Forgotten in Death

by J. D. Robb

  “Rich,” Eve concluded. “Either born that way or she found a generous daddy. The piercings, the tat, the nails, those aren’t low-rent or home jobs. Those cost.”

  She considered.

  “Where was she found? What was she wearing?”

  “On the floor of her dressing room in her Riverside Drive penthouse—family money. A party dress—just the dress—at about two this morning.”

  “Going, coming, or at a party?”

  “At. Hosting. One of the party guests stumbled over her, and according to his statement thought she was passed out or sleeping.”

  “Probably because he was as wasted as she was before she OD’d. I’m betting there were lots of illegals and plenty of high-dollar booze at the party.”

  “You’d win that bet.”

  “She’s been using a long time. Looks like she had an eating disorder on top of it. Her arms are toothpicks, and the faint, circular bruising says ingesting and/or inhaling wasn’t doing the job for her anymore. She needed the syringe.”

  “On the visual, and from the statements, I agree. I’ll need to confirm.”

  She looked at him then. “Why are you on a rich junky’s OD? Who is she?”

  “The only child of Judge Erin Fester and her former husband, the attorney general of New York. Judge Fester asked for me.”

  “Fester’s solid, and the media will crawl all over this. She knew you’d be respectful and discreet.”

  “Youth is often tragically foolish. But you’re here about your newest victim.”

  He gestured to his wall of drawers before walking over to open one. “His wife and children are coming in this morning. We’ll have him ready.”

  “You found the paralytic in his system before it had time to dissipate.”

  “Another sixty to ninety minutes, there wouldn’t have been a trace of it. His killer obtained a high-grade, controlled medical substance. Dexachlorine. It’s used in conjunction with an anesthetic during surgery so the patient is not only asleep but immobile, which is equally important. Dexachlorine doesn’t require a counteragent post-surgery to restore mobility.”

  “It just goes away.”

  “In surgery, the anesthesiologist would monitor the patient, administer more if need be. Its effects are immediate but relatively short in duration. Two and a half to three hours at most, depending on the dosage.”

  “Can’t be easy to come by for a layperson.”

  “If whoever administered it didn’t manage to steal it himself, he would have paid dearly for it.”

  “Or he had a medical source he could lean on, threaten, blackmail. Anyway, your quick work screwed the killer’s plans for Delgato to go down as a suicide.”

  They stood on either side of the drawer tray, with the corpse on it. Eve held out the glossy bakery box.

  “And what is that seductive smell?”

  “A couple of cinnamon buns. I’ve got a source.”

  “I should point out that if you hadn’t found Delgato on the line between life and death, it would’ve been very unlikely for me to find the paralytic.

  “But I’m taking the buns.”

  “If this place runs anything like my department, you’d better have a good place to stash them.”

  Morris brought the box closer to his nose, inhaled. “I have my ways.”

  “If I have mine, I’ll have Delgato’s killer—who damn well killed Alva, too—in a cage by end of shift. Her siblings are probably going to come in for her in the next day or two.”

  “I saw in your report you’d found next of kin. We’ll take care of her until then.”

  She knew he would, and left him with his soft music and harp strings.

  She hit the lab next, and made her way through the cubes, around the counter, by the glass enclosures manned by the lab geeks.

  She spotted the head geek’s egg-shaped skull as Dick Berenski worked at his station. He hunched, skinny shoulders bent as he slid from one end of his counter to the other on his rolling stool.

  Eve walked to the far end, waited while he ran his spider fingers over a keyboard.

  “We got your tox back on the hanging guy.” He kept tapping, and his voice already sounded aggrieved. “Harvo’ll get to your fabric trace when she gets to it. I got drones going through the contents of the dumpster on your other victim. Not going to find squat, but you gotta look. Got her tox back—zip and nada there, like it said in the report. Only blood on her or the tarp’s hers. Tarp came from the roll in the storage shed inside the fence on the construction site.”

  He rolled back in her direction, and Eve saw he was trying to grow a goatee. He’d worked on a mustache once that had resembled a skinny caterpillar with mange.

