He brushed a kiss on her brow. "It'd be a great favor to me if you'd try. Just think of it as a kind of nickname, that's what I'm doing yet. Now if you need to work, I'll make your excuses."
"Nothing much left for me to do but wait. Mostly waiting now for the media to hit, and the feds to scramble. Departmentally, the case is essentially closed. Except, I was going to ask you to get me schematics, blueprints on the Center. If the base isn't at the school, I'm betting it's there. Maybe auxiliaries scattered. But there's got to be an operation center."
"I can do that. I can get a search started, and check in on it by remote."
"That'd be good. And maybe we could run another search and match on Deena. Use the image from the discs from Brookhollow. Possibly she's got more ID with that basic appearance. Could get lucky."
"But the case is essentially closed," he said dryly.
"Departmentally. But I'm da
mned if this is getting away from me until I've tried every avenue."
T
here were more of them. Eve let names and faces buzz through her brain. It seemed there was at least one of every specimen, from seventy years to less than that many days. Every one of them was inclined to talk.
As Scan seemed determined to shadow her every move, she concluded that young boys were much like cats. They insisted on giving their company to those who most feared or distrusted them.
As for her cat, Galahad made an appearance, regally ignored everyone under four feet until he clued in that this variety of human was more likely to drop food on the floor, or sneak him handouts. He ended in a gluttonous coma, tubby belly up under a table.
She escaped the party Roarke escorted out for what Scan called the city tour, and with her head ringing from endless conversation, slipped up to her office.
The case wasn't closed, she thought, until it was closed.
She sat at her desk, ordered the data from Roarke's unit, and studied the blueprints on record for the Icove Center.
There could be others, and Roarke agreed. His computer would continue to search for unrecordeds. For now, she'd work with these.
God knew it was enough.
"Computer, delete all public areas."
She crossed back and forth in front of the screens, studying the accesses, the floor space.
Because it was there. She was sure of it now. It was ego as well as convenience. He'd have based his most personal project in the enormous center that bore his name.
That's where he spent his free time. Those days and evenings never booked. Just a quick walk or drive from home.
"Delete patient areas. Hell of a lot of space yet, for labs, for staff sectors, for administration. Wasting my time, probably wasting my time," she muttered. "Feds'll run through the place like ants in another day, two at the most."
The NYPSD couldn't lock it down. There were civilian patients to consider, privacy laws to wrestle, and the sheer size of the place would make a reasonable search all but impossible.
But the feds would have the juice for it, and the enhanced equipment. Probably should leave this end to them. Let them wrap it up.
"Screw that. Computer, give me lab areas, one at a time, beginning with highest security. Unilab's got some research on this site, some of the mobiles must have pieces of the project," she said quietly when the new image came up. "But how do you find which ones without slapping a lock on all of them?"
Which meant legal wrangles from every country where they had facilities. Civil suits, undoubtedly, from staff and patients.
"They're mobile. Good networking tool, so maybe one of the ways they move graduates from school to placement. Maybe. Nobel Prize, my ass-they're going to be shut down before this is over."
She swung around at the sound in her doorway. Sinead stopped, backing out.
"I'm sorry. I've got myself turned around, and when I heard you talking I came this way. Then when I saw you were working, I tried to slip out again."
"I was just thinking out loud."
"Well now, I do the same all the time myself."