Innocent in Death (In Death #24)(89)

Peabody moved over to stand by Eve, tried to see what her lieutenant might be seeing. “I had a second cousin who drowned when he was a kid. His mother got rid of all his things. All of them except this one shirt. She kept it in her sewing basket. I guess you can’t predict how anyone’s going to handle the death of their kid. I’ll bring food and caffeine.”

She zipped out before Eve could delay her.

Alone, Eve circled the table, the board. And thought about the dead.

The boy had been good-looking, fun-looking, she added. Big, goofy grin on his face in most of the pictures that weren’t taken in infancy. Happy, healthy family, she mused, studying the picture she’d copied of one in Allika’s box—the four Straffos grinning at the camera. Kids in the middle, parents flanking them.

Everyone touching some part of someone else. An attractive unit. Somehow complete.

She compared it to the one she’d copied from Rayleen’s room. One kid now framed by mom and dad. And yeah, even though Allika grinned into the camera there was a hollowness around her eyes, a hint of strain around her mouth.

Something missing.

Did she try to fill that void with social functions, routines, appointments, structure? Medications and men?

Don’t be sad, Mommy!

Bright kid, that Rayleen. Smart, perceptive, pissy. Eve couldn’t hold the pissy against her. So Rayleen had looked up her data, her service record, her cases. Easy enough to do, Eve mused, but interesting work for a ten-year-old.

Nixie, she remembered. Nixie had been another bright, perceptive kid. Courageous kid. One who’d lost a brother, too—and her entire family, her entire world, in one horrible night.

Nixie’d been full of questions, as Rayleen seemed to be. Maybe they just popped out smarter and more full of curiosity now.

At their age, Eve had barely started real school. Had she been curious? she wondered. Maybe, maybe, but she hadn’t been one to ask questions. Not then, not for quite a while. For the first eight years of her life asking too many questions meant a fist in the face. Maybe worse.

Better to stay quiet, watch, figure it out than to ask and end up bloody.

Something was going on in that house, Eve thought. Something was just a little tilted in that perfect space. She wasn’t afraid to ask questions anymore. But she needed to figure out the right ones to ask.

She ate something that might have once wished to be chicken inside cardboard pretending to be bread. And ran a series of probabilities.

She was fishing and knew it, following various lines of logic—and one knotted string of pure instinct.

The computer told her that her instinct was crap, but that didn’t surprise her. Then she ran a hypothetical, omitting certain details, and the computer called her a genius.

“Yeah, wouldn’t that be a kick in the ass?”

She sat back. It was, of course, bullshit to run a hypothetical or probability without including known details or evidence. But she’d satisfied her curiosity.

Intrigued, she copied it all to Mira and asked for an opinion. She sent copies to her home unit, then gathered what she wanted to take home before she headed out to the bull pen and Peabody’s desk.

“I’m going to work from home.”

“It’s nearly end of shift.”

“And your point is?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all.”

“I’m swinging by the school on the way. Just want another feel of the place. Tell McNab I want individual D-and-C’s from the Straffos’ dug deep. Any shadow, any smudges, I want to know.”

“Um, day off tomorrow. Yours, mine, and ours. Valentine’s Day, too.”

“Jesus. Consider yourself on call, Detective. So be prepared to throw something over whatever embarrassing outfit you’re going to put yourself into for McNab’s perverted delight if and when I tag you.”

Peabody gave a sober nod. “I have a trench coat reserved for that purpose, sir.”

Eve considered it. “I’m forced to say: Ick. You don’t head out until you get your report written and copied to my unit here and at home. I want your notes, too. Impressions, opinions.”

“You’ve got something.”

“Dunno. Between bouts of physical expression I can’t bear thinking about, take another look at both vic’s student files—grades, discussions, parental meetings, the works.”

“And I’d be looking for?”

“Let me know when you find it,” Eve said as she strode out.

She took the glides down to the main level, cast a couple of wistful glances at the vending machine. She wanted a Pepsi, but didn’t want to interact with the damn machines.

They hated her.

Rather than squeeze onto the elevator, she jogged down the steps to the garage, pulling out her ’link as she went.

She hit Caro first, and Roarke’s ever-efficient admin sent out a warm smile. “Lieutenant, how are you?”

“Good enough. Can—” She stopped herself from shooting right to the point. How-are-yous required a how-are-you-doing back. She kept forgetting those sort of details. “How’re you doing?”

“Just fine. I want to thank you for the use of your house in Mexico. Reva and I had a lovely mother and daughter weekend there. It’s just beautiful, and the weather couldn’t have been better. It was a perfect break from the winter for both of us.”