Forgotten in Death(61)

“Keep me waiting, Berenski, she gets one and you’re down to five.”

“Hold on, just hold the hell on.” He snatched his station ’link, stabbed at it, rolled a foot away from Eve. “Taver? You got the samples from the Hudson Yards construction site, the Jane Doe remains?”

He slid his eyes toward Eve, hunched his skinny shoulders. “Move it up. That’s what I said. Do a quick prelim on—”

“Full and detailed,” Eve corrected. “Brick from the inner wall is priority.”

He curled his lip at her, but turned away, muttered into the ’link. Then he rolled back. “I’ve got Taver and Janesy on it. It’s going to take awhile.”

“Define ‘awhile’?”

“Maybe half a day.”

“Brick’s first. How long for that?”

“Maybe a couple of hours. You said you wanted the whole shot.”

“I do.” She set the box on his counter. “Don’t make me come back here.”

“You do, bring me a latte—extra shot!”

Okay, Eve thought as she walked away, she had to give him sarcasm points for that one.

“You let him have the whole box.” Peabody sighed, deep, wistful. “Probably for the best. I don’t think I have an hour to sweat off that sweet, cinnamony goodness tonight. The decorator’s bringing samples. Tile and countertops and cabinets and—”

“I’m taking DeWinter,” Eve interrupted. “Go back and see if Harvo’s had a chance to start on the fabric traces I got from the Delgato scene.”

“Okay. I can’t believe you hit another murder after you left Central.” Peabody looked up the stairs that led to DeWinter’s area. “She probably hasn’t had time to do much on the remains.”

“Then I’ll incentivize her.”

“With sticky buns?”

“She’s not the bribe-me type. I’ll just harass her.”

Eve turned, headed up the stairs.

She expected to find DeWinter in her lab in one of her coordinated lab coats using some of her strange equipment on human bones.

She found the bones, the woman’s precisely arranged on a worktable and the fetus’s on another.

But the only living being in the area sat crossways on a chair, legs dangling over the side while she did something on a tablet.

A kid. DeWinter’s kid. Eve knew she had a daughter-type kid.

This one wore bright green high-top kicks, jeans with turned-up cuffs, and a shiny belt with a green tee tucked into them.

Her hair, like DeWinter’s when it wasn’t sleek and tamed, exploded in dark curls, these with some caramel worked through.

Flower pins scooped it back from her face, a face with skin the color of that caramel with just a dollop of cream.

She turned her head to study Eve out of almond-shaped eyes as green as her kicks.

Eve didn’t know much about kids, but she knew when one had a face destined to break hearts. Plus, those eyes. They looked as if they knew entirely too much.

More than an actual human should.

“I know you.” She didn’t smile when she said it, but swung her legs off the chair to stand. “You’re Lieutenant Dallas. My mother worked with you on the Lost Girls—that’s what I call them. I read The Icove Agenda. They were misguided men who twisted science for their own ends. I’m reading The Red Horse Legacy right now.”

She tapped the tablet, then set it aside. “I have a lot of questions.”

“I’ve got one. Where’s your mother?”

“She had to talk to somebody, but she’ll be right back. On the Icove investigation, do you think the clones who got out of the school, most were just kids, do you think they scattered? Or do you think they found a way to regroup, that they found a haven?”

Eve thought of the girl with the infant she’d released herself. Because it wasn’t right. None of it had been right. “They’ve got no reason to cause any trouble or be any threat.”

“That’s not what I meant.” The girl rolled those compelling, farseeing eyes. “Like I’d be scared of kid clones. There were babies, too. Someone has to take care of them, to feed them, educate them, socialize them. I feel the Avrils—and it’s wrong to take a life, but in a way, a very real way, they were defending their own and others—had a place, a safe place. And a way to help the others.”

“I couldn’t say.”

Now she did smile. “Because you think I’m too young to understand. A lot of people make that mistake.”

DeWinter’s heels clicked toward the lab. “That took longer than I thought. Sweetie, if you want to … Dallas.”

“Lieutenant Dallas and I were discussing Avril and the clones.”

“You’ll need to save that for another time, Miranda. The lieutenant has her hands full with her current investigation.”

“The woman and the fetus. It’s very sad.”

Miranda studied the bones with the sad mixed with fascination.

“It’s good you have my mother working on finding out who she was, and when and how she was killed. The way you collaborated on the Lost Girls. In that case, the man who’d killed them and hidden their bodies had mental and emotional defects. From what Mom’s told me, that doesn’t seem to apply here.”