Concealed in Death

by J. D. Robb

  “For a time Lupa talked to our priest, but she still questioned, especially after I was hurt.”

  “She was mugged,” Juan said. “There were two men, and they hurt her. Even when she gave them what she had without trouble, they hurt her. They cut her. You know how it can be, Lieutenant.”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  “A lady saw it from her window and called the police,” Rosetta continued. “Then because I was hurt, and I couldn’t come home or take care of Lupa, they had to take her. That’s when I asked for her to be placed in The Sanctuary, and it was arranged. Lupa . . .”

  She broke for a moment, then steadied again. “It scared her so, when I was hurt. And made her question even more. What had she done or not done? Why did terrible things happen to those she loved and who loved her?”

  “It’s pretty common,” Peabody said, “for kids of that age to see themselves as the center. I mean, good things happen because they’re good, bad things because they’re bad.”

  “Yes, this was Lupa. So I thought friends, girls her own age, without such grief, would be good for her. Then, that evening, I came home from work, and she wasn’t there. I tried her ’link, but she didn’t answer. I waited and waited, I asked the neighbors, schoolmates, everyone I could think of. No one knew where she’d gone, where she was. I went to the police.”

  “Mrs. Delagio.” Peabody spoke up gently when Rosetta’s voice began to quiver. “You did everything right, and you did everything right for all the right reasons.”

  “Thank you. Thank you for that. The police, they put out the alert, and they looked for her. I looked for her. Neighbors looked, people were kind. But days passed, nights passed. She never came home. I never saw her again. She would have come home if she could. I knew it even then. She must have been afraid. I hate thinking of her afraid, wanting me, wanting to come home.”

  “Is there anything you remember, from looking,” Eve began, “from talking to people? Anything that sticks out?”

  “Some people would say they saw her here, others they saw her there. People called the . . . what is it?”

  “Tip line,” Eve supplied.

  “Yes, and the police checked, but it was never Lupa. Detective Handy was so kind. We still talk now and then. I should tell her—”

  “I’ve spoken with her,” Eve said.

  “I’ll speak with her, too. She never stopped looking. She was my hope, even though we both knew, if she found Lupa, it would . . . it would be like this. I wrote down everything, every night for months. I have the little diaries I kept.”

  “Could we have them? We’ll get them back to you.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “I’ll get them.” Juan rose. “I know where you keep them. I’ll call in for you, for me. We’ll stay home today. Make arrangements.”

  She murmured to him in Spanish, and for the first time her eyes filled, overflowed. He answered quietly in the same language, then left the room.

  “I hadn’t met Juan when I lost Lupa. They would have loved each other. He loves her because I do, and he looked, too, long after she was gone. He knows we’ll want to have a service for her. Is it possible to . . . can I have her for a service and burial?”

  “It may take a while, but I’ll see that you do.”

  She nodded, knuckled at the tears. “The other girls, the girls with her, do they have family?”

  “We’re working on that.”

  “We are, Juan and I, fortunate. We’d help with any of the girls who are . . . alone. Is that possible?”

  • • •

  When they stepped out on the sidewalk, Peabody dug in the cavernous pockets of her coat, pulled out a tissue. “Sorry.” She dabbed at her eyes, blew her nose. “I handled it until she asked if they could help bury the other victims.”

  Eve said nothing until they’d gotten to the car, gotten into it.

  “People mostly suck—it’s the law of averages, I figure, especially when you’re on the job. Then you cross paths with people like that. Bad shit’s happened to them, seriously bad shit, but they still come out of it decent.”

  She handed off the diaries to Peabody. Old-fashioned ones, she thought. Small covered books you wrote in with pen or pencil.

  “We’ll take a look through these. Maybe she put something down she didn’t realize was important at the time.”

  “McNab and I could take care of one of the vics. We could swing that.”

  “Peabody.”

  “It’s not getting personally involved or losing objectivity,” Peabody insisted, though she knew better. “It’s being decent.”

