With Peabody, Eve went through every drawer, closet, cabinet, and cubbyhole in the Williamson apartment. And found nothing that pointed the way to the Academy or those who ran it.
In the security hub, they scanned feeds and confirmed Williamson’s departure at twenty hundred hours on the night of Mina Cabot’s murder.
No return at any time, on any feed.
The thirty-day visitor’s log showed no one signing in for Williamson.
Dead end, Eve concluded. In every way.
“Coffee,” she said the minute they got in the car.
“Oh yes, please.” With a heartfelt sigh, Peabody programmed it. “The probability she’s alive and hiding is subzero. But literally terminating her for having her swipe stolen’s seriously harsh.”
“So’s stealing kids and selling them to pervs.”
“Yeah, it is.” Peabody gulped coffee, yawned, gulped more. “But that’s—for them—business.”
“So was this. Fire or discipline an employee, said employee could get pissy, and being pissy might try to cut a deal with the cops. Why risk it?”
“‘Dead men tell no tales,’” Peabody quoted.
“Sure they do, and dead or alive, Williamson’s telling us plenty. She’ll be telling us more when the e-nerds break her codes. That was a saying, right?”
“Yeah, it’s—”
“Sayings like that are another reason people do the stupid. ‘Okay, dead now, so that’s that.’ And it’s not. Nobody knows it’s not better than a murder cop. Add to it, you know why these assholes didn’t think to wipe her apartment? She was nothing to them. Just another number. Night Matron Williamson, employee number whatever. Disposable. She cost them millions, and profit’s the bottom line here.”
She pulled into the garage at Central.
“She worked there a solid number of years,” Peabody added. “I bet she kept her head down, did the job, didn’t make waves. Who’d think she’d keep files on her—charges, I guess.”
“Prisoners,” Eve corrected as they crossed to the elevator. “According to her data, she was a prison guard, Attica, for ten years before she got into this.”
They stepped into the car, and Eve called for EDD level. “I’m betting they recruit,” she continued. “Prison, juvie facilities. Vet them, do deep background, a psych eval, because you need the type who’d be just fine with all this. You’re going to pay them a hell of a lot more, add some juicy benefits—and give them the chance to jab kids with shock sticks.”
“Psych eval. You’re right because they have to know they’re hiring sadists and sociopaths.”
“Maybe—probably—monitor them for the first few months, more likely a year. Spot check after that. You’d need to be careful to avoid addicts, people with spouses or close family ties. Someone like Williamson? No close relationships, organized, routine-bound, punctual, just greedy enough? I’m betting she was a model employee until she screwed up.”
“I could start a search for people with that employment background who transferred to Red Swan.”
“Do that,” Eve said as they stepped off the elevator. “A five-year spread. We only need one, goddamn it. One live one.”
She headed straight to the lab, and through the glass walls saw the e-team at work. Feeney in his industrial beige shirtsleeves, dung-colored tie loose and crooked. McNab, bony hips twitching in red baggies paired with a T-shirt swirled with atomic colors. And Roarke, pale gray dress shirt somehow still crisp, with the sleeves rolled to the elbow, and his hair tied back.
They’d added Callendar, she noted, who completed the lineup with blue-and-green-striped baggies, a sunshine-yellow tank, with the new feature of hair ink black at the crown falling into a short, multicolored rainbow of tufts and spikes.
Eve pushed in; the noise level rose from library quiet to a night at the club.
Music didn’t blast, but it sure as hell pumped. Snatches of conversation—that might as well have been Ferengi—cut through it as the e-team communicated.
Machines beeped, buzzed, clacked.
And the air smelled ripe with coffee and sugar from mugs and fizzies and a not-quite-depleted box of doughnuts.
“Jesus, how can anybody think?” Eve demanded.
Callendar glanced over her shoulder. “Uh-oh, Mom’s home. Kill music. It can actually help you think,” she claimed when it dropped away. “Like the sugar rush.”
“Pulled her in,” Feeney said as he worked. “Lotta data to crack, and we want it fast.”
