by J. D. Robb
She judged him at about forty, ridiculously handsome, and built like a god in his work jeans, safety vest, and hard hat.
“Jim Mackie, just Mackie’s good. I’m the job boss. I had them rope off the section where we found it. Her, I guess.”
“Her?”
“Yeah, I’m thinking her because it’s them. Sorry. It looks to me like maybe she was a woman. A pregnant woman when it happened, because there’s what looks like baby or infant or fetus remains with her. Sorry.”
He took off the hat, swiped his arm over his forehead. “That got me shook some. The little, um, skeleton.”
“Okay. How about you move your people away from there, and my partner and I will take a look.”
“You got it. If you need to go down to her? I gotta fix you into a safety harness. The old stairs collapsed even before we took down the building. I don’t trust the supports, and the street-level building below is just as bad—condemned for good reason. This was a shit-ass job. Sorry, sorry. I’m upset.”
“Shit-ass jobs upset me, too.”
That got a smile. “Heard you were okay. Figured you’d be because the big boss, he’s okay. No shit-ass jobs when you do a job for Roarke. You do quality, or you get the boot.”
“She’s the same,” Peabody told him, and earned another smile.
Then he turned around. “Get on away from there, move back. Anybody on Building One, get on back to work.”
The way people scrambled told Eve that Mackie did that quality work, and knew how to run a crew. She stepped to the rope.
She didn’t know much about building, about concrete and beams and rebar, but even she could see a lot in this section was some sort of filler, more like dirt than stone. And curled in it, about eight feet down, between two crumbling walls, the remains of one adult, one fetus.
Too small to be called a child, she thought, and also curled, likely as it had been inside the womb at the time of death.
“Do you know when this was built—poured—whatever it’s called?”
“I do. Not the exact day, but the year: 2024. If the really half-assed records are accurate, late summer, early fall of that year. I expect if there’s a better record of it, Roarke can tell you the day, and the hour.”
Yes, he would, though he wouldn’t have owned it in the late summer of 2024. He wouldn’t have been born quite yet, she thought.
But he’d know who had owned it. He’d know the owner; he’d know who developed it. Whatever he didn’t know, he’d find out.
“I’ll take that harness, Mackie. Peabody, contact DeWinter, get her here.”
They’d need the forensic anthropologist, but in the meantime, Eve needed a closer look. Whoever they’d been, they, as much as Alva Quirk, were hers now.
“I’ll tag Roarke.”
While Mackie sent for a harness, she pulled out her ’link.
Caro, Roarke’s admin, answered. “Good morning, Lieutenant.”
“Caro, sorry. You need to get him.”
Always efficient, Caro merely nodded. “One moment.”
As the screen switched to holding blue, Eve considered she’d have gotten exactly the same response in exactly the same tone from Caro whether Roarke sat alone at his desk enjoying a cup of coffee or ran a meeting involving the purchase of Greenland.
She didn’t think Roarke could actually buy Greenland, but if he could, if he was planning on it, Caro’s response would have been the polite: One moment.
Eve glanced over as Mackie held up a safety harness. “Give me another sec.”
She took another couple steps away as Roarke’s face filled the screen.
He didn’t smile. Not annoyance, she knew, but concern. Those wild blue eyes held steady on hers. Making sure she was in one piece, Eve thought.
“Sorry,” she began. “I hope you weren’t buying Greenland.”
“Not at the moment.” Ireland shimmered like morning mists in his voice. “Something’s wrong.”
“I caught one on my way in, but that one’s not the issue. It’s the one I caught about a block away from the first. That one’s on, or maybe it’s under, your Hudson Yards Village project.”
“Which part?”
“Ah…” She looked back at Mackie. “Which part is this of the project?”
“Right here’s the Sky Garden phase.”
“Sky Garden. Some restaurant you took down, in the cellar of that. They jacked out the concrete over the old rails, and we’ve got remains, human remains. Two. What appears to be a female and a fetus. I’m calling DeWinter in to examine and confirm.”
