Chapter 18

The bar at the purple moon glittered with stars. More stars twinkled in the ceiling and would, Eve imagined, sprinkle light on dancers who took to the floor when the place was open.

For now its purple booths and silver tables stood empty.

The couple who stood in front of the glittery bar turned when Eve came in.

The man, rangy in good jeans and a white shirt, held both hands of the woman with him. He had an excellent face of strong bones, hard chin, framed by an artful tangle of dreads. Eyes green and hard as the chin watched Eve resentfully as she crossed the room with Peabody.

The woman looked up at the man who said something in an urgent undertone. She only shook her head.

"It's important, baby," she said, gave his hands a squeeze, then pulled hers away to stand on her own.

Eve doubted she'd have recognized the skinny, not quite formed DeLonna in the curvy, exotic beauty.

She'd grown into herself, Eve thought, and knew how to make the most of what she had. The short, spiky cap of hair gave her face a lift, made the most of big, slanted eyes of rich chocolate.

She'd painted her lips stoplight red, and wore the same color in a short, snug dress.

"Lieutenant Dallas." Her voice was smoke.

"That's right." To keep it smooth, Eve held up her badge. "Detective Peabody. DeLonna Jackson?"

"It's Lonna. Just Lonna. Lonna Moon. This is my man, Derrick Stevens. This is our place."

"It's a nice place."

Derrick angled himself between Lonna and Eve. "She doesn't have to talk to you."

"Derrick."

"You don't have to do this."

"Oh, baby, you know I do. We've got a life, Derrick and me," she said to Eve, stepping to the side to stand unshielded. "We've got a place, and a life that's a long way from what was. He worries about me going back there."

"We're not here to bring you trouble."

"The trouble was already there," Lonna said to Derrick before he could speak. "It's hard to know it, but now I do. We should sit down. We can get you a drink. Derrick, I could use a fizzy water. How about some fizzy water all around?"

"That'd be great," Eve told her, and went with her to a booth. Eve and Peabody slid into one side. "You were friends with Shelby Stubacker."

"Best friends ever. Shelby, Mikki, T-Bone. I think I'd have faded away like air without them. Shelby and Mikki, they're dead, aren't they? Sebastian didn't say, not right out, but I knew when we heard about... about what they found in The Sanctuary, I knew. I thought they just left me, and it broke my heart."

"They didn't just leave you."

"It's worse. So much worse knowing that. But it helps, the knowing."

"You were going to have your own place, your own club—like Sebastian's—in The Sanctuary."

"How'd you know that?" Surprised, she stared at Eve when Derrick brought over a tray with tall glasses of water sparkling like the ceiling stars. "It's all we talked about for days and days when we found out we were moving out. I was so scared, but I couldn't admit it. Scared at the thought of being on our own, but excited, too. Best friends ever," she murmured, and sipped her water when Derrick sat beside her.

"Who helped her get the forged documents, the paperwork to get out?"

"You know about that, too? I don't know, not for certain. Shelby didn't always tell us everything. She was the captain. She had power, but she had responsibilities. She said things like that."

"She developed a relationship with Montclair Jones. The younger brother. Sexual?"

On a sigh, Lonna tipped her head to Derrick's shoulder. "She didn't see it as sex. She saw it as bartering, as currency. It took me a while to see it as different." She smiled over at Derrick. "It took some doing for Shelby to draw Monty out. He was a little scared of her, and awful shy, but he was fascinated, too. And he wasn't smart and straight like Mr. Jones or Ms. Jones. He didn't seem all that much older than us, though I guess he was. Shelby gave him his first blow job, and was proud of that."

On a wince, Lonna touched a hand to her heart. "God, that makes her sound awful. You have to understand—"

"I do. She'd been abused, over and over. She learned to survive in a way she thought gave her some control. She was a child who never had a chance to be one."

"Most of us were." The first tear slid down Lonna's cheek.

"Don't cry, baby."

"I have to, a little. Shelby never got a chance to be happy, like I did. And Mikki, she was so needy, so angry. But my God, she loved Shelby. Loved her too much, in a way I see now Shelby could never have given back. We followed her, and she gave us direction, she gave us... family. We'd hook up with Sebastian's club sometimes, for fun, for the company. And because you could learn a lot. He said you weren't going to hassle me about the things I did back then."

