Apprentice in Death (In Death 43)

“Not nearly the same.”

While she agreed with the empty, she cleared the first level—living area, kitchen, dining, a home office, and a kind of family entertainment area.

The house smelled of the spicy rust-and-pumpkin-colored flowers on the dining room table. Some sort of board on the kitchen wall held kid art—weird stick figures, trees with blobs of green representing leaves. A kind of chart that listed duties—chores, she corrected—like clearing the table, setting it, making beds.

Beside the chart someone had pinned a Christmas photo. Zoe Younger, Lincoln Stuben, Zach Stuben, and Willow Mackie in a group in front of a festive tree, presents stacked beneath.

All smiled but Willow, who stared into the camera with hard green eyes and the faintest hint of a smirk.

“Arms folded.” Eve tapped the picture. “There’s defiance there. The boy? He looks happy enough to do handsprings for a few hours, and the parents look happy, content. Her? That’s a fuck-you stare.”

“Indeed it is, and I suspect Mira would add she’s separated herself—the folded arms, the bit of distance while the other three are all touching. Then again, fifteen? It’s an age, isn’t it, to consider your parents the enemy.”

“Hard for us to say. The ones we had were the enemy. But, on the surface anyway, it looks like these two worked to give happy and stable. The house is clean, but it’s not sterile or perfect. Kid-type cereal box on the counter, a couple dishes in the sink, the boy’s skids under a chair in the living area, somebody’s sweater on the back of a chair over there.”

He glanced over—hadn’t noticed. “You’re a wonder.”

“I’m a cop,” she corrected. “You’ve got this task chart—everybody does their share, and that’s probably a good thing. Kid’s weird drawings displayed. The family Christmas picture.”

She took one more look around. “Reads normal, except it isn’t. Under the surface, it isn’t.”

They went upstairs to the second floor, cleared that: the master suite, the attached office, the boy’s room—a minor disaster area with strewn toys, vid games, clothes. A guest room identified as such by its pristine, unlived-in feel, then the girl’s.

And there was a third floor, a kind of casual family area for watching screen, hanging out—which the scatter of games proved they did—with a small kitchenette and a half bath.

Eve headed straight back down to Willow’s room.

Bed, sloppily made, and with none of the fussy pillows or weird stuffed animals Eve had encountered in other teenagers’ rooms. A desk and comp under the window, a lounge chair, some shelves.

Posters on the walls. Some music group all in black with snarling faces and lots of tats. The rest were weapons, or someone holding weapons. Knives, banned guns, blasters.

“Clear where her interests are,” Eve commented, moving to the closet.

A few girlie dresses—some with the tags still on them. Most of the clothes ran to black or dark colors, rougher styles.

“There’s an order in here,” she observed. “She knows where she puts her things, wants everything in its place. And if her mother or her brother poke around in here, she knows it.”

Roarke had already started on the computer. “She has this passcoded, and fail-safed. A very intricate job for someone her age.” He pulled out the desk chair and sat to work.

Eve started on the dresser. Plain underwear, winter socks, sweaters, sweats, all organized without looking overly so.

Purposely, she thought. Yes, she’d know if her mother shifted a pair of socks in the drawer.

“Keep going on that, but she wouldn’t leave anything in here she didn’t want her mother to find.”

“You’re sure of that?”

“She put a slide lock on the inside of the door—they took it off.” Eve nodded toward the door and the telltale marks. “Everything in here is arranged in a kind of system. I always did the same—in foster care, in state. You want to know where your things are so, if necessary, you can grab what matters most, is needed most, and run. Or so you know when they’ve done the look-through. I’m betting her mother does the regular look-through. Mother swallows the posters,” Eve continued as she kept searching. “Mak

ing the girl take them down only entrenches the interest, drives it deeper under. So she swallows that. But she’s had the room painted in this pale, pretty blue, buys dresses that aren’t worn—unless she forces that issue. She comes in, looking for something, anything, to give her more insight into her daughter. Or—more and—because she’s worried she’ll find illegals or weapons or a journal full of ugly thoughts.”

“Did you have one? A journal.”

“No, I kept my ugly thoughts to myself because they always . . . The brother’s room!”

When Eve walked out, Roarke arched his eyebrows. He finished bypassing the fail-safe, then rose to see what his cop was up to.

She sat at the boy’s comp in the middle of his boy mess.