“Come on.” With a laugh, Peabody pushed her shades back in place. “Statue of Liberty,” she pointed out. “She’s the best.”
Eve wouldn’t argue. She’d come close to dying inside the landmark, fighting radical terrorists bent on blowing it up. Even now, she could look at its lines, its grandeur, and see her husband, bleeding, clinging to a ledge outside the proud face.
They’d survived that one, she mused, and Roarke had diffused the bomb, saved the day. Symbols mattered, and because they’d fought and bled, people could chug by on the ferry every day and snap their pictures of freedom.
That was fine, that was the job. What she didn’t get was why Homicide had to zip off the island because the Department of Transportation cops couldn’t find a passenger.
Blood all over a bathroom and a missing woman. Interesting, sure, she decided, but not really her turf. In fact, it wasn’t turf at all. It was water. It was a big orange boat on the water.
Why didn’t boats sink? The errant thought reminded her that sometimes they did, and she decided not to dwell on it.
When the turbo approached that big orange boat, she noted people ranged along the rail on the tiers of decks. Some of them waved.
Beside her, Peabody waved back.
“Cut it out,” Eve ordered.
“Sorry. It’s knee-jerk. Looks like DOT sent out backup,” she commented, nodding toward the turbos at the base of the ferry with the Department of Transportation logo emblazoned on the hull. “I hope she didn’t fall over. Or jump. But somebody would notice that, right?”
“More likely she wandered off from the passenger areas, got lost and is currently trying to wander back.”
“Blood,” Peabody reminded her, and Eve shrugged.
“Let’s just wait and see.”
That, too, was part of the job-the waiting and seeing. She’d been a cop for a dozen years and knew the dangers of jumping to conclusions.
She shifted her weight as the turbo slowed, bracing on long legs while she scanned the rails, the faces, the open areas. Her short hair fluttered around her face while those eyes-golden brown, long and cop-flat-studied what might or might not be a crime scene.
When the turbo was secured, she stepped off.
She judged the man who stepped forward to offer his hand as late twenties. He wore the casual summer khakis and light blue shirt with its DOT emblem well. Sun-streaked hair waved around a face tanned by sun or design. Pale green eyes contrasted with the deeper tone, and added an intensity.
“Lieutenant, Detective, I’m Inspector Warren. I’m glad you’re here.”
“You haven’t located your passenger, Inspector?”
“No. A search is still under way.” He gestured for them to walk with him. “We’ve added a dozen officers to the DOT crew aboard to complete the search, and to secure the area where the missing woman was last seen.”
They started up a set of stairs.
“How many passengers aboard?”
“The ticker counted three thousand, seven hundred and sixty-one boarding at Whitehall.”
“Inspector, it wouldn’t be procedure to call Homicide on a missing passenger.”
“No, but none of this is hitting SOP. I have to tell you, Lieutenant, it doesn’t make sense.” He took the next set of stairs, glancing over at the people hugging the rail. “I don’t mind admitting, this situation is above my pay grade. And right now, most of the passengers are being patient. It’s mostly tourists, and this is kind of an adventure. But if we hold the ferry here much longer, it’s not going to be pretty.”
Eve stepped onto the next deck where DOT officials had cordoned off a path. “Why don’t you give me a rundown, Inspector?”
“The missing woman is Carolee Grogan, tourist from Missouri, on board with her husband and two sons. Age forty-three. I’ve got her description and a photo taken aboard this afternoon. She and her youngest went to get drinks, hit the johns first. He went into the men’s, and she was going into the women’s. Told him to wait for her right outside if he got out first. He waited, and she didn’t come out.”
Warren paused outside the restroom area, nodded to another DOT official on the women’s room door. “Nobody else went in or out either. After a few minutes, he called her on his ’link. She didn’t answer. He called his father, and the father and the other son came over. The father, Steven Grogan, asked a woman-ah, Sara Hunning-if she’d go in and check on his wife.”
Warren opened the door. “And this is what she found inside.”
Eve stepped in behind Warren. She smelled the blood immediately. A homicide cop gets a nose for it. It soured the citrusy/sterilized odor of the air in the black-and-white room with its steel sinks, and around the dividing wall, the white-doored stalls.
It washed over the floor, a spreading dark pool that snaked in trails across the white, slashed over the stall doors, the opposing wall, like abstract graffiti.
“If that’s Grogan’s,” Eve said, “you’re not looking for a missing passenger. You’re looking for a dead one.”
Two
“Record on, Peabody.” Eve switched on her own. “Dallas, Lieutenant Eve; Peabody, Detective Delia; Warren, DOT Inspector…”
“Jake,” he supplied.
“On scene aboard Staten Island Ferry.”
“It’s the Hillary Rodham Clinton,” he added. “Second deck, port side, women’s restroom.”
She cocked a brow, nodded. “Responding to report of missing passenger, Grogan, Carolee, last seen entering this area. Peabody, get a sample of the blood. We’ll need to make sure it’s human, then type it.”
She opened the field kit she hadn’t fully believed she’d need for Seal It. “How many people have been in and out of here since Grogan was missed?”
“Since I’ve been on board, just me. Prior, to the best of my knowledge, Sara Hunning, Steven Grogan and two ferry officers on board.”
“There’s an Out of Order sign on the door.”
“Yeah.”
“But she came in anyway.”
“Nobody we’ve spoken to can absolutely confirm. She told the kid she was going in.”
Sealed, Eve stepped into the first of the four stalls, waved a hand over the sensor. The toilet flushed efficiently. She repeated the gesture in the other three stalls, with the same results.
“Appears to be in order.”
“It’s human,” Peabody told her, holding up her gauge. “Type A Negative.”
“Some smears, but no drag marks,” Eve murmured. She gestured toward a narrow utility closet. “Who opened that?”
“I did,” Jake told her. “On the chance she-or her body-was in there. It was locked.”
“There’s only one way in and out.” Peabody walked around to the sink area. “No windows. If that’s Carolee Grogan’s blood, she didn’t stand up and walk out of here.”
Eve stood at the edge of the blood pool. “How do you get a dead body out of a public restroom, on a ferry in the middle of the harbor, under the noses of more than three thousand people? And why the hell don’t you leave it where it dropped in the first place?”
“It’s not an answer to that,” Jake began, “but this is a tourist boat. It doesn’t carry any vehicles, has extra concession areas. People tend to hug the rails and look out, or hang in a concession and snack as they watch out the windows. Still, it’d take a lot of luck and enormous cojones to cart a bleeding body along the deck.”
“Balls maybe, but nobody’s got that kind of luck. I’ll need this room sealed, Inspector. And I want to talk to the missing woman’s family, and the witness. Peabody, let’s get the sweepers out here. I want every inch of this room covered.”
Eve considered Jake’s foresight in having the Grogan family sequestered in one of the canteen’s solid. It kept them away from other passengers, gave them seats, and access to food and drink. That, she assumed, had kept the kids calm.