"I won't. I understand that, too." To cover it, she shifted her attention to Derrick, just for a moment. "Nobody's going to hassle Lonna."

"First time you do, I show you the door."

"Fair enough. You brought a girl to Sebastian," she said to Lonna. "This girl." And laid Merry Wolcovich's photo on the table. "Do you remember?"

"I do. I don't remember her name, and it turned out she was mean as a snake. But I brought her to Sebastian when I came across some boys giving her trouble. She was giving it back, but they had her outnumbered, so I stepped in."

"You always do."

She laughed a little at Derrick's comment. "I was a fighting fool back then. Shelby taught me how to handle myself, so I pushed right into those boys, went after the meanest one—you can always tell. Take him out, I figured, the rest'll run off. And that's how it was. Then I took her to Sebastian because she was alone."

She ran a finger over the edge of the photo. "She's one of them, too. In the building."

"Yes. You tried to help her, but she didn't stay with Sebastian."

"Mean as a snake," Lonna repeated. "But she was just a kid. She hung with us a little while—mostly with Shelby—but she left, and I didn't see her around anymore."

"Did she leave before or after Shelby?"

"Oh, let me think about that. It must've been after. I snuck back to Sebastian's a couple times, hoping to find Shelby there, but she wasn't. It seems to me this girl was, then she wasn't."

"Okay. How about this girl."

At Eve's signal, Peabody put Shashona's photo on the table.

"Not one of us," Lonna said slowly. "Maybe I saw her around—she's sharp-looking, isn't she? I wonder... did she sing?"

"Yeah." Connection, Eve thought. "Yeah, she did."

"That's it then. Sharp-looking girl, good voice. We sometimes snuck off to Times Square, and I'd sing for the tourists. They'd put money in the box. This girl here, I remember how she came by, sang with me. Just picked up the song—don't remember which—with the harmony.

"Shelby, Mikki, they couldn't carry a tune in a bucket. T-Bone was okay at it, but he wouldn't sing out on the street. But this girl stopped—I'd seen her around before, but more up our way, I think. And she'd seen me. I could tell, the way you do."

"You'd seen her before," Eve pressed. "Near The Sanctuary?"

"Seems like it. Always with a pack. Girlfriends, laughing, talking, going home or out somewhere. I envied that. She had nice clothes, seems they all did. I hated wearing those hand-me-downs, and I noticed clothes on girls around my age."

"Then you ran into her in Times Square."

"That's right. I was set up with my box, and truth be told Shelby was working the crowd for wallets. Telling the truth, back then it was fun, an adventure. We didn't have many. But this time, this sharp-looking girl here, she stopped, and we had ourselves a little duet. Then another, before she went off with her friends. I remember because it felt good to sing with somebody, and because I offered her part of the money, and she wouldn't take it. She said she hadn't done it for money, but for the song. And damned if she didn't put five dollars in the box.

"Good, clear voice," Lonna murmured as she studied the photo. "Gone now, too."

"She has a grandmother, who raised her, who loved her," Eve said. "It's going to mean something to her when we tell her that."

"Tell her... her girl could sure sing, and she had a kindness to her. Lots of girls that age with nice clothes? They'd look down on someone dressed like I was. She didn't."

"I'll tell her. Tell me a little about The Club. Sebastian's."

"Well, Sebastian saw we got food. I was getting fed just fine by the Joneses. They saw to it you ate healthy and didn't go hungry. But some of the girls in The Club would've gone hungry without him. You need to know that."

"Okay."

"We learned to street snatch, pick pockets, learned a few cons. It was exciting, and I was pretty good at it. I liked having a little secret money of my own, even though it belonged to somebody else. I'd never had my own. Couldn't do the bjs, and Sebastian wouldn't have liked it anyway. But I couldn't do them the way Shelby did, even though she tried to teach me that, too."

She laughed a little, gave Derrick a wink out of watery eyes. "Not then I couldn't. I was a little younger, and I told Shelby no way I was doing that. It was nasty. She just laughed, said I should think of it like medicine. Just get it done. But I wouldn't."

"Did you ever get caught?"