“I’m for that. What have you got?”
“Layered it good and proper, she did.” Roarke spoke, and as it often did when he dived deep in the work, his accent clicked up a few degrees. “And bloody buggering hell, there’s another. I’ve got it. Are you seeing this, Ian? She’s sandwiched a cross jab with a roll-down and two-step.”
“Overkill, total. Need assist?”
“No, I have it. Ah, the roll-down’s counterfeit, cozied with a triple slash and inverted ampersand. It’s clever enough, but easily … And there. I’ve got it.”
“Got what?” Eve demanded as her brain just swirled like McNab’s shirt. “What in holy hell have you got?”
“I took the files on the girls—or two and a half years of them, going back from the now. She changed the code, so Callendar’s on the next two. Feeney and McNab are dealing with her personal files.”
“Show me, show me one of them.”
He brought the first on-screen.
“I know that face. She’s on the board. Show—no, send all you’ve got to the conference room.”
“Which room?”
“We’re in one. Peabody.”
“I’m with you.”
“I need an address,” Eve snapped as she headed out. “I need a location. Run that search,” she told Peabody. “Get that started. We only need fucking one.”
“I can use McNab’s unit up here. They’re a lot juicier than what we have in Homicide. And I can have the results sent down to the conference room.”
“Do that.”
She went down alone, jogging down the glides. She swiped into the conference room, eyes on the board as she detoured to the AutoChef. The scent of her own coffee relieved her as she located the girl.
“Jaci Collinsworth, age twelve, Detroit.” She ordered the data Roarke transferred on-screen, saw the same face, the same data. Then more.
Williamson kept records on when the girl had been “admitted,” wrote up a sketchy report on physical condition, and what she called repairs. Dental work, skin and hair regimen, exercise and nutrition.
She deemed Jaci spoiled, difficult, defiant, with poor language skills that relied on swearing. Physically aggressive and requiring discipline and chemical modifications.
Also noted were the times and dates of the discipline, the method, the times and dates and doses of the drugs.
Improvement in attitude and behavior noted at seven weeks.
She’d noted down skill levels—her scale, Eve assumed—as training continued. The trainee required small, daily doses of a personalized chemical cocktail to reach her potential. She got an eight out of ten.
Williamson estimated her value at auction at six million, with a bonus for herself as matron/disciplinarian of six hundred. Her notes indicated this as a disappointment.
She read on, girl by girl, including three she added to the board.
And Mina Cabot.
“You learned fast, didn’t you?” Eve mumbled as she read Williamson’s data. “Play along and look for a way out. You went from spoiled and willful, according to this bitch, to cooperative, compliant, and eager to learn. Got a ten out of ten, and an estimated value between twelve and fifteen million. So up to fifteen hundred for your night guard, who rates you as a success.”
She read, paced, read, paced.
The child Dorian stated had killed herself, confirmed by Williamson’s notes, cost the matron a thousand dollars. Deducted from her pay. Failure.
“She rated them,” Eve began without turning around when she heard Peabody come in. “Scale of one to ten. She really didn’t like Dorian, and I’ve got over twenty incidents where she used a shock stick on her. She considered the discipline did its job, and rated her a nine out of ten, potential value at twelve million, as some buyers liked the sass.
“Sass,” Eve repeated. “She’d have netted twelve hundred dollars at that rate, as a bonus. They also deduct a thousand for any girl who dies. Smart business. Make it work, you get a piece of the action. Fail, it comes out of your pocket.”
“Are you okay?”
“Five by fucking five. I’ve only gotten through six months, and already added three we didn’t have. Younger ones. Six to ten.”
“I think I’ve got two.”
“Two what?” Distracted, Eve turned, then cleared her head. “From the search?”
“Yeah, I’ve got it running on auto now because I wanted to get this to you fast. Can I put them up?”
“Yeah, Jesus.”
