Eve stepped in front of her. “I’m Lieutenant Dallas, NYPSD.” There was a communal groan at the announcement, and two students edged toward the rear doors. “Hold it! I’m not interested in what you’ve got in your pockets or your bloodstream, but anybody goes out those doors, I will be.”
Movement stopped.
“I have a picture. I want you to come up here, one at a time, and look at it. I want to know if you know this girl, have seen her, or have any information on her. You.” She pointed at a boy in a black unitard and baggy shorts. “Here.”
He swaggered up. “Nope.”
“Look at the picture, smart-ass, or this is going to turn into an Illegals sweep.”
He smirked at her, but he looked. “Don’t know her, never seen her. Can I go, Officer?”
“Lieutenant. No. Stand over there.” She pointed to the right wall, then gestured to a girl, also in black.
She started up, flicking a toothy grin at the boy now lounging against the wall, as though they shared a private joke. But when she looked at the photo, the humor drained out of her face.
“On the news. I saw her on the news. It’s that girl from Columbia who was killed. Like Kenby.”
The murmuring started from the crowd of students, and Eve let it roll. “That’s right. Did you know Kenby?”
“Sure. Sure I did. Everybody did. Man, oh man, this sucks so large.”
“Have you seen this girl before?”
Even as she shook her head, someone called out. “I have. I think.”
Eve shifted, looked at the boy who stood with his hand raised. “Come up here. Go stand over there,” she told the girl.
“I sort of think I saw her.” The boy wore the black uniform, and a forest of silver loops along the curve of his ear. He had a trio of matching hoops at the peak of his left eyebrow.
“What’s your name?”
“Mica, Mica Constantine. Kenby and I had a lot of classes together, and we hung out sometimes. We weren’t real tight, but sometimes we partied with the same group.”
“Where did you see her?”
“I think I saw her. When I saw her on the news reports, she looked sort of familiar. And when Kenby—when I heard about what happened to him, like with her, I thought, hey, isn’t that the chick from the club?”
Eve felt the vibe at the base of her spine. “What club?”
“Make The Scene. Some of us go there sometimes, and I think I’ve seen her there. I think I remember seeing her and Kenby dancing a couple of times. I’m not absolute about it, just it seems to me.”
“When do you think you saw them together?”
“Not together. I mean they weren’t like a thing. I think I saw them dancing a couple of times, like last month maybe. I haven’t been to the club in a while. Only reason I remember is they looked good, you know. I’m taking this class to learn how to free up my body, how to move it. So I was watching the dancing especially, and they really moved.”
“I bet other people noticed them.”
“I guess.”
When she reconnected with Peabody, they had three witnesses between them who’d seen Rachel and Kenby dancing at the club.
“They didn’t come in together, sit together, leave together,” Eve summed up as she headed back downtown. “A few casual dances, over a few weeks in the summer, from what we have so far. No way it’s a coincidence.”
“Someone saw them there, and that cemented it?”
“Saw them there, or saw them at some point, somewhere else. Individually or together. They both liked to dance, so maybe they hooked up elsewhere. Both college kids. She might’ve gone to see one of his performances. Diego and Hooper both frequent the club. Odds are either or both of them saw these two together. We’ll sweep Columbia again, see if any of Rachel’s friends or classmates remembers seeing her with Kenby. Or mentioning him.”
While Eve tugged on the next line, Roarke walked down the streets of South Dublin. The area had once been as familiar to him as his own face. There’d been changes since his youth, plenty for the good.