Forgotten in Death(18)

“But.”

Eve frowned. “But?”

“A dozen years or so on the street, you said.”

“She’s got official data—bare minimum—on record from ’48 to ’52. A lot of sidewalk sleepers don’t update their IDs. It only gets updated if they get pulled in for something, or the shelter they use gets around to it.”

“Yes, we see that here often. Take a look at the screen.” After ordering it on, he moved to his sink to wash the blood from his sealed hands. “I did the full body scan. You see the damage to the skull, of course.”

“Hard to miss.”

Eve drank some Pepsi as she studied the internal scan.

“It looks like she had a nose job. Or busted it at some point.”

“Yes.” Morris reached into his friggie, chose a tube of ginger ale.

“Cheekbone, too. Right cheekbone, a fracture there, not recent.”

She understood the “but” now and moved a bit closer.

“Got a pair of fake teeth, lower left.” Eyes narrowed, Eve jabbed with her right, hooked with her left. “Broke her right shoulder, right forearm, wrist—both wrists—two fingers right hand, three left. Looks like those fingers were broken more than once over the years. Some of those ribs were cracked. None of it recent, none of those injuries happened in the last weeks or months. Those are old injuries.”

She looked back at Morris. “Could’ve been a bad accident. Vehicular wreck, serious fall, but. Did they happen at the same time?”

“In my opinion the ribs were broken and healed before the injuries to the arm and shoulder. The fingers—and the right index, the left ring finger were broken at least twice, at different times—both before and after the arm and shoulder. Even with your keen eye, you’ll be forgiven, as you’re not a medical, for missing the slight displacement of the right eye socket.”

“Magnify it, will you?”

When he had, she nodded. “Okay, yeah, I see it.”

“I estimate the orbital and cheekbone injuries, and the second break on the right index finger, occurred after the others.”

“Somebody tuned her up regularly,” Eve murmured.

“That would be my initial conclusion.”

“How old are they?”

“My analysis, and comp-generated probability, puts them at fifteen to twenty years. But I’d like to send the scans—and if necessary the victim—to Garnet for an expert confirmation.”

“Yeah, let’s do that. She’s already working on one of mine.”

“Another?”

“I’ll get to that in a minute. I need to…” She circled the body, studied it, studied the screen.

“You’re not going to be off, or not far off on your estimate. You’re too good for that. So that’s going to put her in her mid-twenties to early thirties. Not a child, so unlikely parental abuse. More likely a relationship. A spouse or lover.”

She held up a finger as her PPC signaled.

“No results, no data on record in the state outside ’48 to ’52,” she told Morris. “Recalibrate search to nationwide and run.”

She pocketed her PPC. “Maybe she went rabbit. One too many tune-ups, she goes rabbit. At some point, she wipes her data, or has it wiped so whoever uses her for a punching bag can’t find her. But then she puts it back up, or creates a new identity, for these four years. And it takes some skill to fully wipe out official data. Or money to hire the skill. Takes that to create fresh.

“I need an e-man with the skills.”

“I suspect you know where to find one.”

“Yeah. It’ll take time to run the national, then if that comes up zip, a global. I’ll get Feeney and his team on it. I’ll hit on Roarke for it.”

She looked back down at Alva. “It’s not going to apply to her murder. I’m not stretching coincidence that she ends up bashed by whoever smacked her around a couple decades ago.”

“But you need to know. She deserved the knowing.”

“I do. She does. Let DeWinter know this takes priority over the other. For now. Her killer’s still out there. For all I know the one or ones who killed my other victims are as dead as they are.”

“Victims?”

“Female and apparently a fetus or newborn, remains potentially close to forty years old.”

Once she filled him in, Morris took a long pull of ginger ale. “You’ve had a busy day.”

“And it ain’t half done. Thanks for the quick work on her. I’m going to find who put her in your house, and as a bonus round, I’m going to track down who beat the crap out of her twenty years ago.”

“I trust you will.”

When Eve left, Morris walked back to Alva. “We’ll all look out for you now.”



* * *



Eve signaled Peabody to meet her at the car, and considered her options. Rather than tag her former partner and captain of the Electronic Detectives Division, she’d prefer to run it by him face-to-face.

She wanted to set up her board and book—or boards and books, she amended, as she’d been running two cases and three victims.

Still, the remains were in DeWinter’s hands now. Until she got something from the bone doc, she had little to do or explore.