Desperation in Death (In Death #55)(86)

So many tunnels in the city, she thought. In use, abandoned, rife with squatters and sidewalk sleepers. Add the underground and its dens of inequity. Sex shops, sex clubs—the sort you didn’t find on the streets, but under them. The junkies, the thieves, rapists, and those who felt wandering among them equaled adventure and excitement.

Tying in with all of that? Could be handy, lucrative, another sort of training ground.

But … that lacked the element of sophistication, and added an element of risk—security-wise, anonymity-wise. Maybe you had scouts troll through, looking for minor girls who wanted a taste of that adventure, or a street kid who thought she could find some work.

She wouldn’t dismiss that connection, but she wouldn’t put it at the top of her list. She could dismiss subway tunnels or tunnels known to house big pockets of junkies, homeless, the lost and abandoned.

Utility tunnels worked. Shut down the access to the Academy, even conceal it, and make use of them when empty. Easy enough to know. She had to believe they had the tunnels monitored. Too huge a security breach otherwise.

She’d look there, but would start with abandoned or out of use.

After a long, frustrating hour, she pushed up, poured more coffee, paced around the room.

“Give me something,” she said when Roarke came back. “Because I’ve got too damn much of everything.”

“I can give you a partial name. Partial last name, and some data that might help fill in.”

He went to her unit, hit some keys so data flowed onto the wall screen.

“Iamson,” Eve read, “vel 5, and we’ve got what … 4th, ment 206. Okay, that’s going to be level five—her clearance. An address. Could be Fourth Street, Fourteenth, Twenty-fourth, and so on. Iamson—that could be a last name.”

“From the angle of the break, it’s partial, then end of the surname.”

“Yeah, I see that. And is that a date? It could be a date, zero-five-seven. A year? 2057. Not date of birth. Date of employment?”

“As good a conclusion as any,” Roarke said, because as he saw it there were many. “It could be her serial number, a number assigned to her. Or part of a longer code. I wish I could give you more, but that’s all there is.”

“It’s more than we had. We’ve also got the location where Dorian hid after she escaped. She states she walked a long time, but odds are it just felt like it. She’s hurt, in pain, dazed, in shock.”

Eve ordered the map on-screen. “For now, I’m going to concentrate on below Houston, east and west. Let’s say you’ve worked for this organization for the last four years, you’ve got at least a mid-level clearance, you’re willingly working for people making money abducting, abusing, and selling children. You’re responsible for locking them in at night. I’m betting you make enough to afford a decent apartment, and one reasonably close to work.”

“You’re going with fourteenth.”

“Starting there,” Eve agreed. “It still gives us a hell of a lot of possible residences, but it’s an apartment, most likely a second-floor deal given the 206. We know she’s female, so—”

“Run a search for a female in that number apartment on Fourteenth Street whose last names ends in iamson.”

“Maybe we get lucky, maybe we don’t, but—”

“Let me have this.” Brushing her aside, he took the chair and the controls.

She could do it, she thought, but had to admit he’d do it faster. And they’d go north from there—and south into Brooklyn. Maybe matron bitch liked a little distance between home and work.

Maybe zero-five-seven wasn’t a date, but part of her ID code, or ’link code, or—

“Marlene Williamson.”

“You’re fucking kidding me. That fast?”

“Age forty-three, single, no offspring, no marriages on record, no cohab on record. Address 526 West Fourteenth Street, apartment 206. Employed at Red Swan Productions as night security since April 2057.”

“Red Swan, get me the data.”

“Coming on-screen.”

“Mobile videography, what the hell?”

“No location, no fixed address. Clever. I can dig in.”

“Yeah, yeah, we’ll do that, but we both know it’s a front, it’s bogus. Maybe they file enough, put enough data in to pass, but it’s bullshit. Let’s go. You drive.”

“If we’re heading to Williamson’s apartment, she’d be at work, wouldn’t she?”

“Yeah, so I’m tagging Reo on the way for a search warrant, and an arrest warrant so we bag her when she comes home. You drive, and I’ll set the rest up. I’ll put McNab and Peabody on the listed employer,” she said as she strode toward the door. She glanced at him as she pulled out her ’link. “Swans aren’t red, right?”

“Not on this planet.”

“Bogus,” she muttered, then pulled out her ’link and contacted the officer guarding Dorian.

“I need to talk to the kid.” She shot a finger at Roarke before he could object.

“She’s in her room, sir. Should I wake her?”

“Yeah, now.”

“Just one minute, Lieutenant.”

“She IDs Williamson,” Eve said to Roarke, “I won’t have to tap-dance with Reo to get the warrants, and she won’t have to do the same with a judge.”