In Death 58 - Random in Death, page 2
“We’re going to need Child Services,” she said, and pulled out her ’link. “Even if it looks like an accidental OD, we’ll need someone. Two’s better.”
“Someone else is about to have their Saturday night screwed.”
She spotted the cruiser and the ambulance in front of the club. Easy to recognize the club, she thought, as it had a rainbow sign lit up with the name, and music notes jumping around it.
“Just double it beside the cruiser.”
“Loading zone just there,” he said, and pulled into it. “I’ll get your field kit.”
She flipped on the On Duty light, got out to take a look at the club.
The graffiti on the old brick seemed purposeful. Guitars, drums, a bunch of figures crowded together. Dancing, she decided, and walked to the uniform stationed at the front door.
“Lieutenant,” she said.
“Officer.”
“No one’s attempted to go in or come out since we arrived. The owner, apprised of the situation, is keeping things calm inside by having patrons join the band onstage, like an open mic. Mr. Kincade and Ms. Furst are still in the alley with the victim and the medicals. My partner is there.”
“That works. I’ve notified Child Services to assist with any interviews involving minors. You can direct them to the alley.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Stand by, Officer.”
Taking the field kit from Roarke, Eve walked around the building to the alley.
Halfway down, the medicals stood with the uniform. Nadine stood with Jake, hands linked, a few feet away.
When Nadine spotted her, Eve held up a hand to keep her back.
“Stand by, Officer. What do we have?” Eve asked the MTs.
“Victim’s fifteen to seventeen years old. We didn’t go into her purse for her ID, Lieutenant, to keep the scene as clean as possible.”
“Appreciated.”
“Can’t give you a definite COD, but it looks like an OD. Got a blue tinge to her skin, and the needle mark’s fresh. But I suspect a used needle due to the redness around it. She doesn’t have any other visible marks. Looks to be a healthy weight, decent muscle tone. The ME’ll be able to give you a better picture.
“We responded at twenty-three-oh-four, and she was already gone. Jake, ah, Mr. Kincade was attempting CPR when we arrived. But she was gone.”
“All right. Again, I appreciate you preserving the scene as much as possible. I’ll take it from here.”
The second MT looked over at Jake. “You did everything you could.”
Eve looked down at the body. Five-three maybe, weighing a buck and some small change. Dressed for fun with a tiny, shiny bag worn cross-body.
Eve opened her kit to seal up. “Roarke, why don’t you take a walk with Jake and Nadine? Get them some coffee.” She looked at Jake—pale, his eyes full of grief and a hint of shock. “I’ll need to talk to you, both of you, but right now, I need to take care of her.”
“She just…she just stumbled out the door, and—”
“I’m sorry this happened, Jake, but you need to leave her with me now.”
“Come on, Jake.” Nadine slid an arm around his waist. “We have to let Dallas do what she needs to do.”
When Roarke led them away, she crouched and carefully opened the little bag.
A mini ’link, lip stuff, her ID, a key card, a little cash, and a disc marked DEMO FOR JAKE KINCADE.
She thought: Well, shit.
“ID in the purse on the victim is for Jenna Harbough, age sixteen, mixed race. Brown and brown, five feet, three inches, a hundred and six pounds. Photo matches.”
Minus the pink tips in the brown hair, and the life in the big brown eyes.
After bagging the contents of the purse for Evidence, she took out her Identi-pad to make it official.
“Prints match.” She read the address into the record, and realized it had to be next door to their friends Charles and Louise. “Parents, Shane and Julia Harbough, younger sibling, male, Reed, age twelve.”
She took out her gauges. “Time of death, twenty-two-fifty-eight.”
After putting on microgoggles, she leaned down to get a good look at the wound on the arm.
“Somebody jabbed me, she said, and yeah, that sounds accurate. The wound on the arm’s fresh. It’s also puffy, inflamed. Potentially, she could have self-inflicted, but there are no works on her person and no signs of illegals abuse. ME to confirm.”