“A pregnant woman buried under the platform there?”
“The way it looks from where I’m standing. I can only confirm two human remains, which I further speculate, given the platform was built and poured, according to your job boss, nearly forty years ago, have been there a few decades. Again, DeWinter will take that end of things.”
“Bloody hell.” He raked a hand through that gorgeous mane of black hair. “I’ll be on my way to you within ten minutes.”
“Okay. I’m going to have to shut down your project until—”
“Yes, yes, we’ll deal with that. I’ll be there,” he said, and cut her off.
“That’ll be fun,” she muttered. She looked over at Peabody, who nodded, wound a finger in the air. More fun, Eve thought, with the fashionable Dr. DeWinter coming up.
She stepped back to Mackie, looked at the harness, looked down in the hole. “All right then, let’s get me suited up so I can make sure this isn’t some sick prank.”
Hope lit all over his face. “Oh, hey, like maybe it’s fake?”
“I’ll know in a minute.”
It wasn’t, but she had to make that determination even if it meant hanging by a damn cable over a bunch of broken concrete, rebar spikes, rocks, and Christ knew.
“It’ll hold ten times your weight,” he told her as she put her arms through the straps. “It’s got good padding, so it’s not going to dig into you, and that adds protection.”
He adjusted the straps, checked the safety buckles, the D rings.
“You ever use one of these?” she asked him.
“Yep. I’m not ten times your weight, but I bet I more than double it, and no problemo.”
“Good to know.”
“DeWinter’s on her way.” Like Eve, Peabody looked down in the hole. “Do you want me to go down with you?”
“No point. I’m going to get it on record, confirm we’ve got human remains, and see what I see. I need my field kit.”
“We’re going to hook it on this ring right here,” Mackie told her. “Keep your hands free.” He handed her a pair of work gloves. “And protect them. You ever do any rappelling?”
“Not if I can help it.” When he laughed, she shrugged. “Yeah, I know the drill. Check in at the other site, Peabody. Start lining up interviews. We need a full run on the victim.”
“You’re set,” Mackie told her. “We’ll take it slow. Lot of rubble down there, and where she is, between the walls? That wasn’t poured, so it’s not going to be real stable.”
“Yeah, I see it. Peabody, DeWinter needs to bring recovery equipment.”
“She knows.”
Of course she knew, Eve thought, and admitted she was stalling.
“Okay.” She ducked under the rope, took another careful look so she could mentally map her route down. Then turned her back to it as she pulled on the gloves.
She gripped the belay rope, took up the slack, leaned into it, and started the descent.
Obstacles, she thought, checking left and right behind her as she went down, feet perpendicular to the wall, keeping her pace slow but steady. She adjusted right, left to avoid rubble and rebar and busted beams.
Six feet down, she called up, “I’m moving a couple feet to the left. I can get closer. She’s right below those beams, between two walls. Say, how stable do you figure those beams are?”
“They held up so far. We got you, Lieutenant. You’re no
t going anywhere.”
While she didn’t want to end up somehow breaking through the ground and splatting on the rubble, she’d actually worried more about the remains.
She eased down on a broken beam, gave it a little testing bounce. “Feels solid enough.”
Kneeling, she pulled off the work gloves, then resealed her hands. And took a close look at her second and third victims of the morning.
2
Not a prank, Eve thought as she took out a flashlight.
“Human remains, one female. I can confirm that without DeWinter. DeWinter to establish approximate age, race, height, weight. Second remains, a fetus or very small infant. No more than a foot and a half in length.”
She played her light over the adult skull. “Some damage, cracks in the adult female skull, and a broken left arm—possibly from the fall. It looks like the left shoulder—if she hit the way we found her, she hit on the left side. There’s something …
“Gold ring, wedding band? Third finger, left hand. Still on there.”
She took tweezers out of her field kit, used them to slide the ring off the curled finger bone. “No engraving. Plain yellow gold ring.”