  Eve let it drop as Peabody fumbled out a fresh tissue. “We’re going to poke at DeWinter. We’ll swing by Stubacker’s last known address, see if anybody there remembers her, or has any fresh info.”

  It was like crossing a border from one country to another. Shelby Ann Stubacker’s old neighborhood squatted with cheap post-Urban housing, or the crumbling remains of what had come before. Pawnshops and graffiti abounded alongside tat and piercing parlors, sex clubs and dingy-looking bars. Here people didn’t hire dog walkers, but likely had attack-programmed droid Dobermans. Instead of carrying briefcases, they’d carry shivs.

  Eve used her master to bypass the locks on the reinforced door of an eight-story building in the middle of the seamy squalor.

  The entranceway carried the stench of old piss and puke under the chemically piney scent of the industrial cleaner some determined soul had used to try to eradicate it.

  Not a chance, Eve thought as she started up the stairs. The stench was in the building’s bones.

  “She was in three-oh-five, living with her mother, and according to the records, a series of her mother’s boyfriends, when the court took her out. We’ll start there.”

  Screens blared behind triple-locked doors and paper-thin walls Eve imagined a determined chemi-head could punch a fist through.

  Now she smelled what she identified—due to her exposure to Bella—as soiled diapers, mixed in with the scent of whatever someone had burned for breakfast.

  “I’d need a portable air filter to live here,” Peabody commented. Carefully she avoided brushing up against the wall, the sticky railing. “And a detox chamber.”

  A baby, maybe the one responsible for the crappy diaper smell, wailed like its feet were on fire. Some kind soul responded to the infant’s distress by banging on one of the thin walls.

  “Shut that brat the fuck up!”

  “Nice.” Peabody shot a hard look down the hall of the second floor. “I’d be crying, too, if I lived here. It must be absolute hell growing up in a place like this.”

  She’d been in places like it—and worse—in her first eight years, so Eve could attest. It was absolute hell.

  On three, she used the side of her fist to bang on the door of the Stubackers’ old apartment. It didn’t warrant any electronic security, just a peephole and a pair of grimy dead-bolt locks.

  She caught the shadow at the peep, banged again. “NYPSD.” She held her badge up in plain sight. “Open the door.”

  She heard the clunk and rusty slide of a riot bar, then a series of hard clicks before the door opened a few inches on a hefty security chain.

  “What the hell do you want?”

  What she could see of the woman’s face didn’t look promising. It still wore yesterday’s makeup, thoroughly smudged from sleep. Eve imagined the woman’s pillow resembled one of those strange abstract paintings she would never understand.

  “Lieutenant Dallas, Detective Peabody. We’d like to ask you a few questions.”

  “I don’t gotta talk to you unless you got a warrant. I know my rights.”

  “We just have some questions about the former tenant of this apartment.”

  Something sly came into the woman’s raccoon eyes. “You paying?”

&nbs
p; “That depends on what you have to sell. Did you know the former tenant?”

  “Sure. Worked with Tracy up at the club, VaVoom, back when we were dancers. So what?”

  “Do you know where we can find her?”

  “Haven’t seen her since she blew town. Been easy ten years back. I sublet this dump, fair and square. Got rent control on it.”

  “Did you know her daughter?”

  “The brat, yeah. Took off long before Tracy did. Had a mouth on her, the kid did, used to steal, too. Lift stuff in the dressing room at the club. Tracy tried to beat the wild outta her, but it didn’t take. Some kids’re born bad, and that’s that. Got so Tracy had to hide any booze or brew she might have around or the kid would drink it. Told me how she came home one night, found the kid pissed-face drunk, probably no more than ten, eleven years old, and she’s all over Tracy’s boyfriend. Tried to say he gave her the brew and got all over her. Kid lied every time she opened her mouth.”

  “Tracy sounds like mother of the year,” Eve said coolly.

