Abandoned in Death (In Death, #54)(21)

And looked, Eve thought, not daunted by the impossibility of the assignment but energized.

“Clear it with Feeney,” she repeated as she took back her PPC.

“No prob. I got this. Yo to Roarke.”

“Yeah.” Even as she turned away to escape the carnival, Jamie was bopping to the beat.





5





Back in the bullpen, at Peabody’s desk, Eve studied the two missing women’s data. Anna Hobe, age twenty-four, single, worked at Mike’s Place, a karaoke bar. Lower West. She lived alone, in an efficiency just under six blocks from her workplace.

Seven days missing, Eve noted, reported by her manager when she didn’t show up for work, her ’link didn’t respond, and the coworker who talked the building super into letting her in found the apartment empty.

Becca Muldoon, age twenty-five, a dancer at Honey Pot, a Lower West Side strip joint, eight days missing. Single, reported by roommate.

“We’ll take Hobe, have Norman take Muldoon. We’ll hit her workplace and residence. Get the files transferred. Give me five.”

She went into her office, added some notes to her book. She printed out Hobe’s photo, held it next to Elder’s. Same coloring, a similarity in features. And from the data, likely a similarity in build.

Muldoon, now, she thought as she studied that printout, she’d put closer to the Bad Mommy. But that came from the facial enhancements Muldoon wore in the ID shot.

With a quick search she found one of Muldoon’s professional shots on her social media. Curvier, definitely bustier.

Would he adjust for that? she wondered.

Either way, they struck her as candidates.

She pinned them up, grabbed her jacket.

“Let’s move, Peabody,” she said as she walked through the bullpen.

“Norman’s already heading out,” Peabody told her. “He contacted the lead on the Muldoon case, and they’re meeting up at the strip club. Eight days,” Peabody added. “If he grabbed her, she’s running out of time.”

“I think the probability’s lower on Muldoon. Yeah, maybe he always wanted backups, alternates, but is he going to grab one right after the other? Higher probability—maybe—because she more closely matches what he created—her face. But her build’s different. She wouldn’t fit in what he dressed Elder in.”

“Buys to fit her.”

“Yeah, easy enough. She’s got a couple of tats already. A snake—a cobra—going down her left hip, and a dragonfly on her right tit. What does he do about that? Leave them, remove them, just cover them up? If he’s seen her in the club, he knows that. But, other side, she’s already got the navel piercing, which would also be in view when she’s working.”

“It caught me she looks more like what he did with Elder than Hobe does. But Hobe looks more like Elder before he worked on her.”

“Exactly. What does he want, Peabody?” Eve asked as they crossed the garage level to Eve’s car. “The good mommy or the bad one?”

Peabody considered it as she climbed in. “He kills the bad mommy, so it could follow he wants the good one. It would weigh on Hobe more than Muldoon.”

“That’s how I see it. If it was only about punishment, he’d have hurt Elder. Messed her up, smacked her around. He took what he wanted, and he took her after observing her, watching her routine, planning it out. If he’s taken another, he did it the same way.”

As she drove out, pushed through traffic, Eve thought it through. “That’s not to say he didn’t have more than one at the same time on his radar. If he’s taken another—and if he hasn’t, he will—he likely had a gauge on her for a while.”

“He’d almost have to, right? If neither of these pans out, if he’s still in the stalking phase, that’s one thing. But if either of these, potentially both, are targets, he had to have picked them and studied them for a while.”

“And how does he pick them? You can’t pick what you don’t see. We don’t have a pattern yet, we’re assuming one.” Though it troubled her to assume, her instincts continued to demand it.

“Mavis doesn’t fit the pattern—the assumed pattern. I talked to her,” Peabody added. “She said you had, and asked her to bring in her security guys. She did, and that’s just a good idea considering the proximity of the dump site to the apartment and the house. But she doesn’t fit, Dallas. She’s smaller, and coloring—if we take hair and eyes? Mavis is all over the place. She doesn’t have a real routine, either, and she’d usually have Bella, or Bella and Leonardo, or Trina with her when she goes anywhere. Or me and McNab.”

All true, Eve thought, and all reassuring. But she had to think on the dark side—the killing side.

“He knew the playground. He didn’t pick the dump site on impulse. He scoped it out, or he knows it because he lives or works in the neighborhood. Add the mommy thing. She’s already a mommy.”

“Because of Bella, and she’s already showing some with Number Two.”

“He could’ve seen her—them—in that playground.” And it gnawed at her, Eve admitted. Gnawed away at her. “What does he want? A good mommy. She fits there. She’s a damn good one.”