Page 5 of Random in Death
“Who is she?”
“I don’t know. A girl, teenage girl. Jake—they’re playing a special under-twenty-one thing. I came out—alley at the back—and he was doing CPR. He’d called an ambulance. The MTs just got here. He said she said someone jabbed her.”
Eve’s brown eyes went from mildly annoyed to cop flat. “She’s stabbed?”
“No, no, a needle mark, on her arm. Or maybe a really thin blade. It wasn’t really bleeding, but it looked raw.”
“Tell the MTs not to move the body. I’m calling it in, and uniforms will respond, secure the scene. I’m on my way.”
“Thanks,” Nadine began, but Eve cut her off.
She noted Roarke had brought out brown khakis and a jacket, a navy tank, boots, belt.
She didn’t complain about him picking out her clothes as she grabbed her communicator and called it in.
“You didn’t tell them to notify Peabody.”
Eve tugged the baggy summer Saturday shorts off long legs, pulled on the khakis. “No point screwing up her night until I know what it is.” She dragged on the tank, then shoved at her choppy brown hair. “Sorry it screwed up ours.”
“Lieutenant, it’s what we do. She sounded frazzled,” he added as he changed his shirt. “She rarely does.”
“Yeah, I caught that.”
She moved quickly, efficiently, a long, lean woman with an angular face, a shallow dent in the chin, and her mind on murder.
She pocketed her badge, then hooked on her weapon harness. “I’m not drunk, but—”
“A lot of wine, so Sober-Up all around.” He detoured into the bathroom, came out with a pill for each. “I’ll drive. I know the club.”
She sent him a look as she shrugged on her jacket. “Is it yours?”
“It’s not, no. But the building is. Ready?”
“Yeah.”
They went downstairs and out to the car he’d already remoted. Her DLE, she thought, in case she had to stay on the job.
In the passenger seat, she put the window down. The fresh air, especially at the speed he’d drive, would give the Sober-Up a solid kick start.
“It’s a club for teenagers?”
Roarke streaked down the driveway, through the gates.
“No. But every year, in the summer, Avenue A plays there one night for the teenage crowd. He told me about it just the other day. He gave a workshop at the school. Apparently, they had their first paying gig there when they were still of that age.
“They lock up all the alcohol,” he added before she could comment.
“Maybe. Who runs the club? I want to run them.”
“I don’t have those names in my head at the moment.”
“I’ll find them.”
Taking out her PPC, she got to work.
“Harvard Greenbaum and Glo Reiser. Harvard’s not a name, it’s a school. And what kind of name is Glo? Not seeing any criminal on Greenbaum, age sixty-three, New York native, married to Reiser for about twenty years, no offspring. She’s got a fifteen-year-old assault ding, charges dropped. Age sixty-one, also a native New Yorker.
“The club’s got a scatter of health department violations over the twenty-odd years they’ve had it. All addressed. No citations for serving the underage. Not one.”