Desperation in Death (In Death #55)(58)

“Sometimes they make it too easy.”

“Not at four-freaking-hundred. Reineke’s escorting his sorry ass down to Booking—probably catching a quick nap in the crib now. I just wrote it up.”

“Well, good work. You can catch a nap of your own.”

“Actually … You got a minute?”

“I’ve got one.”

“Maybe back in your office.”

She gave him the come-ahead and started back. “Are you angling for coffee?”

“Well, boss, if you’re offering. Frosty shades you got there.”

“As long as that tie’s in my office, I’m keeping them on.” She programmed the coffee. “Have you had enough time to think about it?”

“Yeah. I thought about it, talked it over with the family. Thought some more. I appreciate you putting me up for the promotion, and if I can keep doing what I do, just add more damn paperwork, I’d like to take a run at it.”

“Good. It’s the right call, Jenkinson.”

“Feels right, once I thought it through. I told Reineke. You gotta tell your partner, but if we could keep it with the three of us? If I tank it, I’d as soon avoid the ribbing or sympathy.”

“We can keep it between us, but you won’t tank it. Just brush up on some of the bullshit.”

“There’s always plenty to go around. Anyway, thanks.”

And with that item off the list, Eve checked on the status of the search for Dorian Gregg.

Plenty of tags on the tip line, with none of them panning out. But, she noted, a couple of shopkeepers in the area of Tiko’s downtown stall recognized her from around holiday time.

Nothing recent, and nothing after Christmas, she concluded after wading through all of the reports.

She shifted to Peabody and EDD’s search.

More names, more young faces. The efficient team not only grouped them in the categories she’d laid out, but geographically, added timelines.

Though it crowded her office, she started another board, and added the faces that hit the ninety-percent probability. Now she had twenty-three spread across an area under an hour’s shuttle flight from New York. Sixty-two outside that margin.

But the pattern, she thought. When you laid it all out, put it all together, the pattern came through.

Did they select and abduct nationwide? she wondered. Transport all to New York—or have other locations for holding the girls?

Did they specialize in this age group? Just Chicklets, no Kiddies, Ripes, and so on?

“I wouldn’t bet on that,” she muttered. “No, I wouldn’t bet on that. When you’ve got this slick a system, you don’t narrow it so close.”

She went back to her computer, ordered the search, same markers but changed the age range to six to ten years, limited it, for now, to New York, New Jersey—and, thinking of Mina, Pennsylvania.

While it ran, she shifted to the long, complicated list Roarke had generated.

With a city map on-screen, she began to place each property. With that done, she started runs on owners, and members of boards or groups that owned the properties.

Something else to bring EDD in on, she thought, as working solo, it would take her days to thoroughly investigate all of them.

Since she’d come in early for a reason, she got more coffee and stuck with it.

She heard Peabody’s pink boot clump just as her missing child search results came up.

“Jenkinson said you’d been here about an hour already.”

“I thought he was going to catch some sleep in the crib.”

“He caught a catnap at his desk.” She glanced over at the second board. “You’ve got them all up.”

“We’re going to need a third board. Goddamn it.” She had to push up. She gestured to the computer and paced to her window.

“We didn’t get—” Peabody broke off, then slowly sat in Eve’s desk chair. “These are younger kids. Younger girls. You’ve got eleven of them. Eleven in the last year.”

“Eleven that fit the pattern, in this geographic area.”

“Dallas, how could they hold that many girls? Eleven in this age group, the ones on the board in the younger group.”

“They likely have older teenagers. We’ll cross off adults, even young adults for now. But we’re going to run fourteen through sixteen. There’s going to be a mistake in there, goddamn it, some mistake in all of these abductions. Someone else who got out besides the two we know. Another body somewhere we haven’t tied in.”

“I’ll run the next group. I’ll do it.”

Eve said nothing, just nodded.

“Do you want EDD to spread out over these age groups, too?”

“Yeah.” Eve went to the AC, programmed coffee for her partner. “Let’s get that done, then I need them to assist in refining the properties Roarke’s earmarked.”

She took a moment, studying those pretty young faces.

“If this is the pattern, and it damn well is—a pattern, a system, a fucking business model—they need room, a lot of room to securely hold, what, maybe forty or fifty, and could be more, at any one time.

“Figure it, Peabody. You auction two or three times a year, maybe. Hell, maybe you have monthly sales like at the Sky Mall, you’re pulling in hundreds of millions. Two or three locations nationwide? You got yourself a billion-dollar enterprise. If it costs you, I don’t know, ten million or twenty million—hell, double that—in outlay, you’re fucking rolling in it.”