Faithless in Death (In Death, #52)(69)

“As it happens I would. I’ll be on my way home myself shortly.”

“I’ll send you the data, and see you there.”

“McNab will head out as soon as he’s wrapped at Central. He’s finishing up testing out the echo deal on the tracker and ’link.”

“They recovered enough of it.”

“It was pretty mangled, but … He went into ultra-geek mode, so I cut that off. He’ll bring the results with him, and he’ll fill us in, and dig into Ella Foxx. Why wipe her data, if that’s what happened?”

“She doesn’t want to be there. She didn’t write that note yesterday. She’s been carrying it around for a while now, looking for her chance. She doesn’t want to be there, but she obviously can’t walk out.”

“She’s eighteen—if that date’s right. Just, but eighteen and legal. If she’s being held …”

“Walls, security, cams, close supervision. Maybe she walked in there on her own at some point, but she sure as hell believes she can’t walk out again. She won’t be the only one. You wipe her data so she doesn’t exist outside those walls.”

Like she hadn’t existed, Eve thought, outside that room in Dallas, or the other ugly rooms her father had locked her in.

“The woman doing the weeding. She was afraid, she was afraid of Wilkey. The kids weren’t, but she was. This Ella and the other woman with the tea?” Eve continued. “Mirium didn’t even acknowledge them. Like they were droids, or more, just invisible. You say things in front of people you just don’t see that you wouldn’t say otherwise.”

“You think she—Ella—might know things.”

“I think she knew cops were coming so she had that note handy. I think Mirium was plenty pissed to have to deal with cops on her own—what was it?—veranda, and likely said so. What else has she, or others, said in front of the invisible?”

“And they lied. They might consider some of the staff as no big, but they said specifically nobody goes out during retreat. And the cart driver said some staff does. We already knew that because Marcia Piper said her husband works at the HQ and was home Monday night. Either she lied or they did about that one.”

“He was home long enough to put those bruises on her. They looked pretty fresh.”

“They lied about that to get rid of us. Nothing to see here,” Peabody muttered. “But how do you wind it all back to Gwen Huffman and Ariel Byrd?”

“I don’t know yet, but we’re damn sure going to find out.”

“Dallas, we have to get Ella Foxx out of that place.”

“Yes, we do.”

“We could send some officers to Brooklyn—work with the locals—and interview any Foxx still living there who was there during the birth year. It’s a start.”

“If you were connected to someone who took off, went missing, whatever, you’d file a report, so we start there. But I can promise you Savannah Grimsley still looks at her brother’s data now and again. Just hoping he’s updated it.”

“Yeah, you’re right.”

“Reach out to Brooklyn anyway, check on missing persons. Do the same in the other boroughs. Let’s be thorough.”

Maybe they’d find one, Eve thought as Peabody got to work again. Maybe. But she doubted it. They’d wiped her data because nobody would notice or care. Because they could.

And they’d made her invisible.

Wasn’t it another kind of murder? You could still breathe, walk, talk, eat, sleep. But you no longer existed because someone killed your identity.

When she finally reached the city, when she finally reached her own gates, Eve felt a knot of tension loosen in her guts.

“There’s nothing, Dallas, no MP reports filed on Ella Foxx, Alice Foxx, Ella Alice Foxx. Just nothing. But maybe we should start interviewing—”

“What if her parents, her family, whoever had control of her are members? True believers who shoved their daughter into that place before she had a choice? What do you think will happen to her if we ask questions, hit on the right people, and word gets back to Wilkey and the order?”

“For her own parents to do something like that to her, to trap her that way, to let her just not exist and be afraid, not be able to ask for help? It’s so hard to imagine what kind of people would do that to their own kid, their own family. I just can’t—”

It hit her, quick and hard. “I’m sorry. God, that was stupid. I’m wound up, but that was stupid. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. It wasn’t normal for me, it’s not normal for her.”

Eve pulled up at the house, sat a minute. “She took a risk dropping that note in my lap, so I’m going to say she wasn’t shoved into the group, or joined the group, as a kid, not too young anyway. I’d never have done that, looked to a cop for help, because he’d drummed it into me that the cops would hurt me, throw me into a hole, in the dark. But she knows better.”

Eve got out of the car, let out a long breath. “We’re not going to let her down.”

She walked in to a looming Summerset and the waiting Galahad. “Lieutenant, Detective Peabody. I’m informed we’re expecting other members of the NYPSD this evening. I’ll send them to your office as they arrive.”