Dorian woke with her head pounding like an airjack. Her knee felt sick and squishy, like her stomach. She didn’t know where she was or what had happened. For a terrifying few minutes she didn’t know who she was.
Everything went blurry when she tried to sit up, so she lay still. The air smelled bad, and the ground felt rough and bumpy under her. Her ankle throbbed.
She tried hard to think of the last thing she remembered, but just couldn’t, so she concentrated on what she did know.
Somebody had hurt her, and she didn’t want to be wherever she was. That somebody might come back, hurt her again.
This time when she sat up, she braced against the dizziness, hissed her way through it. She saw some buildings—crapholes—some junk.
She wore gray pants—they looked like good pants except for the bloody tear in the left knee. Wet and clingy pants, like her shirt—her white shirt.
She pressed her fingers to her knee, squawked in pain before she could stop herself. She wore plain white sneakers, and the ankle above the left foot swelled like a balloon.
She’d had bumps and bruises and swollen parts before. Her mother got pissed and dealt them out like a hand of cards.
Had her mother done this to her?
No, no, she didn’t think so. She’d gotten away, again.
Spend Christmas in New York. Wasn’t she going to do that? But it didn’t feel like Christmas. It felt hot. Even though she couldn’t stop shivering, it felt hot.
Maybe she had a fever.
Wherever, whenever, she had to move. Maybe find a place she could steal some medicine, an ice pack.
She picked around the woodpile—got a splinter for her trouble—until she found something she could use as a kind of crutch.
Tears streamed, watering the pain as she used the wood to pull herself up. She hobbled her way toward the lights in the distance.
Lights meant people, people meant pockets to pick or stores with ice packs and blockers. Once she had those, she’d find a hole somewhere and sleep. Just sleep until the pain went away.
Dazed, her mind heading toward numb in defense, she walked.
And walked. And walked.
About the same time Dorian crawled through a broken window in a condemned building and fell into a blocker-and-tranq-induced sleep with ice packs strapped to her knee and ankle, Lieutenant Eve Dallas stood over a body on the north edge of Battery Park.
Last night’s storm had cleared the worst of a late June three-day heat wave and left the air in Lower Manhattan oddly refreshed.
Wouldn’t last, but it made a nice morning.
Except for the kid—just a kid, Eve thought. Hair in a frizzy red cloud around a sweet, heart-shaped face. Green eyes stared out behind the film death smeared on them.
Blood stained the white shirt, spreading out from the spear of wood in the girl’s chest.
No blood on the grass or ground, she noted. Could’ve washed away in the rain, but the body lay fairly sheltered under the leafy branches of a tree near the bike path.
She glanced toward the path—light traffic at this hour—then at the uniform who stood by.
“What do you know?”
“Sir. Not a hell of a lot. Guy decides to do some yoga in the park at sunrise.” The uniform chin-pointed at a man of around seventy in compression shorts and tank holding a rolled mat. He stood by a second uniform. “Wilfred Meadows. He lives a couple blocks away and says he likes this spot for his, ah, sunrise salutations. He saw the body, contacted nine-one-one.”
The officer cleared his throat. “When we arrived on scene, the witness was sitting cross-legged a few feet away from the victim, with his hands pressed together.”
The officer demonstrated. “He said he was trying to send positive energy to her spirit on her journey. And he cried a little because she’s just a kid. Says he’s got a redheaded granddaughter about her age.
“He comes here most mornings, he said, and rides his bike on the path three afternoons a week, leads a tai chi class in the park two afternoons a week. He hasn’t seen the victim around before. He thinks he’d have noticed because of the hair and his granddaughter.”
“Okay, get his information and let him go home. We’ll follow up. Wait.”
She spotted her partner, Detective Peabody, walking fast toward the crime scene tape. “We’ll follow up now. Peabody.” Eve crossed to the tape.
“Sorry! Subway glitch, so I ditched it. I put half a mile on my feet and shift just started.”
“Yoga guy there found the body. The uniforms got his statement. Follow up before you let him go.”
“Got it.” Peabody took off her rainbow sunshades, slid them into a pocket of her jacket. Maybe the sun beamed, but she knew how Eve felt about rainbow sunshades on the job. “She looks like a kid.”
“She was. Twelve, thirteen, fourteen. I’ll take the body, you take the wit.”
Eve turned, walked back, crouched down.
Opening her field kit, she took out her Identi-pad first and pressed it to the victim’s right thumb.
“Victim is identified as Mina Rose Cabot, age thirteen, of Devon, Pennsylvania. Caucasian, red and green. Five feet, four inches, a hundred and six pounds. Parents, Rae and Oliver Cabot, same address, one sib, Ethan, age eleven.”
She got out her gauges. “TOD, twenty-three-oh-six. COD appears to be the approximately eighteen-inch-by-three-inch piece of wood or wood product impaled mid-chest. ME to confirm, lab to verify weapon.”
