He smiled, sipped more wine. “There was once an exquisite Van Gogh. But … we don’t need to go into all the details. I’ll say I had weeks for the planning, the setup, and so on, and a necessarily quick execution. Years ago, darling Eve. But we—and surely most others—build in fail-safes for such mischief now.”
“But you could get around that.”
He went back to his pasta. “Given time, and a less strict wife. But circling back, we have what we have, and we’ll do what we can do.”
“What you’ve done so far confirms things we either knew or believed. The Academy has deep pockets, is run like a prison, likely has various levels of security. Sophisticated—Mira called that from the start. Dorian lifted the swipe from a floor matron, according to her statement. Someone like that had access to the elevators—or at least the one on that floor—and that security clearance ran all the way down to the tunnels.”
“And it’s unlikely all would. Food providers, for instance, general cleaning or clerical, that sort of thing. The matron’s just another term for security in this case.”
“Agreed. They use a crematorium. Use the tunnels to get the body or bodies out, transport to a crematorium. Whoever runs that is part of this, or someone there is part of it, taking a fee or more. It gives us another angle.”
“And likely hundreds of mortuary businesses to run,” Roarke added. “What would you look for?”
“First, for a mortuary in New York that provides this dead service owned or run by or that employs someone with a criminal history. Leaning into crimes against minor females, but not exclusively that.”
“Why not exclusively?”
“Blackmail and/or payoffs work. Somebody wants to hide the fact he’s gotten busted, maybe done time. Then you look for those somebodies who might have more money than they should, or the business itself is more flush than it ought to be.
“I can’t take time to dig into all that, so I’ll pass it on.”
“I could have the time.”
“If you have any, I’d rather you use it to get everything off that swipe that’s getable, and help me narrow down locations for the Academy. And I seriously regret they co-opted the name of a place that helped make me a cop.”
She was back, he thought. She was definitely back. “That’s the thing, Lieutenant. Through all of this, I’d wager they have no idea how many areas of your wrath they’ve lit.”
“It can’t be about wrath.” She wound more pasta around a bite of meatball. “Maybe a little,” she conceded. “Under the rest. A little more than a little, but under the active, ongoing, official investigation.”
She ate, wound more. “I can hope, with that little more than a little personal wrath, I get to punch this Auntie and her partner in the throat. I’m okay with hoping for that—but only after we bust their asses, build the case that gives the PA enough to lock them up for the rest of their miserable lives.”
She shrugged, ate. “It’d be a nice bonus.”
She was, yes, all the way back, he thought, and grinned at her.
18
Eve dealt with the dishes while Roarke went back to his IT lab. She considered the fact his far-reaching company might have manufactured the swipe that got Dorian and Mina out of the Academy.
Coincidences bugged the crap out of her, but after some thought, she decided this didn’t qualify. Roarke Industries manufactured so much damn stuff, it would be more of a coincidence if they weren’t one of the possibles here.
Satisfied with that, she went back to her command center, programmed coffee.
So many tunnels in the city, she thought. In use, abandoned, rife with squatters and sidewalk sleepers. Add the underground and its dens of inequity. Sex shops, sex clubs—the sort you didn’t find on the streets, but under them. The junkies, the thieves, rapists, and those who felt wandering among them equaled adventure and excitement.
Tying in with all of that? Could be handy, lucrative, another sort of training ground.
But … that lacked the element of sophistication, and added an element of risk—security-wise, anonymity-wise. Maybe you had scouts troll through, looking for minor girls who wanted a taste of that adventure, or a street kid who thought she could find some work.
She wouldn’t dismiss that connection, but she wouldn’t put it at the top of her list. She could dismiss subway tunnels or tunnels known to house big pockets of junkies, homeless, the lost and abandoned.
Utility tunnels worked. Shut down the access to the Academy, even conceal it, and make use of them when empty. Easy enough to know. She had to believe they had the tunnels monitored. Too huge a security breach otherwise.