by J. D. Robb
“I’ve done a bit of work on that,” Roarke told her. “And taken the liberty of calling in a technical adviser.” He turned to the ’link. “Summerset, send him up.”
“You should’ve cleared this with me,” Eve began.
“You need specific skills for this. Feeney and McNab need more than me. And I need more than an assistant. I’ve someone who’s been doing some very innovative work with my R and D departments, and I don’t think you’ll find anything to worry about regarding his loyalty or his clearance.”
Eve looked at the doorway. And her jaw dropped. “Well, for Christ’s sake, Roarke, I can’t use a kid for this.”
Chapter 8
“Genius has no age.”
So said Jamie Lingstrom as he strutted into her office on a pair of dilapidated airboots.
He wore his sandy hair short and spiked on top with a longer hank in the front that flopped over his forehead. The only piercing—apparently—was to accommodate the tiny silver hoop at the tail of his left eyebrow. His face had done some fining down since the last time she’d seen him, and right now his mouth was twisted into a smirk.
He’d always been cocky.
His grandfather had been a cop, who’d gone down while unofficially investigating a cult. The cult had killed Jamie’s sister and had come uncomfortably close to sacrificing Eve.
He’d sprouted up at least two inches. When did kids stop growing? she wondered. He was sixteen—no, likely seventeen by now. And he should have been doing whatever teenagers did rather than standing in her office with that cocky expression.
“Why aren’t you in school?”
“I do the home thing mostly, on work program. You get to do hands-on-the-job crap as long as it’s with a business that contracts through the school and shit.”
Eve turned to Roarke. “One of yours.”
“Actually, I have several companies that contract with the education program. The youth of today, after all, is the hope of tomorrow.”
“So.” Jamie scanned the room then dipped his thumbs into the front pockets of baggy jeans with holes at both knees. “When do we get started?”
“You.” Eve jabbed a finger at Roarke. “There.” Pointing at his office, she strode in ahead of him, slammed the door smartly.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“Bringing in an expert assistant.”
“He’s a kid.”
“He’s a brilliant kid. You do recall how he managed to bypass the security here with a homemade jammer?”
“So he got lucky.”
“Luck had nothing to do with it.” That particular homemade had been refined, adjusted, expanded. “He has more than a knowledge of electronics—though he has that in spades, I can promise you. He has a feel, an instinct that’s very rare.”
“I’d like to keep his brain inside his head, at least until he turns twenty-one.”
“I’ve no intention of allowing him to do anything that puts him in physical jeopardy.”
“Neither of us intended that last fall, either, but he came damn close. And he’s, well, he’s like Feeney’s family.”
“Exactly. It’ll give Feeney a lift to work with him. The fact is, Eve, we need someone like him. Someone with an open mind and a quick brain. He won’t automatically think a thing can’t be done because it’s not been done before.” Roarke spread his hands. “He’ll see possibilities. He wants to be a cop,” he added before Eve could speak.
“Yeah, I remember, but—”
“Is determined to be, unless I can bribe him into one of my R and D divisions permanently with great gobs of money.” His lips twitched. “Which I’ll certainly attempt. At the moment, he plans to ditch any thought of college and leap straight into the Academy when he hits eighteen next year.”
“So what. You’re hoping to use this assignment to turn him off that idea, into college so you can scoop his genius brain up for your own uses?”
He smiled slowly, and with great charm. “That’s a lovely thought. But actually, I thought this would be a valuable experience for him. And we need him. I’m not blowing smoke when I say that. What you need electronically is going to take considerable work and research and experimentation, all of which you required in a compressed time frame. Correct?”
“Yeah, but—”
“Look. I’m your expert consultant for a rather pathetic monetary wage, and under that agreement I have the option of selecting a technical assistant. He’s mine.”
She blew out a breath, paced to the window. Paced back. “Not just yours. It makes him mine, too. I don’t know how to deal with a teenaged type person.”
