Because the day started mild but wouldn’t stay that way, Eve kept her window open on the drive downtown. No matter what the hour, New York had its sights and sounds.
The quick yips of a trio of cat-sized dogs prancing ahead of their human walker, who bopped behind them, probably to the beat of whatever played in her earbuds.
The dogs had collars embedded with shiny things that shot back the sunlight like lasers. She assumed rhinestones, but hey, you never knew.
The laser beams made her wish for her badass sunshades. Considering, she checked her jacket pockets, and yeah, there they were. Points for Roarke, she thought, and slipped them on.
A maxibus blatted and wheezed as it pulled to a stop. Sleepy people filed off; sleepy people filed on.
She wondered, as she often did, why sleepy people didn’t find a way to live closer to work.
Then again, here she was, living uptown, driving downtown to the job.
Life would throw its curveballs.
She caught the scent of glide-cart coffee—reminiscent of burnt cardboard—ignored the sounds of horns as somebody didn’t move fast enough when a light went green. And watched a bike messenger risk life and all four limbs as he wove through building traffic. He sped through a yellow as it turned red while the pedestrian he nearly splatted at the crossing shot him the finger.
Metal rattled as a shopkeeper lifted his metal security doors, and someone blasted thrash metal through their own open windows.
A sidewalk sleeper, license to beg displayed, set up against a building, tossed a few coins in his bucket to seed it, and began to play a harmonica.
One block down, a woman in a breezy summer dress and skyscraper heels strode out of the street doors of a silver tower. She slid fluidly into a sleek black limo while the doorman and the driver loaded her mountain of luggage.
In New York, the carelessly rich and the quietly desperate breathed the same air.
When Eve got to the morgue, she programmed a large go-cup of coffee. Carrying it with her, she entered the long white tunnel with its echoes, its scents of death and disinfectant.
She’d made good time on her commute, so she’d arrived a few minutes early. And knowing Peabody’s aversion to watching Morris dig into the dead, she expected her partner might arrive a few minutes late.
When she pushed through the double doors, Morris stood over Jenna Harbough. Her body lay naked, split open by his precise Y-cut.
The music he played, for the dead as much as himself, Eve knew—Avenue A.
“I appreciate you coming in on a Sunday morning, and brought coffee.”
“Endless gratitude,” he said.
Since Jenna’s blood coated his sealed hands, she set it on the counter by his sink.
Rather than his usual suit under the protective cape, he wore jeans—black—a T-shirt—white. He’d twisted his long black hair into a single braid.
Walking back, Eve flanked Jenna on the other side of the slab.
“Young, pretty, a bud that will never blossom.” After removing the liver, Morris weighed it, scanned it. Behind their clear shield, his eyes held the compassion she’d assured the victim’s parents he had.
Eve looked down at Jenna. “No external indications of illegals or alcohol abuse.”
“And no internal indications that I’ve found. The lab will do a full tox, of course, but my preliminary conclusion is we have a healthy dead girl. Teeth, bones, skin, muscle, organs show good nutrition and exercise. Her hymen’s intact, so any sexual activity didn’t include penetration.
“Calluses on her fingertips. Guitar player?”
“I can’t say, but music was her thing.”
“You’ll see a slight blister on the side of her left pinkie toe. My conclusion—new shoes. Otherwise, only the needle mark on her left biceps.”
“She had two friends with her. Both of them state they were dancing together near the stage. The victim grabbed her arm, said somebody jabbed her.”
“I’d take that as truth.”
He walked back to the sink to rinse his hands, then picked up the coffee.
“Ah, is there a richer nectar of all the gods and goddesses?” He drank, then set the cup down again. “Jabbed is an accurate word. The needle went in hard—enough that the impact caused mild bruising before death. And, from your on-site, began infection in only minutes. Not just a needle, Dallas, a dirty one. A dull one.”
Rather than microgoggles, he used the scanner, brought the wound on-screen, enlarged.
