Random in Death, page 7
“With that music going? Not hardly.” Then her eyes sharpened. “Why?”
Eve sat back. “Lois Lane can’t use it.”
“Off the record,” Nadine said. “Anything you want off the record’s off the record. It’s not business, Dallas. It’s personal.”
“And the reason I’m going to tell you, both of you, is because it’s personal. He went out the window in the men’s john, and the timing tells me he went out while you were in the women’s.”
“I didn’t see anyone in the alley,” Jake began.
“Because he timed it. He injected her during that two, two and a half minutes, walked to the men’s room, and went out the window before you ended the set and went outside.”
And, Eve thought, was very likely on the street before you announced the break.
“Jake?”
He looked up, met Eve’s eyes.
“Nothing you could’ve done, once he put that needle in her arm, would’ve have saved her. That doesn’t just come from me, but from the chief medical examiner. But because of you, she didn’t die alone.”
Chapter Five
Eve took a moment to let him settle again.
“Because it’s personal, and off the record, I think there’s something else you should know. Jenna Harbough had aspirations toward songwriting and performing. She had a disc in her handbag, labeled demo disc, to give to you if she managed it.”
Emotions ran over his face, surprise, sorrow, guilt. “Can I listen to it?”
“It’s in Evidence. Once it’s been processed, her personal items belong to her parents. Let me see what I can do.”
“Will they talk to me? I don’t know what I’d say, but I feel like I should say something.”
“I’ll see what I can do there, too. Meanwhile, Feeney’s going to talk to the other members of Avenue A. Now that we’ve established a specific timeline, we know when and where she was injected, they may remember something. May have noticed something that didn’t make an impact on them at the time.”
“We went over it all last night, but maybe something’ll click.”
“Now I’m going to tell you something else, and you need to hear me.”
She watched him brace.
“Okay.”
“You made a difference. You don’t feel that now, and maybe you never will. But I’m telling you as someone who deals with death every damn day. And Peabody, who does the same, will back me up.”
“All the way on this. What you did mattered.”
“She wasn’t alone,” Eve continued. “In those minutes when she was afraid and confused and hurting, someone was there with her. You were there with her. She heard your voice, she may not have understood the words, but she heard your voice. She saw your face, she felt your arms around her, and knew she wasn’t alone.
“You need to understand and believe that. We’re cops. We’re murder cops, and personal dealings aside, we’ve got no reason to bullshit you on it.”
“She’s ours now,” Peabody added. “In her last minutes, she was yours, and you did your best for her. Now we will.”
“I want to say I don’t think she recognized me. If that means anything. I mean anything helpful to you.”
“With the drug in her system, the distress from it, that’s not surprising. You’ve been around long enough to know the media’s going to be all over this because they do recognize you. They already are, obviously. And as you said, I figure you and your group know how to handle that.”
Face grim, he picked up his water again. “Yeah, we’ll handle it.”
“You need a statement.”
“Pete—PR’s working on one, but—”
“He’s bucking PR,” Nadine interrupted. “I’m working with them because Jake’s idea of a statement was and is a mess.”
“I don’t want some hollow-ass, two-sentence nothing.” He snapped it out. Eve figured this marked the first time she’d heard him snap out anything.
“And you can’t feed the public an overemotional, guilt-ridden soliloquy,” Nadine responded with absolute and utter calm.
Before Jake could snap again—because she could see it coming—Eve held up a hand. “I’m going to bet the answer’s between those two. You do want to keep it brief,” she added. “You don’t want to say too much, for Jenna’s sake, her family’s, and for the investigation. And you don’t want it to sound like someone else wrote it. I don’t know your PR people, but I’m going to say it’d be smart to give Nadine the lead on this.”
“I’m backing up the lieutenant on this one, too,” Peabody commented. “Nadine knows how the media works, she knows how we work, and she knows you.”
“I’d like to look it over before you release it,” Eve said. “You don’t have any obligation there, but—”
“I’d actually appreciate your take,” Nadine told her. “I’ll send you a copy of what we’ve drafted.”
