by J. D. Robb
“Everything says affluent, stable, and successful.”
“If you don’t count the dead daughter.”
“Yeah.” Peabody blew out a breath. “If you don’t count that.”
The house said affluent, stable, and successful as well. It took up a corner of a line of old and elegant townhomes. Eve assumed the Penbrokes had expanded the property at some point, incorporating the neighboring house into one large unit to accommodate two professionals and three children.
She spotted a Christmas tree in the tall trio of front windows, gave a fleeting thought to the fact Thanksgiving was in the rearview mirror, and they were barreling straight into the next holiday.
Shit. She had to shop.
With Peabody, she took the tidy brick steps to the front door, pressed the bell.
Seconds later, the door opened.
“Frank, I didn’t mean you had to— Oh, sorry, I thought you were my neighbor.”
The man wore cutoff sweats, a tank, and a gleaming layer of sweat over a pretty impressive build. Eyes a few shades darker than his skin skipped from Eve to Peabody, then back again, as he shot forked fingers through his close-cropped hair.
“Can I help you with something?”
“Samuel Penbroke?” Eve asked.
“Yeah. Sorry, I just finished a workout.” He used the towel slung around his neck to swipe at his cheek.
“I’m Lieutenant Dallas, and this is Detective Peabody.” Eve drew out her badge. “NYPSD. Can we come in, Dr. Penbroke?”
She saw it, the change on his face, in his eyes. From polite curiosity to a terrible blend of hope and grief.
“Linh? Is it Linh?”
“It would be easier if we came inside.”
The hope died as he took an unsteady step back. “She’s dead.”
Eve stepped in to a wide, welcoming foyer scented by the bold red lilies on a stand. Peabody closed the door.
“We have some information, and some questions. Can we go in, sit down?”
“Please just tell me, is it Linh?”
“Yes, sir, we’re here about Linh.”
“My wife—” He had to stop like a man catching his breath. “She’s still in the gym. I need you—she should . . .” He walked slowly to a house intercom. “Tien. Tien, there are people here to see us. You need to come.”
It took a moment, then two, before a female voice, quietly annoyed, responded. “Sam, I haven’t done my meditation. Ten minutes, and—”
He cut her off. “Please come out now.” He turned toward the right where the big, sparkling tree stood in front of the windows. “Please, this way. We’ll sit down. My wife—that is—it’s our day off. We take a day off together.”
He glanced toward a grand piano, and the family photos arranged on it. Among them stood the one of Linh they’d used for the Missing Persons report.
“My family,” he began, and Peabody took his arm to guide him to an oversized chair.
“You have a lovely family, Dr. Penbroke. Are those your grandchildren?”
“Yes. We have two grandchildren. A boy, he’s four, and the baby is just two.”
“They must be excited about Christmas.”
“They are very excited. They . . . Tien.”
She was petite, like her daughter, and trim, but with a wiry toughness Eve recognized.
She wore the wedge cut Elsie had imagined for Linh. Her eyes, a strong green that made a compelling contrast with the golden skin, still carried that quiet annoyance though she smiled politely as she came into the room.
“I’m sorry. We were using our gym. We’re barely fit for company.”
“Tien. They’re police.”
It came again, that flipped-switch change. Tien reached for her husband’s hand. “Linh. You found her. You found our daughter.”
“I’m sorry to inform you,” Eve began.
“No.” And here, in a mother’s voice, a mother’s face, the grief after fifteen years was as fresh as it might have been at fifteen seconds. “No.”
“Here, Tien. Here.” Samuel simply drew his wife down, into the big chair with him, hugged her. “You’re going to tell us our illusions are finished, that the hope we’ve clung to all this time is gone. That our little girl is never coming back to us.”
There was no easy way, and a fast and clean cut was best.
“Dr. Penbroke, we discovered several remains of females between the ages of twelve and sixteen. We believe we’ve identified one of them as your daughter.”
“Remains,” Tien echoed.
“Yes, ma’am. I’m very sorry. You could help us confirm her identity. Did your daughter have any childhood injuries? Did she break any bones?”
“She fell,” Samuel said. “Airboarding in the park. A bad fall. She broke her arm, just above the elbow.” He clutched his own. “She was eleven.”
“Peabody.”
At Eve’s unspoken order, Peabody drew the hard copy of the reconstruction from her file bag. “We were able to approximate her face.”
Samuel reached out, took the picture. “Linh” was all he said.
“It’s my baby. It’s our baby, Sam. But the hair’s wrong. She had long hair, beautiful long hair. And . . . and her nose, the tip of her nose turned up just a tiny bit. She had a little beauty mark at the top right corner of her mouth.”
“Tien.”
“It should be right!” Tears fell in silent rivers down her face, but she pushed on. “It should be right. She was very proud of her hair!”
“We’ll see that it’s right,” Eve told her. “We’ll make it right.”
“Twelve, there were twelve,” Samuel murmured. “I heard, this morning, in the city you found twelve. She was one of them?”
“Yes.”
“When? How? When did she die? How did she die? Who did this to her?”
“I can promise you, both of you, we’re doing everything possible to find out. I can tell you that at this time, we believe she died about fifteen years ago.”