She studied the image. The site showed swelling, a raw red fan circling the puncture, and that mild bruising he’d spoken of.
“No matter how I play it, it couldn’t have been ten minutes from the time the needle went in until she was dying in the alley. What does this that fucking fast?”
“We haven’t found a syringe or needle yet, so I can’t analyze them. But from the wound, the rapid spread of infection? I think not just a dirty needle, but one treated with a substance, a bacteria or virus.”
Her eyes narrowed at the image on his screen. “Is that what killed her? Inside minutes?”
“No, simply caused her more pain and distress. We’ll need that tox report, but again, my preliminary indicates a mix, a deadly one. From the blue tinge to her skin, nails, lips? Likely heroin, but—”
He broke off when Peabody came in.
“Good morning, Peabody.”
She gave him a wan smile and studiously avoided looking at the body. “I chugged a double espresso, so it’s almost good. It’s only two minutes after eight,” she said to Eve.
“I made good time. But?” she said to Morris.
“Given the rapidity of reaction, the narrow window between injection and death? I believe they’ll find at least one other agent in the mix. What can you tell me about her actions, reactions, symptoms within that window?”
While Eve ran it through for him, Morris nodded, moved back to lay a hand on Jenna’s forehead.
“If the timing’s correct, and I trust it is, an injection of street Junk wouldn’t have caused such rapid death. Not alone, particularly since she wasn’t a user, was healthy. The MTs arrived quickly, and could have given her an opioid antagonist injection. Purer heroine, a massive dose? Still within that narrow window?”
He shook his head. “I think they’ll find a cocktail, one that quickly began to shut down her organs, stopped a healthy heart from beating.”
“Why not just shoot her up with poison?” Peabody wondered.
“Well, didn’t he, essentially?”
“This is more … exotic,” Eve speculated. “More special. Like a signature?” Eve looked back at Jenna. “She didn’t know him, or at least didn’t recognize him. I don’t know if he came to kill her, specifically, or just whoever caught his eye.
“If it’s a cocktail,” Eve began, and she’d bet a year’s pay on Morris’s analysis, “he’d need access to illegals, controlled substances, the means, the way to create them.”
“He would.”
“Somewhere to start. Her family, they’ll contact you this morning.”
“I’ll make sure she’s ready for them.”
“Thanks for coming in on Sunday.”
“She’s more than worth it,” he said, “to all of us.”
As they went out, Eve rolled it all around.
“Morris said he used a dirty needle, and one probably treated with a bacteria or virus to cause the rapid infection at the site.”
“Jeez! I was going to say overkill much, but it’s just snarly.”
“Snarly?”
“Like mean and petty and piling on all together in one.”
“It’s all that. Thinking of, accessing, and knowing how to mix the substances, access to bacteria or viruses? We have to reconsider adult. The victim, the snarly, the venue? That all reads teenage boy. But…”
“Maybe an adult who can pass for a teenager.”
Maybe, Eve thought as they got in the car. “Or maybe a kid who’s around junkies, or around people who work with chemicals, controlled substances. Somebody who works in medical research, or is around those who do. Maybe an adult using the boy as the trigger.”
“Somebody snarly.”
“Somebody snarly,” Eve agreed, and started the drive to Central.
“You want coffee? I want it, but I should lay off for right now due to double espresso.”
“I want coffee.”
Peabody programmed black coffee for Eve and stuck herself with water.
“When we get in, contact the Harboughs. Find out when it’s most convenient for them to let us go through the victim’s room. Jake’s at ten, so block off an hour there. The Harboughs live next door to Charles and Louise.”
“They do?”
“They know each other. They’re friendly. The mother’s a doctor and does some of Louise’s free clinic time. They knew the victim.”
“They’ll be good people for the Harboughs to lean on.”
“They still had some lights on, so we stopped in after we did the notification. I wanted another perspective on the family, the victim.”