A boyfriend or girlfriend, maybe, who pressured her into trying something new? A rebellious, youthful impulse that went terribly wrong?
He jabbed me.
Or something else.
Gently, she turned the body, found no visible wounds.
Sitting back on her heels, she took out her ’link, tagged Peabody. Then straightening up, contacted the morgue, the sweepers.
“Have you been inside, Officer?”
“Yes, Lieutenant, briefly.”
“An estimate of how many are in there?”
“Well, sir, it’s packed. Gotta be a couple hundred.”
“Okay. I need you to stand by here until the dead wagon comes to transport the victim. And the sweepers arrive to process this scene. After that, I’m likely to need you and your partner inside to help with crowd control.”
“Yes, sir. It’s a damn shame, Lieutenant. I’ve got a grandkid about her age. You hate to see a kid. I’ll look out for her until they come to take her.”
Since she wanted to interview Jake next, Eve walked back down the alley. She saw him with Nadine and Roarke standing by her vehicle. She stopped to give the second uniform instructions, then walked down.
“Nadine, how about you walk around the block with Roarke?”
“I don’t want to—”
“I need to talk to Jake. Just Jake. Then I need to talk to you. Just you.”
Nadine opened her mouth, then on a nod closed it again. She turned to Jake, lifted onto her toes, and kissed him.
As Roarke led Nadine away, Jake turned to Eve. “She thinks I’m going to fall apart, and she’s not far wrong. I couldn’t get her back, the girl.”
“Did you know her?”
“No. I saw her. I realized I’d seen her out on the floor, dancing. Right before the end of the set. She looked so happy.”
“You’d never seen her before tonight?”
“No.”
“Her name’s Jenna Harbough. Is that familiar?”
“No. Jenna.” He repeated it, softly, then pressed his fingers to his eyes.
If you took away the misery, he looked like the rock star he was. Faded jeans and black high-tops, black tee that showed off a damn good build, the careless mop of dark, blue-tipped hair.
But his misery hung in the air around him like a haze.
“I went out for some air. It’s frigging hot in the club. We were taking a fifteen-minute break between sets, so I went out, chugged down some water, got some air. And she stumbled out the alley door.”
“Stumbled?”
“Yeah.”
Eve heard him breathe in—the sound of a man steadying himself.
“She just sort of tripped out, you know? She said she’d been sick, and I figured she’d found a way to get some booze in. Glo’s got a hawk eye there, but you have to figure some will find a way if they want to bad enough. I guess she looked a little drunk because I figured she was. I was going to take her back inside, into the office, get Harve or Glo. They’d be pissed at her, but they’d take care of her, call her parents, whatever.”
He closed his eyes, and Eve let him have the silence. He was telling her what she needed to know without her asking.
“I didn’t notice the needle mark right away, I guess because I was looking at her face. She was so pale—but then she said, ‘He jabbed me. He jabbed me.’ Twice, like that. And I saw the mark, I saw she wasn’t white so much as that faint blue?”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah.” Now he passed a hand over his face. “I’d seen that before. On tour, one of the roadies. They brought him back, they got him in time and brought him back. But she just started to go down. I caught her before she hit. Her pulse was barely there, and she just…I called for an ambulance, but…
“I’ve never seen anyone die before, just…leave. I was holding her, talking to her, trying to get her to talk to me, tell me her name. Anything to keep her here. And she died. I could see it, but I thought, CPR. She’s young, she’ll come back, and the MTs are coming. Nadine came out looking for me, and when she said we needed Dallas, I knew the girl—Jenna—wasn’t going to come back. Maybe if I’d—”
“Jake, what you just ran through for me couldn’t have taken more than two or three minutes.”
“Yeah, it was only a couple minutes. Felt longer,” he murmured. “But yeah, it was so damn fast.”
“I’m going to repeat what the MT told you, and you should listen because we deal with this every day. You did all you could do.”