  She doubted this would be any more successful.

  “Just because you’re stacking ’em up, Dallas, doesn’t mean we don’t have other cases, other work without your name on it.”

  Eve said nothing, just held up the bakery box.

  His beady eyes went nearly as glossy as the box.

  “What’s in there?”

  Since this was a bribe instead of a gift—they didn’t call him Dickhead for nothing—Eve had increased the amount. “A half dozen of the best sticky buns in the city. Possibly the state. Maybe the Eastern Seaboard.”

  He wet his lips. “Whaddaya want?”

  “I had three crime scenes yesterday. The second, unidentified female and fetus.”

  “Yeah, yeah, DeWinter’s got the bones. We got the shoe, some jewelry, bullets. We’ll get to them.”

  “The sweepers sent you samples. Dirt, brick, concrete, block, wood.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah. So?”

  “I need a full analysis on the brick from the inner wall, the materials in the outer wall, the ceiling between the inner and outer wall, and the floor and ceiling outside the inner wall.”

  He gave her a sneer she found severely compromised by the attempted goatee.

  “I want a pair of frosty blondes and a pitcher of vodka martinis all served up on a tropical beach. Naked.”

  She refused to let that terrifying image into her head. “I get the analyses, you get the buns.”

  She heard Peabody’s pink boots clomping her way, but kept her eyes on Dickhead’s.

  “Lemme see ’em.”

  She untied the cord, opened the lid a few inches, tilted the box toward him. The scent streamed out, and could have made a grown man cry.

  Peabody gave a yip from behind her. “You went to Jacko’s!”

  Dickhead’s long fingers reached; Eve shut the box.

  “Did you get any extra?” Peabody all but bounced in her boots. “I’ll work out a full hour for half a sticky bun from Jacko’s.”

  “Keep me waiting, Berenski, she gets one and you’re down to five.”

  “Hold on, just hold the hell on.” He snatched his station ’link, stabbed at it, rolled a foot away from Eve. “Taver? You got the samples from the Hudson Yards construction site, the Jane Doe remains?”

  He slid his eyes toward Eve, hunched his skinny shoulders. “Move it up. That’s what I said. Do a quick prelim on—”

  “Full and detailed,” Eve corrected. “Brick from the inner wall is priority.”

  He curled his lip at her, but turned away, muttered into the ’link. Then he rolled back. “I’ve got Taver and Janesy on it. It’s going to take awhile.”

  “Define ‘awhile’?”

  “Maybe half a day.”

  “Brick’s first. How long for that?”

  “Maybe a couple of hours. You said you wanted the whole shot.”

  “I do.” She set the box on his counter. “Don’t make me come back here.”

  “You do, bring me a latte—extra shot!”

  Okay, Eve thought as she walked away, she had to give him sarcasm points for that one.

  “You let him have the whole box.” Peabody sighed, deep, wistful. “Probably for the best. I don’t think I have an hour to sweat off that sweet, cinnamony goodness tonight. The decorator’
s bringing samples. Tile and countertops and cabinets and—”

  “I’m taking DeWinter,” Eve interrupted. “Go back and see if Harvo’s had a chance to start on the fabric traces I got from the Delgato scene.”

  “Okay. I can’t believe you hit another murder after you left Central.” Peabody looked up the stairs that led to DeWinter’s area. “She probably hasn’t had time to do much on the remains.”

  “Then I’ll incentivize her.”

  “With sticky buns?”

  “She’s not the bribe-me type. I’ll just harass her.”

  Eve turned, headed up the stairs.

  She expected to find DeWinter in her lab in one of her coordinated lab coats using some of her strange equipment on human bones.

  She found the bones, the woman’s precisely arranged on a worktable and the fetus’s on another.

  But the only living being in the area sat crossways on a chair, legs dangling over the side while she did something on a tablet.

  A kid. DeWinter’s kid. Eve knew she had a daughter-type kid.