She bagged it.
“I see splintering, second and third ribs, left side.”
She leaned closer. “Heart shots. Those are going to be from bullets. Plenty of guns around thirty-five to forty years ago if that’s when she went in. We need to locate the slugs when we bring up the remains. I see something.”
She shifted her light, then used the tweezers again. “Earring.” She used a brush to carefully clean it off. “Post style, yellow gold circle with a silver or maybe white gold triangle inside. I can’t look for the second if it’s a pair or I’d disturb the remains. Recovery team needs to locate. Got a gold necklace, too, still attached, so I’m leaving it in place. Gold chain maybe ten inches long holding a what do you call it—swans, a pair of swans twined together at the neck to form a heart.
“Got an old watch, gold watch.” Girlie, Eve thought. Expensive. “One shoe. Ladies shoe, probably leather because it hasn’t fully decomposed. No sign of a ’link or ID. Recovery team should do a thorough search. Maybe a mugging, maybe, but wouldn’t you want the jewelry? Is she going to refuse when she’s pregnant or has a baby with her? I don’t think so. Shoot her after you have the valuables, okay, but before? No point.”
Eve shifted, and focused on the second remains.
So small, she thought as pity rose up. Hell, her cat was bigger.
“Probability on second remains is fetus given the positioning with female. That’s not a damn coincidence. Indeterminate gender. I’m not sure I could tell even if it wasn’t curled up. The top of the skull…” She remembered Mavis talking about Bella’s soft spot. How the skull didn’t knit hard for weeks after birth.
“Soft spot,” she murmured. “No visible injuries.”
Because it died in there, died inside its mother before it took its first breath.
Some sort of exterior wall, she noted. Concrete blocks. And brick, a brick wall on the other side of the hollow. About three feet in from the exterior wall.
Walled you in, didn’t they? Fuckers.
“Dallas? You good?”
“Yeah.” She held up a hand to verify to Peabody, and slowly, carefully eased off the beam to balance on some rubble.
Something shifted; she held her breath.
When the world didn’t fall in around her, she played her light closer to the remains.
“I’ve got slugs here. Bullets. I see two bullets. I can’t safely retrieve them without disturbing the remains or, you know, burying us in here.”
“You should come up,” Peabody called out, and the nerves in her voice sounded clearly. “You’ve got enough on record.”
“Probable COD on unidentified female, two gunshot wounds to the chest. Probable COD on second remains … it comes to the same, doesn’t it? Dr. DeWinter and ME to confirm.”
She secured the evidence bags, put on the gloves.
“Bring me up.”
When she came up again, she unhooked her field kit, passed it to Peabody. “We need sweepers who can get down there once the remains are removed. Call it in, set it up.”
She pulled off the gloves as Mackie unclipped her.
“I gotta shut you down, Mackie.”
“The whole project? Building One—the one we got going up? It’s a half block away from this projected green space.”
“The projected green space is a crime scene.” But she considered. “Is there any way to secure this area off, to access that building from another location?”
“Yeah, yeah, we already access it from two other locations. And I can have a security fence up in three hours, tops, to cordon off this whole area. This elevated space here, it’s going to be all park, see? Open to the public and all, and over there, we’ll have some private green space for the towers. Mixed residential and commercial. More commercial down on street level.”
“Why are you jacking up just this one area?”
“We tested all the platforms, and this one here, this section came up hollowed out in spots. Well, you saw that yourself up close. We’ve updated and reenforced wherever we need to for the new designs. A lot of what got started in the way back ended up bombed out or torn up during the Urbans. And when construction started up again, a lot of it was rushed or subpar.”
Eve tugged at her own memory. “There used to be shops and restaurants up here. Over The West Side, right?”
“Yeah, yeah, but it was crap construction, and they never got the people glides to work right. Plus, they never finished it, so it ended up overgrown, falling down until the boss bought it a couple years ago.”
