Concealed in Death (In Death #38)(48)

“Lieutenant!”

Eve stopped, looked back to see Elsie Kendrick waddling—that was the only word for it—down the wide steps to the lower-level lab.

“I’m glad I caught you. I have two more.” She offered both disc and hard copies. “I should have at least another two by the end of the day.”

“Fast work.”

“I set it on auto for a few hours last night, just bunked here.” She rubbed circles on her truly enormous belly. “I’ve never done so many from one case. I can’t get them out of my head. Would you send me their names, like you did the others? I want their names.”

“You’ll have them when we do. Good work, and thanks.”

She handed Peabody the disc as they continued out, and studied the computer-generated sketches.

“I know these two, they were on my Missing Persons search list. Pull up the file I sent you. They’re both in there.”

And two more of the pretty young girls had faces, had names.

10

She went back to central, to her office, to put those names and faces on her board. Both of them runaways, with LaRue Freeman fresh out of a stint at juvie for theft, and Carlie Bowen circling the foster system after being removed from an abusive home.

Their stories were all too typical, Eve thought as she scanned their files. A short, hard life with too much of it spent on the streets.

Neither of them had been registered at The Sanctuary or HPCCY.

Still, it didn’t mean they weren’t somehow connected. Street kids had networks, she thought as she began to run cross-checks. Networks could become gangs. But even on a lesser level street kids, like most kids, tended to form packs.

Both Shelby and LaRue had done time in juvie—not together, she noted, but . . . and there it was.

Both had had the same CPS caseworker. Odelle Horwitz no longer worked for CPS—nothing unusual there, Eve thought as she grabbed coffee while the current data generated.

Social workers burned out faster than a struck match.

Horwitz, age forty-two, on her second marriage, one offspring, now managed a flower shop on the Upper East Side.

Maybe she’d remember something, maybe she wouldn’t, but it was worth the contact. She turned to her ’link.

She’d ended the interview, had grabbed her coat when Baxter rapped on her doorjamb. “Got a minute, boss?”

“About that.”

He stepped in on his high-gloss shoes. The detective had a wardrobe more typical of Wall Street than Homicide, but she’d take him and his fancy suits through the door with her anytime, anywhere.

“Trueheart and I caught one yesterday, a double slice and dice in the theater district.”

“Those auditions are a bloodbath.”

He laughed. “Funny you should mention it, because it looks pretty much just like that.”

He gave her a brief outline of two actors competing for the same part in a new production. Now one of them, along with his cohab, was in the morgue.

“The other guy, his alibi’s solid. He was onstage playing Gino in a revival of West Side Story. Reviews are mixed, but there were a couple hundred people in the audience, plus the cast and crew who can all verify he was dancing with the Sharks at TOD.”

“There’s dancing sharks?”

He started to laugh again, then realized she wasn’t kidding. “The Sharks—and the Jets. They’re rival gangs, LT. The play’s like a Romeo and Juliet takeoff, but set in New York. Rival gangs, first love, violence, friendship and loyalty, singing, dancing.”

“Yeah, those street gangs are always breaking into song and dancing on their way to the next beat down.”

“I guess you’ve got to see it to get it.”

“Fine. So the competing actor’s clear. He just got lucky?”

“We’re looking hard at his boyfriend. He claims he was backstage during the performance, which would put him clear. And he’s got some cover from some people who say they saw him. But the play runs a couple hours and he could’ve slipped off. We worked out the timing. Crime scene’s a five-minute walk from the theater. Half that at a decent jog. He’s got no priors, we’ve got no murder weapon, no wits. No security on the building. It’s half a dump. But my gut, my nose—hell, my toned and manly ass—says he did it.”

“Bring him in, sweat it out of him.”

“Plan on it. I want Trueheart to take him.”

She had a lot of respect for Officer Trueheart, despite the few smudges of green still left on him. “No wits, no weapon, a reasonable alibi, and you want Trueheart to get the guy to say he sliced up two people so his boyfriend could get a part in a play?”

“It’s the lead.” Baxter smiled. “And the thing is, the guy got that look in his eye for Trueheart when we interviewed him.”

“What look?”

“The ‘I’d like to take you out to lunch, eat the main course off your hard yet sensitive abs, and have you for dessert.’”

“I didn’t need that picture in my head, Baxter.”

“You asked.”

Well, she supposed she had. “If you think Trueheart can bust him—and not because you think it’ll look good when Trueheart takes his detective’s exam next month—do it.”

“He can bust him, and it’ll look good. And it’ll boost his confidence going into the exam. It’s an all-around win.” He paused a moment, looked at her board. “You ID’d two more.”