Chapter 11 #2
Gail cleared her throat and went on, explaining how both girls had left for school that night, taking a bus to a dance at a nearby high school.
While they attended school at the shelter, the high school aged students were often involved in activities at a larger public school, and the shelter administrator, Eli Engel, had assured the police that the girls had been welcome to the dance—and that they hadn’t been a “surprise,” as the officer taking his statement had intimated.
“It says here that the high school is very LGBTQ friendly,” Gail read.
“And it has a very strong antibullying policy—apparently Mr. Engel is something of a bulldog, trying to make sure his students have access to the high school amenities that the shelter doesn’t have, but also that his kids stay safe. ”
“What did the principal of the other school say?” Garcia asked, sounding dubious.
“He said the same thing,” Crosby told them. “But he said the girls didn’t show. He was expecting them—they were coming early to help decorate—but when they didn’t get off the bus, he called Engel to make sure they were on their way.”
A diagram of the bus route popped up on their big screen, with a route penciled in.
The high school was only ten blocks away.
Most New Yorkers could walk that easy, Gideon thought in detachment, but the girls had been wearing heels and their best dresses.
They hadn’t wanted to arrive sweaty and messy when this had been a big deal to them.
“Two stops,” Pearson said, using the tablet to put two dots on the map between where they’d gotten on and where they should have gotten off.
“We’ve got two places to search, although both schools have had service groups canvassing the stops all morning.
This place—” She tapped what on the map looked like a small series of alleys.
“—is a nest of drug dealers and gang activity. It’s actually a drug mart, one the police crash at least every two weeks, but I guess they do too much business to move it someplace else.
We’ve advised Rainbow House to steer clear of that area—too many kids, too much danger.
This other place”—she tapped the other stop—“has small shops lining both blocks—two small bodegas, one on either side of the street, a check cashing place, a cobbler, a diamond seller, and a watch repairman. Those are the street-level businesses. Most of them have two or three businesses in the upper levels before they become walkups.”
“So lots of places for these two girls to get lost,” Harding said.
“Yup,” Pearson told him. “But the good news is there were a lot of long-term passes being used on the buses last night, so we’ve got a record of who boarded when. One of us,” she said, looking at Crosby reprovingly, “can start calling people up to see if they spotted anything.”
“And call up the security footage from the buses themselves first,” Harding told him. “I’ll send you the federal passcodes.”
“Ooh,” Crosby muttered. “Fancy.”
“You’re with the Feds now,” Harding said dryly.
“We pull out all the stops. Speaking of which, Pearson, you and Garcia go to the 12th and Whitcomb stop, and Denison and I will hit druggie central. Chadwick, Carlyle, you go to Rainbow House and see if there were any other kids going to the dance who might have seen anything. I know the cops might have asked them, but they might not have. It sounds like the locals are being assholes, and the shelter director is pretty protective of his kids. Crosby’s running point from here, since he can’t really run.
And he needs to alert the hospitals and morgues so they know what to look for. ”
Gideon actually felt the air pressure in the room change.
“That’s not the outcome any of us wants,” Harding said softly. “But we’ve got to prepare for it. Everybody, good hunting.”
And with that, everybody gulped what was left of their coffee, snagged a last pastry or bagel, and headed toward their weapon lockers before they went downstairs to the garage to claim their vehicles.
SCTF Lonely Hearts Hour was over, and they were at work now.
Crosby, who had been very nervous about taking overwatch duties, was actually stellar at his job, because they hadn’t gotten more than two blocks when they got a call from Elaine.
“Hey, Gideon, long time no see!”
“Hey, Elaine,” Gideon said in genuine pleasure over the SUV’s intercom. “Good to hear from you.” He hadn’t seen her since the night of his get-together—the night Joey Carlyle had come to his bed and had obliterated the thought of any other potential partner from Gideon’s mind.
“You have some time to talk?” Elaine asked, and Gideon risked a glance at Joey, who gave him an absolutely flat, expressionless face back.
“We’re on our way to a call,” Gideon apologized. “You caught us in transit. Elaine, Joey Carlyle. Joey, Elaine Aiello, Chief Medical Examiner of New York.”
“We’ve met,” Joey said, his voice as flat as his eyes. “What can Gideon do for you, Ms. Aiello?”
Gideon’s eyebrows went up. Elaine might not recognize his very purposeful distancing, but Gideon did.