“All the time.” Tien turned her head, pressed her face to her husband’s shoulder. “All the time we looked, and prayed and waited. She was gone.”
“This is very hard, I know,” Eve continued. “Can you tell us why she left home, what happened?”
“She was very angry. Young girls have an angry time, a time they’re unhappy and rebellious. She wanted a tattoo, wanted to pierce her eyebrow, wanted to go with boys, not do her schoolwork or chores. We let her have the little nose stud—a compromise—but she wanted more. It’s a time, a phase many go through,” Tien said, with a plea in her voice. “They grow out of it.”
“She wanted to go to a concert,” Samuel explained. “We said no, as she’d skipped her classes, twice. And had behaved poorly at home. She said we were unfair, and hard things were said by all. We restricted her from her electronics as discipline. It was difficult, but . . .”
“It was normal,” Peabody put in.
“Yes. Yes.” Tien managed a smile through the rain of tears. “Her brother and sister had both had this stage. Not as dramatic as Linh, but she was always more passionate. And she was the youngest. Perhaps we indulged her more.”
“On the morning of September twelfth,” Samuel continued, “she didn’t come down for breakfast. We thought she was sulking. I sent her sister upstairs to get her. Hoa came down, told us Linh wasn’t upstairs, that some of her things were gone, and her backpack.”
“First we searched the house, then called friends, neighbors. Then the police.”
“Did she have friends in the city?” Eve asked. “In Manhattan?”
“Her friends were here, but she liked to go to the city. She loved it.” Tien paused to compose herself again. “The police looked, and we hired a private investigator. We went on screen, offered rewards. They found, finally, she’d taken th
e subway into the city, but they couldn’t find her.”
“She never contacted you, or any of her friends?”
“No.” Tien wiped at the tears. “She didn’t take her ’link. She’s a very smart girl. She knew we had a parental tracer on it, so we’d know where she was. She didn’t want us to know.”
“She would have bought another,” Samuel said. “She had money. She had five hundred dollars. Her sister told us, when it became clear Linh had run away, that Linh had saved money and hidden it in her room, made her sister swear not to tell. We were glad she had money, glad she had enough to pay for food. And we thought . . . we thought . . . she’d come home.”
“But she didn’t. She never came home.”
“We’ll bring her home now.” Samuel pressed his lips to his wife’s hair. “We’ll bring our baby home now, Tien. We need to see her.”
“Dr. Penbroke—”
“We’re doctors,” he said. “We understand what happens to the body. We understand you’d only have her bones. But we need to see her.”
“I’ll try to arrange it. We’re working to identify her, and the others. If we could take DNA samples from you, it would quicken the process for Linh.”
“Yes. They’re on record,” Tien explained. “But take fresh ones so there can be no mistake. Did someone hurt her?”
Navigate carefully, Eve warned herself. “I think someone kept her from coming home to you. We’re working to find out who. I can promise you we’ll do our best for her, for all of them.”
She glanced at Peabody again, and her partner took two DNA kits from her bag.
“Just a few more questions,” Eve began as Peabody rose to get the samples.
“Take the samples to DeWinter,” Eve told Peabody when they left the Penbrokes. “Let’s get this confirmed asap. And give the reconstructionist the long hair, the beauty mark, the bit about the nose. Let’s make it right.”
“I will. We will.”
“If there’s a completed reconstruction of the next vic, make sure I get that. Take a good, hard look at the Missing Persons report and investigative notes. If there’s a hole, we’re going to plug it. So contact the detective who headed it up, have a talk.”
“Okay.”
“I’ll take the handyman and the donor, her granddaughter. If you finish what I’m giving you, do a run on this Jubal Craine, and get me anything you find. We do an immediate search for match on every face as it comes to us. Whatever you find, I know about it when you do.”
“Same goes.”
“Same goes,” Eve agreed, then looked back at the house. “She had a good family, from the way it looks. A well-off one, but a normal one. Rules, chores, responsibilities, an airboard, a sister who’d keep a secret.”
“I think she’d have passed through the phase where everything her parents said, wanted, expected was—or seemed to be—exactly the opposite of frosty. And you really want to be frosty at that age.”
“She made a mistake—I’ll show them I can do what I want when I want. I’m not a kid, they can’t boss me around—and she never got a chance to fix it. That’s how it feels.”
“But you’re going to dig down into the Penbrokes anyway.”
“They loved their kid, and never hurt her. But . . . you talk to the detective who caught the case, and I’ll poke a little deeper. It’s better to be sure.”
She dumped Peabody two blocks from the lab, continued on—then considered.
She used the in-dash ’link to contact Roarke.
He answered, and quickly. “Lieutenant.”
As she’d suspected, whatever meeting he might be in, whatever meetings he might have next, his mind—like hers—was focused on the girls.
“I appreciate the data you’ve been feeding to us. We’re using it. Wanted to update you. We think—hell, I’m sure—we’ve ID’d the first victim.”
“What was her name?”
He would ask that, first. He would want to put the name in his memory. “Linh—that’s L-i-n-h—Penbroke. The probability it’s her is very high. I’ve just come from notifying her parents, and getting DNA samples so we can confirm. But—”
“As you said, you’re already sure.”
