Page 30 of Random in Death

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.

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