“It’s fine. Not everybody’s going to want to sit.”
And finally she saw Whitney striding toward the conference room. With long, lean, lanky Chief Tibble beside him.
Training put her at attention.
“Chief. Commander.”
“Lieutenant.” Tibble scanned the room. “A breakfast buffet. Excellent idea,” he added as Eve braced to take the heat. “I’ve spent the last two hours in holo-briefings with the French, and the commander’s done the same on the domestic front regarding the scouting suspects. I could go for one of the cinnamon rolls and some coffee. What about you, Jack?”
“As long as my wife never hears about it. We’ll take a seat, Lieutenant. You can begin when you’re ready.”
She was beyond ready, but gave it another two minutes, waiting until the brass took seats before she walked to the center of the room.
“Stuff it in, stand or sit. Jamie, on-screen.”
Feet moved; chairs scraped.
Roarke stood in the back, as she’d figured he would. Lowenbaum stood beside him. A scatter of others did the same, coffee mugs in hand.
“I’m not going to spend a lot of time on background. Some of you have been in on this investigation since the beginning. The rest of you are cops, and if you don’t know how to keep your ears and eyes open, you shouldn’t be.
“We’ll start with Mina Cabot. Jamie, let’s go.”
She ran through the basics, and had to admit, with next to no prep, Jamie kept up with her.
She answered questions when they came, added details when warranted, and built the framework, as she saw it, of the child trafficking organization.
“We’ve identified minor females abducted from New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Maryland, Virginia.” As she reeled them off, Jamie put their photos on-screen.
“Our investigation indicates they’re chosen and abducted by scouts paid through the Red Swan front. Detective Peabody has compiled a priority list of suspects. Detective.”
“Cecil Doggett,” Peabody said as she got to her feet.
“That fucking guy.”
Eve zeroed in on Officer Carmichael. In all the years she’d known him, she’d never seen hot rage in his eyes, or heard him speak in that tone.
“Sir,” he said immediately, “apologies.”
“You know that fucking guy?” Eve countered.
“I—we—had an incident once.”
“Elaborate.”
“Sir. He was a cop, in Baltimore.”
“Correct.”
“It was a long time ago. I was twelve. My parents took me and my little sister, my baby brother into Baltimore to visit my grandma. My mother’s mother. My mother, her mother, and my mother’s sister went out shopping, and to a baby shower for a friend. So my dad took us—the kids—out for ice cream that night, and on the way back, we get pulled over.”
“Traffic stop?”
“No, sir, though that man there used that as an excuse. He came up to my dad’s window, put his gun in his face, ordered him out of the car. My sister’s screaming, the baby’s crying, and I watched him drag my father out of the car, slam him against the hood so hard it busted his lip, had his nose bleeding.”
“Did Doggett have a partner or trainee with him?”
“No, sir. He said how the car was stolen. My dad’s telling us to stay still, stay in the car, he’s saying it’s his car, and he has the registration in the car, got his driver’s license in his wallet. He’s begging the cop not to hurt his kids. Doggett there, he leaned down low, and I don’t know what he said to my dad, but I saw the fear in Dad’s eyes. Fear for us.”
The room had gone so quiet, Eve could hear Carmichael breathing.
“People started gathering, calling out, recording it. He cuffed Dad, put him facedown on the ground, and leaned in the car. I thought he was going to shoot me, but he just stared while he got the registration out where Dad told him it was. Took his time with it, checked it against the driver’s license.”
Officer Carmichael cleared his throat. “I believe, always have, if people hadn’t been watching, recording, he’d have done a lot worse, but he took the cuffs off. He told my father how he got lucky, this time. Then he walked back to his car and drove off. My father’s face was bleeding where he got slammed against the hood. His hands shook. Some of those people came up, asked if he was okay, could they help. But he said he just needed to get his babies home. I know that face on-screen, and I know that name. I’ve never forgotten it.”