“Okay, first one? Maxine Pryor, former army, less-than-honorable discharge, sixteen years back. She worked as a guard for Metro State, Atlanta, from 2056 to 2058. Some slaps in her file there. She took a job as a security guard at Red Swan. It says Atlanta, but the address—her residence—is bogus there, so I dug deeper and found one that matches in Chelsea. It’s under L. M. Pryor, and she changed hair color, had a little work done, but it all fits. One marriage, divorced fifteen years. No offspring.”
“That’s good. Give me the next.”
“Cecil B. Doggett. He was a cop in Baltimore City, terminated after twelve years on the job for excessive force, extortion, and ultimately striking a superior officer. Picked up work as a prison guard at a minimum-security prison in rural Maryland, and for the last five years has been employed by Red Swan as a recruitment officer.”
“Is that what they call the scouts in polite company? Address?”
“In Maryland, outside Baltimore. He has a black van registered in his name, no spouse, no kids. I dug down more, and he’s got a damn nice house, a boat, and a Panther ZX convertible roadster. He’s living pretty large on what he reports as his annual earnings.”
“Wonder what kickback the scouts get from sales? This is good, Peabody. Let’s go wake up Maxine Pryor.”
“Do we want a warrant?”
“The first tag she’ll make is to her superiors and their lawyers. We need to convince her not to do that. We use Marlene Williamson. You’re a liability, you’re dead. Then—”
She broke off as she heard McNab coming with a double-time prance.
“Got through.” His face, a little pink from the run, beamed success. “Jesus, the layers, and obsessed much, a million separate files.”
“Location, McNab.”
As he reeled off an address, Eve ordered the map on-screen. “I had that one. What the hell is it?”
Before she could call that up, he told her. “It’s a delivery hub and warehouse for Reliable Delivery Services. It’s been around for like ever. Maybe close to ninety, a hundred years, global, but they have their headquarters in New York, always have.”
“Who owns the building?”
“Same guy who owns the business—lock and stock,” McNab told her. “Roarke knows him, some. They’re coming, but the cap told me to fly, so I did.”
He paused, let out several huffing breaths.
“Jonah K. Devereaux, inherited the whole deal from his parents when their private shuttle went down in the Sea of Japan when he was like twenty-something. He got it all.”
“Already a multi-billion-dollar industry,” Roarke added as he walked in. “Under his eye, it’s continued to run smoothly enough, though he hasn’t implemented any expansions in the last decade or so. He has the family home on Long Island as his New York residence, and I believe villas in the south of France, another in the Caymans. I haven’t checked as yet, but he may have more.”
“You know this guy?”
“Very slightly. The foundation his parents started when he was still a boy donates generously to some organizations I also support. I brushed up against him a few times at charity events but not, that I recall, in the past few years. The word is, such as it is, that he prefers spending his time on one of his estates. He’s never married, but has been known to enjoy the company of women, usually professional women, and younger. Not children,” he said quickly. “I’ve never heard a whisper of that, or I’d have passed it on to you already.”
“What’s younger?”
“Twenties, thirties. He’s in his sixties, maybe early seventies, and that wouldn’t be unusual.”
“I need more on him, on the business, on Red Swan.”
“We’re here to get it,” Feeney told her. “Callendar’s upstairs pushing on Red Swan. We don’t need the fancy to look at Devereaux or RDS. Figured to use your bullpen.”
“Have at it. I need everything you can get me on this building. Every square foot of it you can get.”
“You’ll have it. Give us another hour.” Feeney rubbed his eyes. “And a hell of a lot of coffee.”
Eve checked the time. Somehow it had gotten to be past four in the morning.
“You’re sure about the hour?”
“An hour,” Feeney confirmed. “Maybe less.”
“Use what you need, take what you need. Peabody, keep at it. Let’s see how many people you can connect to Red Swan, and add in the delivery service to the search. He’d need some there, too, even if he’s running the front as legit.”
Alone in the room, she looked back at the board. She’d get back to those faces. More, she’d get them out, all she could.
To do it, she needed more than data. She needed cops.
Taking out her ’link, she started calling them in.