  “She did the best with what she had. Kid was no good. One day Tracy comes into work with a busted lip and a shiner. Kid did it. And what happens? You people come and say Tracy abused the brat just because the kid had some bruises on her. A woman’s got to defend herself, and got a right to discipline her own.”

  “Did Shelby ever come back, after she was taken out of the home?”

  “Who—oh, right, that’s her name. Not that I know of, and Tracy would’ve told me. The kid was a freaking thorn in her side. They took her off, put her in some sort of group home, and that was the end of that. A few years later, Tracy took off with this guy. He played the ponies, hit pretty good on a trifecta or whatever the fuck. They took off, said they were going to live in Miami or somewhere. Never heard from her again. But I got rent control.”

  “Lucky you. Did you know any of Shelby’s friends?”

  “Why would I? Don’t know as she had any. Piece of work, that girl. If she comes around here like you, looking for her ma, I’ll tell her just what I think.”

  Eve tried a few more questions, and realizing the well ran dry, passed the woman a twenty through the gap.

  She tried a few more doors, but stepped back out with little more than she’d gone in with.

  “What a horrible excuse for a human being.” Peabody dropped into the car, snapped her safety belt. “Not just the bitch on three, but the vic’s mother by all accounts. I just don’t get how a woman can treat her own kid that way. Knocking her around, neglecting her, and just walking away when . . .”

  It struck her, obviously and visibly, so she cringed.

  “Sorry. Sorry, Dallas.”

  Eve shrugged. “At least I didn’t have about a dozen years with mine.”

  “Sorry anyway.”

  “The question is, if Shelby didn’t go back to her mother—the bitch of a wit could be wrong about that, so see if you can dig up any record of her being placed back here—why didn’t Jones and Jones file a Missing Persons on her?”

  “I didn’t think of that.”

  “That’s why you’re not the lieutenant. Dig, and while you’re digging we’ll go get all up DeWinter’s ass.”

  “She’s got a really good one.”

  “Jesus, Peabody.” Amazed, Eve slid out into traffic. “You checked out her ass?”

  “I check out everyone’s ass. It’s a hobby.”

  “Get a new one. Like . . . bird-watching or something.”

  “Bird-watching? In New York?”

  “You could count pigeons. It would take the rest of your life.”

  “I like ass-watching.” Peabody settled herself in comfortably. “When I see one bigger than mine, it makes me feel good. When I see one smaller, it helps me resist eating a whole bunch of cookies. It’s a productive hobby, my ass-watching. And there’s no record on file rescinding the court order to remove Shelby Ann Stubacker from the home. No record of any petition filed by the mother to get her back.”

  “Which means, despite the notation in her records that she was placed back in the parental home, she went missing from either The Sanctuary or the new digs. Interesting.”

  “I guess Jones and Jones go back on the list.”

  “They were never off. But now they bump up to the lead.”

  She pushed and threaded her way through traffic, considering new angles. “Tag HPCCY, tell them we need the documentation on Shelby’s court order. We need the CPS docs, the recommendation to send her back home.”

  “On that.”

  While she was, Eve parked again.

  “Ms. Jones says she’ll pull the files up out of storage,” Peabody said as they went inside, worked through the maze to DeWinter’s sector. “She asks if we’ve ID’d anyone else.”

  “Tell her that information will be forthcoming.”

  She found DeWinter—an emerald green lab coat today, open over another body-conscious dress, this one hot pink and white checkerboard.

  She stood with Morris, who was just as snappily dressed in deep, dark plum. Together they studied a screen displaying indecipherable shapes—to her—in colors as bold as their wardrobes.

  “It’s cause of death,” DeWinter said. “Do you agree?”

  “I do.”

  “What’s cause of death?” Eve demanded.

  Both turned toward her so they stood with a trio of slabs, a trio of remains, between them.

  “They drowned,” DeWinter said.

  “Drowned.” Eve stepped in, looked down at the remains, up at the screen. “You can determine that, conclusively, from bones.”