“That case you’re checking out,” she said. “The two trans girls in Brooklyn?”
“Missing for fourteen hours,” Gideon recited, a chill in his stomach. “We’re heading to interview the LGBTQ shelter right now.”
“I’d suggest you detour here,” Elaine said, no nonsense. “I don’t have your girls, for which I’m grateful, but I do have a body that came in last week and hasn’t been claimed, and you might want to take a look.”
Next to him, he felt Joey’s active hostility begin to ebb away.
“We’ll be there in ten,” he said, and Joey—who wasn’t Catholic in the least—crossed himself.
“Oh God,” he muttered. “Here it comes. And I thought Crosby was bad.”
“Crosby is bad,” Gideon muttered, slamming on his brakes, taking a hole on his left, and racing to cut in front of a car four cars ahead of where they’d just been. “I’m good. And I’m faster than Crosby!”
They made it in seven, and the smoldering hostility from Carlyle had completely disappeared.
IF THIS bitch put her hand on Chadwick’s sleeve one more time, Joey was going to stuff her in her own goddamned hurt locker.
Elaine Aiello was lovely, blond, fortyish, which put her a few years older than Chadwick, but most people wouldn’t notice the difference. She had a charming smile, kind manners, and was very concerned over SCTF’s missing girls.
And she had reason to be, Joey grudgingly admitted after he saw the body.
The girl’s makeup had been smeared off her face when she’d been brought in, and her wig had been ripped off, as had her corset, leaving bleeding crescents on the thin, breastless chest where the underwires had dug in.
She’d been anally violated, and her genitals had been taped to her thighs with duct tape, which had been torn off brutally, ripping hair and skin.
Aiello’s compassion for her dead victim was absolutely heartbreaking to witness, which was the only reason Carlyle hadn’t killed her yet.
“She showed up a week and a half ago,” Aiello said, covering the body and asking her dieners to return it to its spot in the refrigerator racks.
The drawers were for active cases. The racks were awaiting identification or disposal.
It wasn’t pretty—or dignified—but it was a small bit of land with a lot of dead bodies, and space was at a premium. “COD, asphyxia.”
“Manner of death?” Chadwick asked, seeming to ignore the way her hand rested on the bend of his elbow as he tapped notes into his phone.
“It appears as though her face was held in sand,” Aiello said.
“Which is a horrible, horrible way to die. But I brought you in because it looks as though she’d been held and abused for a good two days—or a gawdawful two days—and that could give you a small window to find your missing girls.
Also because the sand is specific, and I’ll send my lab results to your point man when they come back in an hour. ”
“You really put a fire under the lab,” Gideon said in pleased surprise.
“The minute I saw your case run across my feed,” she verified, and her swallow of anguish was very real.
“My youngest sibling was trans,” she said softly.
“He… he walked into a bar for a drink, and somebody spotted his binder and….” She shook her head.
“He died two days later of a brain hemorrhage, and my parents buried him under his deadname. This hits close. Nobody’s looking for her,” she said, her eyes overfilling, and Carlyle hated her even more because he didn’t hate her at all.
He disappeared for a moment, running out of the cold room to the vending machines, and he came back with a water as she and Gideon were entering the corridor.
“Here,” he said, producing a bit of toilet paper he’d grabbed while he’d been at it. “Sorry. Couldn’t find any tissues.”
“There’s some in my office,” she said, her voice clogged as she took the tissues. “But thank you. That’s kind.” She wiped her eyes carefully and blew her nose, then accepted the water. “Both of you—I know you’ve got to run, but let me know if I can do anything else.”
“Where was the body found?” Gideon asked.
“Under the carousel at Adventure Park,” she responded. “It was shipped to Manhattan because they don’t have any special-victims facilities or personnel.”
“We’ve gotten that impression,” Carlyle growled. “Our victims disappeared from Bed-Stuy, and the officer who took their guardian’s statement was—”
“A piece of work,” Aiello confirmed. “Yeah, my friend who works in Bed-Stuy wanted better for our girl in there.” She gave a weak smile. “And lucky me, I got you guys.” Her smile dimmed. “Bring them home, okay?”
“We’ll do our best,” Gideon said and kissed Aiello on a messy cheek.
Then he turned, and Joey stuck to his heels as he strode toward their vehicle, already on the phone with Crosby to alert the rest of the team.