She tagged her bullpen, including Uniform Carmichael; she tagged Reo, Willowby, and added Lowenbaum from SWAT. She, with reluctance, woke up her commander, and considering the proximity of the building to the river, requested both air and water support.
Then she sat, used the conference room comp to do some digging herself on Devereaux. EDD would get her what she needed, but she thought of wealthy—seriously wealthy—men, and how often they ended up on the society pages with some snazzy woman—or man—on their arm.
She started back, scanning for photos, names of women he escorted. He had a partner, a female partner, not a twenty- or thirty-year-old, according to Dorian. But older.
Maybe he mixed business with pleasure, or had at one time. He had to meet her somewhere, build a relationship, cement trust.
Her eyes burned, begged to shut down for just a few minutes. The back of her neck felt like wires hummed and twisted under the skin.
She’d need a booster before much longer, she admitted, and she hated them.
She scanned through photos and quick write-ups—Devereaux in tuxes, beautiful women in glamorous gowns. Slick suits, sleek cocktail dresses.
Blondes, brunettes, redheads, curvy or stick thin, but with common denominators: young and stunning.
But nothing and no one clicked, not with the socialites, the heiresses, the celebrities and high-dollar models.
When her eyes blurred, she rubbed them clear. Thought about more coffee.
Wasting time, she decided, and with her focus fading, nearly missed it.
The photo was more than twenty-five years old, a glossy report from the Met Gala. Devereaux, his hair lush and gold, had his arm around the waist of a statuesque woman in a figure-hugging red gown cut low to showcase impressive breasts and an equally impressive waterfall of diamonds and rubies. Her pale, almost silvery blond fall of hair rained down to her shoulders, and a sparkling pin swept it up behind one ear.
A ruby pin in the shape of a swan.
“‘Iris Beaty,’” Eve read, “‘flaunts her past as the notorious madam of Red Swan with a diamond and ruby hair clip. Will she rub elbows with clients enjoying the rarified air of the Met Gala? Discreet as ever, Ms. Beaty won’t name names even now that sex workers are licensed and legal.’
“Iris Beaty,” Eve ordered. “Official ID and data on-screen.”
As she studied the older, still beautiful face, the ice-cold eyes, Eve saw predator. She pushed up, dragged her hand through her hair, pacing now as she read the background.
“Holy shit. I’ve got you.” Ignoring the running footsteps, she continued to read.
“Red Swan,” Callendar said triumphantly.
“Iris Beaty.”
“Well, hell.” Blowing out a breath, Callendar looked at the image on-screen. “We’ve way underestimated your e-skills.”
“Cop skills, no real e about it. I found a photo of her with Devereaux, and she had a damn red swan pin in her hair.”
“Ballsy.”
“How did you find her?”
“She wrote a damn book, can you check that? Flight of the Red Swan. It popped in one of my runs. High-class escort service back in the twenties. She had a good long run finding dates at a few thousand a bang for people who could afford it. According to the summary I read, the book’s full of juice, but she’s all coy about saying who bought who and like that. She wrote it after sex work was legalized, regulated.
“And I connected her to Devereaux—old friends, right, maybe more. And he helped finance her legal LC business.”
“Is that still running?”
“No. She sold out and retired.”
“I’ll buy sold out. Legal, regulated, monitored, the paperwork, the license fees, taxes? Cuts into the profit. And I’m betting some of those earlier clients paid steep to keep her—what did you call it—coy. But she didn’t retire. Just changed direction.”
“I hear that. The address on her official data? Some farm she supposedly retired to in France? Bogus. And her financial data, what I skimmed, looks hinky to me.”
“Hinky how?”
“Seems like she’d have more. Plus, no credit transactions, zippo. All cash. And what goes out, comes in. Almost to the dollar—or euro. Whatever.”
“Another front. We can dig into that. She’s in New York, and going to have that more. Lots of more. We’ll dig, and we’ll find it. But first, we find her.”
She checked the time again, and found the hour up.
