Missing in Death (In Death #29.5)(2)

Or . . . maybe she could just peek in. Surely not all the stalls were out of order. She only needed one.

She pushed open the door, hurried in. She didn’t want to leave Pete alone for long.

She made the turn at the line of sinks, her mind on getting the provisions and squeezing back to the rail to watch Staten Island come into view.

She stopped dead, her limbs frozen in shock.

Blood, she thought, could only think, so much blood. The woman on the floor seemed bathed in it.

The man standing over the body held a still-dripping knife in one hand and a stunner in the other.

“I’m sorry,” he said—and, to her shocked mind, sounded sincere.

Even as Carolee sucked in the air to scream, took the first stumbling step back, he triggered the stunner.

“Really very sorry,” he said as Carolee fell to the floor.

Racing across New York Harbor in a turbo wasn’t how Lieutenant Eve Dallas expected to spend her afternoon. She’d played second lead that morning to her partner’s primary role in the unfortunate demise of Vickie Trendor, the third wife of the unrepentant Alan Trendor, who’d smashed her skull with an inferior bottle of California chardonnay.

According to the new widower, it wasn’t accurate to say he’d bashed her brains out when she simply hadn’t had any brains to begin with.

While the prosecutor and the counsel for the defense hammered out a plea arrangement, Eve had made a dent in her paperwork, discussed strategy with two of her detectives on an ongoing case and congratulated another on closing one.

A pretty good day, in her estimation.

Now, she and Peabody, her partner, were speeding across the water in a boat she judged to be about the size of a surfboard toward the orange hulk of a ferry stalled halfway between Manhattan and Staten Island.

“This is absolutely mag!” Peabody stood near the bow, her square-jawed face lifted to the wind, her short, flippy hair flying.

“Why?”

“Jeez, Dallas!” Peabody lowered her shades down her nose, exposing delighted brown eyes. “We’re getting a boat ride. We’re on the water. Half the time you can forget Manhattan’s an island.”

“That’s what I like about it. Out here, it makes you wonder, how come it doesn’t sink? All that weight—the buildings, the streets, the people. It should go down like a stone.”

“Come on.” With a laugh, Peabody pushed her shades back in place. “Statue of Liberty,” she pointed out. “She’s the best.”

Eve wouldn’t argue. She’d come close to dying inside the landmark, fighting radical terrorists bent on blowing it up. Even now, she could look at its lines, its grandeur, and see her husband, bleeding, clinging to a ledge outside the proud face.

They’d survived that one, she mused, and Roarke had diffused the bomb, saved the day. Symbols mattered, and because they’d fought and bled, people could chug by on the ferry every day and snap their pictures of freedom.

That was fine, that was the job. What she didn’t get was why Homicide had to zip off the island because the Department of Transportation cops couldn’t find a passenger.

Blood all over a bathroom and a missing woman. Interesting, sure, she decided, but not really her turf. In fact, it wasn’t turf at all. It was water. It was a big orange boat on the water.

Why didn’t boats sink? The errant thought reminded her that sometimes they did, and she decided not to dwell on it.

When the turbo approached that big orange boat, she noted people ranged along the rail on the tiers of decks. Some of them waved.

Beside her, Peabody waved back.

“Cut it out,” Eve ordered.

“Sorry. It’s knee-jerk. Looks like DOT sent out backup,” she commented, nodding toward the turbos at the base of the ferry with the Department of Transportation logo emblazoned on the hull. “I hope she didn’t fall over. Or jump. But somebody would notice that, right?”

“More likely she wandered off from the passenger areas, got lost and is currently trying to wander back.”

“Blood,” Peabody reminded her, and Eve shrugged.

“Let’s just wait and see.”

That, too, was part of the job—the waiting and seeing. She’d been a cop for a dozen years and knew the dangers of jumping to conclusions.

She shifted her weight as the turbo slowed, bracing on long legs while she scanned the rails, the faces, the open areas. Her short hair fluttered around her face while those eyes—golden brown, long and cop-flat—studied what might or might not be a crime scene.

When the turbo was secured, she stepped off.

She judged the man who stepped forward to offer his hand as late twenties. He wore the casual summer khakis and light blue shirt with its DOT emblem well. Sun-streaked hair waved around a face tanned by sun or design. Pale green eyes contrasted with the deeper tone, and added an intensity.

“Lieutenant, Detective, I’m Inspector Warren. I’m glad you’re here.”

“You haven’t located your passenger, Inspector?”

“No. A search is still under way.” He gestured for them to walk with him. “We’ve added a dozen officers to the DOT crew aboard to complete the search, and to secure the area where the missing woman was last seen.”

They started up a set of stairs.

“How many passengers aboard?”