Concealed in Death (In Death #38)(60)

“So she did.”

“Yeah, she did. She spent two weeks in the hospital, another four on doctor’s orders bedrest at home. The guy went out looking for Mikki when he could, but they never saw her again. They’ve got two kids now, a boy about the age Mikki was, and a girl a couple years younger.”

“She f**ked the kid’s life.”

“And she knows it. She tried to fix it, Dallas, and she couldn’t. Now she’s got to live with knowing her daughter’s been dead all this time.”

“Mikki didn’t go back to the new home—to HPCCY—so they weren’t the family she spoke of. Shelby, I guess. And the old building where they formed that family. Shelby, DeLonna, and T-Bone. We need to find the other two, dead or alive.”

“They’re off the grid. I can’t track either of them. Records show they were with The Sanctuary, then with HPCCY. DeLonna got into a work/study program at sixteen, then poofed. So unless that’s bogus, she wasn’t one of the remains. T-Bone stayed until he hit eighteen, then just vanished into the city. No data on him after he left.”

“Pass them to McNab,” Eve ordered. “If he can’t find them, I’ll give them to Roarke.”

“I’m all over that. Are you buying this clusterf*ck deal with Shelby?”

“I haven’t decided. I can see how it could happen—shoddy, but the kid had some smarts. Timed it when everything was messed up, mixed up, and the doc looked legit if you didn’t look real close. I want to verify the signature. If it’s not his, Jones looks a little clearer on it.”

“You have to wonder why she wanted out all of a sudden, getting better digs and all that.”

“Better digs, but not hers. Not her rules.” She’d had decent digs in the state facilities, Eve remembered. Mostly three squares. And she’d wanted out as much as she’d wanted to live.

“Somebody offered her something she wanted more. Or she saw the chance to take what she wanted more. Freedom. No rules but her rules, do what she wants when she wants. Eat what she wants when she wants. It’s not like family, Peabody—most of where you end up if you’re a kid without a safety net—it’s okay, it’s decent, and they’re trying to help. But it’s not family. It’s two slippery steps up from prison.”

“Did you ever run?”

“In the early days, yeah. And I know I was lucky they caught me. I’m lucky I realized pretty quick juvie’s only a half a slippery step up from prison. So why not take the extra steps, do the time, take what you can out of it?”

Eve shook it off. “But she risked getting caught, getting dumped in juvie instead of a group home because it was all shit to her. I knew plenty like her, and most of those, I can guarantee, ended up slipping down that half a step into a real cage.”

“I guess some of it is shit,” Peabody considered. “It’s just the best shit we’ve got.”

“She wanted out, and she knew how to bargain, probably blackmail, cheat, steal, whatever it took. But somebody helped her get out, and I’m going to take a leap and say the probability’s high the person who helped get her out killed her.”

“Well, here’s a thought. If Jones or his sister are psycho kid killers, they’ve had their pick from a garden variety for years. Unless those specific kids were specific targets, or there’s some meaning in the number twelve.”

“Yeah, I’m going around on that. The brother was there.”

“The dead brother? The lion lunch brother?”

“That’s the one. Try this on,” Eve said with a glance at Peabody. “Say he’s a psycho kid killer. He has access to the vics, at least we can be sure he had access to the ones connected to the home. He had access and knowledge of the building. They dropped that he helped with repairs now and then, so maybe he can build a few walls.”

“Then why did he go to Africa, unless he wanted to become an international psycho kid killer? We should check to see if any kids went missing over there before he got eaten.”

“We’ll do that. But as to why, what if they caught him? The siblings—the do-gooders? Or maybe it doesn’t go that far, but they catch him behaving inappropriately with one or more of the girls. Can’t have that. Ship him off, time for a missionary stint. And the king of the beasts takes care of him.”

Eve didn’t like the ending. “We’re sure he and the lion went a round?”

“I verified the report, the death certificate, the cremation, and the transportation of the ashes back to New York.”

“Rather have a body,” Eve muttered. “Better, I’d rather have a live killer so we can bag his sorry ass. But we’re going to play with psycho dead brother some.”

“It’s hard to see either one of them covering for him if they found out he’d killed those girls.”

“Blood. Water.”

“Okay, maybe so. But they don’t strike me as stupid, or as gamblers. Would they just leave the bodies there?”

“Not if they knew about them, and I’m tripping over that one, too,” she admitted. “So, like I said, maybe it didn’t go that far. And maybe this is a dead end and the dead brother was just another do-gooder who provided a lion with a tasty meal.”

“Like the Christians. You know how the Romans fed them to lions to the cheers of the crowd?”