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“No,” chuckling under my breath, I snag a missed photograph from the table and bring it up to study Jane’s face. Her perfect skin. What was once, I’m certain, a beautiful smile. “I seriously need you to draw for me. But I’ll make it easy on you and give you a photo.”
Silence hangs for an extended beat.
“You want me to draw someone you already have a picture of?”
“Yeah. But that’s because she’s dead. We don’t have an ID, and splashing her face all over the news isn’t cool. I was hoping you’d sketch us something a little nicer. Give her a smile. Open her eyes. Brush her hair down. Make her presentable, so when her mother sees her over toast and coffee, she doesn’t have a fucking heart attack on the spot.”
“Jesus.” A groan, then the sound of a hand raking over crackling stubble echoes through the line. “Shit. Fine. When do you need it?”
“Can you start now and have it done by the morning? I wanna release it before everyone goes to work and school. I can’t progress this case till I know who she is, and the longer it takes for you to get me a face, the longer a killer is out there with a newborn baby in his care.”
“A newborn baby?” His words come out sharper. Less fatigued. “She’s a new mom?”
“Literally. He took the baby from her belly moments before she was killed. We have no clue yet if the infant is alive. Was it wanted? Was it sold? Was it tossed in a fucking dumpster after the killer dumped the mom?”
“For fuck’s sake.” I hear feet on the floor. Light switches flicking on. The beeps that accompany a coffee machine coming to life. “Send the mom’s pictures. I’ll get started after I take a piss.”
“Thanks.” I set the photograph back on the table and shuck it toward Fletch. “Sending you an email now. I appreciate you, McNamara. Send her back the moment you’re done.”
“Yep. Talk to you later.”
Hanging up, I set my phone on the table and rest my elbows on either side. Then I glance across at Fletch, keeping my eyes open only through sheer willpower. “Who’s with Mia?”
“My neighbor has this kid.” He goes to work shuffling images into a collage for our artist and takes a picture with his phone. “She’s thirteen. It’s not ideal, but I didn’t have a lot of options, so I asked her mom if she could send Deena, the kid, up to sleep on my couch for a few hours. Mom is in the building. Deena’s big enough and responsible enough not to burn down my apartment. She has a phone on her and knows to call 9-1-1 and get herself and Mia the fuck out if something feels wrong.”
He snaps another picture. Another. He zooms closer, then backs away. “It’s not a long-term plan, and I would never put it on her to be there a whole night and do bedtime routine and wake-up. But it meant I could come to work tonight. Mia will never know I was gone, and Deena will make fifty bucks for her time.”
Satisfied with his work, Fletch stares at his phone for a moment and shoots off an email to McNamara. “I need to find a nanny soon, Arch. Juggling is hard.”
“Gloria wasn’t a good fit, but we’ll keep searching. When’s your next candidate coming in for an interview?”
“She was set for tomorrow at nine. But that was before we caught this case. I don’t know if—”
“We’ll make time.”
Pushing up from my chair and dropping my phone into my pocket, I search the war room and try to make sense of my next step.
We have a body. We have a mystery. We have our victim with the M.E.’s office, and wedon’thave an ID. The next logical step, while we wait for security footage of the area, and uniforms continue to scour the park for anything Fletch and I might’ve missed on the first run, is… sleep.
That realization feels wrong. Taking time to sleep in the early hours of an investigation feels like I’ve missed something.
“I don’t know what else to do.” I drop my hands into my pockets and jiggle the keys in the right. “Usually, we work it through, but right now, we’re stuck until we have more.”
“Bed.” Reading my mind, Fletch snatches his phone and turns toward the door. “We can’t notify the family, because we have no fucking clue who they are. McNamara is sketching. Hewitt is prepping a news segment. Minka is with the body. And the baby…” He shrugs. “We don’t even know if it’s alive.”
“We could put an alert on the hospitals in the city. Any baby who turns up without papers is gonna be reported anyway, and whoever took the baby can’t seek medical help without throwing up flags. But it’s worth a shot. Either the kid was wanted, and is now in the care of Dad—or a buyer—or it wasunwanted, in which case, the guy probably already dumped the second body.”
“I’ll call the hospitals and put word out,” Fletch murmurs. “But there’s fuck-all else we can do till we identify her. Come on.”
He drags the door open and snags his coat as we pass. “I’d normally find a rack here and get a few hours, but I can’t do that now that I have Mia. And normally, you’d find a rack right beside mine, since we’re both toxic assholes who work too much. But if you don’t rescue Doctor Delicious from herself, what are the chances she’ll work till she drops?”
“A hundred percent.” Sighing, I follow my partner into the pit and head toward the escalators that stand in the gut of our building. “She’ll stay with Jane till we have a name.”
“And we won’t get a name for a few hours yet. Tonight was date night, wasn’t it?” He glances across at me with eyes swollen from exhaustion. “Don’t think I didn’t see her pretty dress.”
“Don’t look at her pretty dress,” I grumble in response. But my tone lacks any venom. Everyone knows Fletch looks at Minka. I’ve come to the point of accepting it. “We were having a nice time, too.”
“She admit she loves you yet?”
