Abandoned in Death

“If being a fuckhead was a crime, I’d have to lock up half of New York. And occasionally arrest myself.” - Eve Dallas to Roarke about Teegan Stone, Abandoned in Death

Abandoned in Death
Book Number	54
Release Date	February 08, 2022
Publisher	St. Martin’s Press
ISBN	ISBN 978-1250278210
Publication order
Previous	Forgotten in Death
Next	Desperation in Death

Plot Summary

The woman’s body was found in the early morning, on a bench in a New York City playground. She was clean, her hair neatly arranged, her makeup carefully applied. But other things were very wrong―like the tattoo and piercings, clearly new. The clothes, decades out of date. The fatal wound hidden beneath a ribbon around her neck. And the note: Bad Mommy, written in crayon as if by a child.

Eve Dallas turns to the department’s top profiler, who confirms what seems obvious to Eve: They’re dealing with a killer whose childhood involved some sort of trauma―a situation Eve is all too familiar with herself. Yet the clues suggest a perpetrator who’d be roughly sixty years old, and there are no records of old crimes with a similar MO. What was the trigger that apparently reopened such an old wound and sent someone over the edge?

When Eve discovers that other young women―who physically resemble the first victim―have vanished, the clock starts ticking louder. But to solve this case she will need to find her way into a hidden place of dim light and concrete, into the distant past, and into the cold depths of a shattered mind.

Spoiler warning! This article contains plot details about an upcoming episode.

Timeline

Story Dates: Wednesday, June 7 - Friday, June 9, 2061

Day 1 – Wednesday, June 7, 2061

Chapter 1

• BEFORE - Opens in the past (Early 2000’s). We’re inside the head of a woman (who we later come to find out is Lisa McKinney/Violet Fletcher) who is addicted to Oxy traveling around in her car with her young son in the back. She’s calling him “baby darling” and when she doesn’t do what he wants, he calls her “Bad Mommy.” The woman is contemplating suicide, and thinks to take her son with her. She gets him a drink and puts pills in it. As she’s driving, she spots a church and decides to take her sleeping son and leave him on the doorstep. Then she takes some pills and drives her car into a river.
• NOW (Current “In Death” time) we see 25-year-old Mary Kate Covino. She has been abducted and is chained up in a small, dark room with a cot in a basement. An older man comes into the room and is calling her “Mommy.” He speaks with a southern accent in a child’s voice. He wants her to call him “Baby Darling.” He starts having tantrums and yelling at her when she doesn’t act how he wants.
• Mary Kate starts learning about her captor as she interacts with him. Her captor switches back and forth between his little boy voice and that of a man’s (with no accent).
• Days go by in the basement and Mary Kate has no idea how long she has been held captive.
• At a certain point, Covino hears a woman screaming, starts screaming herself and her captor bursts into the room carrying a bloody knife. He tells her that “Number One” was bad and needed to be punished, and “Number Two” was cleaning up the mess. Covino finds out she is “Number Three” and is determined to do whatever it takes to stay alive.
• Next we see the killer cleaning up and dressing up “Number One.” He sews up her neck wound, washed her, styled her hair (he had cut it earlier), added makeup, gave her a manicure and pedicure, and added jewelry and her favorite clothes. He had already pierced her ears, navel and added a butterfly tattoo. After spritzing her with perfume, he then puts her in a van and dumps her on a bench in a public park with a sign make with crayon on construction paper that says “Bad Mommy.” It is 3:00 a.m.

Chapter 2

• Just before dawn, Eve enters the park and studies the body on the bench. She was found around 6:45 a.m. by an LC who thought she was sleeping. Officer Steppe was first on scene.
• She is identified as: Lauren Elder, female, age twenty-six. Bartender at a bar called Arnold’s. She went missing on the night of May 28th. Detective Norman caught the case. Victim has marks on her right wrist and left ankle. Eve smells perfume on her. Her tattoo is on the lower back and is described as a big butterfly, blue with yellow markings.
• The playground that Lauren was left at is the playground near Mavis and Leonardo's new house. This will be Bella’s playground.
• Eve and Peabody go to notify the victim’s cohab, Roy Mardsten. He tells them he filed a missing person’s report with a Detective Norman. Eve and Peabody also notify Lauren’s parents.
• Eve and Peabody interview Lauren's coworkers at Arnold’s.
• Eve has Peabody contact Norman to fill him in and get his files and also Mira for a consultation.
• Peabody shocks Eve by telling her she wants to get a tattoo one day. Eve expresses her opinion about voluntary self-mutilation.