“I don’t want it to sound cold.” With a wince, Jake looked at Nadine. “Sorry, really sorry. I didn’t mean you’re cold, or sound like it. It’s just—You need to cut me some slack.”
“All you need. This time.”
“I have to get back to it. Peabody, do the one-on-one, then you get back to it.”
Jake rose as Eve did. “I know you’re not big on … cut me some slack,” he said, and hugged her. “Thanks.”
“Okay. Keep it short,” she told Nadine. “We’ve got work.”
She headed back, then turned into the bullpen. Both her detectives sat at their own desks. “Status?”
“They’re kids. Few dings.” Santiago shrugged as he worked. “Shoplifting, underage drinking, truancy. Kid crap.”
“I took the adults first.” Carmichael mimicked her partner’s shrug. “Few little dings. Nothing pops.”
She imagined either of them finding something that broke the case hit the same odds as Santiago beating Carmichael at cards.
In her office, she contacted the parents of each of the victim’s friends to arrange a follow-up interview. It didn’t surprise her both agreed to come into Central.
A lot of people didn’t like cops in the house. Bonus? It saved her time.
What did surprise her came in the form of a lab report in her incoming.
Somebody had spent Sunday morning analyzing vomit.
And had matched it to the victim’s DNA.
The contents, other than cherry fizzy, soy fries, gummy candy, included a junkie’s dream stash. The heroin both she and Morris had suspected, along with ketamine, a trace of potassium chloride—something she knew had once been used in lethal injections before the outlawing of capital punishment.
And the surprising addition of Rohypnol.
Why add in a date-rape drug when death was the goal?
The heroin, confirming Morris’s take, wasn’t Junk, not street-level, but high-octane, and not cut with any of the usual cheap agents.
Death was the goal.
But why the other drugs? Why the roofie? Why the dirty needle?
Playing? Experimenting?
She got up, programmed coffee, and drank it standing at her skinny window, looking out at her view of New York.
To add to the symptoms? The speed of reaching the goal? Pain, dizziness, confusion, possibly hallucinations, potentially a seizure. And death within minutes.
He’d wanted all of that.
She turned as she heard Peabody coming.
“She vomited up—DNA confirmed—a lethal mix of drugs, heavy on the heroin—not Junk, the pure stuff. He added ketamine—again, not street-level Kettle. Traces of potassium chloride—the last step in lethal injections back in the day. He added a roofie.”
“A roofie?”
“There has to be a reason for it. He wasn’t going to rape her—she’d be dead.”
Peabody’s face showed a mixture of distress and disgust. “Unless he … ick, after she died?”
“I don’t see how. He’d already taken off, out the window. And he couldn’t know she’d go outside, couldn’t know where she’d die. But there’s a reason for it.
“She wasn’t sexually active, so maybe she blew him off there. Maybe she didn’t see him.” Eve closed her eyes, took herself back to the club. “Maybe the ‘asshole’ comment was just knee-jerk. But damn it, it’s all fast. It seems like she’d have caught a glimpse.”
“Maybe, with the lights, the crowd, she didn’t catch a good one.”
“Yeah. We’ll set up in the lounge again. The vic’s friends are coming, each with a parent, for a follow-up.”
“The victim’s mother’s going to contact us when they’re ready. They want us to go through her room when they’re not there. So when Morris is ready for them to come in.”
“That works. Go ahead and check with McNab, see if he’s getting anywhere.”
She sat again, added the notes from her follow-up with Jake to her book.
And studied the timing again.
Yes, crowded floor, dim, atmospheric lights. But he had to get right next to her to use the needle. The jab hurt, she turned toward the direction of the hurt.
How could she not have seen him?
She imagined herself the killer.
Move in, palm the syringe in your hand.
Am I excited, nervous, angry, detached?
Depends. If it’s just an experiment, detached would work.
But if it’s the finish line? Excited seemed more likely.