"Nearly, lots of times. It added to the thrill, I guess. Mr. Jones and Ms. Jones ran things pretty tight, but most of us had had some street time—and I was getting more of it—so we found ways around and through. And we always had each other's backs."

"Do you still? Do you know where T-Bone is?"

"He did the same as me, got his name changed. Then he lit out. He wanted to see the world, that's what he wanted. And he has. He got some education, and that's thanks to Mr. Jones and Ms. Jones and the rest. He got on a boat, worked on the crew and went all the way to the South Pacific. He's still seeing the world, and I hope you'll let him be. We talked after I heard about the girls, and he said he'd come back if I needed. I don't want him to have to."

"We'll let that stand for now. If it turns out he's needed, I'll want you to tell him, or give me a way to contact him, to talk to him."

"I can do that, but he's probably going to come anyway. We go back. You know how it is when you go back."

Not as far, Eve thought. But she thought she knew.

"Tell me about when Shelby left."

"We had it all planned. I still remember being so scared it wouldn't work, then so happy—and so unhappy—when it did. She got out, she'd set up our place, and would get the rest of us out. I'd have to go. Part of me wanted to so much, and another part just wanted to stay where I knew it was safe. And the new place? It was so nice. I'd never been in such a nice place.

"But she got out, just like she said she would. But then Mikki had to go back to her mother, right on top of it. That wasn't the plan. We had a meeting—Mikki, T-Bone, and me—and decided Mikki would need to wait it out with her mother for a few days, maybe longer, and we'd wait to hear from Shelby."

"And you never did."

"We never did. Now it was just me and T-Bone. And he got in trouble for mouthing off. He was wound up tight—we both were—because he usually knew how to keep a lid on it. He was on restriction and kitchen duty—and they really buttoned down the new place, so it wasn't easy to slip out like before. But we figured I had to. We had to find Shelby, get some direction."

She took a long drink now. "I was a skinny little thing. One night after bed check, I climbed out the window of my room. The windows only opened partway, just for that reason, but I wiggled my way out. Then I had to climb down, and I'm lucky I didn't fall and break my leg, or my neck. Then I ran to the subway. I'd taken Matron's swipe card out of her purse and I'd have to get it back. I'd have to climb back up, wiggle back in, but all that was for later. In that moment, I was free as a bird, and running to my best friend ever."

"To The Sanctuary."

"I took the subway, and I got off at the stop. It's just a couple blocks to walk, and I ran. I ran, and it was a nice warm night. I remember thinking Shelby would be so surprised to see me. She'd be proud of how I got out the way I did when the new place was so buttoned up. She'd laugh, and we'd laugh, and she'd tell me what to do next. I thought of that. I remember thinking that, and how fast my heart beat.

"And then I don't remember. It's all a dark blur. I remember waking up in the morning, in my bed in my room, in the new place. Feeling sick and so tired. And scared, because I wiggled out and climbed down—I was sure I had—but I never remembered climbing back or wiggling in, or laughing with Shelby. And my window was closed tight and locked. I was wearing my uniform pajamas, and I hadn't been."

"Do you remember seeing anyone, talking to anyone?"

"I remember just like I told you. Except... I had dreams for a while. Dreams where I see myself walking around in there, calling out for Shelby. And everything gets dark, and in the dream I hear someone preaching about cleansing. The mind, the body, the spirit, sort of like what we talked about at The Sanctuary, but not. Cleansing for the bad girl, so... she could come home. It's mixed up. And I was cold, and I was naked, and scared, but I couldn't scream or run or move. I had that dream a long while."

She gave a little shudder. Instantly, Derrick put an arm around her, drew her into his side.

"Sometimes in them I hear shouting and yelling. Sometimes I feel like I'm floating, and not scared, just floating away with this soft, soft voice telling me it was all right, to just forget, to just forget."

"Whose voice?"

"I don't know. But now I think—" She gripped Derrick's hand. "Now I know what happened to Shelby and Mikki was going to happen to me. But it didn't. I don't know why it didn't, and how I woke up safe, dressed in my uniform nightgown, in bed with the window tight shut."

"No one ever asked you about that night?"