  This one wore bright green high-top kicks, jeans with turned-up cuffs, and a shiny belt with a green tee tucked into them.

  Her hair, like DeWinter’s when it wasn’t sleek and tamed, exploded in dark curls, these with some caramel worked through.

  Flower pins scooped it back from her face, a face with skin the color of that caramel with just a dollop of cream.

  She turned her head to study Eve out of almond-shaped eyes as green as her kicks.

  Eve didn’t know much about kids, but she knew when one had a face destined to break hearts. Plus, those eyes. They looked as if they knew entirely too much.

  More than an actual human should.

  “I know you.” She didn’t smile when she said it, but swung her legs off the chair to stand. “You’re Lieutenant Dallas. My mother worked with you on the Lost Girls—that’s what I call them. I read The Icove Agenda. They were misguided men who twisted science for their own ends. I’m reading The Red Horse Legacy right now.”

  She tapped the tablet, then set it aside. “I have a lot of questions.”

  “I’ve got one. Where’s your mother?”

  “She had to talk to somebody, but she’ll be right back. On the Icove investigation, do you think the clones who got out of the school, most were just kids, do you think they scattered? Or do you think they found a way to regroup, that they found a haven?”

  Eve thought of the girl with the infant she’d released herself. Because it wasn’t right. None of it had been right. “They’ve got no reason to cause any trouble or be any threat.”

  “That’s not what I meant.” The girl rolled those compelling, farseeing eyes. “Like I’d be scared of kid clones. There were babies, too. Someone has to take care of them, to feed them, educate them, socialize them. I feel the Avrils—and it’s wrong to take a life, but in a way, a very real way, they were defending their own and others—had a place, a safe place. And a way to help the others.”

  “I couldn’t say.”

  Now she did smile. “Because you think I’m too young to understand. A lot of people make that mistake.”

  DeWinter’s heels clicked toward the lab. “That took longer than I thought. Sweetie, if you want to … Dallas.”

  “Lieutenant Dallas and I were discussing Avril and the clones.”

  “You’ll need to save that for another time, Miranda. The lieutenant has her hands full with her current investigation.”

  “The woman and the fetus. It’s very sad.”

  Miranda studied the bones with the sad mixed with fascination.

  “It’s good you have my mother working on finding out who she was, and when and how she was killed. The way you collaborated on the Lost Girls. In that case, the man who’d killed them and hidden their bodies had mental and emotional defects. From what Mom’s told me, that doesn’t seem to apply here.”

  DeWinter slid an arm around the girl’s shoulders. “I don’t think you’ve met my daughter, Miranda. Her school has a professional day today, and her sitter—”

  “Who I don’t need.”

  “Her sitter had to cancel.”

  “I like coming here. There’s so much happening.”

  “Why don’t you go see what’s happening with Elsie? She’s working on the sketch and holo of the adult victim.”

  “You want me out of the way while you talk to Lieutenant Dallas.”

  “Yes.” DeWinter bent down, kissed the top of her daughter’s head. “Yes, I do.”

  Miranda tilted her face up. “Can I get a fizzy?”

  “Fine. Use my code. And don’t wander off downstairs.”

  The girl rolled her eyes again. “It was nice meeting you,” she told Eve. “I’d like to talk to you about the Red Horse investigation when I’ve finished the book. A lot of people think, and say, there isn’t real evil in the world. But there is. I have to decide if I want to work on the science end or the investigative end of stopping evil, and the misguided, and the ones that fall into other areas.”

  She went back for her tablet, tucked it under her arm. “Did it take you long to learn how to use your service weapon?”

  “Miranda.”

  “All right, all right, I was just wondering. I’m going.”

  Eve frowned after the girl as she left. “How old is she?”

  DeWinter just laughed. “She still wrestles with the dog and bargains for ice cream. But her mind? She’s scary smart, and sometimes it exhausts my brain trying to keep up with hers.”

  “You talk about cases with her?”

  “She offers interesting perspectives. I can’t shut what I do away from her, so we talk, and I explain. Often that sparks something, shows me another approach.” DeWinter’s eyes turned cool. “You don’t approve?”

