She pushed to her feet. “Let’s take it all into Central. You’ll have more tools there, and it’ll be quicker. Tag Feeney, tell him to go there, not here. I’ll get a detail to sit on the place in case I’m wrong and she just found a hole to hide in for a few days.”
She looked around. “Take it in. Peabody and I will do another solid sweep through, check the security feeds, then meet you. You don’t—”
Roarke cut her off. “Don’t say it.”
She shrugged. “Knee-jerk. I’ll see you there.”
Eve walked away to order the detail.
But, she thought, she wasn’t wrong. Marlene Williamson had certainly taken a last trip through the tunnels and was never coming back.
19
With Peabody, Eve went through every drawer, closet, cabinet, and cubbyhole in the Williamson apartment. And found nothing that pointed the way to the Academy or those who ran it.
In the security hub, they scanned feeds and confirmed Williamson’s departure at twenty hundred hours on the night of Mina Cabot’s murder.
No return at any time, on any feed.
The thirty-day visitor’s log showed no one signing in for Williamson.
Dead end, Eve concluded. In every way.
“Coffee,” she said the minute they got in the car.
“Oh yes, please.” With a heartfelt sigh, Peabody programmed it. “The probability she’s alive and hiding is subzero. But literally terminating her for having her swipe stolen’s seriously harsh.”
“So’s stealing kids and selling them to pervs.”
“Yeah, it is.” Peabody gulped coffee, yawned, gulped more. “But that’s—for them—business.”
“So was this. Fire or discipline an employee, said employee could get pissy, and being pissy might try to cut a deal with the cops. Why risk it?”
“‘Dead men tell no tales,’” Peabody quoted.
“Sure they do, and dead or alive, Williamson’s telling us plenty. She’ll be telling us more when the e-nerds break her codes. That was a saying, right?”
“Yeah, it’s—”
“Sayings like that are another reason people do the stupid. ‘Okay, dead now, so that’s that.’ And it’s not. Nobody knows it’s not better than a murder cop. Add to it, you know why these assholes didn’t think to wipe her apartment? She was nothing to them. Just another number. Night Matron Williamson, employee number whatever. Disposable. She cost them millions, and profit’s the bottom line here.”
She pulled into the garage at Central.
“She worked there a solid number of years,” Peabody added. “I bet she kept her head down, did the job, didn’t make waves. Who’d think she’d keep files on her—charges, I guess.”
“Prisoners,” Eve corrected as they crossed to the elevator. “According to her data, she was a prison guard, Attica, for ten years before she got into this.”
They stepped into the car, and Eve called for EDD level. “I’m betting they recruit,” she continued. “Prison, juvie facilities. Vet them, do deep background, a psych eval, because you need the type who’d be just fine with all this. You’re going to pay them a hell of a lot more, add some juicy benefits—and give them the chance to jab kids with shock sticks.”
“Psych eval. You’re right because they have to know they’re hiring sadists and sociopaths.”
“Maybe—probably—monitor them for the first few months, more likely a year. Spot check after that. You’d need to be careful to avoid addicts, people with spouses or close family ties. Someone like Williamson? No close relationships, organized, routine-bound, punctual, just greedy enough? I’m betting she was a model employee until she screwed up.”
“I could start a search for people with that employment background who transferred to Red Swan.”
“Do that,” Eve said as they stepped off the elevator. “A five-year spread. We only need one, goddamn it. One live one.”
She headed straight to the lab, and through the glass walls saw the e-team at work. Feeney in his industrial beige shirtsleeves, dung-colored tie loose and crooked. McNab, bony hips twitching in red baggies paired with a T-shirt swirled with atomic colors. And Roarke, pale gray dress shirt somehow still crisp, with the sleeves rolled to the elbow, and his hair tied back.
They’d added Callendar, she noted, who completed the lineup with blue-and-green-striped baggies, a sunshine-yellow tank, with the new feature of hair ink black at the crown falling into a short, multicolored rainbow of tufts and spikes.