Abandoned in Death (In Death, #54)(20)

Probably. What else had she had to compare?

Had she had shiny clothes?

Probably.

She remembered the smells—sex and smoke—and the smell of the powders and paints—like candy. Perfume.

She’d smelled perfume on the body.

So he remembered the smells, too. Childhood smells.

Had he lived his life with this woman, or had she walked out on him like Stella had on her?

She rose, paced to her skinny window.

In New York, or somewhere else?

Bad Mommy. Hadn’t Stella been her template for motherhood, Stella and the array of foster mothers that followed, for a very long time?

Bad Mommy would’ve been her judgment, too.

Had the killer been in the foster system? Another angle, but one she couldn’t begin to dive into without a better time frame. And she’d started out in Dallas. Like the killer, she’d ended up in New York.

No way to know, yet, where the killer had started his journey.

The next thought had her heading out of her office.

“I’m going up to EDD, tapping Feeney,” she told Peabody.

“I’m on with Norman.” Peabody jiggled her ’link. “We may have a couple missing persons who fit the basics.”

“Nail them down, and we’ll take them when I get back.”

Taking the glides, she thought it through as she went. Another long shot, maybe, but worth pushing.

Once she got this rolling, she’d get back in the field, check out these other missing women, hit all the victim’s contacts. Hair salon, health clinic, dentist, the shops she frequented regularly. Someone might have noticed something.

She walked into the crazed and colorful world of EDD. It was Jenkinson’s ties on steroids.

Though she didn’t see McNab bouncing in his cube, she saw plenty of others in equally wild gear bopping and hip-swiveling as they worked.

She turned toward what she knew would be the brown, baggy calm of Feeney’s office.

Found it empty.

“Hey, Dallas.”

She looked around, and nearly didn’t recognize him. The moment’s blankness might have been caused by the blinding purple baggies and the exploding aurora borealis on his shirt.

He’d let his hair grow long enough so he could pull it back in a stubby tail, and had streaked the blond with spring-grass green.

Jamie Lingstrom, Feeney’s godson, and the kid—well, college kid now—who had the distinction of being the only person she knew who’d ever—almost—gotten through Roarke’s home security.

“Is it something in the air up here,” she wondered, “that turns colors nuclear?”

“Energy boost.”

“Sure. What are you doing here?”

“Summer intern. Just grunt work, but it’s a start.” He looked around EDD as if he’d entered paradise. “I rotate. Two days a week here, three with Roarke. Next week, reverse it.”

“Roarke? You’re interning with Roarke?”

“Low rung, but it’s iced supreme. Best of both worlds.”

She eyed him. “Getting a leg up in both so you can straddle them.” She had to admire the strategy. “Smart.”

“Gotta explore to know where to plant the flag, check me? So, if you’re looking for the Cap, he and McNab are in the field. You got something I can—”

“Callendar,” she said, naming another detective she knew and had worked with.

“She’s buried right now.” Jamie shifted his weight, subtly, to block Eve. “I just finished what the Cap laid on me, so I can take what you’ve got.”

She considered the fact that what she wanted done equaled the gruntiest of grunt work. The work of an apprentice drone.

He fit the bill.

“Where’s your ring in this circus?”

“Down around here.” He led the way through the maze, did a fist bump, finger wiggle with a female with a cascade of blue braids, and ended up in a cube so small and tight if she’d tried to squeeze in with him, she’d have had to bring herself up on inappropriate conduct charges.

“I need a long-range ID search.”

“I’m your man.”

“By default, and when Feeney gets back, you clear this with him. Female, Caucasian, no age range at this time. I have an identifying mark. I want you to use that data, check criminal records. You’re going back to the year 2000. No, make it 1990.”

His eyes widened. “No bull?”

“No bull. Start in New York.”

“Start?”

“Yeah. Start in the city, then the boroughs, then the state. You don’t get a hit, move on.”

“To what?”

“Another state.” She pulled out her PPC, ordered up the photos she wanted. “What’s your code? No, here, just copy it over yourself.”

He took her handheld. “Dallas, she looks pretty dead.”

“She is. I’m not looking for her, but who she represents to the person who killed her.” She hesitated, then reminded herself she’d connected with Jamie not so much through Feeney as through Alice.

His sister, his murdered sister.

So she ran through the basics.

“Butterfly tat, that’s a solid. Okay, I’m all over it and back again.” Faster than she could have thought it, he transferred the photos to his unit.