Chapter 3

• Eve goes to the morgue and discusses the bodies and death with Morris. They conclude that the victim was similar to a doll or image that the perpetrator wanted to create. Morris feels the clothes, makeup and hairstyle are all from turn of the century.
• As Eve arrives back at Central, Peabody calls to tell her Mira can see her now. She suggests Eve ask Mira’s admin about her new grandchild to smooth the way.
• Eve fills Mira in on the details of the case so far. Mira says that the woman the killer wanted to re-create mattered. “There’s as much love here as hate. Maybe more.” They discuss possible reasons behind the kidnapping and killing.
• Up in the bullpen, Eve sees Nadine who brought a box of brownies. Nadine is concerned about the dump being near Mavis’s house. Eve gives Nadine info on how the victim was dressed and the tattoo, and asks Nadine to do some digging to possibly find the killer’s mother.
• Eve calls Mavis, tells her about the murder because the body was dumped in the same park Mavis takes Bella to. Eve asks her to be careful.

Chapter 4

• BEFORE - Flashback to the killer’s mother wandering around half dead. She remembers fighting to get out of the sinking car, but doesn’t remember anything about her life before that. After wandering about the woods for a few days, she finds a road, but then collapses. She’s found by an ER doctor named Joseph Fletcher.
• NOW - Detective Norman arrives and fills Eve in on his and Detective Marlboro’s investigation of Lauren Elder’s disappearance. They tracked her ink to within a half block of her apartment building when it went dead. Norman asks to continue to be involved in the investigation.
• On the way back to her office, Jenkinson fills here in on a case he is working with Reineke.
• Eve then meets with Yancy. She tells him she wants him to use photos of the victim to approximate what the killer’s mother might have looked like at different ages. She asks for decade by decade best guesses on the images. Regression from age 80 on down.
• Eve has a memory flash to her early childhood, playing with her mother’s makeup.
• Eve then goes to EDD to get someone started on a search for the mother and finds Jamie Lingstrom interning there. Jamie convinces Eve to give him the assignment. She also finds out he is splitting his internship between EDD and Roarke’s company.

Chapter 5

• Back in the bullpen, Peabody has been looking for other missing women that match the profile. One is Anna Hobe, who works at a Karaoke Bar called Mike’s Place. The other is Becca Muldoon, a dancer at the Honey Pot strip club.
• Eve and Peabody head over to the bar and talk to Anna’s co-workers, then walk the route to Anna’s apartment. They look around the apartment to see if any evidence was missed.
• Before leaving Anna’s apartment building, they run into one of her neighbors, Joslyn Rameriz, who tells them she saw a man standing across the street in the rain on the night Anna disappeared. She had been out of town, so was missed in the door to doors.

Chapter 6

• Eve looks out Joslyn’s window. All she could tell them was he got out of a car (or a van, or something else).
• Peabody and Eve then go to Mavis’s new house to check on the progress. Bella came to greet them in her official role as “Job Boss.” Lots of progress had been made on the yard and the house. Eve finds out that Roarke is “Supervisor of All” on the remodel.
• Eve offers to give Summerset to Mavis as a housewarming present.
• Eve and Roarke drive home as Eve updates Roarke on the case.
• Summerset asks Eve what she thinks of the house. After she tells him, he remarks that they are actually in agreement. He will mark the calendar.
• Eve looks at Roarke standing in the window to her terrace and tells him that if he had committed a crime under her, she would have done everything she could to have busted him. But she would still have fallen for him.

Chapter 7

• Eve sets up her murder board and discusses the case with Roarke over dinner.
• Roarke asks what he can do to help. Eve asks him to look for possible properties.
• BEFORE - Joe takes the injured woman to his home and allows her to live there while she heals. She refuses to go to a hospital. The woman is suffering from amnesia and cannot remember her past. She insists that she doesn’t care that she cannot remember the past and doesn’t want to know. He checks for any info on any missing persons reports for the woman, but finds none. She asks him to give her a name and he calls her Violet.
• NOW - Mary Kate is thinking about her captor. She decides she needs to get away. Her captor brings her food and she continues to interact with him.
• In an attempt to try and escape, she’s banging a metal pipe in frustration. When she stops, she hears someone else banging on the pipes. She tries to communicate with the person and learns that the other person is Anna (Hobe). They create a rough form of communication until Covino can’t talk anymore.

