Still, her attitude isn’t helping much.
“Uh, Eva,” I say. “This is Special Agent Lancaster. He works for the State Department—”
“Bureau of Diplomatic Security,” the agent elaborates woodenly. “It’s the security and law enforcement arm of the U.S. State Department.”
“Who the hell died?” Eva demands. “The shah of Iran?”
“Uh, no,” I say. “It’s a student.”
“The kid of the shah of Iran?”
“Ma’am,” Special Agent Lancaster says in a slow, impassive tone to Eva, “I’m going to need your full name and also the name of your supervisor—”
“My supervisor is the chief medical examiner,” Eva says, whipping a business card out from the pocket of her coat before jostling Special Agent Lancaster aside (and nearly running over his size-twelve feet with her wheelie bag). “Now get the hell out of my way so I can do my job.”
Special Agent Lancaster looks a little startled. He’d had no trouble at all running off the cops from the Sixth Precinct (although they were still in the building. They’d merely retreated downstairs to the dining hall to drink coffee, which Magda, the cafeteria’s extremely popular head cashier and one of my best friends, had been only too delighted to offer to them for free), not to mention everyone who’d shown up from the Housing Office, who were now gathered downstairs in the second-floor library, holding their crisis resolution meeting, which I had to admit I was a little relieved not to be attending.
But the agent was going to have his hands full with Eva, and I could tell he knew it. I saw him touch the wireless communication piece in his ear, then begin speaking softly to someone, most likely in the bureau’s makeshift headquarters in the first-floor conference room. He was probably calling for reinforcements.
“So, um, this is the deceased,” I say to Eva, stepping past the special agent and into room 1416, then pointing Eva in the direction of Jasmine’s body, though of course she’d have had a hard time missing it. It was the only corpse in the immediate vicinity.
“Her name is Jasmine Albright,” I say to Eva. “She’s twenty, a junior. Sarah, our grad assistant, said she had dinner with Jasmine last night—they both had falafel—and Jasmine was fine. Then we tried to reach her this morning and she didn’t pick up. That’s all I know.”
I don’t mention the thing Ameera had said, about Jasmine having been at a pahty the night before. None of us—at least those of us who’d been there at the time—had been able to get another word out of her about it. Hopefully Drs. Flynn or Kilgore had better luck, but so far I haven’t heard anything.
Eva mutters a curse word as she looks Jasmine over while simultaneously taking a pair of latex gloves from the kit she carries with her—literally a wheelie bag filled with tools used for collecting postmortem evidence.
“Sorry about this, Heather,” Eva says sympathetically. “I couldn’t believe it when I got the address. I was like, Noooo. Not Death Dorm again!”
“Thanks,” I say. I’m as used to Eva’s quirks as I am to her spiked blond hair and tattoos. Contrary to popular belief, medical examiners are usually quite cheerful, though not surprisingly a bit prone to gallows humor, since they spend the majority of their time around dead people.
“What’s up with the suit, though?” Eva asks, flashing a look of annoyance at Special Agent Lancaster. “This girl have rich parents or something?”
“Not that I know of,” I say. “He’s here because we have a Very Important Resident who lives—”
“Ms. Wells,” Special Agent Lancaster snaps, pausing his phone conversation. “The reason for my presence here is on a need-to-know basis, and Ms. Kovalenko does not need to. It has nothing to do with this girl’s unfortunate death.”
Eva looks at me questioningly. I shrug. “As far as I know,” I say, “it doesn’t.”
“Well,” she says, her lips forming a hard line. “Ramon and I will be the judge of that, won’t we . . . if he ever finds a place to park the van. What’s going on out there in front of the building, anyway?”
“What do you mean?”
“There are all these buses parked outside, and kids getting onto them.”
Suddenly I remember.
“Oh God.” I put a hand to my mouth. “Casino Night.” I’d totally forgotten.
“What night?” Eva asks.
“Casino Night.” I shake my head. “It’s part of orientation week for the new students. All the kids are being taken on a harbor cruise around Manhattan for mocktails and gambling. Not real gambling, of course, there’s no cash involved, they win prizes like New York College sweatshirts and other swag.”
Eva shakes her head. “Things have certainly changed from when I went to college. We thought it was cool when they gave us free hot dogs to grill over a hibachi in the quad. Now you people take them on cruises around Manhattan.”
“Well,” I say. “Hibachis aren’t allowed anymore, because they’re considered a fire hazard.”
Eva rolls her eyes. “Of course. We wouldn’t want any of them learning a skill that might actually come in handy someday, such as barbecuing, would we?” She throws Special Agent Lancaster a narrow-eyed glance. “When my boy Ramon gets here you’ll let him through, right, 007? Or are you going to shoot him?”