Missing in Death (In Death #29.5)(7)

“No,” Eve agreed, “it doesn’t.”

“I didn’t hurt anyone. I wouldn’t.”

“I don’t think you hurt anyone.”

“An hour. I lost an hour. How can that be?”

“Have you ever lost time before?”

“No. Never. I mean, I’ve lost track of time, you know? But this is different.”

“Will, how about getting your mom a drink?” Steve sent his older son an easy smile. “I bet she’s a little dehydrated.”

“Actually—” Carolee laughed a little weakly. “I could really use the restroom.”

“Okay.” Eve watched Peabody come back in with a med kit. “Just a second.” She walked over to waylay her partner. “Go ahead and give the kit to Grogan, and take the woman to the john. Stick with her.”

“Sure. We’re on board, and we’ve got a deck-by-deck search going. I have to say, the natives are getting a little restless.”

“Right. They’ll have to hang on a little longer.”

“I wonder if maybe this whole thing isn’t some stupid prank. Somebody dumps a bunch of blood in that bathroom, hangs the sign, sits back and waits for somebody to go in.”

“Then why hang the sign?”

“Okay, a flaw in the scenario, but—”

“And how did they transport a couple quarts of human blood? And where did Mrs. Grogan go for an hour?”

“Several flaws.”

“Stick with her,” Eve repeated. “Get their New York address. Let’s arrange for them to be taken back so she can get a full check at a health center, and I want a watch on them.” She glanced back. “If she saw something, someone, maybe whoever’s responsible for the blood will start to worry about her.”

“I’ll make sure she’s covered. Nice family,” Peabody added, studying the group.

“Yeah. Welcome to New York.”

Eve tracked down Jake.

“All emergency evac devices are accounted for.” He passed her a file of security discs. “Those are from all cams on board. The list of employees, DOT officials, is labeled.”

“Good. Where the hell did those fireworks come from?”

“Well.” He scratched his head. “It looks like they were set off starboard side, probably the stern. That’s from figuring the basic trajectory from witnesses. But we haven’t got any physical evidence. No ash, no mechanism. Nothing so far, so I’m not sure they were set off from the boat.”

“Hmm.” Eve pondered and glanced out at the wide harbor.

“The NYPSD is crawling all over the place, and your CI team’s covering the crime scene. If it is one,” he added. “We’ve accounted for every DOT employee on board, and between your people and mine, we’ve been interviewing passengers, concentrating on those who are in the areas of the scene. So far, none of them saw anything. And you have to admit, hauling a body around would attract some attention.”

“You’d think.”

“What do we do now?”

As far as Eve could determine, there were two options. The killer—if indeed a murder had taken place—had somehow gotten off the ferry. Or the killer still needed to get off.

“Looks like we’re going to Staten Island. Here’s how we’ll handle it.”

It was going to take time, and a great deal of patience, but nearly four thousand passengers would be ID’d, searched and questioned before they were allowed to disembark at St. George terminal. Fortunately a good chunk of that number was kids. Eve didn’t think—though kids were strange and often violent entities to her mind—that the pool of blood was the work of some maniac toddler.

“It’s actually moving along okay,” Peabody reported, and got a grunt from Eve.

“The search is ongoing,” Peabody continued. “So far, no weapon, no body, no evil killer hiding in a storage closet.”

Eve continued to review the security disc on boarding on her PPC. “The body’s dumped by now.”

“How?”

“I don’t know how, but it’s dumped or transported. Two searches, and this one with corpse detectors. He, or an accomplice, used the fireworks as a distraction. Get everyone’s attention in one direction, do what you need to do in the other. Has to be.”

“It doesn’t explain how he got the DB out of the bathroom.”

“No.”

“Well, if it wasn’t a prank, maybe it’s a vortex.”

Eve shifted her gaze up, gave Peabody a five-second pitiable stare.

“Free-A ger here, remember. I grew up on vortexes. It’s a better theory than abracadabra.” On a sigh, Peabody studied the bright, tropical fish swimming behind the glass of an enormous aquarium.

“He didn’t toss the body overboard, then dive in and swim away,” Peabody pointed out. “Like a fish.” Noting Eve’s considering expression, Peabody threw up her hands. “Come on, Dallas. There’s no way out of the bathroom, not without walking in front of dozens and dozens of people.”

“In back mostly, since they’d be looking out at the water. If the blood currently being rushed to the lab proves to have come from a warm body—one we hope to identify through DNA matching—there has to be a way out and a way off, because he used it.”