New York to Dallas (20 page)

But why the hell hadn’t they pressured anything out of him?

She stepped to the connecting door where Roarke worked three comps, muttering at all of them, in his search for McQueen’s accounts.

“Maybe you could holo me in to New York, into Interview.”

He paused, rolling his shoulders as he sat back to study her. “If that’s what you want, we can set it up.”

“If I’m there it adds weight, and maybe I can hit him from another angle.”

He said nothing for a moment, only watched her.

“And completely screw up their rhythm,” she said. “Undermine their progress and fuck Peabody’s confidence to hell. I know what you’re thinking because I’m thinking it, too. But waiting here, it’s . . .”

“Hard. Waiting is hard, and frustrating, even when you know it’s what you have to do. Maybe especially then.”

He’d know, she thought. A cop’s spouse knew every layer of waiting. “Does it piss you off, too?”

“More than a little at times.”

“There’s nothing else for me to do tonight. Nothing else to dig at. All I can do is keep going over and over what we have, and fucking wait for somebody else to give me more.”

“Then take a break, let it settle awhile. I’ll give you more on my area when I get it.”

She retreated, got more coffee.

She circled the board, told herself they had every area covered that could be.

She checked the time.

 

 

While Eve circled and studied,
Darlie Morgansten tried on the most icy jacket ever. It was pink, her favorite color, and had sparkles all over the collar. Completely vid star.

It also cost more than three months’ allowance, and since she’d already spent most of this month’s on a too totally mag purse, and last month’s plus on stuff she couldn’t quite remember but wanted
so
abso-complete, she was awesome short.

Still, she modeled and admired herself in the mirror, ignoring the watchful eye of the salesclerk who’d given her and Simka, her best friend since ever, the eyeball treatment since they’d walked in.

“Darl, you
have
to get it. It’s, like, mag to infinity on you.”

“Maybe Dad will give me an advance. Mom won’t.” She rolled her lively green eyes. “All I’ll get from her is—”

“The Lecture,” Simka finished, rolling her eyes in solidarity. “You could tag him up, show him how super-frosted you look in it.”

“Too easy to say no over the ’link. Sheesh, that lady’s still hawking us. It’s not like we’re shoplifters. Here, take my picture.” She handed Simka her ’link. “Then I can go home, soften him up, show him when he’s in a really good mood.”

“But somebody might buy it before you give him the works.”

“I’ve got a little left. I can put it on hold.”

She angled herself, smiled brilliantly for the shot, a pretty young girl with long brown hair, temporarily streaked with vivid purple, which had earned her The Lecture just that morning.

In fact, the hair deal had meant she’d had to wheedle her butt off for this trip to the mall, and she’d only copped it because her mother was shopping, too.

And she had to meet The Warden—her most current term for her mother—at nine forty-five on the dot right under the clock tower. And tomorrow was a free day and everything with no school due to teacher-planning sessions.

She’d wanted to shop with Sim, go to the vids, have pizza after, but
no
. Home by ten, in bed by ten-thirty.

You’d think she was three instead of thirteen.

Mothers were such a pain.

“I’m going to put it on hold. We’ve still got a half-hour before we have to meet The Warden.”

“Check. I’m going to try on this top and the pants, too. I’ll come out so you can tell me the abso-total truth about how they look.”

“I will, but I already know they’ll look complete on you. Cha.”

Darlie hurried to the counter, gave the watchful clerk a haughty stare as she paid the holding charge. She started back toward the dressing area when a fabo skirt caught her eye.

“Excuse me.”

Startled, Darlie jumped back. “I wasn’t doing anything.”

“I’m sorry.” Sarajo—now Sandra Millford—put on an easy smile. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I just wondered if you could help me out. My niece is about your size, your coloring, your age. Fifteen?”

Flattered, Darlie lied cheerfully. “Yeah.”

“Do you think she’d like this? I want to get her something special for her birthday next week.” Sarajo held up a pink party dress.

“Oh, wow. I was looking at that before. It’s so, just
so
. It’s way expensive.”

“She’s my favorite niece. Can I just hold it up against you, to see how she might look?”