  “I can. You see on screen a sample of the diatoms I extracted from the bone marrow of the third victim identified. That would be—”

  “Lupa Dison.”

  “Yes. I also have similar samples from the first two victims, and the fourth. I’ll continue to conduct the procedure on all the remains. But I can conclude for the four on which I’ve conducted the tests, these girls drowned. The diatoms here reached the lungs and penetrated the alveolar wall, and the bone marrow. Comparing these samples to samples of water I took from the crime scene—”

  Eve tossed up a hand to stop the flow. “You went back to the crime scene? Without notifying the primary?”

  “I didn’t think it was necessary until I’d reached my conclusions, which indeed—in consultation with Dr. Morris—I have. Now, these unicellular organisms have a silica shell, and as you can see, truly gorgeous sculpturing. The aquatic diatom—”

  “Stop.” Eve held up a hand again, added the other, and caught Morris grinning out of the corner of her eye. “I don’t want a science lesson. I need to know if you’ve found COD.”

  DeWinter just frowned at her. “As I just said, drowning, in city water. While certain additives have changed or been deleted from the city’s water in the last fifteen years, the basic biology remains. Such as—”

  “Stop there, too. City water? No chance of, say, pool water, river water, seawater?”

  “No, again, aquatic diatoms—”

  “Just no’s enough. The bathtub then. It’s not impossible to drown a girl in a sink, or just pour water down her throat, stick her head in the john. But with the lack of injury at or around time of death, the bathtub makes more sense. Plus, it’s right there if you want to drown a bunch of girls.”

  She walked around the slabs as she worked it out.

  “They’d have fought back if they could. Drowning’s a hard way to go. You’d flail around, kick, knock your elbows, try to grab whoever’s holding you under. They didn’t do that, according to what you’ve seen.”

  “No, there were no fractures or other appearance of damage to the bones so far examined at or around TOD. However—”

  “So he tranq’d them first. Just enough to make them go under easy. Enough so maybe he could bind their hands
and feet, make it easier yet. Tranq them, maybe restrain them, then slide them in, hold their heads under. One at a time.”

  She studied the remains again, brought the bathrooms of the crime scene into her head. “You can’t let one of the others see what you’re doing. So one at a time. Maybe you’ve got another on tap, but you can’t risk her coming around enough to make a fuss. When she’s out, you undress her. That’s practical, the clothes will add to the weight when they’re wet. And it’s more a thrill anyway, seeing that young, naked body. If she’s out enough, maybe you rape her first. Slip her a little Whore or Rabbit, even something a little milder, she won’t fight you.”

  She circled around the slab as she spoke, studying the bones, seeing the flesh and blood that had once covered them.

  “When you’re done with her, after you’ve watched her die, you take her out, put her on the plastic. You take the restraints off so you can use them on the next girl. And you roll her up.”

  Eve looked over at Morris, nodded. “That’s how I see it. He’d probably already started the false wall, easier if he’d done that. Just leave a section of the board out. He’d put her back here, in the dark, out of sight, probably tack the board up. Nobody’s going to come in, nobody but him and the next girl.”

  She shifted her gaze to DeWinter. “Does that work for you, fit with your conclusions so far?”

  “Yes. Yes, it does. Though there’s no way to conclude if they were restrained as there are no signs of damage from struggling against restraints on the wrists or ankles. And it’s simply not possible to determine if they were raped.”

  “It’s a theory. Let me know when you’ve done that diorama test on the others.”

  “Diatom.”

  “Right. And let me know if you plan to revisit the crime scene. The one about a killer returning to the scene of the crime’s a cliché for a reason. See you around, Morris.”

  DeWinter took a long breath when Eve and Peabody left. “That was disturbing. It’s disturbing to be walked through murder that way, as if by the murderer.”

  “It’s a particular skill of hers.”

  “I can see them. The victims, the dead, through their bones. I can tell how they lived, how they died. But I wouldn’t like to have their killer inside my head.”