Concealed in Death (In Death #38)(45)

She murmured to him in Spanish, and for the first time her eyes filled, overflowed. He answered quietly in the same language, then left the room.

“I hadn’t met Juan when I lost Lupa. They would have loved each other. He loves her because I do, and he looked, too, long after she was gone. He knows we’ll want to have a service for her. Is it possible to . . . can I have her for a service and burial?”

“It may take a while, but I’ll see that you do.”

She nodded, knuckled at the tears. “The other girls, the girls with her, do they have family?”

“We’re working on that.”

“We are, Juan and I, fortunate. We’d help with any of the girls who are . . . alone. Is that possible?”

• • •

When they stepped out on the sidewalk, Peabody dug in the cavernous pockets of her coat, pulled out a tissue. “Sorry.” She dabbed at her eyes, blew her nose. “I handled it until she asked if they could help bury the other victims.”

Eve said nothing until they’d gotten to the car, gotten into it.

“People mostly suck—it’s the law of averages, I figure, especially when you’re on the job. Then you cross paths with people like that. Bad shit’s happened to them, seriously bad shit, but they still come out of it decent.”

She handed off the diaries to Peabody. Old-fashioned ones, she thought. Small covered books you wrote in with pen or pencil.

“We’ll take a look through these. Maybe she put something down she didn’t realize was important at the time.”

“McNab and I could take care of one of the vics. We could swing that.”

“Peabody.”

“It’s not getting personally involved or losing objectivity,” Peabody insisted, though she knew better. “It’s being decent.”

Eve let it drop as Peabody fumbled out a fresh tissue. “We’re going to poke at DeWinter. We’ll swing by Stubacker’s last known address, see if anybody there remembers her, or has any fresh info.”

It was like crossing a border from one country to another. Shelby Ann Stubacker’s old neighborhood squatted with cheap post-Urban housing, or the crumbling remains of what had come before. Pawnshops and graffiti abounded alongside tat and piercing parlors, sex clubs and dingy-looking bars. Here people didn’t hire dog walkers, but likely had attack-programmed droid Dobermans. Instead of carrying briefcases, they’d carry shivs.

Eve used her master to bypass the locks on the reinforced door of an eight-story building in the middle of the seamy squalor.

The entranceway carried the stench of old piss and puke under the chemically piney scent of the industrial cleaner some determined soul had used to try to eradicate it.

Not a chance, Eve thought as she started up the stairs. The stench was in the building’s bones.

“She was in three-oh-five, living with her mother, and according to the records, a series of her mother’s boyfriends, when the court took her out. We’ll start there.”

Screens blared behind triple-locked doors and paper-thin walls Eve imagined a determined chemi-head could punch a fist through.

Now she smelled what she identified—due to her exposure to Bella—as soiled diapers, mixed in with the scent of whatever someone had burned for breakfast.

“I’d need a portable air filter to live here,” Peabody commented. Carefully she avoided brushing up against the wall, the sticky railing. “And a detox chamber.”

A baby, maybe the one responsible for the crappy diaper smell, wailed like its feet were on fire. Some kind soul responded to the infant’s distress by banging on one of the thin walls.

“Shut that brat the f**k up!”

“Nice.” Peabody shot a hard look down the hall of the second floor. “I’d be crying, too, if I lived here. It must be absolute hell growing up in a place like this.”

She’d been in places like it—and worse—in her first eight years, so Eve could attest. It was absolute hell.

On three, she used the side of her fist to bang on the door of the Stubackers’ old apartment. It didn’t warrant any electronic security, just a peephole and a pair of grimy dead-bolt locks.

She caught the shadow at the peep, banged again. “NYPSD.” She held her badge up in plain sight. “Open the door.”

She heard the clunk and rusty slide of a riot bar, then a series of hard clicks before the door opened a few inches on a hefty security chain.

“What the hell do you want?”

What she could see of the woman’s face didn’t look promising. It still wore yesterday’s makeup, thoroughly smudged from sleep. Eve imagined the woman’s pillow resembled one of those strange abstract paintings she would never understand.

“Lieutenant Dallas, Detective Peabody. We’d like to ask you a few questions.”

“I don’t gotta talk to you unless you got a warrant. I know my rights.”

“We just have some questions about the former tenant of this apartment.”

Something sly came into the woman’s raccoon eyes. “You paying?”

“That depends on what you have to sell. Did you know the former tenant?”

“Sure. Worked with Tracy up at the club, VaVoom, back when we were dancers. So what?”

“Do you know where we can find her?”