"T-Bone. I told him what I remembered, but he figured I'd dreamed it all. That I never climbed down at all. I started to think the same, and I felt awful about it. I'd been a coward and let down my friends. But they'd let me down, too. I held on to that so I wouldn't feel so ashamed."

She turned her head toward Derrick, just a little. He brushed his lips over her hair.

"Shelby abandoned me, like everybody, so I wouldn't care. I'd just get through it, get by. I'd do what I had to do to get through and get by until I was old enough to get out. Nobody was ever going to take me on—scrawny, skinny, odd-looking girl like me. I just had to get through until I could walk out. Then I'd be whoever I wanted to be."

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."

Eve let it hang between them until they'd gotten into the car, into the warm. "It felt okay with her. Okay on my side of it, the right thing on hers. It is personal, but sometimes you use the personal to lever off the lid of something."

"Do you still have nightmares?"

"Not like I did." And it wasn't as hard to think about, Eve realized as she merged into traffic. "Hardly ever. I have weird dreams, talking to the dead."

"That's creepy."

"Not really, not always. And it's useful. Just another lever. See about Nash Jones. I want him in the box, and I've got just the lever to pry him open."

While Peabody tried to hook Nash Jones, Eve used the in-dash to contact Mira's office.

Mira's dragon peered coolly from the screen. "Lieutenant."

"I need a few minutes with Dr. Mira."

"The doctor is in session. She has a meeting directly after, followed by a consult. Her day is booked, Lieutenant."

"Five minutes. Twelve dead girls and I need five minutes."

"I'll get back to you when I find five minutes."

Eve bared her teeth at the screen as it went blank. "Who doesn't have five fucking minutes? You'd think I was asking for an audience with God."

"Mira is her god," Peabody pointed out. "And Nash Jones is also in session. Shivitz passed me to his assistant who said she'll have him contact me as soon as he's free. But also said his day was crowded."

"He'll just have to make room."

Since without Nash Jones or Mira she had five minutes, Eve detoured to DeWinter's lab.

···

She heard someone shouting as she walked in. Her hand went to the butt of her weapon, then released it again when she recognized elation rather than fear or violence.

From the other direction she heard what sounded like a muffled explosion, followed by hysterical laughter.

"What kind of madhouse is this?"

"I think it's kind of icy." Peabody peered through glass walls, craned her neck to see over equipment. "But maybe you have to lean toward nerd to think it."

"You have to be neck-deep in nerd to think it. Like nerd quicksand. And why is it called quick anyway? In the vids people and unfortunate animals just sink slowly."

"Actually, you wouldn't sink but float, unless you struggle."

Eve glanced to the left where some nerd—sex not quite apparent in the baggy lab coat and behind the fly-eye microgoggles—looked up from examining a jawbone.

"What?"

"Quicksand's just ordinary sand that's saturated with water to the point it can't support weight, and it's usually only a few feet deep. The grains lose their friction, being saturated. But if you can, just float on it because your body's less dense than the quicksand."

"Okay, good to know. Next time I fall into some, I'll remember that."

"But if the mixture contains clay, that's a problem. The clay acts as a gel, so if you fell into it, the force would cause the gel to liquefy and bond the clay particles together."

The lab rat slapped one palm on the other. A good look at the hands determined male lab rat for Eve.

"You could sink pretty deep. Then the force needed to pull you out would be about the same as to lift a car or small truck. The trick is to wiggle out, as the motion lets water seep in, so you're back to floating."

"Okay then. I'm going to have to write all that down. Just in case."

To avoid more quicksand data, she got moving. "How do people know that stuff? Why do people know that stuff?"

"Science," Peabody said. "You can't live without it."

Eve started to argue, then remembered she was on her way to nag a scientist.

DeWinter wore the same weird little microgoggles, but her lab coat would never be called baggy. Today's was hot pink and matched her skyscraper ankle boots.

"I wondered if you'd make your way here today," she said without looking up from the bones on her steel table. "This is our last victim. COD remains the same. I put her age again between twelve and fourteen. Closer to fourteen, I believe, as there are signs of malnutrition. Her teeth indicate she had little professional dental care. Six cavities, apparently untreated, and two lost teeth, several others chipped or broken. Her right wrist had been broken in early childhood, probably around the age of five. It healed poorly, and likely troubled her."