Pulling into Central’s garage, Eve aimed for her slot.
“Solid, same as my impression. Close-knit, stable. Louise hit absolutely firm on Jenna not using. No teenage romances, nothing specific or serious. Music, songwriting. Both the parents and Louise and Charles said Jenna made that demo, hoping to get it to Jake last night. They all stated she’d never met Jake or any of the band before. If she had, she’d have told them and everyone else she could tell.”
“I know we know Jake didn’t do it, but that adds weight to what we know.”
“So does the alley security cam. It went down exactly as he said.”
And she’d seen everything he’d felt, from the initial amused concern to the alarm, the panic, the desperation, then the grief.
“We need to follow up. He saw her dancing. He remembers smiling at her. He may have seen something else that didn’t get through the shock last night.”
“Maybe one of the other band guys saw something. I know McNab interviewed them, but maybe, on a follow-up.”
“Yeah, we’ll cover that. I’m going to see if Feeney wants to take them.”
Peabody grinned as they walked to the elevator. “You’re a good pal.”
“He’s a good cop.”
“Yeah, he is, and if any of them saw anything that relates, he’ll know the buttons to push to jog memories. It’ll also give him a mega lift.”
“Good, he’s going to need it to run the security tapes to try to find somebody who was there, then wasn’t.”
She considered the empty elevator a perk of working on a Sunday morning.
She walked in to find Santiago and Carmichael playing cards at Carmichael’s desk. Eve looked at Santiago with pity.
“Is there a bet?”
“I’m winning.”
Carmichael shook back her hair. “Not for long. Hey, LT, Peabody, didn’t expect to see you bright and early on a Sunday morning.”
“Obviously, or you’d be working instead of scamming your partner at cards.”
“Not scamming.” Carmichael swiped a finger over her heart. “I’m just better at them.”
Santiago gave his partner the hard eye. “I’m winning.”
“Uh-huh. We caught up on paperwork yesterday, caught two—one ruled accidental. Victim tripped into the street in front of a Rapid Cab. Great shoes.” Carmichael spread her thumb and forefinger apart to show how high.
“See, those things are lethal.”
“Well, she was pretty drunk, too, which didn’t help her balance.”
“The other was a domestic,” Santiago added. “A pissing match over a possible dalliance with an ex-girlfriend escalated when the current girlfriend stabbed the boyfriend with a kitchen knife. A fillet knife. I’m dating a chef, and you pick up these things.”
“Make sure you don’t dally,” Eve advised. “I don’t want to have to break in another detective.”
Carmichael snickered. “She tried to claim it was an accident, how she’d turned around to say something and he sort of ran into it. That might’ve been the case on the first hole she put in him.”
“But since there were four others, we deduced deliberate. So both cases closed.”
“Good. Then you’ve got time to do some runs. I’ll send you a list.”
“What did you catch?” Santiago wanted to know.
“Fill them in, Peabody.”
She went into her office to set up her board and book. Then she dumped everyone who’d been interviewed the night before on her detectives.
She knew the killer hadn’t been among them, but it needed doing.
Then, checking the time, she tagged Feeney.
“Yo,” he said when his face came on-screen. Sunday or not, she noted he wore one of his shit-brown ties, a beige shirt, shit-brown jacket. His wiry silver-threaded ginger hair looked like he’d spent the night in a lightning storm.
But his hangdog eyes were fully alert.
“I’m on my way in. The boy tagged me, filled me in. How’s Jake?”
“I’ll find out in about an hour. I know the e-work’s time-consuming, but if you can carve out a little more?”
“What else you got?”
“I want to hit it while memories are fresh. I’ve talked to Morris, and we’ve established somebody on the dance floor stuck the needle in the victim. An infected needle on top of whatever was in it.”
“Fucker. Going after a little girl.”