His eyes met hers. Not the wild blue of Roarke’s, but a deeper blue now drenched in sorrow. “It doesn’t feel like it.”
“Do people—fans, groupies, like that—ever send or give you demo discs?”
He smiled at little. “Oh yeah. Why?”
“Something I need to look into. Can you tell me when you went outside, about what time?”
“I can tell you because I checked to make sure I got back before the fifteen was up. It was ten-fifty-five. We had one more short set before we closed out at midnight. We could go over a little, but when we’re doing these, we try to hit last number at midnight. Kids have curfews.”
“Right.” She saw Roarke and Nadine coming around the corner. “I need you to come into Central tomorrow, to follow up. Let’s make it ten.”
“Okay, sure. Listen, does she have family? I know you can’t tell me specifics, but—”
“Yes. I’ll notify them tonight.”
He closed his eyes again. “If they want to talk to me—I was with her when…”
“I’ll let them know. It’s your turn to take that walk.”
“All right. Dallas, what she said? If somebody did this to her—”
“It’s my job to find out. One more time around,” she said to Roarke, then turned to Nadine.
“I’ve never seen him like this. He’s always in control. I need to get him away from here, Dallas.”
“Then let’s make this quick. What time did the band break?”
“Oh, I don’t know, just before eleven, I think. I knew the break was coming, so I made a dash to the ladies’ before a hundred teenage girls had the same idea. When I came out, I looked for Jake, and Renn said he’d gone out to the alley. So I went out. I saw Jake doing CPR on the girl. I was going to call for the MTs, but he said he had. And, Dallas, I could see it was too late. He was trying so hard to save her, but she was gone. And I said I was going to tag you.
“And he looked at me when I did.” Taking a breath, Nadine dashed a tear away. “And he looked at me as if I’d broken his heart.
“You can’t suspect him of doing something to that girl. You know—”
“I don’t, but at the same time, there’s a procedure that has to be followed to clear him of any suspicion. You know that.”
Nadine swiped at another tear, this time impatiently. “It’s different when it’s your person. You know that. And I know you,” she added. “So I know you’ll find out who did this to that poor girl.”
“At this time, I can’t conclusively say anyone did it to her.”
Nadine pushed a hand at her streaky blond hair, gave Eve one long look with those shrewd green eyes. “You can’t say it, but you know it.”
“And you know the fact that Jake Kincade and Nadine Furst were in an alley with a dead minor female is going to explode all over the media.”
Nadine set a hand on the hip of a pair of tight black jeans. “I’m a freaking reporter on the crime beat, so I know that very well. Only another reason I want to get him the hell away from here. We’ll handle it.”
“No interviews unless I clear it.”
It took only that for Nadine to look and sound more like herself. “You have heard of a little constitutional amendment we call the first?”
“If someone did this to her, wouldn’t it just bring on a happy dance if they found their ugly little deed all over the celebrity gossip channels? Her name was Jenna. Let’s keep her and your person away from that until we can’t.”
“You’re right, and I wasn’t going to do interviews. I just don’t like being told I can’t. Here they come. Roarke’s a goddamn rock, Dallas.”
“I know that, too. Take Jake home. He’s coming in tomorrow morning for a follow-up. With some luck and Morris, I’ll have a COD by then.”
She glanced back at the club. “And with a shitload of luck, maybe a suspect tonight.”
“What about the rest of the band? He’ll want to know. They’re family.”
“I need to talk to them, then they can go. It’s a process, Nadine. And there’s Peabody with McNab. Take Jake home,” she repeated, and headed in the opposite direction to meet her partner and her partner’s person.
In his striped baggies and neon-pink tee, Detective McNab, one of the Electronic Detectives Division’s stars, looked like he should be riding a unicycle and juggling.
His earlobe glittered with studs and tiny hoops; the tail of his long blond hair swung as he pranced her way.
Peabody clumped in her pink boots. She may have worn more sedate black trousers and quietly pink shirt, but she still sported those red streaks through her dark, and currently all flippy, hair.
