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“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?”
