The In Death Collection Books 21-25 - J. D. Robb [143]
“Oh, man, oh, shit. Tubbs. He’s dead. He’s dead, right?”
“That’s official,” Eve said and turned to signal to her partner.
Detective Peabody, her dark hair currently worn in sporty waves, straightened from her crouch by the tangle of body parts. She was mildly green herself, Eve noted, but holding steady.
“Got ID on both victims,” she announced. “Santa’s Lawrence, Max, age twenty-eight, Midtown address. Guy who—ha-ha—broke his fall’s Jacobs, Leo, age thirty-three. Queens.”
“I’m going to arrange to have these two taken into holding, get a test for illegals, get their statements when we finish here. I assume you want to go up, look at the scene, speak with the other witnesses.”
“I. . .”
“You’re primary on this one.”
“Right.” Peabody took a deep breath. “Did you talk to them at all?”
“Leaving that for you. You want to take a poke at them here?”
“Well . . .” Peabody searched Eve’s face, obviously looking for the right answer. Eve didn’t give it to her. “They’re pretty shaken up, and it’s chaos out here, but . . . We might get more out of them here and now, before they settle down and start thinking about how much trouble they might be in.”
“Which one do you want?”
“Um. I’ll take the black guy.”
Eve nodded, walked back. “You.” She pointed. “Name?”
“Steiner. Ron Steiner.”
“We’re going to take a little walk, Mr. Steiner.”
“I feel sick.”
“I bet.” She gestured for him to rise, took his arm, and walked a few paces away. “You and Tubbs worked together?”
“Yeah. Yeah. Tyro Communications. We—we hung out.”
“Big guy, huh?”
“Who, Tubbs? Yeah, yeah.” Steiner wiped sweat from his brow. “Came in about two-fifty, I guess. So we figured it’d be a gag to have him rent the Santa suit for the party.”
“What kind of toys and goodies did Tubbs have in his sack today, Ron?”
“Oh, man.” He covered his face with his hands. “Oh, Jesus.”
“We’re not on record yet, Ron. We will be, but right now just tell me what went down. Your friend’s dead, and so is some poor schmuck who was just walking on the sidewalk.”
He spoke through his hands. “Bosses set up this lunch buffet deal for the office party. Wouldn’t even spring for some brew, you know?” Ron shivered twice, hard, then dropped his arms to his sides. “So a bunch of us got together, and we pooled to rent the suite for the whole day. After the brass left, we brought out the booze and the . . . the recreational chemicals. So to speak.”
“Such as?”
He swallowed, then finally met her eyes. “You know, a little Exotica, some Push and Jazz.”
“Zeus?”
“I don’t mess with that. I’ll take the test, you’ll see. All I did was a few tokes of Jazz.” When Eve said nothing, merely stared into his eyes, he welled up. “He never used heavy stuff. Not Tubbs, man, I swear. I’d’ve known. But I think he had some today, maybe laced some of the Push with it, or somebody did. Asshole,” he said as tears spilled down his cheeks. “He was juiced up, I can tell you that. But man, it was a party. We were just having fun. People were laughing and dancing. Then Tubbs, he opens the window.”
His hands were everywhere now. His face, his throat, his hair. “Oh, God, oh, God. I figured it was because it was getting smokey. Next thing you know, he’s climbing up, he’s got this big, stupid grin on his face. He shouts, ‘Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.’ Then he fucking dived out. Head first. Jesus Christ, he was just gone. Nobody even thought to grab for him. It happened so fast, so damn fast. People started screaming and running, and I ran to the window and looked.”
He mopped at his face with his hands, shuddered again. “And I yelled for somebody to call nine-one-one, and Ben and I ran down. I don’t know why. We were his friends, and we ran down.”
“Where’d he get the stuff, Ron?”
“Man, this is fucked up.” He looked away, over her head, out to the street. Fighting, Eve knew, the standard little war between ratting out and standing up.
“He must’ve gotten it from Zero. A bunch of us chipped in so we could get a party pack. Nothing heavy, I swear.”
“Where does Zero