Forgotten in Death(21)

When he saw her, Jenkinson smirked.

“Status.”

“Healthy, not close to wealthy, but pretty fucking wise. Baxter and Trueheart caught a floater—East River. Carmichael and Santiago are in Interview with a suspect on the knifing on Avenue B they caught last night.”

He jerked a thumb over his shoulder to where his partner barked into his ’link. “Reineke’s running down a lead on the case we caught day before yesterday. We’re moving on it. Peabody’s in Interview with one of yours.”

She scanned the case board as he spoke, nodded. “I’m in my office.”

“You got a twofer this morning. If we wrap this up, we can give you a hand if you need it.”

“I’ll let you know.”

In her office, she tossed the sunshades back in the drawer and hit the coffee. She gave herself a moment, just one moment, to stand at her skinny window, fueling up, looking out at the city she’d sworn to protect and serve.

A lot of Alvas out there, she thought. She could have been one of them. Her beatings had started young, ended when she’d been eight and killed the man who’d beat her, raped her, terrified her.

Maybe Alva had killed her abuser. Maybe she’d killed, then run, then tried to vanish.

A hard life, Peabody had said. And a damn hard end to it.

Eve turned away from the window. She set up both sides of her office board. Front for Alva Quirk, back for her unidentified victims.

She sat, started a book for Alva, another for the Jane Doe.

She continued on the book when she heard Peabody’s bootsteps.

“Status?”

“I interviewed the security chief. He’s clear, Dallas. I was kind of hoping he’d be the link, but he was—and I verified—in Connecticut at his parents’ seventy-fifth anniversary party. There’s video of a lot of it. He and his husband took a limo to and from because they wanted to be able to drink and stay late. I have the limo company, talked to the driver. He dropped them at home on Third Avenue at zero-two-twenty-two. There’s security on their building, and they didn’t go out again until they both left at zero-eight-sixteen this morning.”

“Okay.”

“I want to add he’s upset. He’d like clearance to check on the security, find the breach. I told him we were on that. He’d seen Alva around. Not on-site, but on the street.”

“We’ll clear him when we’ve cleared the scene. He may spot something, since he’s worked it. Feeney’s got people on it now. Do you need me on the next?”

“I’ve got it. It’s the IT guy, and he’s coming in now.”

“If you get a buzz, pull me in.”

“I will. I like you’re letting me handle this part.”

Eve glanced up. “You know what you’re doing.”

“And I like handling it. I’ll go write this one up, take the next.”

Eve nodded. Alone, she got more coffee. She put her feet on her desk, studied her board.

Old injuries, a hard life. A believer in rules. Who broke what rule, Alva? Where’s your book?

Where’s your place? Other books, others breaking rules.

Inside job, she thought again. And a sloppy one. A goddamn unnecessary one. Panic or meanness?

Or both?

More than one killer, almost certainly. No drag marks. Bash her, wrap her up, carry her, dump her.

“I’ll find them, Alva,” she murmured. “Then I’m going to go back and find who broke you.”

Since Peabody had the interviews in hand for the moment, Eve dug into the Singer family. The connection between the two murders on her board ran through them.

The company had its beginnings in the mid-twentieth century, when the current CEO’s great-grandfather, James Singer, leveraged a loan—from his father-in-law—to purchase his first rental property: a three-story, sixteen-unit walk-up on the Lower West Side.

James Singer and his son, Robert James Singer, expanded, developed, and built. On his father’s death—heart attack—R. J. Singer and his wife, Elinor Bolton Singer, took over the business.

And on R.J.’s death—lung cancer—Elinor Singer ran the company, until she retired and turned the reins over to her son, James Bolton Singer.

Eve brushed through the history, as the founders had been long dead and buried before the Hudson Yards projects. But it gave her a sense. By the time J. B. Singer took over, his family had a solid and expanding business in place.

Under Elinor Singer’s lead, and with her son as CFO, they bought the Hudson Yards properties—their biggest acquisition, biggest project not only to that date, she noted, but their biggest development still.

Since construction also began on their watch—with an interruption for the Urban Wars—she took a closer look, beginning with Elinor Bolton Singer.

The daughter of Henry Bolton and Gladys McCain Bolton, she’d grown up wealthy—Park Avenue mansion, and another country home in the Hudson Valley. One brother—and digging there, Eve concluded he’d been groomed for political office before his death in a plane crash. One sister—who’d developed a drug and alcohol habit and died of an overdose at twenty.

Elinor attended Radcliffe, studied business management and finance. Which hadn’t helped save her family business, which floundered after her mother’s suicide.