“Sure. Oh, it’s just frosted extremely.”

“You think?” Sarajo slid the pressure syringe under the material, shifting as she’d practiced to shield the movement from view. She jabbed it quickly into the side of Darlie’s throat.

“Ow. What was—”

“Must be a pin in it.”

She watched the girl’s eyes glaze.

“I don’t guess it suits her after all.” Supporting Darlie with one arm, she hung the dress up. “Time to go.” She spoke clearly, smiling, walking the girl out. “School night!”

“No school tomorrow.” The words slurred.

“You’re right about that.”

She walked Darlie toward the south entrance. McQueen picked them up on the way, tucked his arm around Darlie from the other side. “How did the shopping go, ladies?”

“We had fun,” Sarajo said easily. “But our girl’s not feeling very well. Overtired, I guess.”

“Aw, well, we’ll be home soon.”

Looking like a family, they went outside to the lot, McQueen jamming security as they went. Even as Simka came out of the dressing room to show off her outfit, they lifted Darlie into the van.

 

 

Eve walked into the shop with Roarke.
It was a ground-level shop in a three-level mall. Dozens of ways in, she’d already noted, dozens of ways out.

Bree broke out of a huddle of cops, hurried to her.

“Darlie Morgansten, thirteen, brown and green, five-three, a hundred and ten. She was with her friend.” She gestured toward another girl, sitting on the floor, crying. “The friend was trying something on in the dressing room. When she came out, Darlie was gone. They were to meet Darlie’s mother, Iris Morgansten, at twenty-one forty-five. The mother”—she gestured again to a woman talking rapidly to Bree’s partner—“was shopping elsewhere in the mall.”

Bree took a breath.

“One of the clerks noticed Darlie with a woman, assumed it was her mother. They were looking at a dress. Then they left together. No struggle, no sign of duress. We’ve got people going over the security discs now.”

“Nearly an hour ago,” Eve calculated. “They’re gone. They won’t be anywhere in here. Have them check the logs for the last few days. The partner would have cased the place for him, taken pictures. He’d have to know the best way out, where security is inside and out. Why the hell did it take this long to get out the alert?”

“The other girl looked around for Darlie, then asked one of the clerks. They told her Darlie left with her mother. So Simka—the other kid—went down to the meeting spot to wait. It was nearly thirty minutes before the mother got there, and realized something was wrong.”

“All right. I want to talk to the store employees, the kid, the mother.”

“The father’s here, too, now.”

“I don’t need him if he wasn’t here when it went down. I want—”

She broke off when Nikos came over.

“You were right. You were right about this. I didn’t trust your instincts, went with the percentages. Now that kid’s . . .”

“If not her, someone else,” Eve said, cold now. “You put your weight in, yeah, and that was a mistake. But either way, there aren’t enough cops to watch every girl in Dallas.”

“Maybe not, but it’s not going to help me sleep at night. You were right about the van, too. The seller remembered her as Sister Suzan. We didn’t get anything out of him because there just wasn’t anything to get. Straight cash transaction, sign the transfer, and she drives off. Alone. We recorded the entire interview. You’ll have a copy.”

“All right.” She saw Laurence sit down beside the weeping girl, hand her some tissues. And saw him put an arm around her when she turned her face into his chest to sob there.

“Laurence should take the friend,” Eve decided. “She’s already turning to him, so he’s got a jump there. Maybe you can use the federal badge, give security a push. I want to see everything from the last week. Detective Jones, I want the clerk first.”

“Yes, sir.”

“We’re going to get her back,” Nikos said. When her eyes met Eve’s again they were full of regret, knowledge, cold rage. “But not soon enough.”

“No.” No point in pretending otherwise, Eve decided. “No, it’s already too late. Now we concentrate on getting her back alive.”

 

 

At some point,
despite the lights and the fears, Melinda slept. The sound of the locks shot her awake, hands balled into fists. Those hands went numb when Sarajo dragged the girl inside.

“No, no, no, no.”

Sarajo shoved the naked, trembling girl to the floor. “Shut the fuck up.” She backhanded Melinda, sent her sprawling, added a vicious kick when Melinda tried to get up.