Chapter 8

• Eve is hitting a wall in the investigation. She goes into Roarke’s office to bug him. She’s rarely in his office and starts pacing and sitting on his new couch. While there, she starts thinking about their upcoming anniversary. Dallas starts asking Roarke a bunch of questions about his office trying to figure out what she should get him. One thing leads to another and they end up doing the thing in his office.
• During the night, Eve has a dream about herself as a child and her mother. She was putting on makeup to be pretty like her mother and ended up being physically abused. Suddenly she is “outside” at a playground. She didn’t know what it was, but had fun on the toys. The little girl learns to slide. When she landed, a woman was there. It was the current Eve and young Eve. Eve confronts her mother and tells young Eve to take one more slide because she will have to go back.

Day 2 – Thursday, June 8, 2061

• Roarke and Galahad wake Eve from her nightmare. She then decides to go down for a workout and then ends with doing some meditating.
• During breakfast they talk about their vacation (Ireland and possibly Greece) and then Eve leaves for work.

Chapter 9

• Eve starts her work day at the lab and starts with Harvo. Harvo gives her information on the clothing that the victim was wearing as well as the hair products. She then takes her over to the tech that is working on identifying the make up used. That tech’s name is Dawber and he gives Eve information on the perfume and makeup.
• Eve and Peabody then go back into the field. They stop by a drug store to take a look at makeup. Peabody shows Eve how they have a system where you can scan your own face in and see how makeup looks on you. Dallas wonders if you can do that same thing with a photo, thinking that maybe that’s what the killer has done.
• Back at Cop Central, Eve has Peabody start a run on vintage clothing. Detective Norman stops by to let them know Becca Muldoon has returned safe and sound. They then receive a notification of another missing person, Mary Kate Covino.

Chapter 10

• BEFORE - Flashback to the killer‘s mother again. Now she is married to Joe and they have one baby daughter. Before they married, she changed her name to Violet Blank because her life before Joe found her was blank.
• NOW - Mary Kate wakes up from a drugged sleep and realizes that the killer has given her a tattoo and earrings and a belly ring.
• Eve and Peabody go to question Mary Kate’s roommate (Cleo Bette) who tells them Mary Kate was supposed to go on a weekend trip with her boyfriend but the boyfriend dumped her. Mary Kate never came back home after that, and also never went to the vacation spot or canceled the vacation.
• Eve and Peabody then go to question the boyfriend, Teegan Stone.

Chapter 11

• Stone turns out to be a big asshole who was essentially using Mary Kate for free labor and free sex. Peabody labels him “Teeg the Dick.” They take Mary Kate’s suitcase into evidence.
• After that they go to Covino’s workplace and one of her coworkers, Jim Mosebly, is a suspect; Dallas tells Peabody to get all the information she can on this guy.

Chapter 12

• Back at Central, Eve has a briefing with her team in the conference room to go over what they’ve found so far in this investigation, specifically what they found on Mosebly. She sends various members of her team off to visit residences from the results of Roarke's searches.
• After shift, Eve takes Roarke with her to question Mosebly. She questions him, searches his home, then essentially decides he’s innocent after hearing the whole story of his mother.

Chapter 13

• After they leave Mosebly’s house, Roarke takes Eve to the pizza place where she had her first slice of New York pizza.
• Dallas tells Roarke she wants him to possibly buy some real estate. She wants him to buy the building where Teegan Stone owns the bar and has his apartment so he can be evicted.
• After dinner, they go home and Eve works more on the case. She comes up with a theory that the killer might have put in additional toilets for each holding room, and Roarke says he will look for properties that have recently installed multiple toilets. Eve talks about the killer being “two people.” One the disciplined adult and the other a spoiled brat.
• They go to bed, but Eve can’t turn her mind off, so Roarke helps her out with sex.

Day 3 – Friday, June 9, 2061

• Very early the next morning, Eve gets a call from dispatch about another murder. She figures it is Anna Hobe, and she’s right.

