Page 120 of Concealed in Death

She finished off her water. “That’s what I did. I changed my name. I didn’t do it legal, Sebastian helped me. If you do it legal, there’s a record. I wanted to just be new, be me. So I was Lonna Moon. I thought it sounded like a singer. It’s all I wanted to be. I did all right. Sang for my supper, and paid the rent singing, waiting tables, whatever. After a while, I didn’t have to wait tables so much. Then I met Derrick. And I’m with Derrick. That’s the best thing I’ve ever been. The only thing I ever want to be.

“Shelby and Mikki, they never got the same chance.”

“I want to show you some other pictures.”

Her hand tightened on Derrick’s. “The other girls.”

“We have all but one identified. I wonder if you remember any of the others. Peabody.”

“I just want to say, Ms. Moon, I admire what you’ve done. I admire someone who can take the pain and the hard from the past, and make it into the strong and the good. I just wanted to say.”

“Thanks for that. It feels good to hear that.” Then she looked down at the rest of the pictures Peabody laid out.

“Oh God. Oh God! That’s Iris there. Sweet Iris, oh God. And this one, she was in The Sanctuary with us. I don’t remember her name.”

“Lupa Dison.”

“Yes, Lupa. She was nice. Quiet, but nice. I know these faces, almost all. Not names of the others. I think I knew some of them on the street, either with Sebastian or just on their own. Mostly they’d have street names or made up ones anyway. I don’t remember this one at all.”

Eve nodded when she touched Linh’s picture. “Okay.”

“I’m sure of Iris, and this one. Lupa. And the one I told you I brought to Sebastian, and the one I sang with. We looked for Iris. I helped when I heard she’d left. She wasn’t... she was special, and Sebastian worried something would happen to her on her own. Something did.”

“Yeah, something did. Lonna, would you be willing to work with a doctor? Someone who could help you remember what happened that night?”

“No.” Derrick rapped his free fist on the tabletop. “She’s not doing that. She’s not letting someone poke around in her head, try to make her remember something that still makes her wake up crying some nights.”

“I understand how you feel,” Eve said. “I know what it’s like to block something out, something bad and frightening. Something that comes back at you in dreams when you can’t block it so completely.”

“Do you?” Lonna murmured.

“Yeah. And I know what it’s like to have a man who loves me just want to make it stop. Just want me to have some peace. I know it can tear just as much at the one who has to hold you when you wake up from it. But it won’t stop until you pull it out, look at it square. It won’t just stop until you can look at it, then learn to deal with it.

“You’re the only one we know of who survived. The only one who might have something buried down deep that can lead me to him so he can pay.”

She took out a card, wrote Mira’s name and contact on it.

“If you decide to do that, to dig down for it, look at it square, you contact this woman. I promise you she’s the best there is. She’ll take care because she’ll care.”

“What I told you, what I do remember, is it enough to help?”

“It is. You don’t have to give any more if you can’t.” She nudged the card closer. “This is for you, whether you talk to me again or not. Peabody’s right, you’ve made something good and strong.”

She looked up at the stars on the ceiling. “And you’ve got a nice place here.”

“You can come back sometime, have a real drink, see it at night, when it really shines.”

“I might just.”

She slid out of the booth, waited for Peabody to do the same.

“Lieutenant? They were my friends. You have to find who hurt them.”

“Working on it.”

Outside as they walked back to the car, Eve tossed Peabody a look. “Your brain’s buzzing so loud I want to swat it. Spill.”

“I’ve got more than one thing, but I guess I want to start saying you don’t usually—mostly ever—say something personal to a wit the way you did to her. About knowing what it’s like to block out something terrible, and have it come back at you anyway.”