“It has to cost, a lot, to buy a human being. Especially a young girl or boy, then it has to cost to keep them somewhere. Feed them, clothe them. You could get a licensed companion who’d do role-playing. You could buy a damn sex droid.”
“Those don’t hit the mark,” Eve said simply.
“What I mean is, it costs. So you have to have that kind of money. Maybe Roarke—”
Eve shot Peabody a look that had Peabody mentally rolling up in a ball.
“I don’t mean Roarke—not like that. God. I just mean maybe he heard some stuff about somebody with that sort of money. Or he could, in his Roarke way, dig around in that pool. And you probably don’t want that. That’s a terrible idea. Delete.”
It took Eve a minute, a struggle against her personal feelings, those flickers of her past. “No, I can’t say I want it, but it’s a good idea. He’s got connections, not just with stupidly rich people, but with the shelter, the school. And he does have a Roarke way. Let’s see where we are after we cross some of these angles.”
“All right.” Peabody waited until Eve blew past a pair of eighteen-wheelers like they were parked.
“And maybe we could have like a safe word if I say something or suggest something that hits you wrong on this. Like ‘aardvark.’”
“‘Aardvark’？”
“It’s the first thing that popped into my head.”
“What’s wrong with ‘shut the fuck up, Peabody’？”
“‘Aardvark’ could be code for that. So coworkers, suspects, and witnesses wouldn’t know. And if I shut the fuck up when you said ‘aardvark,’ you wouldn’t feel obliged to put your boot up my ass, which is painful.”
“I might feel obliged to put my boot up your ass before I said ‘aardvark.’”
“Yeah. There’s that.”
Eve let silence hang for nearly a mile.
“We don’t need a safe word, Peabody. And we’re not doing the job, not putting the victim first if you’re afraid to say or suggest something, or I’m touchy about what you say or suggest.
“What happened to me happened. I got through it. Whatever happened to Mina, she didn’t. We do the job and find out who and why.”
She waited another beat.
“That doesn’t mean my boot won’t meet your ass for other reasons.”
“I’m aware.” Then Peabody brightened. “But it’s a little bit of a smaller target now.”
Eve just smiled. “I have excellent aim.”
4
They found Dorian’s building on the sketchy edge of the city. The eight-story concrete block tower butted up against a strip mall and faced a road thick with grumbling traffic. It looked as if it had seen better, brighter days—and all of them had passed half a century earlier.
Considering the gray dinge over the peeling puke-green paint and the visible weeds growing out of sagging gutters, whoever owned the building didn’t trouble with pesky details like upkeep.
They parked at the strip mall, walked and stepped over a low, pitted concrete curb.
Eve mastered into a skinny lobby and eyed the pair of elevators. The skull and crossbones painted on one of the doors had her aiming for the stairs.
More dinge, she noted, some grime with it, and a lacing of trash. The tenants, at least some of them, didn’t appear to worry about upkeep, either.
They hiked to the fourth floor.
By her eye, she judged the industrial beige walls hadn’t seen a fresh coat of paint in over a decade. Most of the doors—army green—had numerous locks.
Not a camera or palm plate to be seen.
She knocked on 412.
It took several more knocks before the door across the hall creaked open a few inches and thumped against the security chain. Eve saw a single eye, the side of a nose, and the corner of a tight-lipped mouth.
“She’s in there all right.”
The door creaked shut again.
Taking the neighbor’s word for it, Eve gave the door a solid pounding. “Ms. Gregg, this is the police. We’re here about your daughter, Dorian. Open up, or we’ll come back with an entry warrant.”
An empty threat, but it got the desired result, as locks snicked and clacked, a chain rattled, a bar thumped.
The door opened, and Jewell Gregg barred the way. A tall, mixed-race woman with a headful of gold-tipped black twists, she folded her arms over her chest. She wore snug red shorts that showed off the snake tattoo slithering up the outside of her left leg, and a tight white tank.