“Ah, well, I’d say you’d deal with him as you deal with everyone else. You order him around, and if he argues or doesn’t jump quickly enough you freeze his blood with one of those vicious looks you’re so good at and verbally abuse him. It always works so well for you.”
“You think so?”
“There, see.” He cupped her chin. “There it is now. I can actually feel my blood running cold.”
“You can keep him, but he’s on probation. And you’ve waived your pathetic monetary wage.”
“Have I?” He frowned. “I can’t seem to recall doing so.”
“And his fee comes out of your pocket.”
He’d already intended to pay Jamie, but knew how to play the game. “That’s exceedingly unfair. I’m going to talk to my departmental representative about this high-handed treatment.”
“You don’t have a departmental rep.” She walked back to the door. “You got me.”
“To both my joy and sorrow,” he replied behind her back as she strode into her office.
Jamie was crouched between Feeney and McNab, showing off some handheld device. “It’ll read every system on the market and some that aren’t on it yet,” he was saying. “Then it clones . . .”
His head came up, and then his body. The handheld was jammed into his back pocket. “So, hey. We got a deal or what?”
Roarke merely crossed to him, held out a hand.
Shoulders slumping, Jamie pulled the jammer out of his pocket. “I only borrowed one so I could see about fine-tuning a couple of functions.”
“Don’t hose me, Jamie. And if you continue to borrow equipment, you’ll be losing your work program privileges very quickly.” The jammer disappeared into one of Roarke’s pockets.
“It was my prototype.”
And the royalties from it, Roarke mused, would make the boy a very rich young man. But he said nothing, merely lifted an eyebrow and waited for Jamie to squirm.
“Okay, okay. Don’t fry your circuits.” Sulking, he looked at Roarke, looked at Eve. He was never quite sure which of them was in charge.
Either way, he knew both of them could stomp him flat before he saw them lift a foot.
It’d been easy with his parents before the divorce. His father had been in charge. After, especially after Alice died, Jamie himself had mostly been in charge.
But around here, you just never knew.
“What’s the word?” he demanded.
“You’re attached as Roarke’s tech in a probationary capacity,” Eve told him. “You step out of line, over the line, try wiggling under the line, I squash you like a bug. Now, do you see everyone in this room?”
“Yeah, nothing wrong with the orbs. So?”
“They’re all the boss of you. Which means, anyone here gives you an order, including telling you to stand on your head and whistle through your teeth, you do it. Clear? Next,” she continued before he had time to complain, “all data, all info, all conversations, all actions or proposed actions done or discussed pertaining to this assignment are confidential. You speak of this to no one, including your best pal, your mother, any girl you’re hoping to see naked, or your pet poodle.”
“I don’t blab off,” he said with some heat. “I know how it works. And I don’t have any lame poodle. Plus, I’ve seen naked girls.” He grinned now. “Including you.”
; “Careful, lad,” Roarke said quietly. “Step carefully.”
“You’ve got a smart mouth. I remember that about you.” Deliberately Eve walked a circle around him. “I like a smart mouth, under certain circumstances. So instead of yanking your ears over your head and tying them in a knot, I’m going to overlook that comment. Once. Baxter, take this drone into the work area. Show him the basic setup. If he touches anything, break his fingers.”
“You got it. Let’s go, kid.” When they reached the doorway, Baxter leaned down. “How’d you see her naked?”
“He’s going to be trouble,” Eve muttered.
“He’ll be worth it.” Roarke slid a hand over the jammer in his pocket. “Believe me.”
“He’s a good kid, Dallas.” Feeney pushed to his feet. “Smart, and as steady as you get at that age. We’ll keep him in line.”
“I’m counting on it. I’m dumping him on you e-guys. Nadine and her camera are due in about twenty. She’s never late. You both good to do the one-on-ones downstairs somewhere?”
“Works for me.” McNab glanced toward Feeney. “I want to get that over, and get on the job.”