“Set up facial ID, will you? Maybe we pop out another ID. Wait,” she said even as Callendar moved to the comp. “Try Swan—it has meaning for her. Start with Iris Swan, and look in France, too.”
As Callendar got started, Eve turned to the door and Peabody.
“The others are wrapping up,” Peabody said. “I’ve got five more, Dallas, over ninety percent probability.”
“On the board.”
“Ex-cops, ex-military—at least these five.” Peabody began to put them up. “I’m seeing they recruit the ex-cops as scouts, the military as guards and security. So far, anyway. Two female and one male as guards, I think, one female and one male scout.”
Peabody glanced back. “What digging I did into Red Swan, I get a mobile consulting firm, pretty small change. A couple more surfaced. A dance company in Wisconsin, and looks legit. A company called Cygne Rouge in Provence—France.”
“France,” Eve repeated.
“Yeah, it’s—ah—videography.”
“It’s going to connect.”
Peabody paused. “It is?”
“Any more?”
“A defunct escort service, way back. Out of business for close to a decade.”
“Depends on your definition. She ran it,” Eve said, and ordered Iris Beaty’s ID back on-screen.
“Is that—”
“I’m betting that’s Auntie. Iris Beaty.”
“Aka Iris Swan,” Callendar announced. “French ID.”
“And check her data,” Eve noted. “Same address as the videography front.”
“Are we going to France?”
Ignoring Peabody, Eve studied the side by sides Callendar put on-screen. “Changed her hair for Swan—deeper, longer, but not much else. Vain—she likes her face. And she’s not in France. She’s here in New York.”
I know you now, Eve thought.
“We’ll add informing the authorities over there,” she added. “They’ll want to hit that location. You want to funnel girls in Europe, it’s handy to have a location in Europe. And she’d spot-check on that. Zip on over, make sure it’s all running smooth. But she lives in New York. This location is the main hub.
“I need the data on the damn building. Peabody, get me whatever they’ve got. We’ve got a full briefing in ninety minutes.”
“Who are we briefing?”
“Every-damn-body. Go.”
Eve swung back to the board. “Yeah, I think she hit with these. Callendar, let’s start financial runs. Maxine Pryor first. Look for the shady, a secondary account, any—”
She broke off as she heard people coming. “Hold that for now.” She started to complain when they came in, but she caught the gleam in Feeney’s eyes.
“Me first,” she said, since Beaty was already on-screen. “Iris Beaty, former sex worker, former owner and proprietor of Red Swan, a defunct escort service, and companion to Jonah Devereaux. You can call her Auntie.”
“Good work, Callendar.”
She lifted her shoulders at Feeney. “Looks like Dallas and I hit with her at the same time. Different angles, same target.”
“She also has ID, French ID, under the name Iris Swan, and an address under each name in France, one bogus, the other claiming to be a videography business.”
“Another front.” Feeney hit the AC for coffee.
“Most likely, and most likely either another training location or a holding station for shipping the girls. Meanwhile Peabody’s ID’d seven employees of the Red Swan in New York—which claims to be a mobile consulting firm. No physical address.”
“Handy.”
“Your turn.”
“Devereaux’s got a legit shitpile of money, holdings, investments,” Feeney began. “RDS is a private company, he’s the sole owner, and he rakes it in. Doesn’t seem like he’d need the two shadow accounts we dug up. Had to dig deep,” Feeney added. “Guy’s no dumbass there, so it took a while. And … Your find.” He pointed at Roarke.
He’d changed somewhere along the line, Eve noted. Rather than his dress shirt and suit pants, he wore a black tee and jeans.
“He’s a signatory on what appears to be a business account, in Switzerland—he went classic there—for Cygne Rouge, LLC.”
“French for Red Swan.”
“Exactly. He has a second on Nevis under RS Productions, LLC. Both currently hold over two hundred million, and Iris Swan is also a signatory on both.”
“You had her, too,” Eve observed.
“Three times a charm. As money flows in and out,” Roarke continued, “these are clearly accounts set up to cover the expenses of running their business, and for channeling a portion of profits.”
