But she shook her head, shut it down. She’d need to walk onto the scene objectively. She detoured into the bedroom, changed into street clothes, strapped on her weapon.
“It’ll have cooled off out there.” Roarke passed her a short leather jacket. “I’ll have to tell you that so far I haven’t found any major heists, nothing that fits your bill. Not with the take outstanding or the doers at large. At least,” he added, “none that I don’t know the particulars of, personally.”
She simply stared at him.
“Well now, you did ask me to go back a number of years. And a number of years back, I might have had my hand in a few interesting
pies.” He smiled. “So to speak.”
“Let’s not,” she decided, “speak about those particular pies. Crap. Crap. Do me a favor and drive, okay? I want to get some background on the victim before we get there.”
As they walked out of the house, Eve pulled out her PPC and started a background run on the recently deceased Jimmy Jay.
8
A PLATOON OF UNIFORMS HELD A GOOD-SIZED army of gawkers behind police barricades at Madison Square Garden. The winter before last, the terrorist group Cassandra had blown a good chunk out of the building. Wreaking bloody havoc.
Apparently, the death of an evangelist elicited nearly as much hysteria and chaos.
Eve held up her badge as she muscled her way through. “He’s with me,” she told one of the uniforms, and cleared the path for Roarke.
“Let me lead you in, Lieutenant.”
Eve nodded at the uniform, a fit female with a crop of curly red hair under her cap. “What do you know?”
“First on scene’s inside, but the word is the vic was preaching up a storm to a sold-out house. Downed some water—already onstage with him—and fell down dead.”
The uniform cut through the lobby, jerked her head toward one of the posters of a portly man with a shock of hair as white as his suit. “Jimmy Jay, big-time evangelist. Scene got secured pretty quick, Lieutenant. One of the vic’s bodyguards used to be on the job. Word is he handled it. Main arena,” she added, leading Eve past two more uniforms flanking the doors. “I’ll go back to my post, if you don’t need anything.”
“I’m set.”
The houselights were on, and the stage lights burned. Despite them, the temperature was like an arctic blast and made her grateful for her jacket.
“Why is it so freaking cold in here?”
The uniform shrugged. “Packed house. Guess they had the temp bottomed out to compensate. Want me to see about getting it regulated?”
“Yeah.”
She could smell the remnants of the packed house—sweat and perfume, sweetened drinks and treats that had spilled in the rows. More uniforms and the first of the sweepers milled around those rows, the stage, the aisles.
But the body lay center stage, with an enormous screen behind him where an image of a hellacious, wrath-of-God storm was frozen in mid-lightning strike.
She hooked her badge on her waistband, took the field kit Roarke carried.
“Full house. Like Ortiz’s funeral. Smaller scale, but same idea. Priest, preacher—taken out in front of the faithful.”
“Same killer, or copycat.”
She nodded as she scanned. “There’s a question. But I won’t ask it until we determine COD. Maybe he had a stroke or a heart deal. Overweight,” she continued as they walked toward the stage. “Probably worked up, playing for a crowd this size. People still die of natural causes.”
But not Jimmy Jay Jenkins, Eve thought when she got closer to the body. She mounted the stage. “First on scene?”
“Sir.” Two uniforms stepped forward.
She held up a finger, scanned over to the grizzled-haired man in a dark suit. Once a cop, she thought. “You’re the bodyguard?”
“That’s right. Clyde Attkins.”