Abandoned in Death (In Death, #54)(81)

They both turned to Eve’s comp when it signaled an incoming.

“Dawber beat the thirty?”

“No, it’s Yancy. We’ve got his first image. Lisa McKinney, age thirty-five.”

“Damn, that’s good!” Peabody leaned closer. “You can see how he aged her, even changed the hairstyle some to go with, I’m guessing, what was in.”

“It is good.” Eve studied the face, the subtle signs of a decade of time around the eyes, the mouth. “The unsub couldn’t replicate like this. We were never going to get a hit using the victims. They’re not the real deal, just the best he can do.

“Computer, begin face recognition program on displayed image, searching for matches from the years 2012 to 2022.”

Command acknowledged. Searching …

“Keep it narrow,” Eve muttered. “We’ll keep each image he comes up with to a ten-year span. Something’s going to hit. Unless she’s been dead all along.”

“Why don’t I start a secondary search? Use the same image, skip to 2023, do, say five more years.”

“Yeah, go ahead and try that. And if Dawber doesn’t come through inside the thirty, push him again.”

When Peabody left, Eve rose again to go to the window with what was left of her coffee.

He was out there, she thought. On the street, in an office, in a house, a market, a meeting. Maybe drinking coffee as she was now, but he was out there.

And they were closing in. She could feel it. She could feel the pieces fitting together. The mother had always been the key.

Now they had her name, her face, her hometown.

“Lisa McKinney, where did you go? What did you do?”

She thought of herself, a child, wandering the streets of Dallas, bloodied, broken, too traumatized to remember the last rape, the last beating, or anything that came before it.

“But it hadn’t been like that for you,” she murmured. “No, not like that. You wouldn’t want her back if it had been like that. She didn’t beat you, or you’d have beaten the replacements. She fed you, clothed you—and you do the same for her, your projection of her.”

She dumped him, sold him, or died, Eve thought again. And all of those equal, to his mind, leaving him. Abandoning him. Bad Mommy to leave your little boy.

Eve glanced back at her working comp. And if she’d died during his early childhood, the search for Lisa McKinney would lead nowhere.

No death record meant no body found or the body went unidentified. But she’d had a car and a license in 2002, so …

Still plenty of ways for a person to die, go undiscovered, or remain a Jane Doe.

When her comp signaled another incoming, she pounced on it.

“Okay, Dawber, I don’t have to head over there and kick your ass into gear.” She bypassed the—to her—unintelligible science stuff, and went straight to the meat.

“Nail It by Adora, salon grade, professional use only. Color On a Moonlit Sea—who comes up with this shit? Acrylic Monomer (liquid), Crystal Acrylic Powder, Ultra Nail Prep and Ultra Bond, Adora Total Max Nail Glue. Blah blah blah,” Eve finished.

Peabody came hustling back.

“He copied me,” Eve said.

“I plugged it into the search. That’s one of the top brands, and a deluxe kit. Goes for over four hundred wholesale.”

“And all that for freaking fingernails? Who wants all that stuff gunked on their fingernails?”

“It’d cost you double to get the service in a salon. He had to buy the color separately, because the kit doesn’t include.”

“For four hundred, you don’t get the stupid polish?”

“And you have to use the Adora product made for the kit. I checked with Trina on that when I was setting up the first search. So I’ve plugged in the kit and the color. Even if he paid cash—and probably—they’re going to have a record. This is going to pay off.”

“All because she bit her nails. Let’s pull out some of the vendors, do this face-to-face.”

“I’ll set it up to alert me on any hits,” Peabody began, and Eve’s comp signaled again.

Initial match on search, ninety-eight-point-two probability.

“Display on main screen,” Eve snapped. “Fucking A! That’s her. Changed her name, but that’s her. Violet Blank Fletcher, in the damn system, driver’s license, passport, even a social security. Age listed as thirty-four in 2014. Married Joseph Fletcher, MD—three offspring, two sons, a daughter. But wrong ages there for our guy. Too young, born after she poofed. Poofed to Sylvan, Louisiana. Computer, display map of Louisiana, highlight Sylvan.”

“Oh, oh, look! It’s not far from New Orleans! Are we going to New Orleans?”

“Throttle back, Peabody. Computer, full data on Violet Blank Fletcher on-screen.”

Acknowledged.

“Married the doctor in May of 2004. Doesn’t list her place of birth, her parents, any employment—or any offspring before the three with the doctor.”

“Because Violet Blank Fletcher didn’t have any,” Peabody concluded.

“She sure as hell didn’t. And it also lists her date of death, last September. Accidental overdose of sleeping pills. I’m taking a wild guess here that it wasn’t, given her history, her family history, an accident. And somehow her death was his trigger.”