“Jenkinson said you’d been here about an hour already.”
“I thought he was going to catch some sleep in the crib.”
“He caught a catnap at his desk.” She glanced over at the second board. “You’ve got them all up.”
“We’re going to need a third board. Goddamn it.” She had to push up. She gestured to the computer and paced to her window.
“We didn’t get—” Peabody broke off, then slowly sat in Eve’s desk chair. “These are younger kids. Younger girls. You’ve got eleven of them. Eleven in the last year.”
“Eleven that fit the pattern, in this geographic area.”
“Dallas, how could they hold that many girls? Eleven in this age group, the ones on the board in the younger group.”
“They likely have older teenagers. We’ll cross off adults, even young adults for now. But we’re going to run fourteen through sixteen. There’s going to be a mistake in there, goddamn it, some mistake in all of these abductions. Someone else who got out besides the two we know. Another body somewhere we haven’t tied in.”
“I’ll run the next group. I’ll do it.”
Eve said nothing, just nodded.
“Do you want EDD to spread out over these age groups, too?”
“Yeah.” Eve went to the AC, programmed coffee for her partner. “Let’s get that done, then I need them to assist in refining the properties Roarke’s earmarked.”
She took a moment, studying those pretty young faces.
“If this is the pattern, and it damn well is—a pattern, a system, a fucking business model—they need room, a lot of room to securely hold, what, maybe forty or fifty, and could be more, at any one time.
“Figure it, Peabody. You auction two or three times a year, maybe. Hell, maybe you have monthly sales like at the Sky Mall, you’re pulling in hundreds of millions. Two or three locations nationwide? You got yourself a billion-dollar enterprise. If it costs you, I don’t know, ten million or twenty million—hell, double that—in outlay, you’re fucking rolling in it.”
She got more coffee for herself. “You have the front or fronts to wash the profits when you need to. But you’ve got direct payments, and they’re going to be in places that don’t regulate. You infuse the business, sure. Need the food, the clothes, the payroll, and all that, but you’ve got the fronts.”
“And if you factor what Willowby said—the ones they call Pets or Slaves or Domestics? You’d have more.”
“We’ve got less than three days now before at least some of these girls get sold off. I’m damned if we’ll let that happen.”
“I’ll get started on the next age group, and I can let EDD know about the assist.”
“I’ll take care of that. I have to send Feeney the file anyway.” Eve rubbed at her eyes. “Hold on a minute. Roarke’s working on an idea to infiltrate the auction. It’s setting up fake accounts and backgrounds, and maybe hacking into the accounts of buyers we might identify to get locations.”
“How many warrants are we going to need for all that?”
“I’m leaving that to Feeney. It’s an e-geek area. But we need to put everything we have together, cohesively, convincingly. We’re going to have to bring in the feds at some point soon. And we’ll need to give Feeney all the weight we can for authorization to run this e-op.”
She turned back to the board. “If we find Dorian Gregg, we can bust this organization, put a big hurt there. But even if that happens, I want to go through with the rest. This may be a big one, but it’s not the only.”
“Damn right. All the motherfuckers need to pay.”
Amused, heartened, Eve looked back at Peabody. “Listen to the mouth on the Free-Ager.”
“I’m a cop, and a goddamn girl.” Peabody hissed out a breath. “Hell, there’s going to be boys, too. Maybe not the assholes we’re focused on, but there’s sure a hell of a market with these perverts for little boys.”
“And when we bust through this, we’re giving a hell of a lot of data to the feds to bust through that.”
“Okay. I’ll get on it.” She rose. “If it’s going to take another board, at least, you’re going to run out of room in here.”
“Yeah, I’m holding the conference room. It annoys the hell out of me. I like my space. But we’ll need one for full briefings, and when we pull in the feds. I’m going to request a meet with Whitney to discuss that part, and bring him fully up to date.”