Salvation in Death (In Death #27)(37)

“ ‘Reap,’ the Good Book says. ‘You will reap what you sow!’ Tell me, tell God Almighty: Will you sow sin or will you sow—”

He coughed, waved a hand as he pulled at his tie. He choked, sucking for air as his big body convulsed, as he tumbled. With a piping squeak, Jolene rushed across the stage on her pink glittery heels.

She shouted, “Jimmy Jay! Oh, Jimmy Jay,” while the roars of the crowd turned to a wall of wails and screams and lamentations.

Seeing her husband’s staring eyes, she swooned. She fell across her dead husband, so their bodies made a white and pink cross on the stage floor.

At her desk, Eve had narrowed her list down to twelve male babies, baptized at St. Cristóbal’s in the years that jibed with the age range of her victim who had Lino as a first or middle name. She had five more that skirted the outside boundaries of those years in reserve.

“Computer, standard run on the names on the displayed list. Search and—hold,” she added, muttering a curse under her breath when her ’link signaled.

“Dallas.”

Dispatch, Dallas, Lieutenant Eve. Report to MadisonSquareGarden,

Clinton Theater. Suspected homicide by poisoning.

“Acknowledge. Has the victim been identified?”

Affirmative. The victim has been identified as Jenkins, James Jay.

Report immediately as primary. Peabody, Detective Delia, will be notified.

“On my way. How do I know that name?”

“Leader of the Church of Perpetual Light. Or no, Eternal Light. That’s it,” Roarke said from the doorway.

Eve’s eyes sharpened, narrowed. “Another priest.”

“Well, not precisely, but in the ballpark.”

“Shit. Shit.” She looked at her work, at her lists, at her files. Had she gone completely off, taken the wrong turn? “I’ve got to go.”

“Why don’t I go with you?”

She started to say no, to ask him to stay, continue his search. No point, she thought, if she was after a man-of-God killer. “Why don’t you? Computer, continue assigned run, store data.”

Acknowledged. Working . . . it announced as she headed for the door.

“You’re thinking dead priest, dead preacher, and you took the wrong line of investigation.”

“I’m thinking if it turns out this guy drank potassium cyanide, it’s no damn coincidence. Doesn’t make sense, doesn’t make any sense.”

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 MadisonSquareGarden. 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.