Chapter 14

• The killer had placed Hobe’s body outside of a children’s museum, just outside of the radius they had set up for patrols.
• She was found by Kylo Grishom. Kylo had snuck out of his house to go see his girlfriend and saw the body on his way back home. He’s afraid of what his mother will say, but Eve tells him she will talk to his mother. (When she does, she comes away with a blueberry muffin.)
• They notice some differences in the makeup and clothing. This time, the killer planned her death because he slit her throat from behind.

Chapter 15

• Eve and Peabody go to the morgue to talk to Morris about Anna Hobe’s body. He tells them she had bit her nails and the killer had covered them with fake nails. Peabody recognizes the nails as expensive ones you would get at a salon. Peabody calls Trina to ask if she would check her sources for recent purchases by older men.
• They go to the lab to ask Harvo about the clothes and then head to Dawber’s area to see what he has found on the makeup. Eve tells him that the fake nails are a priority.
• They head over to Dezi’s area to ask about the shoes but are waylaid by Dickhead. Dezi entertains them behind Dickie’s back. Eve threatens Dickie if he stops any reports from coming out in a timely manner.
• BEFORE - Violet and Joe have three children together, and she’s become the perfect wife and mother. But she occasionally has nightmares of drowning, a child screaming for her, and a sense of utter despair.
• NOW - Mary Kate woke in a different room. She was now in a bigger room with a kitchen, sofa, easy chair, bed and a real bathroom. Most important - she saw a set of stairs. This led her to hopes of getting out. After her captor brought her breakfast and left, she looked for a pipe to contact Anna. Seeing scratches on the pipe, she realizes Anna is dead.

Chapter 16

• Eve moves to the conference room to update her boards.
• Peabody comes in with more information on fake nails. As Mira comes in, they explain about the nails and the killer’s need for perfection. Mira explains her thoughts about the child and his need for love and the man and his need for revenge.
• Nadine and Quilla surprise them by walking into the conference room. Nadine smugly announces she found the unsub’s mother. At the same moment, Jamie walks in announcing he also identified the mother. Jamie, Quilla, and Nadine play tag team on how they each found her. They provide Eve the known history of Lisa McKinney and her son.
• They determine that the killer will be 63 in November.
• Eve then contacts Yancy and gives him Lisa’s image, asking him to age project it.

Chapter 17

• Peabody reports to Eve that Dawber has had a comp glitch in the lab but should get the nail analysis done in 30 minutes.
• They try to figure out how the abandoned boy ended up in New York.
• Yancy starts sending in age progressed images on Lisa McKinney and Eve and Peabody start facial recognition searches.
• Dawber comes through with the nail analysis and Peabody and Eve decide to head out and talk to vendors directly.
• Before they can leave, the facial recognition gets a match. Lisa McKinney is now Violet Blank Fletcher. As they examine her past and her marriage and children, they see she died the previous year. Eve figures that triggered the unsub.
• Instead of going out into the field, Dallas starts the process of talking to “Violet’s” children.
• Eve speaks to Violet’s daughter. The daughter doesn’t believe Eve and denies her mother was Lisa McKinney, but Eve “persuades” her that she was. Hard truths come out but Eve learns more about her past and asks for a copy of the suicide letter she was left.
• Eve and Peabody hash out their conversations with siblings. They start to realize that maybe after Joe Fletcher’s death, Violet may have remembered her earlier life and reached out to her “baby darling.”
• Peabody is excited to drive as they set off to check out nail suppliers.

Chapter 18

• Eve talks to the final brother and writes up a report of the conversations and they hit various suppliers with no success.
• Peabody braves telling Eve about house progress.
• Eve is seriously considering that Lisa/Violet actually suffered from long term amnesia.
• Eve determined that when Violet did a quick trip to Hilton Head she also spent three days in New York City.
• They speculate that before she died, Violet contacted the son she abandoned and that is what caused him to snap.
• Roarke stops in and Eve fills him in on the case. They are about to head home when one of the clerks at a nail supplier calls her back. She had talked to her coworker who said it was weird that she sold an old man a different nail kit in a similar color.
• Dallas now remembers the “comp glitch” from earlier.
• Roarke walks the clerk through sending Dallas the video feed.
• Eve has a shocked Peabody start a run on Dawber.
• Eve thinks - I looked right at him and thought it would be somebody like him.
• Dawber went into the foster system as John Church.
• The video feed comes through and confirms it is Dawber.
• Dallas contacts Jenkinson to back them up as they go to check out Dawber’s address.

