Page 9 of Concealed in Death

She skirted around the hood of her car, slid in behind the wheel. And there let out one long breath. “Jesus Christ.”

Beside her, Peabody let out one of her own. “I can’t get past them being kids. I know we have to, but I can’t get past the fact a dozen kids were wrapped up and dumped in there like garbage.”

“You don’t have to get past it. You use it.” Eve pulled out, wove through traffic. “But I don’t think it was like garbage, not to the killer.”

“What then?”

“I don’t know, not yet. The way they were wrapped, the way he spread them out through the building, stacked some of them together. Does any of that mean something? We’ll bring Mira in on this,” she said, referring to New York Police and Security Department’s top profiler and shrink. “And we start working, straight off, with the data Roarke has on the building. We dog this DeWinter like hungry hounds.”

“Did you see her boots?” Peabody’s dark eyes rolled like a woman in the throes of ecstasy. “They were like butter. And the dress? The cut, the material, and the really cute little buttons running all the way down the back?”

“Who wears butter boots and cute little buttons to a crime scene?”

“It all looked really good on her. And the coat was totally mag. Not mag like yours, a more girlie kind of mag.”

“My coat’s serviceable, practical.”

“And magic,” Peabody added as it was lined with sheer body armor. “But still. Plus I got from Dawson she’s like a bone genius. I think he’s got a crush on her, which I get because she looks amazing, but he says she can find more answers in a finger bone than a lot of lab rats can in a whole body.”

“Let’s hope he’s right because we’ve got nothing but bones, a handful of cheap jewelry, and a building nobody apparently gave two shits about for years.”

“Wall material,” Peabody added. “Lab rats may be able to date some of the gyp board, the studs. Maybe even the plastic.”

“There’s that. Cheap,” Eve considered. “The plastic looked cheap to me. The kind you buy by the big-ass roll to toss over things you don’t want to get wet, or throw down on a floor when you’re painting or whatever, then just dump. Same with the wallboard. Not much of an investment, but decent enough work—carpentry work—so nobody poked at the walls before this.”

“So the killer had some construction skills.”

“Enough to construct walls nobody looked at and thought: What the hell is that doing there? That blended in. But why the hell hide bodies there? Why not find a better way to dispose of them? Ditch or hide the bodies—taking them out and burying them’s easier—but hide them because you don’t want them found. They might connect to you. But you’ve got to have easy access to the building, so that connects to you. Yet you keep the bodies there.”

“To keep them close?”

“Maybe you want to visit them.”

“That’s just more sick.”

“The world’s full of sick,” Eve said, and contemplated on just that as she drove into Central.

She zipped into her slot in the garage. No IDs, no faces, no names—but that didn’t mean they didn’t dig in hard.

“I’m going to start the book and board,” she said, striding to the elevator. “You take whatever data Roarke’s sent on the building itself, the history of it, get more.” She stepped into the elevator. “I want to know everything there is to know about its use: who used it, who owned it, worked in it, lived in it. Primarily post-Urbans, but not exclusively.”

“I’m all over it.”

“We take the probability DeWinter’s on-scene estimate’s close, and the time line that’s most likely—” She broke off to shift over when more people piled into the car. “We start at fifteen years, after the building was shut down. But we need to know who had a connection to it or interest in it prior, and after.”

The next time the doors opened, two uniforms hauled in a very fragrant sidewalk sleeper. Eve opted out, Peabody in her wake, and headed for the glide up.

“She seemed to know her stuff, and not just fashion-wise.”

“We’re going to find out.” She hopped off the glide, continued to Homicide. “Everything, Peabody,” she repeated. And she’d do a little digging on Dr. Garnet DeWinter.

She stepped into the bullpen and the clashing scents of really bad coffee, processed sugar, and industrial-strength cleaner. The smells of home.

Detectives manned ’links and comps at their desks, uniforms did the same in their cubes. She noted the empty desks of Detective Baxter and his trainee, Officer Trueheart. Remembered after a quick mental search that they’d both be in court.

She split off from Peabody, shrugging out of her coat as she made the short jog into her office. There, in her small space with its single narrow window, sat her AutoChef with the perk of real coffee, most excellent coffee, thanks to Roarke.

She tossed her coat on her excuse of a visitor’s chair. The ass-numbing chair, plus coat, should discourage visitors. Then she programmed coffee, dropped down at her desk.