Page 8 of Random in Death
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—”