“We’ve got a dead teenage girl in the alley waiting for the dead wagon. Inside,” Eve continued, “we’ve probably got a hundred or more teenagers currently being stalled by the rest of Avenue A. There may be closer to two hundred with staff, any parents or guardians.”
“How’s Jake?” Peabody asked.
“He’s holding up. We’ve got to start carving through the people inside, releasing them—and Child Services hasn’t shown up yet. The victim’s parents need to be notified. I have to take that now. Peabody, tag CS again, and tell them to get somebody’s ass over here or I will fry any number of asses. Until that ass or asses are here to represent the rights of the minors, stick with adults, or with minors in the company of a parent or guardian.
“McNab, talk to the band, get times, locations. They took a break about twenty-two-fifty-five. Get the security feeds, front and back.”
She described the victim and what she wore. “See if anyone saw her, saw anything. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
She walked back to Roarke. “Appreciate you circling the block like that.”
“It’s a lovely night for a walk, if an ugly reason to need one.”
“It’s going to be a really ugly night for the victim’s parents. I’m going to go do the notification.”
“Without Peabody?”
“I can’t spare her for this when we have all those potential wits and suspects in that club. Look, I don’t know how long we’ll be at this so—”
“You’re about to go tell a mother and father their child’s dead.” He took her field kit to put it in the trunk. “I’m with you, Lieutenant.”
He closed the trunk. “Have you run them?”
“Not yet.”
“Why don’t I drive while you do that?”
She paused to breathe, to let the night air blow away some hard.
“That works. They live next door to Charles and Louise.”
“Do they now?” he murmured. “Whenever you marvel how big the world is, it reminds you how small it can be. Odds are they know each other.”
“Yeah.” She slid in the car. “Odds are. The victim had a disc in her purse. It was labeled. Demo disc for Jake Kincade.”
“Ah well. Did you tell him?”
“No, it’s need to know right now until I check it. I ran him through did you know her, have contact, recognize her name. All no. He said he saw her on the floor during the last song before they broke, dancing. I believed him. I’d have believed him even if I didn’t know him. Plus, the timing’s going to check out, which means he couldn’t have stuck a needle in her arm, if he’d somehow hidden the fact from someone like Nadine, from me, from you that he’s a vicious teenage girl killer.”
“But it concerns you.”
“It’s a complication, a possible connection between Jake and the victim. His story rings true, and again it would even if I didn’t know him. Add the timing. But it’s a complication.”
One she needed to unravel.
But first she had to forever change the world and the lives of three people.
They drove into the quiet Lower West Side neighborhood with its dignified brownstones and summer-green trees. She noted a couple of lights on in the house Charles and Louise shared. At least twice as many glowed in the Harbough residence.
Waiting up for their daughter, she thought. Probably checking the time, anticipating. She knew parents worried—she’d met enough of them—and some imagined the worst.
But none believed the worst until it came knocking on their door.
“She’s a doctor,” Eve told Roarke, “so that ups the odds she knows Louise. He’s an exec at a Wall Street firm, heads his own division. They’re twenty years into the marriage. She has an assault charge—she’d have been about her daughter’s age. Unsealed at her request.”
As she spoke, Eve got out of the car to stand on the sidewalk and study the house.
“She punched a guy picketing a woman’s health clinic when he tried to bar her and her mother from going in.”
They walked to the door flanked by carriage lights that gleamed.
Solid security, Eve noted as a matter of habit, and thought of the key card she’d bagged that Jenna Harbough would never use again.
She rang the bell, and felt Roarke’s hand press briefly against her back in support.
The man who answered had a thatch of brown hair threaded with gray. Over his thin build, he wore gray sweat shorts and a T-shirt that read:
BECAUSE
His narrow face had what Eve took to be a weekend stubble. Though he offered a pleasant smile, curiosity filled his hazel eyes.
“Can I help you?”