“Yeah, there’s that. Jake saw her on the dance floor during that—what is it—set. Toward the end, close to, it appears, the time she was attacked. We need to reinterview the rest of Avenue A, in case they remember seeing someone or something that relates.”
His already alert eyes went bright. “I’ll take that for you, sure.”
“I’d appreciate it. I need to go over Jake’s statement, get into the victim’s room, reinterview the two girls she was with last night.”
“No problem, I’ve got it. I’ll set up the search in the lab, get that going. I can contact Art, Renn, Leon, and Mac. If they can’t come to me, McNab can keep on the search while I go to them.”
“That works.”
“Pulling into the garage now.”
“I’ll check back with you later today.”
When she clicked off, she thought she’d cut back her workload, put the interviews in expert hands. And as a bonus made the EDD captain and her former partner’s day.
Not bad.
Since she’d dumped the runs, passed on the interviews, she had time to contact the lab and try to nag her way to results.
It didn’t get her much, and since Berenski, the chief lab tech, had the day off, she couldn’t even try for a bribe.
Because Sunday.
Maybe, maybe, the Sunday crew would get to the tox screen before the end of the day. But everything else stayed on hold until Monday.
So she took five minutes, put her boots on the desk, and studied the board.
Nice girl, solid family, big night out with friends.
Did he expect her to be there?
No way to be sure, either way.
She goes for the music, some hero worship there, and a big dream. Dances a couple times with others, but primarily with her two girlfriends.
No boyfriend or romantic relationship with a girlfriend. Still a virgin. Not looking for sex, for hookups, casual or serious.
He comes prepared to kill. It took time, had to take trouble to create whatever he had in the syringe. Had to know how to handle viruses or bacteria, and have access.
That pointed to an adult, but screw that, she thought, it wasn’t.
At least not emotionally, she considered. Or if it was an adult using a kid to kill.
A Mira question, which had to wait until the next day.
He knew how to get in, knew how to get out. Nothing impulsive there.
If they didn’t know each other—and she couldn’t yet nail that as firm—how did he pick her?
Her face, her body, the way she moved, her outfit? Because the kill hadn’t been impulse, either. He’d waited, timed it, to near the end of the set.
He’d had a timetable, an agenda, and a target.
He’d had plenty of time during the event to pick his target—if he hadn’t chosen Jenna previously. What made her the one?
She swung her boots down as Peabody’s clomped toward her office.
“Jake and Nadine are here. I can throw myself on the sword and block Nadine.”
“No need. She may have seen something she didn’t think of last night.”
“Good, because I hate throwing myself on the sword.”
“Why would anybody do that?”
Peabody hiked her shoulders. “Death before dishonor?”
“Death ends you. You can come back from dishonor. Let’s do this in the lounge.”
When she went out, she saw Jake had washed the blue out of his hair. Shadows dogged his eyes, and he had the look of a man who’d had a very rough night.
She imagined he had.
Beside him, Nadine stood camera ready in a black suit. Though the makeup hid most of it, Eve saw shadows there, too.
“Working?” she said to Nadine.
“It leaked, which we had to expect. I went into the station, did a quick in-studio on it. It would help if we could do a one-on-one. It’s not for the damn ratings, Dallas,” she snapped at Eve’s cool stare.
“Come on, Lois.” Jake took Nadine’s hand, leaned down to kiss the top of her head.
“I’m aware of that, Ms. Lane. Like you’re aware there’s not much I can say about an active investigation, especially at this stage. Add the fact we have a relationship, and I know Jake.”
“Anything. Anything to take some of the pressure off. Hell, Dallas, the media’s even got his mother’s house staked out.”
“It’s okay.” Jake gave the hand he held a squeeze. “She’ll handle it. We’ll handle it. Somebody else’s mom lost her daughter. This is nothing.”
Not comparable, Eve thought, but not nothing.
“Let’s take this to the lounge. When we’re done, you can have a brief—very brief—one-on-one with Peabody.”
