Page 47 of Concealed in Death

“I don’t think she ran away. I think she was lured or enticed into that building, killed there. I think, most likely, those few days before she poofed, she met the killer, or someone who connected her to him. She—the kid—started asking a lot of God questions.”

“Excuse me?”

“You know, how come God this, or why doesn’t God that. They’re pretty serious Catholics, according to the primary, but during the investigation, they found she’d been reading about alternative religions and—what would you call them? Philosophies? Using the house comp, as they could only afford the one, late at night after the aunt was in bed.”

“It doesn’t seem unusual behavior for a young girl, especially one who’d suffered a major loss.”

“No, but I think about that higher power stuff, and I wonder. It’s another possible connection to HPCCY.”

She gestured with her spoon, then used it to dig back into the stew. “Say the kid was meeting somebody from The Sanctuary—resident or staff. Someone she knew from her time there, had a connection with. They’ve never been able to track down where she spent that time, after school, before getting home. Could be someone used that spiritual angle to hook her. Why did God do such a shitty thing? Here are some answers.”

“She might’ve walked by the building going to school,” Roarke suggested.

“She’s the second vic who was in residence there. It’s not going to be coincidence, it’s not going to be happenstance. She wasn’t doing illegals, no sign of that anywhere.”

“A good girl,” Roarke put in, “with hard and sorrowful circumstances.”

“Yeah. She went to school every day, and her grades were solid. She got counseling, both separately and with the aunt, and nobody saw her as runaway material. She and the aunt hadn’t fought. Added to all that, she took nothing with her. She had school stuff, the clothes on her back. A kid doesn’t take off without hauling some of her stuff.”

No, Eve thought, no. A kid does what Linh did, packs up some of her things.

“She had a little money saved—just a little bit from doing chores or errands, that kind of thing. She didn’t take it either. Nobody looked at this as a runaway once they got the ball rolling. And nobody came forward claiming to have seen anybody lurking around. I’m getting the case file, but my sense is this detective put in the time and effort, and maybe more than most would.”

“But you have two of your victims in residence at The Sanctuary, at the same time.”

She drank a little more wine as she considered.

“Of the three we’ve ID’d, we have an experienced street kid, an impulse runner from a good family, and a kid from the working class who was, by all reports, well behaved and learning to cope with loss. What they have in common is age, size—and, in two, confirmed connection to the crime scene.”

“From what you know, age and size will remain common traits.”

“So it follows the other commonality will hold true for the twelve. It just reaffirms the killer connects to The Sanctuary, and likely HPCCY.”

“Another resident?” Roarke suggested. “Have you considered this may have been done by another child?”

“I’m running it around. An older kid. They took them, supposedly to eighteen, but they may have had a few that bumped over that.”

“Letting it slide a bit,” Roarke agreed. “Maybe having those who hit the age limit but still had nothing do a bit of work around the place in exchange for room and board.”

“They’d be the type to do that,” Eve agreed, thinking of her impression of the Joneses. “A boy. Girls that age might trust an older girl, but aren’t they pretty stupid about boys in those years?”

“I’ve never been a teenaged girl, so I couldn’t say for certain. You were.”

“Me? Hell, I was never stupid about boys. Until you anyway.”

He laughed into his wine. “That’s so sweet.”

“I had too much going on to get stupid about boys. I wouldn’t even have had sex except I was curious what was the big deal. Turned out, at least back then, it wasn’t all that big.”

He laughed again, just enjoying her. “How old were you? I can’t believe I’ve never asked.”

“I don’t know, about seventeen probably. Everybody else, or mostly, was banging like hammers, so I figured I should find out why. How about you?”

He lifted his wine. “I believe I’ll take the Fifth, once again.”

“Oh no, you don’t. It’s got to be in the marriage rules. I tell you, you tell me.”

“Rules are so... confining, but all right then. About fourteen. The Dublin streets and alleys were colorful, we could say.”