“Yeah, I am. I’m heading north now to talk to a potential wit/suspect. I’ve got Peabody on other angles, so if you’re interested in standing in, have the time—”
“Give me the address. I’ll meet you.”
• • •
She beat Roarke there, but opted not to wait. Instead she used her master to buzz her way into a sturdy four-level building, veered past the gate of the elevator, and took the stairs up to the third floor, southwest corner unit.
And knocked.
When the door opened, Eve adjusted her eyeline down.
The kid—male—was in the neighborhood of ten, she calculated, and boasted a solar system of freckles over his round face—and some sort of purple goo at the corners of his mouth.
“I don’t know you,” he said, firmly, and started to close the door.
Eve stuck her foot in, which resulted in causing the kid to holler, top of impressive lungs: “Mom! Mom! Some lady’s breaking in!”
“I’m not a lady. See?” Eve jerked out her badge as running footsteps pounded from the upper level of what she saw was a spacious loft-style that took up two floors.
“Mom! There’s a police lady!”
“Trilby, get back!” The woman, blond ponytail, carpenter pants, plaid work shirt, nudged the kid away as she glanced at Eve’s badge. “Go wash your face, for God’s sake, Trilby, you’ve got grape jelly everywhere. And go finish your homework. Leave your sister alone.”
“Jeez! I gotta do everything!”
“Yeah, your life stinks. Sorry,” she said to Eve as the boy sulked away. “Can I help you?”
“I need to talk to Brodie Fine.”
“We just got in, and he beat me to the shower.” She glanced around to check on her son, lowered her voice. “Is this about the building on Ninth? The bodies? We heard on the news,” she said when Eve said nothing. “Brodie and I were sort of half-ass dating when he did handiwork there. We’ve been talking about it most of the day. I’m one of his carpenters,” she explained. “And his wife. And the mother of his children.”
“I’d still like to talk to him.”
“Sure. Sorry. I don’t mean to keep you out in the hall. You can—” She paused as Roarke walked up to Eve.
“My consultant,” Eve explained.
“Nice. If you don’t mind me saying. Come on in. I’d rather talk about this when the kids aren’t around, but what’s the point? Kids hear everything anyway. I was just about to have a beer. You want?”
“I wouldn’t mind one,” Roarke said, sliding into the ambiance of the homey loft the way Eve imagined he slid into a boardroom.
“Civilian consultant,” he reminded Eve. “She won’t have one, being a cop on duty. You’ve a lovely space here—is it Mrs. Fine?”
“Yeah, I went traditional, but you can call me Alma. Brodie and I did the place ourselves. It’s taken us six years so far, but it’s coming along.”
“Beautiful workmanship.” Roarke ran his fingers down some beaded trim. “It’s chestnut, isn’t it?”
“You know your wood.” She studied him. “My grandpa had a farm down in Virginia. Had a bunch of chestnut, so we stockpiled it, me and Brodie, cleaned it up, planed it down. Worth the work, we figure. Not many opportunities to work with real wood. Sure is a pleasure.”
“I imagine so.”
“Have a seat. I’ll get the beer. You want something else?” she asked Eve. “I’ve got water, sure, but I can make coffee, or I got some Coke stashed away—hidden from the kids.”
“Actually, a Coke would be great.”
“You got it.”
Eve glanced around. Roarke had it
right: It was an impressive space. Family-with-kids messy maybe, but that added to it. They’d fashioned an open floor plan, using clever placements of counters or breakfronts to define living area from dining, dining from kitchen, and all of it from a play area.
A second floor circled three sides, again open with a decorative rail that looked sturdy, and was formed with pickets too close together to allow even a small head to shove through.
Lots of wood against lots of color, she noted, and all accented by big windows that would let in plenty of light.
Anyone who could do this kind of work, she thought, could certainly build some false walls that blended in without a seam out of place.
“Mom! Trilby’s in my face!”
“Trilby, what did I tell you?”
“I’m not doing nothing to her!”
“You’re not doing anything to her,” Alma corrected as she brought out the drinks. “And don’t, or there’ll be no Max Adventure on screen tonight for either of you.”
This time there came a stereo: “Mom!”
“I mean it. Sorry.”
“No problem,” Eve told her. “Your husband?”
“Sure, I’ll go up and tell him to put some clothes on. Just give me a minute.”
“What’s all the racket?” The man’s voice boomed, but didn’t sound threatening. It sounded amused. “No Max Adventure tonight?”
“Dad!” More stereo.
“Better straighten up, or we’ll never know what happens to Max and Luki on Planet Crohn. Hey, babe, can you . . . Hey, sorry.” He stopped at the landing as he looked down, spotted Eve and Roarke. “Didn’t know we had company.”
“It’s cops, Brodie.”
His easy smile faded as he nodded and started down.
His hair, a curly brown mop, still dripped a little from the shower. He wore jeans, a long-sleeve brown tee, and thick socks.
“I wondered if you’d come by. Alma and I talked about if we should go in, offer to give a statement. We were going to talk about it more after the kids go down tonight. It wasn’t a mistake? The media report?”