Eve stepped in, studied the bones.

"A more recent injury here. Hairline fracture, left ankle. Probably incurred a week to ten days prior to her death."

"Signs of abuse?"

"The wrist, and this hairline again on the right elbow. From a fall, landing on the right. Certainly possible she was pushed. There's considerable wear in the hips, the knees, for a person her age, indicating she did considerable walking, repetitive motion. And see the toes, how they overlap."

"Wearing shoes too small, like Shelby Stubacker."

"Yes."

"Street kid, and not a new one. She lived on the street for years."

"I tend to agree."

"How's the facial reconstruction going on her? She's the last of them."

"We can check. She couldn't have run on that ankle."

"No, but she probably didn't have the chance to try anyway."

"I got your e-mail," DeWinter began as she removed the goggles. "While we've kept the media feed thin, with this last ID, I believe it's time to open it up."

"I believe it's not."

"Lieutenant, cooperation with the media can be very useful. Not only does it keep the public informed, as is their right, but the exposure of relevant data can and does generate interest, and interest can and does lead to information that can and does provide new leads."

Eve let her wind down so she could wind her back up. "First, I don't care about keeping the public informed because right now, this is my business, not theirs. Second, I have a key interview yet to complete, and I don't want information leaked that could bump up against that. When we have all identifications," she continued, rolling right over DeWinter's next pitch, "and if there's any notification to be given to next of kin on the last vic, we can release their names."

She'd just make sure Nadine got the final names first.

"You can do the release, make a statement, but"—Eve paused to drive the point home—"no information on my investigation is to be released. No components of the investigation, no discussion of potential suspects, motives, no release of COD."

"I've done this sort of thing before," DeWinter said dryly.

"Then it shouldn't be a problem." Eve glanced at the bones again. "But she comes first."

"Lieutenant." Insult, with a thin coating of frustration, shimmered into her voice. "They matter to me, too. I hold their bones in my hands, I scrape at them, test them, incise them. To do that I have to keep..." DeWinter drew the flat of her hand down in front of her. "A certain separation. I have to focus on the science. But it doesn't mean they don't matter to me.

"I can tell you about her." She gestured. "How she walked and walked the streets in ill-fitting shoes, eating what she could find when she could find it. The pain her mouth gave her, those bad teeth aching and aching. The last week or so she lived, limping, her ankle swollen, bruised, miserable. I think she had a very, very hard life. Her death, the method of it, was almost kinder. Wrong and immoral and unfair, but almost kinder than the life she lived."

"Maybe it was. I can't disagree with you, but her death, the method of it, the mind and hands behind it, have to stay on top for me. The public's right to know doesn't even come close."

"You have a suspect," DeWinter realized. "You have someone in your sights."

"I need her face, her name. I need to complete an interview. With those, it's possible this will break. Until then, I have lots of suspects."

"I'd like to know who—"

"Why did you steal the dog?" Eve interrupted.

"What?"

"The dog. You were charged a few years back for dognapping."

"I didn't steal the dog. I released it from its neglectful owner who kept it chained outside, summer and winter, with no shelter, who often forgot to feed it or give it fresh water. And"—oh, she was wound up now—"who told me when I spoke to him about it to mind my own fucking business, using that word in front of my little girl."

"Nice," Eve commented.

"One day instead of taking food and water over to the dog when the abusive, ignorant, disgusting excuse for a human who owned it was out—probably getting drunk, again—I took over bolt cutters. Then I took the dog to the vet."

"You got charged."

"Because I refused to give the dog back to him. The dog needed to stay at the vet to be treated for dehydration, malnutrition, fleas, mange, among other issues."

"Aw." Peabody's dark eyes filled with sympathy. "Poor thing."

"Yes! I refused to say where the dog was, and the pathetic man called the police. I was charged with taking the dog, and when the dog was examined, he was charged with animal abuse. That was satisfying."

"What happened to the dog?" Eve wondered.

"We named him Bones, my daughter's idea." She smiled now. "He's healthy, sweet-natured, and enjoying living in New York."

She pulled out her pocket 'link, swiped, then held it up. On screen sat a sleek brown dog with floppy ears and a dopey look in his eyes.