“She doesn’t come up here,” Eve cautioned. “She doesn’t go near the kid. Any progress, any at all, tag me. I’ve got a meet downtown at thirteen hundred. I’ll be working out of here until then.”
“Let’s get started.” Feeney laid a hand on McNab’s uninjured shoulder. “We’ll show the boy what real EDD men can do.”
“Flick Baxter back this way. I need to get him set up somewhere.”
“I’ll take care of that. You’ll want him on this level,” Roarke assumed.
“Fine. And whatever that is in your pocket, Ace, keep it there.”
He shot her such a hot, suggestive grin that Peabody was forced to swallow.
“Get the salacious images out of your head, Peabody,” Eve ordered. “We’ve got work.”
She started Peabody on probability scans. When you were dealing with brass and bureaucrats the more data, the more paper, the better.
Eve began a hunt for known child abusers who’d wiggled through the system and out again.
How did so many of them skate over the law? she wondered.
She backtracked, looking for any connection between one or more of her possibles and each other, between one or more and either Cogburn or Fitzhugh.
Birds of a feather, she mused. Some of them had to have sullied the same nest at one point. It was irritating to have to go by case numbers rather than names, but a great number of the files were sealed. Minor victims often had seals slapped onto their files.
Using numbers, incident reports, descriptions, she whittled it down to a short list, ran probabilities.
Since her short list was over twenty-five possibles, she worked on secondary connections.
Twelve of the minor victims had shared the same child services rep.
CLARISSA PRICE, BORN 5-16-2021, QUEENS, NEW YORK. ID NUMBER 8876-LHM-22. MOTHER MURIEL PRICE, FATHER UNKNOWN. MARITAL STATUS, SINGLE. EMPLOYMENT, CHILD SERVICES, MANHATTAN DIVISION. EMPLOYED SINCE 2-1-43. CURRENTLY B LEVEL.
EDUCATION: MASTER’S DEGREES, SOCIOLOGY, PSYCHOLOGY EARNED FROM NYU.
NO CRIMINAL RECORD.
“Visual,” she ordered and studied the image of Clarissa Price. An attractive mixed-race female, with a competent, straight-ahead look about her. Not many in Child Services lasted as long without the job adding lines and layers. But Clarissa’s skin was smooth. Her reddish brown hair was curly and worn neatly pulled back at the nape.
Eve called up the home and work addresses, copied and saved the data. Then went hunting again.
This time she found a cop.
Detective Sergeant Thomas Dwier had arrested Cogburn four years earlier on possession with intent. But he’d rushed it, scooping Cogburn up without ascertaining if he’d been carrying. The arrest hadn’t stuck.
He’d had better luck with an illegals dealer who supplied the uptown teenage crowd. But by the time the case had wound itself through the system, it had been pleaded down to possession and the dealer had ended up paying a fine, and walking.
He’d bumped into Fitzhugh as well, taking on a complaint of abduction and rape that had been tossed by the P.A.
Eighteen months before Dwier had worked on a team running a sting on a child pornographer. The woman had run a licensed day care center. The case had gone all the way to trial, resulting in acquittal.
Mary Ellen George, Eve thought, who according to the files, just happened to be a known associate of Chadwick Fitzhugh.
“Saddle up, Peabody.” Eve stuck data discs in her bag. “We’re going to make a couple of stops before The Tower meeting.”
“Mary Ellen George. That was some trial.” In the passenger seat, Peabody studied the data Eve had accumulated. “Did you buy that act of hers?”
“What act?”
“That shattered, innocent, schoolmarm act.” Peabody glanced over, squinted. “Didn’t you catch any of the trial on-screen?”
“I don’t watch that crap.”
“Well, you must’ve seen the blips in media reports, read the commentaries and stuff.”
“I make it a point to avoid media reports, commentaries, editorials, and so on.”
“But, sir, you’ve got to watch the news on-screen, or read it.”
“Why?”
“Well . . . to keep abreast of current events.”
“Why?”
“Because, because.” Flustered, Peabody pushed back her uniform cap to scratch her head. “Because we live in the world.”