  Eve lifted a hand for peace. “I don’t know anything about kids. She threw me off, that’s all. Maybe part of that’s because she had the same take I do about the clones. About the Avrils and the rest.”

  “She wants a happy ending for them. Or at least a just one. I’d imagine you’d hope for the just as well.”

  “Hope’s not enough.”

  DeWinter nodded as they shifted to the tables. “But it should factor in, shouldn’t it? Especially when you’re still a child. I can tell you these remains were weeks away from full term, from the chance to be a child. My analysis puts him at thirty-two weeks. Viable, and just over six pounds, and seventeen inches. I found no defects or indications of medical issues. He died inside his mother, cut off from oxygen and nutrition.”

  “Forty weeks is full term, right?” She knew that from Mavis. “So eight weeks to go.”

  “Which would have made him premature, but again, viable. He would have lived outside the womb.”

  “What about the woman?”

  “I’ve only gotten started. Elsie has taken measurements, done a 3D replica of the skull, and is working on the reproduction. I can tell you she was between twenty and twenty-five at TOD. Five feet, six inches in height. We were able to extract DNA, but have just begun an analysis and a search.”

  “If she went in that hole when the building was going up, that’s a long shot on the search.”

  “We can analyze the DNA, and will. Her injuries, the breaks, the dislocation of the shoulder are consistent with a fall. The damage to the ribs is consistent with gunshot wounds. They recovered three thirty-two-caliber bullets.”

  “Yeah, I got that report.”

  “She wore a size seven shoe, narrow. You likely saw that report, and the report that the ring size was a five. It’s consistent again with the remains. A delicate build. If she gained normally, given the week of pregnancy, the weight of the fetus, she would have been between a hundred and forty to a hundred and forty-five pounds at TOD. Most likely a hundred and fifteen to a hundred and twenty pre-pregnancy.”

  “A hair over average height, slim build, small-boned, narrow feet and fingers.”

  “Long, slender fingers. A bit short-wai
sted, as she had long legs for her height. The bone structure of the skull? Delicate features. A narrow nose, strong but not prominent cheekbones, a heart-shaped face, wide eyes, well spaced. Her teeth are perfectly even, and while we’ll run tests, I found no visible signs of decay.”

  It didn’t give her a name, Eve thought, but it gave her quite a bit.

  “So she had dental work—perfectly straight—and good nutrition and hygiene.”

  “We’ll run tests, but yes. I see healthy bones. Nothing to indicate she lived on the street, used illegals. Everything to indicate, at this point, she had good nutrition and good health care, good prenatal care.”

  “That’s helpful.”

  “I think she would have been very attractive. Early twenties, so on the young side for marriage—if the ring she wore is a wedding ring—and motherhood.”

  “The jewelry looked like the real deal to me, and the shoe was leather. I’m waiting on those reports, but if they confirm, she had some income or someone who paid for that sort of thing.”

  “I’ll be working on this today, and Elsie will continue with the reproduction.”

  “Okay, this is a good start. Anything you get, anything, send it to me. I’ll take it in bits and pieces.”

  “You haven’t closed your initial case.”

  “Working up to it.”

  Eve started out and down. She spotted Peabody just outside Harvo’s domain, leaning against the glass wall while she scrolled on her PPC.

  “That better be work and not home improvement.”

  “It is. I skimmed when I got up this morning, but I’m catching up. Harvo had to finish something, but she’s on ours now. Jesus, Dallas, we’ve got Alva’s books. We’re really going after her fuck of a husband.”

  “Damn right we are. But he can wait.”

  She stepped through the doorway.

  Harvo looked through a microscope while she tapped her blue-tipped fingers on a mini pad. Over her head, codes and symbols, maybe equations—who knew?—covered a screen.

  She wore white baggies and a white sleeveless tee—tame for her, if you discounted the figure of a woman on the back of her shirt flying through what appeared to be a meteor storm above the planet.