With her sealed hands, Eve picked up and examined the victim’s. “Some bruising on the knuckles, some dried blood.” She took a sample of the blood, sealed it, then put on microgoggles, studied both palms. “Looks like a couple splinters in the palms, both hands. Blood on the shirt around the wound consistent with the injury. Some drops on the cuff of the shirt, some on the pants. Not consistent with the wound.”
She shook her head. “Where the hell did that spear thing come from?”
She sat back on her heels. “Put up a fight, didn’t you, Mina? Grabbed for the spear of wood—or maybe you held it to begin with and the killer used it against you.”
“Victim has pierced ears—two on the left, one in the right. No earrings. No shoes, no ’link, no wallet or purse. She’s got a little—looks like silver—heart on a chain. Chain’s broken.
“So the killer takes her earrings, her shoes, whatever else she had on her, but doesn’t take the necklace. Maybe heard somebody coming and ran before he could grab it. Maybe.”
She replaced her tools. “No visible facial wounds or other visible injuries. Clothes are intact. ME to check for sexual assault or rape, but it looks like a mugging gone way wrong. What the hell were you doing in New York, Mina from Pennsylvania?”
Family trip, Eve thought, a runaway? She sure as hell didn’t look like a kid who’d spent any time on the streets.
She pushed up as Peabody walked to her.
“Mr. Meadows’s statement jibes. I’ve got all his information. He’s lived here for eighteen years, works as a life coach for Healthy You and Me—thirty-three years there. Married for forty-one years. His wife’s a fitness coach, same company. His wife’s a redhead, so are their daughter and their oldest granddaughter. He said he had one horrible instant when he thought the victim was his granddaughter, Abigail. He knew it wasn’t—but he had that instant.”
“She’s Mina Cabot, from Devon, Pennsylvania. Looks like a mugging, but…” Eve looked back. “See how she’s laid out? Not posed or anything, but it’s still neat. Not like she took the spear in the chest and fell. And no grass stains on her clothes. No blood on the ground—we’ll have the sweepers check that, but … Let’s roll her.”
Together they went back to the body. Peabody sealed her hands with the can Eve passed her, then they carefully turned Mina on her side. “Let’s amend the size of the spear to closer to twenty-four inches,” noted Eve. “Look at the blood on the back of the shirt. It pierced her back. But there’s no blood under her.”
“Dump site?” Peabody asked.
“Her shirt’s damp—hasn’t dried through—and TOD confirms she died during that storm last night. But the pants? They’re dry, and the blood on them? Rain didn’t hit that.”
“They fit her though. Well, maybe just a tad short, like she had a little growth spurt.”
“Her ID lists her at five-four. Morris to verify.”
“They’re good pants. School-uniform navy.”
Eve’s eyes narrowed. “‘School uniform’?”
“That’s how they strike me. Private school uniform. They’re usually navy or gray, maybe khaki for the summer. These aren’t summer weight though.”
“Not summer weight,” Eve repeated thoughtfully. “Morris will check for rape. Why change her pants? Take her shoes—you can see by the condition of the bottom of her feet she wasn’t walking around the city barefoot. Why take her shoes, remove her earrings, take her ID, her ’link, if she had all that, but take the time to change her pants? Because I’m damned if she died in these. Or died here.”
“Pretty kid,” Peabody said. “Seriously pretty.”
“Yeah, she was. Look at her nails—fingers and toes. Perfectly kept, clean, neat. Soft hands. She hasn’t spent any time on the streets. Check with missing persons in Devon, see if they have anything on her. I’ll call for the dead wagon and the sweepers.”
Moved her here, Eve thought as she made the contacts. Set it up to look like a mugging. But it wasn’t about a pair of shoes or a pocket ’link.
“Dallas. There’s been an Amber Alert out on her since last November. November nine. She didn’t come home from school. Bester Middle—private school. I’ve got the names of the detectives assigned. And there’s a notation the parents have offered two hundred thousand to anyone with information that leads to their daughter’s return.”
“This kid hasn’t been on the streets for over seven months. A runaway, possibly. We’ll see what the investigators say. But she’s had a decent place to stay. You know this shit—is that actual wood or composite?”
Peabody crouched down.
“It’s pine,” she said. “The real deal. Looks like it has some age on it. The lab’ll have to pin that down. I think it’s an old stud.”
“Like your grandfather?”
“Ha! Funny! Like a wall stud maybe, and somebody who didn’t give a shit about decent wood ripped it out. Somebody rehabbing a building—like we’re doing with the house, but we’d never treat material like this. It’s warped some, so it’s been out in the weather. Probably for a while.”
“Another point she was dumped. The killer didn’t just happen to pick that up lying on the ground here. We’ll have uniforms canvass, but somebody brought her here, after that storm blew out, dumped her under that tree.