Chapter 19

• The team heads out while Eve gets warrants going.
• Eve briefs Whitney - another person shocked and annoyed that they knew the unsub.
• Roarke starts a search for other properties using combinations of McKinney’s and Dawber’s names and history.
• The neighbor at Dawber’s apartment tells them he moved out months ago.
• To save time while working on the search results, Roarke invites the team into a nearby pub he owns.
• While the team chows down on prime eats, Dallas asks the team to describe Dawber. They come up with nebbishy, reliable, exacting, soft and alone.
• Roarke comes up with a solid hit on the house. They bring up the blueprints and start to plan out the op.

Chapter 20

• BEFORE - Violet can’t sleep after the unexpected death of Joe. One night, the memories flood back of the little boy she abandoned. She despairs over what she did to him and the lies her mind had hidden while she lived a good life with her new family.
• She wrote letters to all of her children.
• She bought a house and provided a bank account to the son she had abandoned.
• Then she took pills and went to bed.
• NOW - Mary Kate hears her captor come back. She knew she had to find a way to placate him or she would be the next one to die. She decided that she needed to treat him as her mother had treated her own children.
• He comes in in a bad mood. She works to get him out of the mood. Her manipulations on him start and they appear to be making progress.
• Dawber mentions he is going to bring another mommy home tonight.
• She convinces him to play the memory game so she can see what he has in his pockets.
• Outside - the team studies the house and looks for heat sources.
• Jamie is used to distract Dawber so that they can enter the house.
• Dawber gets upset when the doorbell rings and heads upstairs to get rid of him.
• Eve pushes into the house and tackles Dawber. Jenkinson and Reineke get into the basement and Mary Kate (who had gotten herself loose) runs into Jenkinson’s arms.
• Dallas has Jenkinson take Mary Kate to Central and has Mira and Louise called in to look at her.

Chapter 21

• Dawber has an office on the second floor of his house. In it, Dallas finds his victim boards. He had researched them very thoroughly. He had also documented his captives including after he had killed them and prepped them. He had already researched victims four, five, and six, and was moving on four that night.
• Reineke lets Eve know that Dawber has four pairs of Spider-Man pajamas in his size, what he was wearing as a child when abandoned.
• Eve states that he is not crazy. He was very focused and did a lot of planning.
• Before they leave the house, Jamie brings them the letter that Lisa McKinney wrote him before she died.
• Peabody reads the letter out loud as they head back to Central. This allows Eve to understand a little bit of what Dawber must be thinking.
• Eve goes in to interview Mary Kate, who has been tended to by Louise and fed out of Eve’s AutoChef.
• Eve documents the tattoo and piercings so Mary Kate can have them removed, then Dr. Mira arrives and Mark Kate starts telling them the story of her captivity.
• Eve has Peabody contact Berenski to identify the contents of syringes Dawber had filled.
• After Mary Kate heads home, Eve has Peabody come back to the conference room with her and Dr. Mira to plan out the interrogation.

Chapter 22

• Roarke walks in before Eve heads off to interrogation. When she asks how he is so quiet, he says, “Darling, I walk on air when I’m near you.” He also brought her details of all of Dawber’s plans.
• Right before they headed to interview, Dick Berenski came storming into the bullpen and chewing out Eve for thinking Dawber was capable of doing this. He is very outraged until Eve starts telling him some hard truths, which Mira confirms, as he calms down. They let him go to observation as he still believes they have the wrong person.
• Eve, Peabody, and Mira head into interview with Dawber. He starts out calm and in total denial. Then he flips a switch into his bratty little kid persona. As he gets promised a soda and ice cream if he behaves, he flips back into Dawber. Mira points out that his flip was too rushed. She says that he doesn’t have the multiple personalities he is trying to pull off.
• Eve starts pushing his planning and his mother's other family at him and his actions start to crack. He breaks and starts telling them his mother was weak, but only loved him. He knows she was wrong and he can have her back his way.
• Peabody leaves interview and Dawber calms down and pretends he doesn’t know what she is talking about. He breaks down and flips into his little boy persona again. After more pushing by Eve, he comes back with his fake confused adult personality. He asks Mira to help him. But she states that she’d try - if anything he said was actually the truth.
• Eve starts pushing on the women he stalked and captured. She asks why he killed them. In the end they get a full confession. Mira concludes that he is a psychopath with other issues and disorders, but not legally insane.
• Dallas stops to talk with Berenski. He wants to help Dawber, but Eve convinces him not to and explains that he fooled a ton of people.
• Eve goes back to her office and tells Roarke she is still up for wine, a walk, and the pond when they get home. She looks at her board and concludes they did their best.

