“And if we’re right, they’ve lost two returns on their investment.”
“They need to recoup that. Not only bring in new girls, but prep any they have for sale. And I’ve got some street contacts. I already put the word out on Dorian Gregg. If she’s in New York, we’ve got a shot at finding her.”
“I’ll talk to your lieutenant, and to Feeney.”
“I appreciate it. Almost as much as this coffee.” She got to her feet.
“Why SVU? Why minors particularly?”
“Me? I had a perfect childhood, good as it gets. My dad’s uncle was a cop, in Queens. He had the best stories, like fairy tales to me. I wanted the Academy. My parents weren’t thrilled, let me tell you, but they gave me a year to get it out of my system. I didn’t. Then my second week in uniform, we find this kid, seven years old, beaten half to death. His father did it before he passed out drunk. Mother was doing her second round for fraud down in Virginia where she’d taken off when the kid was about five.”
She shrugged. “That was it for me.”
“Where’s the kid now?”
“Evan? Evan Hawkins. He was lucky. He had grandparents living upstate who wanted him, with no idea he even existed. He just graduated high school. He’s going to fricking MIT. Too many aren’t lucky, but now and again.”
“I’ll be in touch, and so will somebody from EDD.”
“Great. I’ll send you those brochures.”
When she left, Eve sat to update her notes and reach out to Willowby’s lieutenant.
When she heard Peabody coming, she rose.
“Read my updates. You can use my desk. I’m expecting some data from Willowby. I’ve cleared it so she’s attached to the investigation.”
“Oh. Okay. How—”
“I have to go up to EDD.”
“Did something break? How long have you been here? Shift just started.”
“I got in early. Read the notes. Do you know if McNab’s clear?”
“He closed one yesterday afternoon, but—”
“Read the notes,” Eve said again. “And yes to the damn coffee.”
She swung through the bullpen, tried to avoid eye contact with Jenkinson’s tie as he stood by his desk slurping coffee.
She failed, had her retinas blasted by what might have been a depiction of the big bang.
She just kept going.
She’d known, of course, she thought as she jumped on a glide. Willowby’s general information hadn’t been news. But she hadn’t known, not fully, the details. The terms used for the children in trafficking. The categories, she supposed.
She needed a hook, and Willowby might help her find it. She saw some openings now. Dorian Gregg could bust those openings wide, but she’d begun to see.
When she stepped into the carnival of EDD, Jenkinson’s tie seemed tame, almost ordinary. Colors blasted and clashed, neon baggies, polka-dot suspenders, screaming T-shirts, and crazed airboots.
She spotted McNab standing in his cube, hips twitching, long blond tail of hair swaying as he worked on whatever he worked on.
She moved quickly into the sanity of Feeney’s office.
He sat at his desk, scarred brown shoes up, baggy, crap-colored suit reassuring. As was his explosion of ginger, gray-threaded hair.
His basset hound eyes slitted in concentration as he studied his wall screen.
“Got a minute?”
“Barely got my ass in the chair, this crap coffee in my hand, and already caught one. Fricking cyber fraud, already hauled in five mil inside twelve hours, targeting centenarians. I get that old and stupid, stun me.”
“You’ll get that old, but you’ll never be that stupid. I need McNab, or somebody on his level you can spare.”
“I just tossed the boy one.” Frowning, Feeney slurped coffee. “I could have him pass it off, maybe. You need an EDD man on the dead kid?”
“It’s a ring, Feeney, I know it. A trafficking ring.”
As she filled him in, he put his feet on the floor.
“You got him. I can shut down this scam in an hour—it’ll pop up somewhere else, but I can shut it down. You can have me, too. Sick sons of bitches. Give me the data on the kid you think’s in the wind. I can put some of my uniforms out there.”
“Thanks for that.”
“We’ve got some channels into porn sites, helped bust a trafficking case—adults though—a couple months ago. Bringing women—eighteen, twenty, twenty-couple—over from Eastern Europe on a cargo ship, jamming them into two or three rooms on the Lower East, then renting them out to pervs, using the better-looking ones for underground porn sites.”