“Could’ve weighed her down, dumped her in the river—it’s close enough.”
“They wanted her found.”
Eve nodded at her partner. “And why’s that? She was out in that storm, and she fought. Nothing under her nails, so she didn’t get any scratches in—or the killer cleaned them before the dump. No facial bruising, just a little on her knuckles.”
“Fight didn’t last long,” Peabody concluded.
“No.” Eve looked down at the body again. “Not long.”
Eve waited until she got to Central, into her office, grabbed some life-giving coffee from her AutoChef, before making the first contact.
Rather than start with the notification, she contacted the lead detective on Mina’s missing persons case.
“Ah, hell. Ah, fuck it all to hell.” Detective Sharlene Driver scrubbed her hands over her deep brown face, then pressed her fingers to eyes several shades darker.
Then she dropped them, and the eyes went cop flat. “I’d appreciate the details, Lieutenant.”
“And you’ll have them. My partner’s writing the report now and will copy you. I’ll answer any questions you may have. I have some of my own.”
“How about I anticipate some of them, answer—and reciprocate by sending you our files?”
“Appreciated.”
“It’s a good family, Lieutenant. Mother’s a civil rights attorney—does a lot of pro bono work. Father’s a doctor, a GP, has his own practice. They’re financially solid, but not crazy rich—not kidnap a kid for a big, fat payday rich. Mina did exceptionally well in school, had a solid circle of friends—no serious boyfriend, but she was sweet on a guy in her class. We talked to him, his family, the friends. Nothing pointed to her running off. Nothing.”
Driver paused. “You have to look at that. Kid gets pissed off, takes off, but not here. She’d negotiated a vid date—her first group date with the boy and two other couples, and was looking forward to it. She was walking home from soccer practice.”
“Usual time and route?”
“Yeah, and that’s a thing. It’s only about a half mile, nice neighborhood—with this little grove of trees along her way. The other thing is while the parents had the talk about strangers and all that, and Mina was a sharp kid, she was also the type—look at her parents—to try to help somebody she thought needed it.”
“Somebody knew her route, used her nature, grabbed her up.”
“That’s how we saw it. No ransom demand. We got some hotline calls, but mostly bogus, and nothing panned out. The closest we came is somebody thought they might have seen a van in the area. Either a black or brown or frigging blue van. With windows, no windows.”
“I hear you.”
“The dad picked up the son at his friends’—where the kid habitually went after school—just before five. Mina was due home by five, but he didn’t worry until about five-thirty when his wife got home. They called Mina’s ’link—but couldn’t connect. Started calling her friends, her soccer coach, then while Oliver—the dad—went out to drive around the area, Rae called the police.
“They haven’t given up, Lieutenant. This is going to crush them. If you could do me a solid, let my partner and me notify them. We have a relationship.”
“I’ll make sure you get the report quickly. I’ll want to talk to them, but it can wait until later in the day.”
“I’ll tell you they’re going to be on their way to New York today. They won’t wait.”
“Give them my contact. I’ll make time.”
“They’re going to ask me if she was raped.”
“I can’t give you that information. She’s with our ME now, and he’ll determine that. What was she wearing the night she went missing?”
“School uniform—she’d have had her soccer clothes in her bag. White, long-sleeved shirt, navy pants. She had a habit of shoving her school blazer in her backpack—because it was lame—and wearing a white zip-up hoodie. Same with her uniform shoes—dark brown loafer style. She’d more likely have worn her white kicks.”
“Jewelry?”
“Three earrings—studs. Two silver hearts, one blue star, a silver heart on a chain. She’d have had her ’link, her ID, under twenty in cash, her tablet, schoolwork—assignments, a binder to hold assignments—earbuds, the makeup she was allowed—and what she snuck in, which her mother knew about. Hairbrush, hair ties, and a small first aid kit. Her father insisted both kids carry the basics. We didn’t find a trace of any of it.”
Whoever grabbed her wanted it to look like a runaway at first glance, Eve thought when she ended the call. Like the killer wanted it to look like a mugging.
To buy time, she assumed, in both cases.
And that led her to believe the snatch and the murder rested on the same person or persons.
She got up to start her murder board.
She kept at it when she heard Peabody clomp down the hall to her office.
“Send the report to Detective Driver.”
Peabody pulled out her PPC and did so.
“Devon’s going to do the next of kin notification, and reciprocate by sending us their files. They concluded a snatch, not a runaway. I’m going to agree with that. The victim didn’t strike out for the bright lights of New York after soccer practice with under twenty in her pocket.”
Eve didn’t turn. “I can feel you giving the AC begging glances. Get your damn coffee. Get me more.”
“It was more like longing glances than begging.”
