Abandoned in Death (In Death, #54)(89)

“Oh yeah, sure. You gotta.”

“Do you have the feed from yesterday when he was in?”

“Uh-huh.”

Eve doubted two syllables had ever brought her such pleasure.

“We loop it back every forty-eight hours, so—”

“I need to see that feed, Darci. I’d rather not take the time to come to you, so I need you to send me the feed.”

“Oh, I mean, I know the boss would want me to do whatever, but I don’t know how to do that. It’s just me and Carrie here now, and—”

A second woman shoved her face next to Darci’s and waved frantically.

“That’s Carrie, and it’s just that we don’t know how to do that.”

Before Eve could yank out her own hair, Roarke nipped the ’link out of her hand. “Hello, Darci, why don’t I walk you through how to do what the lieutenant needs?”

“Oh! My! God!” The squeals followed, in stereo, and knowing his wife’s threshold for such things, Roarke strolled out into the hall.

“He’s the right age. Run Dawber, Peabody.”

“You think—Jesus. Dawber—do we have his full name?”

“Fuck me.” Eve squeezed her eyes shut, took herself back to the lab, to Harvo, to the walk to Dawber’s area. “Andy. Try Andrew. Dawber, Andrew. See if he was adopted or in the foster system.”

“Dallas, if I can have your desk unit, I can set it up for what Roarke’s having them send you.”

“It’s yours,” she told McNab. “Son of a bitch, it could be the son of a bitch. Under my damn nose. Works for the cops. Forensic chemist. Knows just what to do, how to do it. How not to leave a trace of himself on the body, how to choose the products, the clothes that make it close to impossible to track back.

“Except for the nails.” She paced as well as she could with two other people in her office. “Had to have the perfect, the exact, and didn’t have time to cover it well. Went to Brooklyn, but that’s not enough. Gave us the wrong data, wasted a day there, but that’s not going to be enough.”

She whipped back to McNab. “How long is this going to take?”

“You’re set, and it’s not that complicated on the other end, but they’re already buzzed out and they don’t know the system, so it might take a few minutes to baby them through it.”

She checked the time. “He’ll have clocked out of the lab. He’s with her now or on his way. I didn’t see it. I looked right at him, and I thought: You’d be the type. The right age range, the quiet type, perfectionist, the type who blends so people don’t really see him.

“Son of a bitch.”

“Dallas, he went into the foster system as John Church in 2003, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Age five, no parents or guardians on record, found wandering alone in a church yard. Adopted in 2005 by Elyse and Lloyd Dawber. I’ve got his education, medical, criminal—and at a glance, nothing pops. He moved to New York in 2016 to attend Columbia, got his advanced degree in forensic chemistry, and has worked for the NYPSD lab since 2025.”

“Address.”

“Yeah, Lower West. He could walk to the lab.”

“What kind of building?”

“Take me a minute.”

Roarke walked back in, still talking on her ’link. He gestured to McNab, got a nod. “You’ve done very well indeed. The feed’s on your screen now, cued up as we discussed.”

“Uh-huh, uh-huh. This is so exciting. Your accent just slays me.”

“You and Carrie have been an enormous help. You have the code for the lieutenant’s unit in the corner there for receiving, so now you only need to click send.”

“Here goes! Did it work? Did it work?”

“It certainly did, and thank you. The lieutenant’s going to be busy for a while yet, but she’ll contact you tomorrow.”

“This was fun!”

Eve ignored Roarke as he stepped out again to end the conversation, and watched the feed.

“Son of a bitch,” she said yet again as Andrew Dawber walked into view.

He looked harmless with his round face, his pressed khakis, the shy cherub’s smile. He went directly to the nail products—no browsing, no distractions. Eve watched Carrie—salesperson of the month—cross to him.

Need any help? Eve thought. Can I show you something?

Quick, friendly conversation, and she found the color for him. She gestured, probably trying to make an upsell, but he just smiled, shook his head.

Back to the sales counter, check his license—chatting, her chatting, him smiling—take the cash, make the change—bag it up.

“In and out in under four minutes. He doesn’t waste time. Friendly, but not memorable. But Carrie remembered enough.”

“It’s an apartment building, Dallas. Multiunit, a deli and a convenience market street level. He’s on the fifth floor. I don’t see how he got three women in there and held them.”

“A basement, maybe he has access to the basement. Rents it so he can close it off.”

But it didn’t feel right.

Yanking out her communicator, she contacted Jenkinson.

He said, “Yo.”

“We’ve ID’d him. Andrew Dawber, lives— Peabody!”