Page 7 of Concealed in Death

“Wait.” She crouched, peered down through the eye socket of the skull. “There’s something here.” Grabbing a tool out of her kit, she reached through, clamped the tiny glitter.

“Excellent eye, indeed,” DeWinter said. “I missed it.”

“An earring.”

“I think a nose ring, possible brow ring. It’s a very small stud, so I’d lean toward the nose. It simply dropped off and down during decomp.”

Eve slid it into an evidence bag, sealed it.

“We’ll begin drawing out DNA, starting facial reconstruction. I assume you want ID as soon as we can possibly determine.”

“You assume right.”

“Cause and time of death may take longer. I could use a detailed history of the building, when the outer wall was constructed, what its purposes were.”

“Already being accumulated.”

“Excellent. Dawson can secure these remains as well. I’ll start on them immediately, and contact you as soon as I have anything useful. I look forward to working with you, Lieutenant.”

Eve took the offered hand again, then let it go when she heard the shout.

“We’ve got another one!”

She met DeWinter’s eyes. “Looks like you’re not done here yet.”

“Nor you.”

Before they were done, they found twelve.

Eve went through the building section by section. To the south wall first, where sweepers meticulously cut out a large square of gyp board, bagging some of its dust and chunks for analysis. Inside the narrow opening, three wrapped remains were stacked. She examined them along with DeWinter.

Females, between twelve and sixteen. As with the first two, some showed older injuries, none showed overt trauma that could be determined as cause of death.

With the remains, Eve found three studs and one small silver hoop.

The rest of the main floor held a handful of partitions, two small restrooms, long since stripped of fixtures.

By the time she, along with DeWinter, climbed the open iron stairs to the second level, the sweepers had found five more.

“Again we have a mix of ethnicity,” DeWinter told her, “and again, all female, all in the same age range. Some injuries I’d suspect resulted from childhood abuse, but none that determine cause of death. Whoever did this preyed on females past puberty, but far short of adulthood. Females of this age range, some of whom most likely experienced earlier physical abuse.”

“It was, for a few years, a kind of shelter.”

Eve glanced back at Roarke as she bagged what she thought might be a toe ring.

“What kind of shelter?”

“Documentation’s spotty. It was used as a kind of shelter for children and teenagers during the Urban Wars, those who’d lost their parents. A kind of makeshift orphanage.”

“These bodies haven’t been here since the Urbans.”

“It’s possible,” DeWinter disagreed. “I’ll be able to determine how long, within a reasonable time frame, once I have the remains back in my lab.”

“Not since the Urbans,” Eve repeated. “The concealing wall wasn’t built that long ago. And there would’ve been no need to keep them here like this. People died in droves during the Urbans. You want to kill a few girls, need to get rid of the bodies? Just take them out, leave them on the street. And,” she continued before DeWinter could speak again, “how the hell do you kill them, wrap them up, stack them up, then build walls to hide them when the place is full of people? You need time, you need some privacy.”

“Yes, I see you’re right. I only meant, forensically, the remains could be from that time period, and we won’t know until tests are run to determine.”

Eve straightened, handed the evidence bags out to Peabody. “Any documentation on how long the place housed Urban orphans?”