“Peabody and I have a relationship,” Nadine countered. “Peabody knows Jake.”
“But she’s not the boss of this division or the primary in this investigation.”
“Valid, and thank you.”
“Let me say this,” Eve continued as they walked. “Jake, you’re not a suspect. You’re a witness. Evidence clears you absolutely.”
“I wasn’t worried about that. Wasn’t thinking about that.”
“See, I have to, because Boss Cop, as Harve dubbed me. Shit, I forgot coffee.”
“I’ll spring for some.” Jake turned to the Vending in the lounge.
“No, Jesus, don’t drink that swill. Peabody, use my code—if you dare—get me a Pepsi. Don’t go for the house coffee,” she told Jake.
“Just water.” He shoved both hands through his mop of hair. “Water’s fine.”
“I’ll have what Dallas is having—the low-cal variety.” Nadine sat, linked her hand with Jake’s again. “I could use the boost. We didn’t get a lot of sleep.”
“You talked to her family. I’d really like to talk to her family, if they’d let me.”
Eve nodded at Jake. “I’ll test those waters. Is there anything you want to add or amend to the statement you gave me last night?”
“I can’t think of anything. I’ve played it over and over in my head, from the time she came out the alley door until … until the MTs pronounced her.”
“Let’s go back from there. You saw her on the dance floor.”
“Oh, yeah, right. Thanks,” he said when Peabody gave him a tube of water. “She was close to the front of the dance floor. You try to make a connection to the audience when you can. She was cute, and she was dancing, but staring up at us, so I smiled at her.”
“That was the last song in the set?”
“Yeah, pretty sure on that. When we broke, I sort of glanced back toward where Nadine was sitting. Figured she’d gone to the ladies’, or the bar.”
“How long from the time you looked at Jenna to the end of the set? Approximate.”
“Ah…” He closed his eyes. “Let me think back. No, I’ve got it, because Mac was just starting the drum solo, and I moved stage right to open it up for him. That’s when I looked out and saw her. So we’d have about two minutes left. Now and then Mac gets into it, goes over a little. But no more than two and a half minutes.”
“Two to two and a half minutes. Not much less, not much more?”
“No, between that’s close.”
“She was dancing with two other girls. Did you see them? Did you see anyone move toward Jenna—a boy or man?”
“Dallas, they’re packed together. Everybody’s dancing with everybody unless they’re on the edges or manage to clear a space. I looked at her because, well, she was right there, and she had heart eyes on me.
“Shit.” He paused a beat. “It doesn’t cost me to smile.”
He paused again, drank some water.
“You just sort of pick someone out, make that contact, that connection, but you’re focused on the work—the music, the moves.”
He shifted, leaned in a little. “It doesn’t matter how many times you’ve played that song, hit those notes. When Mac hits the last beat of the solo, I come on with a riff, right off that last beat. Then we hit the vocals, bang, four-part harmony.”
He leaned back again. “You’ve got to focus on the work. I couldn’t tell you anything specific about the other girls, or if somebody moved in on her, because I was totally focused. But it was just a couple minutes before we closed the set and I announced the break. Before I looked back for Nadine.”
“Okay. Nadine, you went to the john.”
“Right after they started the last song. I’ve seen how people crowd the floor for that one, so I grabbed my chance.”
“How long were you in there?”
“First, it took me a while to get there. The place was packed, and I stopped for a few seconds to talk to Glo. She was helping serve, because packed. I know I could hear the music when I got there. Lots of yelling and applauding when I was still in there doing a quick makeup repair. I was just coming out when I heard Jake do the taking-a-break thing, and they’d started the house reel.”
“Did you see anyone going into the men’s room?”
“Not when I went in. When I came out, let’s say I had good timing because there was a stampede of teens, both genders. I got through that, then went backstage to ask about Jake. Leon said he went out to the alley for some air. It was freaking hot in the club.”
“When you were in the john, did you hear anybody in the men’s?”
“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.”