about Two?”

“I have the basics started.” Again, Elsie tapped buttons. “I’m going to want to work with it, adjust the data. But here’s what I have so far.”

The holo, much less refined here, showed a fuller face, slacker. Smaller eyes, Eve noted, thinner mouth. Not a particularly pretty girl, not at this point in any case. Pale skin, somewhat sallow, a broader nose.

“We’ll do better than this with more time. I’ll send you a copy of the final.”

“Good. We’ll take what you have for now, get started.”

“This one was sad.” Elsie laid her hands on her belly again. “You can just feel it. And she didn’t have time to get happy again.”

When Elsie’s belly jerked, visibly, under her hand, Eve took a definite step back. Peabody took one in.

“Can I?”

“Sure.” Elsie turned her enormous belly toward Peabody’s reaching hands.

“Awww.” The cooing sound matched the sappy look on Peabody’s face.

“I know, right? They’re going to settle down soon, running out of room in there. It’s crazy considering how many times a day they punch or kick me, but I’m going to miss it.”

“Have you got names?”

“Daddy and I are still arguing, but I’m pulling for Harmony and Haven.”

“Pretty.”

“Okay, well,” Eve began.

“Oh, let me make you a copy of both holos, and I’ll update the second image as I refine it. I can probably get a third started today,” Elsie continued as she programmed copies. “And possibly complete three to four tomorrow. I hope to have all of them for you within three days. I just think of the parents, the not knowing. It has to be torture, even after so many years.”

“I don’t want you upsetting yourself, Elsie,” DeWinter warned. “Adding stress to your life at this stage.”

“It’s not, not really. I feel like I’m doing something for them, bringing their faces back, and that leads to giving them their names back. They shouldn’t be numbers. None of us should ever just be a number.”

She handed Eve the disc.

“You do good work. I’ll be in touch, Dr. DeWinter. See you later, Morris.”

“I’ll be back in my own house before the end of the day if you need me.”

She headed down, worked her way back out of the maze. When they were clearly out of anyone’s earshot, Peabody spoke up.

“They look good together.”

Lost in thought, Eve frowned. “What? Who?”

“Morris and DeWinter?”

“What?” Eve repeated. “Get out.”

“No, they do. I don’t see that
hum
between them like he had with Detective Coltraine, I just meant on a kind of visual level. Both of them kind of exotic and artsy. I always wonder if McNab and I come close to looking good together,” she went on, speaking of her main man and one of the Electronic Detectives Division’s aces.

“I mean, I’m kinda short and—it’s Be Kind to Myself Day, so I’ll say zaftig.”

“Zaftig?” Eve muscled her way out the door, strode toward her car. “What language is that?”

“It’s fancy language for full-bodied. And McNab’s all bony and beanpoley.”

“You look right together, which is better than good.”

Completely stunned, Peabody stopped in her tracks. “That’s the totally, absolutely nicest thing you’ve ever said about me and McNab.”

Eve just shrugged. “I’ve gotten used to you. Mostly. Get in the damn car.”

With her cheeks flushed with pleasure, Peabody obeyed. “Do you really think we look right together?”