J. Robb - Kindred In Death

“She got sneaky and secretive.”

“She was, in a way, having a rebellion. Only she was really quiet about it,” Peabody added. “I’m also inclined to think Jamie’s right about the guy not being on the stuff, or doing any of the hard. She’d have copped to it. And that kind of rebellion wasn’t in her. I don’t think he’s wrong there.”

“All this is telling us what kind of mask he wore. Not what’s under it. He’s taken it off now. No more need for it.”

She pulled into an illegal slot, activated her On Duty light.

“It’s worse than Coltraine.”

Eve got out, said nothing as Peabody walked around to meet her.

“We knew her.” Her eyes, dark and troubled, searched Eve’s face. “She was one of us. And she was Morris’s. I didn’t think it would ever hit home as hard as that one, working that one. But this? A cop’s kid, a girl like that, done like that? And I knew her. It’s worse.”

“He knows that,” Eve said. “He knows it’s worse than anything. He wants it to be, made sure it would be with the video. And he’s thinking he got away clean; he’s rocking on that. We’re going to prove him wrong, and take him down.”

“Yeah. Okay.” Peabody rolled her shoulders. “I guess that was a pep talk.”

“It was a fact. Go north. I’ll take south.”

A day made for strolling, Eve thought. Cotton-ball clouds dabbed across a sky of perfect and delicate blue. The air held the fragrance of flowers and flowering bushes she couldn’t name rioting in swirling islands. Green, green grass rolled like a carpet under tall, majestic trees. The wall of them and the madly flowering shrubs shut out the noise, the pace, the hurry of the city and opened a door to a sedate and verdant world.

The little pond sparkled like a liquid jewel under its pretty arch of bridge with the reflection of the trees and clouds a dreamy blur on its surface.

People sat on benches, drinking from go-cups, talking to each other or on ’links, consulting their PPCs. Business suits, sweats, summer dresses, beggar’s rags mixed together in the eclectic array that was New York, even in the green.

Nannies and professional parents took advantage of the weather and pushed kids and babies in strange wheeled devices, or carried them in stranger harnesses. Along the path joggers bowled along with their ear-buds, headsets, e-fitness pods tucked on, colorful shorts flapping or skin-suits showing off bodies already viciously toned.

She imagined Deena running along the brown path, her life spread out in front of her like the green, green grass and the brilliant islands of blossoms. Until she stopped to help a boy.

Since they were closer, Eve approached a knot of adults with kids first-warily.

She badged the group at large. “NYPSD. Have you seen this girl?”

She held up Deena’s photo.

She got a lot of automatic head shakes. One of the kids-about the age she judged of Mavis’s Bella, stared at her with that doll-eyed blankness Eve found creepy while it sucked busily on the plug somebody had stuck in its mouth.

“Maybe if you actually looked at it,” Eve said. “She jogged here in the mornings, about this time, several days a week.”

One of the women, with a very small, round-headed child strapped to her front, leaned closer. Eve had to force herself not to lean back as the kid waved arms and legs like a human metronome.

“I’ve been here nearly every Monday and Wednesday morning since May. I haven’t noticed her. What did she do?” She lifted her head with an avid, fearful look. “This part of the park’s supposed to be a safe zone, at least in the daytime.”

“She didn’t do anything. Anyone else? She might have jogged here more habitually earlier in the spring. March, April?”

More head shakes, but Eve noticed one of the women taking a harder look.

“You’ve seen her?”

“I’m not sure. I think maybe. But it wasn’t in the park. I don’t think.”

“Around the neighborhood,” Eve prompted, “in a store, on the street. Maybe more than once, if she looks familiar. Or maybe you talked to her.” She glanced at the two kids riding tandem in the cart. “She liked kids. Take another look.”

“I think… Yes. Sure. She’s the one who helped me out.”

“Helped you out?”

“I had all these errands. The woman I work for, sometimes she doesn’t remember I’ve only got two hands, you know? I had both boys, little Max and Sterling. Sterling’s a handful by himself. And I had to pick up a dress for her, and the marketing, and she wanted flowers. Lilies. So I’m loading, and all of a sudden Sterling’s screaming like I stabbed him in the ear.”

She shifted her gaze to one of the other women and got a smirk of understanding.

“So I’m trying to deal with him, and I’m juggling the stuff I can’t stow in the stroller, and this girl-she’s the one-she calls out to me and comes scooting up. She had Mister Boos.”

“Who?”

“Mister Boos, Sterling’s bear. See.” She gestured to the boy in the second seat of the tandem stroller. He sat casting looks of suspicion at Eve and clutching a bright blue teddy bear with mangled ears and a shocked expression on its face.

“Mine!” Sterling shouted, and bared his teeth in challenge.

The woman rolled her eyes. “If he can’t get to Mister Boos, life isn’t worth living. He’d dropped it, or maybe tossed it, and I hadn’t noticed. So she picked it up and brought it over, and about that time Max started wailing because Sterling was. She asked if she could give me a hand, and I said I only needed about six more or something like that. I made Sterling thank her for saving Mister Boos, and told her I only had about another block to go. And she said she was going that way, and she’d carry the market bag if I wanted. It was really nice of her.”

“She walked with you.”

“Yeah, she-” The woman, who must have had kid radar, whipped her head around and jabbed a warning finger at Sterling seconds before he could follow through and clobber his little brother with Mister Boos.

He subsided, with an angelic smile and a satanic look in his eye. Eve wondered if she’d be hunting him down in about twenty years.

“Sorry, he’s getting bored. Where was I? Oh yeah, this girl? She helped me with the bags, walked me right to the building. She was awfully nice, and really polite. A lot of kids that age, they don’t even see you, if you know what I mean. She got Sterling to laugh, said how she liked kids. Babysat for a couple of twin boys, I remember she said, so she knew they could take a lot of work.”

“When was this?”

“I know exactly because the next day was my birthday. April fifth.”

“She was alone?”

“That’s right. Walking home from school, she said. She had a backpack, I think. I’m not sure about that, really. But I saw her a few weeks later. Maybe a month, or six weeks. I don’t know. It was raining-sky just opened up, and I was rushing to get the kids home. That was over on Second, somewhere between Fiftieth and Fifty-fifth. Because I’d taken the kids to the Children’s Museum over there for a program. They had a magic show.”

“You spoke to her?”

“No, see I was rushing to get to the bus stop, because the maxi will take the tandem stroller, and it was raining buckets. I didn’t want to walk all that way across town in the rain with the kids. But I saw her, and I waved and tried to get her attention. But she and the boy just hopped on an airboard and zipped.”

“The boy,” Eve repeated and felt the tingle.

“She was with a boy, and they were laughing. She looked really happy. Wet, but happy.”

“Did you get a look at him, the boy?”

“Ah… Sort of. It was only for a minute.”