Grabbing his medical bag, he was out of the car in seconds and running.
When he dropped down beside her, he feared the worst, but he found a pulse. And when he began to check for injuries, she stirred.
She opened her eyes, bloodshot, swollen, and glazed with shock.
Her voice came out in a hoarse croak, but he heard her.
She said, “Help me.”
NOW
Eve read the tox report on her victim and got a picture of those last hours. As she copied it to Mira, added it to her book and board, Peabody buzzed through.
“Detective Norman’s here, Lieutenant.”
She considered her office, the single ass-biting visitor’s chair, and decided to give Norman a break. “Let’s take it to the lounge. I’m right behind you.”
After a last look at her board, she started out.
“One second, LT.” Santiago hustled over to her. “If you can sign off on this, Carmichael and I can close it out.”
She scanned the report on the suspect in a bludgeoning death—her spouse—and her confession thereto.
“Looks like good work between brownie breaks.” She scrawled her signature and kept going.
She found Peabody and Detective Norman already at a table with crap coffee. A scatter of other cops took their break, or used the quieter space for work.
Norman looked young. Since she’d already looked him up, she knew he was only a couple years older than Trueheart, her youngest detective.
He had smooth, golden brown skin, deep-set dark eyes that spoke of some Asian in his DNA. He wore his hair close cropped with hints of gold among the black. He had a skinny build inside a black suit and a dull gray tie knotted at the base of his long neck.
As well as young, Eve thought he looked miserable.
She sat. “Detective Norman, thanks for coming in. I’m Lieutenant Dallas.”
He offered his long, slender hand—and a solid grip with it. “Lieutenant. I brought all the files on Lauren Elder. I was working with Detective Marlboro on this case—she’s senior—but she’s on vacation.”
“Okay, why don’t you just run it through for us.”
“Yes, sir. Roy Mardsten, who identified himself as Elder’s cohab, reported her missing on the morning of May twenty-ninth. Detective Marlboro and I caught the case, and though it had been less than twenty-four hours, and Elder an adult, Mardsten expressed urgency. Elder wasn’t answering her ’link, and he’d checked with her coworkers—I have a list in the files—and her family. He’d contacted her friends, and had also contacted local hospitals.”
He paused to gulp at some coffee. “We interviewed him, and there was no indication he and Elder had any relationship difficulties. This was confirmed by interviews with neighbors, coworkers, family. Her coworker Buddy Wilcox was the last to see her at approximately zero-two-thirty-seven when they closed the bar, Arnold’s, where they both worked. The door cam confirms both of them exiting at this time. He stated Elder intended to go straight home, indicated no distress, and was in fact joking with him as they closed for the night. They stood on the sidewalk for a minute, according to his statement, talking. Then she walked in the direction of her residence, while he traveled in the other direction to catch the subway to his own. We have security footage of him on the train platform, time stamped at zero-two-thirty-seven, and getting on the train two minutes after.”
He let out a long breath. “We concluded Elder had been abducted between her workplace and her residence. Her routine was the same when she worked the night shift. She traveled the same route, and in general, between zero-two-twenty and zero-two-thirty.”
“You concluded it would have been possible for someone to note this routine.”
“Yes, sir. We interviewed former relationships, bar regulars, neighbors, and canvassed her route. The thing is, Lieutenant, there was nothing. We looked into finances, her family’s, her cohab’s, but even if this had been for ransom, there wasn’t really enough there. The cohab’s family’s got some, but why take her? Nobody saw her after she left the bar. We didn’t find a trace of her. Our EDD tracked her ’link from the bar to 16 West Seventeenth.”
“A half block from her apartment building.”
“Yes, sir. It went dead, just dead, so they concluded her abductor disabled it. But he didn’t discard it, or if he did, someone picked it up before we caught the case. No, sorry, before Mardsten walked the route, which he did the next morning when he woke to discover she hadn’t come home, when she didn’t answer his tags, and he was unable to connect.”