I knew you needed your beauty sleep, so I left you breakfast. Have a good day! Your baby darling.
“Oh my God, oh my God, what butterfly?” But her hands shot first to her ears. He’d pierced her there, too. Multiple times. She felt the soreness as she clamped her hands over the little studs.
Tears spilled as she shifted, tried to run her hands over her back. She felt the slight difference, traced it as best she could.
“Jesus, it’s huge. He pierced me, he tatted me. He’s making me her.”
But he wouldn’t. She wouldn’t become somebody else no matter what he did.
She was Mary Kate Covino.
The tears fell and she went through her routine of naming off her family, her friends, what she did, what she liked. And she used the hydrogen peroxide on the piercings, did her best to smear the cream on the tattoo she couldn’t see.
Then she banged on the pipes, banged and banged until she finally heard the answer.
Not alone.
* * *
Eve decided to take the roommate first. When you lived with someone, they knew stuff. Often things family might not.
A good building, she noted. Again Lower West Side. Definitely his territory. The obviously well-rehabbed redbrick building had door cams, an intercom for buzzing in, and required a swipe and a code for entry otherwise.
“She’s a subway ride or a fifteen-to-twenty-minute walk from her workplace,” Eve calculated. “The boyfriend’s bar’s only about two blocks away. So he stalked her coming and going from the bar. Tells me she must’ve had some sort of routine.”
She walked to the door, mastered in. “Let’s see if the roommate confirms that.”
“Sixth floor, 608.”
Since Eve judged the elevators in the small lobby, recently cleaned from the smell of it, likely reflected the maintenance of the building, she pressed a call button.
“Family’s in Queens. Data says she’s lived here for three years—with the same roommate. Worked for the marketing firm for going on four—right out of college. No criminal bumps.”
They stepped into the elevator—one that didn’t make strange noises—and Eve called for the sixth floor.
Peabody read off the data. “Roommate, Cleo Bette. Sous chef at Perfecto. That’s like a block from the bar—upscale place.”
They got out on six.
Good soundproofing, Eve thought. Or everybody was out. She buzzed at 608.
“Margie, I said I’d let you know when—” The woman who yanked open the door stopped. “Sorry. I thought you were my neighbor a couple floors down. Look, it’s not a good time, so—”
She broke off again when Eve held up her badge. “Oh, thank God.” She grabbed Eve’s arm, all but pulled her into the apartment. “Did you find her? Is she okay?”
“I’m sorry, we just got the report. Lieutenant Dallas, Detective Peabody.”
“Oh. I was hoping … Wait, wait. I know those names. We saw the vid. Mary Kate and I. Oh Jesus, you do murders.”
“Ms. Bette.” Peabody stepped up in her soothing mode. “We don’t know that anything’s happened to Mary Kate. We’re here to help find her. Maybe we could sit down.”
“Okay, yeah, sorry.” She closed her eyes a moment, a tall, mixed-race woman with a lot of curly brown hair bundled back. She wore gray sweatpants, a black tank top, and looked terrified.
But she gestured to chairs in a small, very tidy, very female living area. “I’m sick,” she went on, “because I didn’t know. I thought she was … I have to pull it together.”
“Why don’t you start at the top,” Eve suggested. “From the beginning.”
She clasped her hands with their long, slender fingers and short, unpainted nails. “Mary Kate was supposed to take a trip to the beach for a few days. With Teegan Stone. They’ve been seeing each other for a few months. She was kind of … okay, she was dazzled. He’s gorgeous, right? He owns Stoner’s, a bar over on Seventh. I didn’t see when she left because I was at work. I work most nights. I know she planned to take her rolly—her suitcase—with her, go down to the bar, spend the night with Teeg, and leave first thing the next morning.”
“When was this?”
“Um. Um. June third. I mean that’s the night she went to the bar. I didn’t think anything when she didn’t tag me, because dazzled. I just figured she was having fun, all into him.”
“But she wasn’t?” Eve prompted.
“They didn’t go, and she didn’t stay there that night. According to that shithead Teeg. See, she was supposed to be home last night—work night for me. I saw she wasn’t here when I got home, and figured she’d stayed at his place. I was tired, and I just went to bed. But I tried to tag her this morning, and I got nothing. No connection, so I tried Teeg. He was pissed at me because I woke him up, and he said he hadn’t seen Mary Kate since she left the bar the night before they were supposed to go, how she’d gotten too pushy and clingy, and he cut her loose. And he said her stupid suitcase was still at his place, and tell her to come get it, and, if she didn’t get it, he was just going to set it out on the street.”