“A couple years ago.”
“He’s got ideas. Well, you’d know, right? Took some time to get the design the way he wanted—it’s a big project.”
“I can see that. Bigger than the one Singer’s developing.”
“Oh yeah, more than double that. So it takes awhile to get the design, get it all engineered and approved and permitted, and…”
She saw his eyes widen. “Is that one of yours? She looks too fancy to be a cop.”
Eve turned and thought he had a point. Garnet DeWinter looked too fancy to be a cop. Then again, she wasn’t one.
“Forensic anthropologist. Bone doctor,” Eve added as Mackie continued to watch DeWinter approach.
In heels, for Christ’s sake, Eve thought. Scarlet stilts to match the body-hugging red dress. A statuesque woman, she carried an enormous bag. She’d changed her hair, Eve noted. Not the style so much, as she had it in her most usual sleek roll at the nape of her neck. But she’d gone sort of copper colored, which Eve had to admit looked good with her mocha-colored skin.
Peabody tapped her hair, tapped at DeWinter. “Love it.”
DeWinter flashed a smile. “Me, too. And yours.” Then she looked at Eve, smile fading. “Dallas.”
“DeWinter. This is Mackie, he’s job boss.”
DeWinter offered a hand, and not a smile so much as a very female sizing up. “Mr. Mackie.”
“Aw, just Mackie’s good.”
“Mackie. I’ve got a recovery team coming in,” she said to Eve. “But I’d like to see the remains in situ.”
“Are you planning on going down there wearing that?”
“If I feel I need to examine the remains in place, I have the proper gear with me. Down there?”
With Eve, she moved to the rope. “This was part of the old elevated train platform?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And the plan was when this concrete was put in to convert it to residential and commercial space?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She smiled at Mackie again. “You needed to demolish this platform?”
“Yes, ma’am. The material—we tested it—wasn’t top grade. It shouldn’t have been used for this purpose, and we detected some hollow spots, suspected some of the supports might not’ve been up to cod
e—at least not up to today’s codes. So we started jacking it out, and we found them.”
“We had a DB at another site, a block south,” Eve told her. “We responded here.”
“Busy morning.”
“Mackie tells me this would’ve been done in 2024.”
“That’s helpful. I’ll be able to confirm if they’ve been here for that amount of time. A female and a fetus. I’ll go down and examine them.”
“I’ve been down.” Eve considered the trip down and back, and while she and DeWinter weren’t the best of pals, she’d spare her that. “And have it on record. It’s hard to see from here, and at this angle, but there are two holes in the female. Left side, second and third ribs. I could see the two slugs. Couldn’t get to them, but I have them on record.”
“You’re sure the damage was from gunshots?”
“As sure as I can be from a visual. She fell on her left side, most likely. Broken left arm, dislocated left shoulder. Some damage to the skull, but it doesn’t read blunt force trauma. Probably from the fall. Bang, bang, and in she goes.”
“We’ll see.”
“I took what looks like a wedding ring off the third finger of her left hand. No visible injuries on the second remains.”
“The mother’s heart stops, blood flow stops, oxygen stops. The fetus wouldn’t survive. I can and will give you cause of death, year of death, the ages of the victims, and so on. I’ll extract DNA if possible, and if she was in the system, you’ll have her name. Otherwise, we’ll generate a sketch and a holo.”
“You can do that?” Mackie asked. “Figure out what she looked like?”
“We can.” DeWinter’s lashes swept up, swept down. “I have a brilliant reconstruction artist in my department.”
“How long will it take?”
Flirty girl banished, DeWinter glanced back at Eve. “Until it’s done. Once it is, finding the who did this and why is up to you.”
“You do yours, I’ll do mine.” She spotted Roarke, turned, and walked to him. “Before you were born,” she said.
“Understood.” He looked over at DeWinter. “And still, the second time for the three of us, isn’t it? Let’s hope it doesn’t become a habit.”
