Joan Pickart - Body of Evidence

“Yes,” Palmer said, apparently also focusing on business for now.

Colin gestured at the files. “They only got reported because somebody noticed they weren’t showing up at their usual hangouts anymore. Only one was reported by the family.”

“Not many care what happens to these kids,” Darien said. “I guess these are the lucky ones, to have friends with enough nerve to call the police.”

“Hey, there’s also the fact that these kids are runaways and don’t want to attract any attention,” Palmer said defensively.

“Palmer’s right,” Colin said. “And there are probably a dozen who never got reported for each one of these.”

And some that someone tried to report, Darien thought, but got shined on because it was just another runaway among hundreds, if not thousands. But she knew she’d gain nothing by speaking the thought. At least, not in front of Palmer.

But when he had to go back to his own cubicle to take a phone call, Waters opened the subject himself, saying thoughtfully, “I wonder how many on Gardner ’s list might be among those unreported missings?”

“You mean the girls who were shrugged off as just another street statistic?”

He didn’t pretend not to understand, which gave him points in her mind. “We’re not perfect. But there are only so many of us, and so many hours in a day. Things get kissed off.”

“Like girls who are addicts or thieves, or have taken to selling themselves on the street out of desperation, so their disappearance isn’t worth the effort?”

He looked at her silently for a long moment, and she wondered if she’d gone too far. Then he spoke softly. “I had a cousin who ran away and disappeared into the wilds of Los Angeles. I didn’t expect L.A.P.D. to find her. Even then I knew L.A. was too big, and she was just one girl among thousands.”

She was surprised at the personal story, but couldn’t help asking, “What happened to her?”

“She turned up dead six months later.” He grimaced. “Ironically, not drugs, or killed by a john, or anything like that. She got hit by a car. Stupid, huh?”

“I’m sorry.” Not knowing what else to say, she turned back to the matter at hand. “So, what do you think this means?” she asked. “Why would Franklin Gardner have a list of women who match the descriptions of missing runaways?”

Colin gave her a surprised look that gradually changed to one of sympathetic understanding. “Guess you wouldn’t hear much about this kind of thing out in the country.”

“What kind of thing?” she asked, trying not to sound defensive at being called, in the gentlest way, a country bumpkin of sorts. “And why did you say it looks like a shopping list?”

“Because it looks like Gardner was taking orders for particular types of girls, and then filling them.”

She felt a bit slow. “Orders?”

“Probably from some overseas client with a picky customer base. Some men are very particular about what they want.”

Darien ’s eyes widened, and suddenly she did feel very much a country bumpkin. “You mean…some sort of white slavery thing?”

“Some call it that, yes. We’re guessing these girls were kidnapped, very specifically, and sent off to be used as prostitutes somewhere where nobody asks questions.”

“My God,” Darien breathed, stunned. She’d heard of such things, of course, but they had always seemed the stuff of lurid documentaries, nothing she would ever encounter firsthand.

“What I don’t understand,” Waters said, “is why somebody like Franklin Gardner would be involved in something like that. With his family name, and they already have more money than they could possibly spend in a lifetime.”

“Some people aren’t content to treat their own women as property,” Darien said, rather fiercely now that she knew what they were dealing with. “They look at all women that way.”

He gave a half shrug, half shudder, as if he were trying to shed a distasteful idea. “Hard to believe he’d risk it.”

“Or his partner in crime,” she said.

Her own partner went very still. “His partner?”

“Yes. Didn’t you see who the files were copied to?”

“No.”

“Here, it’s in here,” she said, pointing to the lines still in gibberish-or what had looked like it to him-at the top of the list. In the middle of a long string of characters he saw D.Reicher@gardnercorp.com.

“He’s in this, too? Damn, I knew he had snake eyes.”

“All I can say positively,” she warned, “is that he got sent copies of the list, and-”

She stopped suddenly as another thought struck her.

“What?” Waters asked.

“I was just thinking. If they were both involved in this enterprise, maybe there was a falling-out among criminals?”

“One that occurred at Gardner ’s penthouse, and ended up with Gardner dead? Yeah, that thought has occurred to me.” His grim expression lightened suddenly, and he gave her a crooked smile. “You might just have nailed our killer, partner.”

The words warmed her beyond rationality. “Thank you…” She hesitated, then risked it. “Colin.”

“You’re welcome, Darien.” He said it so easily, yet it was pointed enough to acknowledge the change.

Now we’re partners, she thought with satisfaction. Just the tiniest bit of anxiety tinged that satisfaction as she acknowledged that Colin Waters was a very unsettling associate. He would be for any woman, she told herself, not just her.

And managed to ignore the fact that how it would affect other women didn’t matter because she was the woman being unsettled.

While waiting for the search warrant they’d requested, they had attended the funeral. Mrs. Gardner had apparently made enough noise to enough important people that the autopsy had been rushed to a finish and the body of her son released. There had been a side benefit, to them anyway, in that the autopsy report had been completed faster than they could have gotten it no matter how hard they’d pushed. Ironic, she thought.

But they’d learned that the injury to the back of the head had indeed been the fatal blow, with the stab wounds inflicted postmortem. And who knew what Benton and Sutter would turn up when they analyzed the autopsy that might open up new avenues to pursue, she added silently as she stifled a yawn.

Waters had indicated with nothing more than a nod and a whisper, Detectives Benton and Sutter, present at the funeral for the same reason they were: to see who showed up on the chance their killer was among them. Given the size of the funeral, and the upper crust of society who were present, it only added to the nightmare size of the investigation. The three remaining Gardners of course were there, wearing very expensive black and suitably grim expressions. However, so were the mayor and several other high-powered notables, and Darien wasn’t sure they’d learned a thing. Other than that she still hated funerals.

By the time they returned, the search warrant was ready. They got it for Reicher’s home, since they doubted he would be foolish enough to store information like that on his office network. It had taken so long because they’d been fighting to make it as broad as possible in case they stumbled across anything else incriminating besides the matching computer files they were hoping to find. They’d encountered the resistance they’d expected, but not nearly as much as Gardner ’s maid had given them, and Colin wondered rather cynically if it was because Reicher was a less-than-kind employer.

His residence was a condominium both larger and flashier than Gardner ’s penthouse, with stark, modern furnishings and lots of exotic lighting. The servant who answered the door had taken one look at the warrant and welcomed them with ill-concealed glee. Colin doubted Reicher would find out about this from that quarter.