She’s dancing, turned away, bouncing with her friends.
Shove the needle into her arm, hit the plunger, pull it out.
It takes a couple seconds when you’re not worried about the niceties.
Sitting, she mimed the act.
Pressure syringe would’ve been faster. But the needle hurts more. That’s a choice, that’s intent.
Two seconds to inject? Three, maybe four before the syringe is back in your pocket.
How long did it take her to turn?
Ow. Jolt, pull back from your friends, slap a hand on the sting. Just seconds, a few seconds. Turn around.
Didn’t he want to see her face? He wasn’t going to watch her die, but to not even see her face?
Even if just an experiment, that had to be part of the data, didn’t it? Action/reaction.
“She fucking saw him.” Eve pushed up, paced. “Even if he was turning to get gone, she had to see him.
“Why am I stuck on that?” Annoyed with herself, she scrubbed her hands over her face.
Peabody came back. “McNab’s on it, but nothing yet. Feeney’s taking the rest of the band at their studio. They’re not suspects, so he’s taking them all at once, to see if one maybe sparks a memory with the others.”
Exactly why she wanted to take both the friends together.
“And the victim’s friends, their mothers, are on the way up.”
“Have you ever given anybody a shot?”
“Jeez, no.” Peabody shuddered at the thought. “Sometimes you have to give animals meds or whatever. I didn’t like doing that, usually found a way to get out of it.”
Free-Ager, Eve thought. Farm animals.
Close enough.
“You’ve got a syringe in your pocket, and I’m the target. You come up behind me, on the left while I’m all freaking giddy and distracted.”
Eve turned away. “Jab me. With your finger.”
“Okay, but since it’s a needle, I have to take off the tip—you know, the little protective tip so I don’t jab myself. Then tap it so there’s no air bubbles, and—”
“He doesn’t give a shit about air bubbles. Jab it, shove the plunger down—fast. Get it back in your pocket and get away.”
Peabody obeyed.
“Ow.” Eve jerked back, looked down at her arm, slapped a hand on it. “Somebody jabbed me.” Turned.
Peabody just started to turn to move away.
“You’re barely a foot away.”
“Well, I was pretending I’m on a crowded dance floor.”
“Exactly. She saw him. Even if just that glimpse. He’s a planner, and you bet your ass he rehearsed this, in a variety of ways. He had to know she’d catch that glimpse.”
“He had to know she’d be dead in minutes, so he didn’t care.”
“But she could’ve said, ‘That butthead John Smith jabbed me.’ She didn’t just collapse and die right then and there. She’s with two friends. ‘Somebody jabbed me,’ turn, see, and say, ‘That asshole John Smith.’ No way, at this point, to know if he knew her, but she caught that glimpse, at least a glimpse, and didn’t know him.”
“You’re worried he didn’t know her, either, because if he didn’t, she was random.”
“If she was random, if she was just a type, just a girl, and he reached the goal, he’s going to want to reach it again. Let’s go take the friends. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”
“Leelee’s mom’s Maddie Spencer. Chelsea’s is Audrey Fine.”
“Got it.”
They walked into the bullpen just as the four entered.
“Ms. Spencer, Ms. Fine. Lieutenant Dallas, Detective Peabody.” Eve extended a hand to both. “We appreciate you coming in so quickly.”
“We want to do everything we can to help,” Maddie said. “Jenna was like part of our families.”
“We’ve all known each other since the girls were in middle school.” Audrey kept her hand on Chelsea’s shoulder.
“If you’d come with me.”
“We have a lounge on this floor,” Peabody told them, talking directly to the girls. “It’ll be pretty quiet in there today. I know this is hard. You were both really helpful last night when we talked.”
“We didn’t know she was sick.” Leelee’s eyes flooded. “We just didn’t know.”
“You couldn’t have. Let’s take the big table there.” Peabody had already pushed two together in anticipation. “Would you like something to drink? Vending has lemonade this time of year, but it sucks beyond.” Peabody smiled at the mothers. “The coffee goes beyond the beyond.”