“Stay down, facedown, or I’ll bloody her. That’s how it works with you, right?” Grimly, Sarajo shackled the limp girl, let her drop as Darlie’s head lolled. “Yeah, that’s how we get you to behave. You start something with me, bitch, she pays. Remember that.”

“Did you have a part in this? In what he did to her?”

“My part starts now.” Sarajo shook her hair back. “Her?” She gave a half-laugh, a shrug. “She was foreplay.”

“I’ll kill you if I get the chance.” Melinda spoke quietly, and from a place in her heart she’d never known existed. “You remember that. I’ll kill you for what you did to her. You’re worse than he is.”

“You don’t worry me. Why don’t you and the baby whore compare notes.”

She shut the door, locked it. As the lights went out, the girl moaned, cried for her mother. Melinda crawled over, did her best to comfort—soothing, singing, stroking.

She’d protect, somehow, she’d protect. Even though it was too late to shield.

Before the lights had gone to black, she’d seen the tattoo on the girl’s small breast. Number twenty-eight inside a perfect heart.

11

L
aurence stepped into mall security, glanced at the multiple playbacks Eve watched.

“I let the kid go home. Simka Revin,” he added. “I showed her the pictures we have of the female UNSUB. She can’t be sure. Jones reports same with the vic’s parents, but two of the clerks on tonight recognized her. Said she’d come in a couple times a week over the last month or so.”

“Yeah, I’ve spotted her on here a few times—same look. Tells me she wanted mall employees to recognize her, think of her as a regular.”

“We got people showing the pictures, clearing employees and the shoppers who were here before the lockdown. Place was crowded, with plenty of kids Darlie’s age milling around. Public schools are closed tomorrow.”

“Yeah, I got that already.” She turned to him. “You can be sure he knew it when he picked his spot. There’ll be other spots, and she’ll have cased them just like this. He’s having a real good time, Laurence.”

He nodded, hands in his pockets, eyes on the security monitor. “I’ve been doing this awhile.”

“Yeah, I read your file.”

He smiled a little. “Ditto. The way I see it, if Darlie had gone in the dressing room, Simka wouldn’t be tucked into her own bed tonight.”

Eve gestured to the screens. “That shop, and a couple others, particularly draw his vic type. Sometimes they go in with an adult, but more often in little packs. That’s what he likes. Likes to separate one from the pack, like a lion with an antelope. Abduct in plain sight. It adds to the thrill, and makes him feel more important. A lot of girls went through that shop tonight, and she could’ve lured any one of them for him.”

“Bad luck for Darlie Morgansten.”

“Yeah. Bad luck.”

 

 

After two in the morning,
with the initial search protocol complete, the alerts issued, the search active, Eve and Roarke returned to the hotel. The smudges of fatigue under her eyes blurred like bruising against her pallor. A sure sign, he knew, she’d passed the point of exhaustion.

She needed sleep but, as he expected, objected when he stopped the elevator on the bedroom level.

“I’m not done.”

“Oh, but you are.”

She stripped her jacket off, tossed it on a bench in the foyer. “Look, I need you to do something.”

“Fine. And I need you to do something. We’ll trade.”

She stood, weapon harness over shirtsleeves, her whiskey-colored eyes ripe with a combination of fury, sorrow, and stress he understood very well. He felt the same himself.

“Goddamn it, Roarke.”

“And that’s not the way to get something from me, particularly at half two in the morning. Tell me what you need, and I’ll try to get it for you.”

“The female, she cased that mall in her ‘I’m just a harmless woman’ gear. She even bought stuff for girls who fit the age spread, things the vic would go for. She knew the place, so I’m betting she used it for her own shopping.”

“Good bet.” He shrugged out of his own jacket, sat on the bench to pull off his shoes. If he’d be working a bit longer, he’d damn well work comfortably. “I see where you’re going.”

“She’d probably dress as who she is or who she wants to be for McQueen, wouldn’t she? Hitting shops that cater to adults, women’s stores, sexy gear stores. You want to bang, you buy the sexy underwear.”

He glanced up. She roamed the foyer, moving, moving, moving because she knew—as he did—once she stopped she’d go out.