“We’re going to run the parents to cover it. Look for any debts, any payouts that don’t square. Devon’s done that, but we cover it. She had a boyfriend—sort of. We’re going to look at him and see if he has a perv older brother, uncle, father. Run her coaches and teachers, same deal.”
“Okay.”
“And we look for any connections to New York, because they brought her here, and they kept her here. No signs of restraints or force—so far.”
“Maybe kept her drugged.”
“The tox will show it, just like Morris will determine if somebody used her for sex. Why do you grab up a pretty young teen if not for ransom—and no ransom demands made—or sex?”
“Like a house droid? Slave labor?”
“Not with those hands and nails. If anything, she’d had some pampering there, with that—what do you call it—kind of manicure deal.”
“French. You’re right. She had a classic French manicure—fingers and toes. Nothing flashy, all classy.”
“Classy,” Eve repeated, and grabbed her coffee. “If it was for sex, he wanted that classy. Or … let’s check child pornography. Thirteen’s on the cusp of that. It’s more pubescent porn. Photos, vids.”
Eve looked at the ID shot on her board, that young, fresh, open face. “Pretty redhead, clear white skin, some curves. Youthful but what—budding?”
“It’s so sick.”
“Yeah, and so’s jamming a sharp piece of wood in a kid’s chest. McNab did some time in Vice—check with him.”
Since the EDD ace was Peabody’s cohab and main squeeze, checking with him added a plus.
Eve stepped back from the board, studied it.
“A pretty young girl walks the half mile home from school—same route every day. That makes a snatch easy. But the nice neighborhood makes it stickier. Somebody took some time, to watch, to plan. Had transportation. I’m betting somebody’s done this before. Maybe selling the kids he snatches. For sex, for underground porn sites.
“It has to be worth it, to keep her for months, to keep her clean and healthy, closed in or drugged, or convinced she’s living the high life. Has to pay off. Has to pay enough to transport her out of state.”
“Maybe that just happened,” Peabody suggested. “And something went wrong there, and she got away.”
“Could be. Could very well be. You’ve had her all this time, you maybe get a little careless, and she tries to bolt.”
She looked at the picture from the crime scene.
“Where the hell did that weapon come from? Close to where she bolted, if so?”
She went back to her desk to open the murder book on Mina. “Check with McNab, and let’s put together a list of known pedophiles—in and around Devon, in New York.”
“Holy shit, that’s going to be a long list.”
“Girls—eleven to fourteen. Younger won’t work, older’s beyond that scope of sick. No brutality—unless Morris turns some up. He kept her school uniform,” Eve murmured. “The pants. But the shirt? Roe said long sleeves when she was snatched—we need to verify that absolutely, because she had on short, cuffed sleeves when she was killed. Maybe we can track the shirt.”
“They could change the pants, but not the shirt,” Peabody concluded. “But why keep the pants?”
“Maybe he has a collection. That’s the file from Devon coming through. Go.”
Eve read the files from the initial incident report through the steps and stages of the investigation, the interviews, statements, the timeline the investigators put together. She studied the map of the neighborhood, the location of the house to the school, both to the grove of trees.
Thorough, she decided. The Devon detectives weren’t morons or slackers. They’d worked it, and hard, covered the ground, then covered it again.
And attached to the file, she found a list of known pedophiles that included nearby Philadelphia.
She’d go through those interviews, too, but first she entered the list, then ordered a new search narrowing it to her parameters.
Females between eleven and fourteen.
She did the same for New York, restricting it—for now—to Manhattan.
Then, testing her tech skills, ordered one more for any connections between the narrowed Pennsylvania list and New York’s.
While the computer worked, she put her boots on her desk, picked up what was left of her coffee, and studied the board.
Pampered hands and feet, no signs of restraints, no outward signs of malnutrition, violence.
Morris would confirm or refute that, but for now …
What kept a thirteen-year-old girl with an abductor for months?
Someone she knew, trusted. But nothing in Driver’s report indicated anything like that, and she and her partner hadn’t missed a trick that Eve could see.
No physical restraints didn’t mean she hadn’t been locked up, or fed drugs to make her compliant. Brainwashed, threatened.
School uniform pants and a plain white shirt. The necklace. Odd, really, they’d allowed her to keep the necklace but not the earrings.
Because it sure as hell hadn’t been a standard botched mugging.
“You got outside, didn’t you, Mina? And you fought back when they caught you. Died for it. Maybe you still had those pants, or maybe they put them on you to make you look like a runaway. Left your necklace with a broken chain to make it look like a mugging or fight.”
Just another kid, Eve thought, who takes off and comes to a bad end.
“But that’s not you. Look at that face. Pretty girl with skin like white rose petals. And a body just barely past the first bud. Whoever took you kept you pretty and prime for a reason.”
When her computer announced the completion of her first search, she dropped her feet to the floor, swiveled back.
She’d find the reason.