In Death 16 - Portrait in Death

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.
     
     
The Urban Wars had crushed this part of the city, turned the projects into slums, and the streets into a battlefield. He remembered the aftermath only dimly. Most of it had been over and done before he'd been born.
     
     
But the consequences had lasted a generation.
     
     
Poverty and the thieves it bred still haunted this area. Hunger and the anger it fed lived here, day by day.
     
     
But it was coming back, slowly. The Irish knew all about wars, conflicts, hunger, and poverty. And they dealt with it, sang of it, wrote of it. And drank around it of an evening.
     
     
So, there was the Penny Pig. It had been a neighborhood pub when he'd been a boy and most of his neighbors were villains of one sort or the other.
     
     
He supposed it wouldn't be inaccurate to name him one of the villains.
     
     
It had been a haunt for him, and those he ran with. A place to go and have a pint and not worry about the cops coming in to roust you. There'd been a girl there he'd loved as much as he was able, and friends he'd valued.
     
     
All of them, dead and gone now, he thought as he stood outside the door. All but one. He'd come back to the Penny Pig, and the one friend alive from his boyhood. Maybe he'd find some of the answers.
     
     
He stepped inside, to the dark wood, the smokey light, the smell of beer and whiskey and cigarettes, and the sounds of rebel songs played low.
     
     
Brian was behind the bar, building a Guinness and holding a conversation with a man who looked to be older than dirt. There were a few at the low tables, drinking or having a sandwich. A miniscreen playing some Brit soap opera sat over the bar