Purity in Death (In Death #15)(39)

"I'll take care of that. You'll want him on this level," Roarke assumed.

"Fine. And whatever that is in your pocket, Ace, keep it there."

He shot her such a hot, suggestive grin that Peabody was forced to swallow.

"Get the salacious images out of your head, Peabody," Eve ordered. "We've got work."

She started Peabody on probability scans. When you were dealing with brass and bureaucrats the more data, the more paper, the better.

Eve began a hunt for known child abusers who'd wiggled through the system and out again.

How did so many of them skate over the law? she wondered.

She backtracked, looking for any connection between one or more of her possibles and each other, between one or more and either Cogburn or Fitzhugh.

Birds of a feather, she mused. Some of them had to have sullied the same nest at one point. It was irritating to have to go by case numbers rather than names, but a great number of the files were sealed. Minor victims often had seals slapped onto their files.

Using numbers, incident reports, descriptions, she whittled it down to a short list, ran probabilities.

Since her short list was over twenty-five possibles, she worked on secondary connections.

Twelve of the minor victims had shared the same child services rep.

CLARISSA PRICE, BORN 5-16-2O2I, QUEENS, NEW YORK. ID NUMBER 8876-LHM-22. MOTHER MURIEL PRICE, FATHER UNKNOWN. MARITAL STATUS, SINGLE. EMPLOYMENT, CHILD SERVICES, MANHATTAN DIVISION. EMPLOYED SINCE 2-1-43- CURRENTLY B LEVEL.

EDUCATION: MASTER'S DEGREES, SOCIOLOGY, PSYCHOLOGY EARNED FROM NYU.

NO CRIMINAL RECORD.

"Visual," she ordered and studied the image of Clarissa Price. An attractive mixed-race female, with a competent, straight-ahead look about her. Not many in Child Services lasted as long without the job adding lines and layers. But Clarissa's skin was smooth. Her reddish brown hair was curly and worn neatly pulled back at the nape.

Eve called up the home and work addresses, copied and saved the data. Then went hunting again.

This time she found a cop.

Detective Sergeant Thomas Dwier had arrested Cogburn four years earlier on possession with intent. But he'd rushed it, scooping Cogburn up without ascertaining if he'd been carrying. The arrest hadn't stuck.

He'd had better luck with an illegals dealer who supplied the uptown teenage crowd. But by the time the case had wound itself through the system, it had been pleaded down to possession and the dealer had ended up paying a fine, and walking.

He'd bumped into Fitzhugh as well, taking on a complaint of abduction and rape that had been tossed by the P.A.

Eighteen months before Dwier had worked on a team running a sting on a child  p**n ographer. The woman had run a licensed day care center. The case had gone all the way to trial, resulting in acquittal.

Mary Ellen George, Eve thought, who according to the files, just happened to be a known associate of Chadwick Fitzhugh.

"Saddle up, Peabody." Eve stuck data discs in her bag. "We're going to make a couple of stops before The Tower meeting."

***

"Mary Ellen George. That was some trial." In the passenger seat, Peabody studied the data Eve had accumulated. "Did you buy that act of hers?"

"What act?"

"That shattered, innocent, schoolmarm act" Peabody glanced over, squinted. "Didn't you catch any of the trial on-screen?"

"I don't watch that crap."

"Well, you must've seen the blips in media reports, read the commentaries and stuff."

"I make it a point to avoid media reports, commentaries, editorials, and so on."

"But, sir, you've got to watch the news on-screen, or read it."

"Why?"

"Well . . . to keep abreast of current events."

"Why?"

"Because, because." Flustered, Peabody pushed back her uniform cap to scratch her head. "Because we live in the world."

"Yes, we do. There doesn't seem to be a thing we can do about it. Now, tell me how watching news blips and the On Trial channel is going to make me a better person."

"Just informed," Peabody answered.

"Seems to me it's only news for a few minutes. Then its old and they have to blast up something else that's news. Vicious cycle if you ask me. I don't get caught up in it because, by definition events that are current today are no longer current tomorrow. And before you know it, it's tomorrow anyway. So you've just wasted all that time getting riled up about something that's past its time when you wake up the next day."

"My head hurts. I know there's a major flaw in everything you just said, but it made my head hurt so I can't think of it."

"Don't worry about it. We'll check out George later. First we take a shot at Clarissa Price."

Parking near the Manhattan Division of Child Services was a joke. The two-level slots the city had put in along the street were jammed with vehicles that looked as if they hadn't dared move out in the last five years. Eve saw at least three with pancake tires and another with a windshield so covered with dust and grime it would've taken a pickax to clear it.

She double-parked, flipped up her on duty sign. And wondered idly just how far traffic would back up before she came out again.

The building was a squat twelve-story box of block construction that surely hadn't seen its proper share of city maintenance dollars since it had been tossed up after the Urban Wars.