“And it hooks them together on all this, nice and tight. The building. I need the building.”
“Copied to this unit.” Roarke stepped over, reached around Callendar, and brought a set of blueprints on-screen. “These are the official ones. As you see, there’s the lobby area on the main floor where customers would bring packages in for shipping. Offices for clerical work and so on. Storage area for packaging, boxes, crates. An underground garage for trucks, vans, other vehicles. The shipping area, the shipping dock. Offices on the upper floors, more storage, a conference room, employee locker room, employee break room.”
“That’s not right.” Eve just shook her head. “It’s too much room for offices, and it’s sure as hell not set up for holding abductees.”
“I agree. Far too much wasted space, termed here as future builds and projects. Considering the purpose we all believe the structure’s used for, and the deep pockets of that purpose, it occurred to me the work needed to utilize those upper floors, all really but the front—in both senses—could be done unofficially, without permits.”
“That won’t help me plan an op.”
“No, but this should.”
He brought another set of blueprints on-screen. The detailing, the use of space gave her a quick flash of her time in state schools.
“How’d you get this? I can’t—we can’t use data you got by hacking Devereaux’s files. Nothing we do from it will stick.”
“Do I look like this is my first day on the job?” Feeney pointed at his own face. “Remember who trained you, kid. We figured what we figured, and Roarke figured there had to be prints somewhere. Even off-the-grid, you gotta have a plan. Roarke does a little digging—not over any line—and pulls out the architect Devereaux likes to use.”
He held up a finger before Eve could speak. “I tagged up the PA—went to the top—called in a favor. We go back some. It took some doing—another reason we ran over some—but we got a warrant to cyber-search the files, and there it is. Clean. A defense attorney might squawk, but it’s clean.”
“Okay. Okay. The plans are ten years old. They’ve been at this awhile.”
“The building was originally a warehouse with offices on the lower levels,” Roarke told her. “I have those blueprints, but suffice it to say they used the basic footprint, reconfigured to their needs. You have the rooms where they’d hold the girls, four floors of those small rooms and baths with a break area on each, presumably for staff. These larger areas could be training areas, classrooms. You have a single elevator on each floor. No windows. Stairs with reinforced doors and alarms.”
“Main level,” Eve picked it up. “The delivery front lobby, its storage and work areas, access to the shipping dock and garage. A security hub. One floor up, studios, shower area, kitchen area, another security hub, classrooms. Big office at the end there, with a bathroom and an elevator—that’s going to be Beaty’s office. Lower floor, that’s the infirmary, sickrooms, cleaning supplies, employee locker rooms.
“Top floor,” she continued. “You’ve got windows there. They’ll be privacy screened, but windows. Big space. Living and dining areas, powder room, big kitchen, big bedroom and bath, home office, home gym, entertainment room. She lives there. Auntie’s got herself a nice penthouse apartment.”
She slipped her hands in her pockets. Whatever fatigue she’d felt had snapped away.
“The tunnels. Both sets of plans had tunnels running under, old ones, to be filled in, according to the official ones. But they didn’t do that. Where do they lead?”
“We have that, and can show you, but … McNab.” Roarke turned to him. “Your find.”
“You have to figure if they take bodies out that way, they’d want to get close to where they dispose of them.” He reached out, finger-touched with Peabody. “Makes you sick when you think they’re doing that to kids. You take the tunnel east from the elevator, then the south fork. It’s going to come out under Quiet Rest. Funeral home and crematorium.”
“Good work. Damn good all around.” Eve shoved her hair back again. “I need everything on the funeral home.”
“I got it,” McNab told her.
“We pile that in.”
Studying the screen, she paced back and forth. And she could see how it could be done. Not fast, not easy, but she could see it.
“Okay, I’ve called in my detectives, Willowby, some uniforms, Lowenbaum from SWAT, the commander, Reo. I’ll pull Mira in. I see how it can work, so let’s talk it through, work out any kinks before they all get here.”