“Yes, we do. There doesn’t seem to be a thing we can do about it. Now, tell me how watching news blips and the On Trial channel is going to make me a better person.”
“Just informed,” Peabody answered.
“Seems to me it’s only news for a few minutes. Then its old and they have to blast up something else that’s news. Vicious cycle if you ask me. I don’t get caught up in it because, by definition events that are current today are no longer current tomorrow. And before you know it, it’s tomorrow anyway. So you’ve just wasted all that time getting riled up about something that’s past its time when you wake up the next day.”
“My head hurts. I know there’s a major flaw in everything you just said, but it made my head hurt so I can’t think of it.”
“Don’t worry about it. We’ll check out George later. First we take a shot at Clarissa Price.”
Parking near the Manhattan Division of Child Services was a joke. The two-level slots the city had put in along the street were jammed with vehicles that looked as if they hadn’t dared move out in the last five years. Eve saw at least three with pancake tires and another with a windshield so covered with dust and grime it would’ve taken a pickax to clear it.
She double-parked, flipped up her ON DUTY sign. And wondered idly just how far traffic would back up before she came out again.
The building was a squat twelve-story box of block construction that surely hadn’t seen its proper share of city maintenance dollars since it had been tossed up after the Urban Wars.
The lobby, such as it was, was small and crowded and boasted an ancient manual directory.
“Sixth floor.” She walked right by the beleaguered lobby receptionist and onto an elevator. So much, Eve mused, for building security.
And as she’d had personal experience with Child Services, she knew that the kids who’d been sucked into the system could be just as dangerous as the adults who put them there.
She stepped out on six and saw someone had tried to add an illusion of cheer in this area. There was a section under a window with child-sized seating in primary colors and an offering of plastic toys. Across from it were two vid-game units currently under attack by a pair of bored, surly teenagers in rebel black.
She saw one of them gaze up and make her for a cop before his eyes traveled over Peabody’s uniform and dismissed them both.
She walked up to him, waited for his lazy glance to mee
t hers again. Then she leaned over. “Take the knife out of your boot, real slow, and give it to me and I won’t run you in for carrying a concealed.”
Since it was concealed, and very well in his opinion, he only sneered. “Fuck off.”
Eve’s hand slapped on the hilt under his pant’s leg seconds before his. “You want trouble with me, I’ll oblige. Otherwise, I’ll just take this and let you spend your mandatory hour bullshitting your social worker.”
She yanked the knife out of his boot, slid it into her own. “Nice blade. Decent balance.”
“Cost me seventy-five.”
“You got hosed, pal. It’s not that good.”
She turned her back on him and walked to the young, cheery-faced receptionist. They were always young and cheery-faced because they rarely lasted a year before running away with their idealism shattered behind them.
“I need to see Clarissa Price.” Eve laid her badge on the counter.
“Miss Price is in a family session. She should be finished in ten minutes.”
“We’ll wait.” Eve walked back and deliberately dropped into the seat beside Knife Boy.
It took him twenty seconds of pretending indifference to break. “How’d you spot the sticker?”
“That’d be telling.”
“Come on.”
She’d already spotted the bruises on his wrists—fresh—and when he shifted saw the old burn marks on his shoulder, only partially hidden by his tough-guy muscle shirt.
That was one thing her father hadn’t done to her, she thought. No burns, no scars. Wouldn’t want to diminish the value of the merchandise.
“When you made me you moved your right leg back, rotated your ankle to check if the blade was under and secure. You get busted for carrying, they toss you in Juvie. Ever been inside?” The way he shrugged told her he hadn’t. Yet. “I have. Whatever deal you’ve got it’s better than being inside. Couple of years, they’ll shove you out of the system, and your life’s your own. You go inside at this stage, they’ll keep tabs on you till you’re twenty-one.”
Since that was as close to advice or a lecture as she intended to give, she pushed up again and went out to hunt up a vending machine.