"He's so cute!" Peabody exclaimed.

"He is now, and worth the arrest and the fine."

"If you'd've called the cops, you'd have avoided the arrest and the fine," Eve pointed out.

"Maybe, but I was too mad. And I enjoyed breaking Bones out of jail. So, now that we've settled that, about the media—" She broke off as her pocket 'link played a bar of—of all things—one of Mavis's current hits. "That's my girl's signal."

"We'll head over to Kendrick."

"I'll be a minute."

"Take your time."

"I hate when people are mean to animals," Peabody said as they headed out.

"The guy was obviously an asshole," Eve said, "but taking the dog that way? It's playing vigilante and shows a little problem with impulse control."

"Maybe, but Bones sure looked happy. You're really not going to tell her the theory?" Peabody glanced back as they turned toward Elsie Kendrick's area.

"I don't know her well enough to trust her, and don't know if I'll trust her when I do know her well enough."

She walked in to find Elsie working at a control panel. "Hey. I've just about got her. Just fine-tuning."

"These are really mag." Peabody turned from the sketches pinned to Elsie's board. "They're really beautiful. I wonder if maybe we could have copies for the ones who had somebody. Their parents or guardians, who cared about them."

"I can make copies, sure."

"That's a good thought, Peabody."

"Here's our last girl." Elsie set the controls for the holographic reconstruction.

Eve watched it shimmer into three dimensions.

Not such a pretty girl, this one. A thin face, a little hollow on one side—the missing teeth, she thought. The eyes seemed hollow as well, a little sunken.

"Peabody."

"Running it for match now, sir."

"She's not in the Missing Persons file. Nobody reported her, but then, from the forensics, she'd been on the street a long time."

"It looks like it," Elsie agreed. "She didn't have an easy time of it."

"Nothing's popping," Peabody put in.

"Keep running it. Elsie, can you make a copy of this, then do another? Can you do the reverse-age thing? Take her back about, let's say, three years."

"I can do that, good thought. Just hold on."

Eve took the copy, stuck it in Peabody's file bag, then watched as their Jane Doe morphed into a younger girl. Just a little more fat in the cheeks, a little more symmetry.

"Copy that, too. I'll run this one."

"I can do a lateral search and match while you are," Elsie told her. "One of us should hit."

But they didn't.

"Maybe I went off," Elsie began.

"I doubt it. You were on the nail with the other eleven. We'll widen the search. Peabody, copy both images to EDD, ask Feeney to do a global. It'll be faster going through EDD."

"I'll keep it running here, too. If you find her, send me her name. I feel—I don't know why—more with this girl."

"Maybe because it feels like she never really had anyone."

"Maybe." Elsie nodded at Eve.

Back in the car, Eve headed for Central. "Give Jones another push. He's got to be out of whatever he was in by now. No, I'll do it. Hit them with rank."

She used the in-dash, put cold cop on her face.

"Higher Power Cleansing Center for Youths. How can I help you today?"

"This is Lieutenant Dallas, NYPSD. I need to speak with Nashville Jones immediately."

"Oh! Just one moment, please, I'll transfer you. Have a positive day."

"Yeah, yeah. People are always saying shit like that," Eve complained to Peabody. "Have a good day, have a happy day, have a peaceful day or whatever. I'd rather have a kick-ass day."

"That should be your sign-off."

"Mr. Jones's office, this is Lydia. How can I serve you today?"

"You can serve me Mr. Jones, asap."

"Lieutenant Dallas, yes, I gave him the message. I'm afraid Mr. Jones had to leave. Something came up and—"

"What the hell do you mean, he left?"

"He had something come up," Lydia repeated. "He asked me to cancel the rest of his schedule for today. I'm sure it was very important. I'd be happy to leave him another message."

"Because the first one worked so well."

Eve clicked off before Lydia could wish her a positive day.

"Goddamn it." She zipped between a Rapid Cab and a panel truck—incurring the ire of the truck driver, switching lanes so she could make the turn.

Peabody clamped a hand on the chicken stick as Eve punched into vertical to avoid a minor traffic snarl.

"I take it we're going to HPCCA."

"You bet your ass. Son of a bitch!" Eve threaded another needle. Peabody shut her eyes.