Character List

List of Main Characters Appearing in this Book

• Eve Dallas
• Roarke

List of Secondary Characters Appearing in this Book

• David Baxter
• Detective Carmichael
• Uniform Carmichael
• Ryan Feeney
• Mavis Freestone
• Nadine Furst
• Galahad
• Jenkinson
• Leonardo
• Ian McNab
• Charlotte Mira
• Li Morris
• Delia Peabody
• Reineke
• Detective Santiago
• Lawrence Summerset
• Troy Trueheart
• Jack Whitney

List of Recurring Characters Appearing in this Book

• Bella Eve
• Dick Berenski
• Callendar
• Louise Dimatto
• Harvo
• Jake Kincade
• Sean Lannigan
• Jamie Lingstrom
• Quilla Magnum
• Dennis Mira
• Charles Monroe
• Cher Reo
• Chief Tibble
• Trina
• Anna Whitney
• Detective Yancy

List of Minor Characters Appearing in this Book

• Andi
• Cleo Bette
• Carrie
• Mary Kate Covino
• Ms. Covino
• Darci
• Andrew Dawber
• Dezi
• Linny Dowell
• Senator Edward Fletcher
• Dr. Joella Fletcher
• Dr. Joseph Fletcher
• Violet Fletcher née Lisa McKinney
• Kylo Grishom
• Elise Grommet
• Ivy
• Irene Jasper
• Officer Kotter
• Bo Kurtis
• Londa
• Roy Mardsten
• Morah
• James Mosebly
• Detective Norman
• Officer Pinsky
• Joslyn Rameriz
• Mike Schotski
• Sly
• Teegan Stone
• Sherry Wozinski

List of Peripheral Characters Appearing or Mentioned in this Book

• Alistar
• Bandi
• Big Beau Boswell
• Brad
• Cecil (dog)
• Lorcan Cobbe
• Carter Covino
• Tara Covino
• Darlie
• Elyse Dawber
• Lloyd Dawber
• DeBois
• Lauren Elder
• Chasen Q. Fletcher
• Gina
• Gran
• Reverend Horace Greenspan
• Anna Hobe
• Holly
• Jack
• Jan
• Janis
• Phillip Jasper
• Jonah
• Ken
• Alice Lingstrom
• Lulu (dog)
• Margie (’link)
• Margie (neighbor)
• Detective Marlboro
• Buford McKinney
• Harry McKinney
• Tiffany Boswell McKinney
• Josie McNamara
• Adalaide Mosebly
• Reverend Elijah Mosebly
• Becca Muldoon
• Nat
• Nonna
• Zeke Peabody
• Pop
• Pugs (dog)
• Redman, SVU
• Rhonda
• Wayne Kyle Ribbet
• Marshall Riggs
• Meg Roarke
• Patrick Roarke
• Liza Rysman
• Selma
• Spice (dog)
• Stella
• Officer Steppe
• Sugar (dog)
• Sylvie
• Richard Troy
• Buddy Wilcox
• Zel

Memorable Quotations

• “Murder, at least, Eve understood.”
• “Moms are just cops with kids.” - Eve to Peabody when Peabody claimed, “Only moms have the metaphorical eyes in the back of their heads.”
• “The world would be better off if more people minded their own business instead of trying to run other people’s lives.” - Eve to Roarke

YANNIs

• June 7, 2061 is actually a Tuesday, not Wednesday.
• Andrew Dawber’s hair was either white: “snow-white hair” or gray: “neatly cropped gray hair” and “a gray-haired man”
• Adalaide Mosebly spent either “the last sixteen years at the Suskind Home” or “a dozen years”
• Mary Kate Covino was called Mary Alice Covino once in Chapter 17.