“We could use a round of Cokes. Okay, Maddie? Nobody got much sleep last night.” Audrey, a freckle-skinned redhead, took a seat, drew Chelsea with her swollen blue eyes and purple-streaked blond hair down beside her.
“We’ll relax the rules.” Maddie, a dark-skinned brunette, her brown eyes a near match with her daughter’s, did the same while Peabody went to Vending.
“I know you talked with Detective Peabody last night, and as she’s already said, you were very helpful. I’m sorry to ask you to go over it again, but sometimes people remember things, just some little detail, they didn’t think of.”
“Mom says it can help Jenna, but I don’t see how anything helps.” Now Chelsea’s eyes filled. “We’re never ever going to see her again.”
“Someone hurt her,” Eve began.
“It wasn’t Jake Kincade!” It all but exploded out of Leelee. “We saw stuff on the Internet. Bogus extreme, and—”
“It wasn’t Jake Kincade. He did everything he could to help her.”
“You’re not going to arrest him?” Chelsea watched Eve with shadowed and suspicious eyes. “Mom says cops can lie. She’s a lawyer.”
Since Eve had already run a background on the families, she was aware. “We’ve established conclusively, through solid evidence, Mr. Kincade was not, in any way, responsible for Jenna’s death.”
“Mom?”
“Lieutenant Dallas has no reason to lie about that, baby.”
Leelee elbowed her friend. “Plus, we saw the clone vid and she was totally iced getting the bad guys. You were, too,” she said when Peabody brought the drinks.
“Maybe.” Chelsea swiped at tears. “But I know Jake and Leon and Mac and Art and Renn were all onstage when Jenna said somebody jabbed her, and they’re saying illegals killed her, and some fuckwads—”
“Chels!”
“I don’t care, Mom.” The girl’s voice rose in pitch and volume. “It’s freaking me because they’re fuckwads saying she OD’d, and she was a junkie.”
“They’re fuckwads,” Eve agreed, ignoring the mother, giving the girl her attention. “And they’re liars looking to stir up ugliness about someone who can’t defend herself. We’ve also concluded, conclusively, through sold evidence, Jenna did not use illegals.”
“As if,” Leelee muttered. “Illegals are for losers and flakers. Jenna wasn’t, ever.”
“But someone did jab her, and she did overdose—through no fault of her own. I want you to think back to that last song before the break.”
“We’ve thought and thought.”
“And it’s hard,” Peabody put in, “hard to keep thinking. But that’s when and where he hurt her.”
“We were all there, all three of us. This close.” Chelsea held her hands up, a foot apart. “And she was so mega juiced because Jake looked at her, right at her, and smiled. I mean that was the ult!”
“She wanted to meet him so bad,” Leelee continued. “She knew he’d take the demo and listen to it if she could.”
“And it was then, when she was happy, when she told you he smiled at her, just after that, when she said someone jabbed her? Is that how you remember it now?”
“We were all juiced because it’s just the ult, and I looked at the stage. Maybe one of them would look at us again, you know? So I looked that way,” Chelsea continued. “Then Jenna sort of yelled, half yelled, I guess. Like ‘Ow!’”
“She did. I was mostly looking at her, and her eyes got really big, and she sort of jerked.”
“You were looking at her, Leelee? Did you see anyone behind her?”
“All kinds of people. Everyone was dancing and shouting or singing or clapping, whatever. Avenue A slays that song, and we’d never heard it live, which is slay it max. I thought somebody like stepped on her foot or bumped her hard. That’s what I thought.”
When tears dripped again, her mother cracked the tube, urged it on her. “Drink a little, then take a breath.”
“’Kay. I guess she looked mad. Mostly when you get bumped it just happens, but she looked mad, and she did that little jerk. That’s when she said about getting jabbed. I still thought it was just like somebody caught her with an elbow or something.”
“What did she do then?”
