Page 10 of Random in Death
“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.