by J. D. Robb
“So what’s two more? Who’s driving?”
“Seriously?” Now Peabody’s mouth dropped open.
“You’re primary.”
“Okay, yay. I’m driving.” Thrilled, Peabody plopped behind the wheel. “I’ve been wanting to do this ever since Roarke gave it to you. It looks like crap, but oh, baby, she is loaded squared.”
She was, Eve agreed. Her husband never missed a trick, plus he just loved giving her presents. One of his first, a tear-shaped diamond twice the size of her thumb, rode under her shirt.
It was beautiful, exquisite, and probably worth more than the gross national product of a small country. But if she’d had to choose between it and the crap-looking vehicle, the crap would win, hands down.
“I’ve got a sex bar, a game parlor, pizza joint, and the public ball court,” Peabody began. “I could plot a route into the navi that would take us by all of them in the most efficient time frame.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
“But? Come on. I give you input when you’re primary.”
“They ran out loaded with junk food, so why go to a pizza joint to hang out, especially when they’re juiced? Sex club, maybe, if they’re after a bang.”
“But?” Peabody repeated.
“They just knocked a couple of old people around. It’s unlikely they know they killed one of them. It’s all fun and games. They didn’t take any money, didn’t snatch the Ochis’ wedding rings, their wrist units, the DB’s wallet.”
“And a sex club costs,” Peabody concluded. “The bang costs more.”
“They scored junk food and proved how frosty they are. When you’re stoned, think you’re frosty, and having such a fucking good time, you want to brag, maybe smack a few more heads.”
“Game parlor or basketball. I get it. We’ll try those first. If we don’t hit, we’ll swing by the others.”
Eve nodded approval. “Better plan.”
Peabody keyed in the locations. “You really think they don’t know Ochi’s dead?”
“They’re stoned, they’re stupid, they’re major assholes. But none of them has a murder under his belt. They ran out laughing, high-fiving. Odds are if they’d known they’d done murder, they’d have finished the wife off, had a conversation, acknowledged the kill. They didn’t.”
They hit the game parlor first, found it packed. Cooler than outside, Eve thought, but the cacophony of bells, whistles, screams, roars, blasts, and the spinning, blinking, flashing lights made her wonder why anyone would want to spend a summer afternoon glued to a machine.
The pudgy, pasty-faced attendant near the entrance took a gander at the ID shots.
“Yeah, true. They game regular. Slash banged high score on Assassins couple days ago. Still standing. Gonna take it down personal when I got space ’cause he’s an asswipe.”
“Have they been in today?” Peabody asked him.
“Untrue. Night gamers mostly. Stone heads when they can get it.” He shrugged. “What do?”
“We need to talk to them.” Peabody pulled out a card. “If they come in, contact me. What’s riding top on Bust It?”
His attention focused. “You game?”
“Solid true G-bitch. Slayed the ace on Bust It.” She held up three fingers. “Triple.”
“Major ups,” he said with respect. “You wanna whirl?”
“On the move, but maybe back around.”
“Take you on,” he said with a grin.
“Set. Taking it out,” she added. “If they whirl, tag me.”
He swiped a finger over his heart and pocketed her card.
“What,” Eve demanded, “was that?”
“Maybe he’d tag us, but odds are against because he didn’t really give a shit, and I thought he might just toss the card. So I got his attention, his respect. Gamer-bop. It’s kind of stupid, but it worked.”
“True,” Eve said and made Peabody laugh.
They wound their way through traffic, past graffiti-laced prefabs tossed up after the Urban Wars where men with nothing better to do sat on crumbling stoops sucking brew and rotgut out of bottles wrapped in brown paper.
Street toughs stood in small packs, most of them in snug tanks to show off a range of tattoos and sweaty muscles.
Rusted fencing surrounded the cracked and faded blacktop court. Somebody had gone to the trouble to push or sweep the piles of litter to the fence line where broken glass glittered like lost diamonds.
A group of men—late teens to early twenties—were playing shirts and skins. And some of the skins were scraped and bruised. Onlookers leaned or sat against the fence, and except for the teenage couple currently attempting to reach each other’s navels from the inside with their tongues, they shouted at, insulted, and harangued the players.
Peabody pulled in behind the husk of a stripped-down compact.
Someone had painted FUK U on the dented trunk.
“What does it say about the literacy rate when you can’t even spell fuck. It’s sad,” Eve decided.
“Bruster,” Peabody said, lifting her chin toward the court.
“Yeah, I saw him, and his asshole companions.”
“I’ll call for backup.”
“Uh-huh.”
Eve watched a moment. They’d come in as shirts, and those shirts were glued to their torsos with sweat. Jimmy K had rolled his baggy pants above his knobby knees, and from his rhythm, his moves, Eve judged he had a little game in him. Maybe he’d have more if he wasn’t currently coming down from a high and sweating like a pig in the heat.
Bruster’s face was lobster red and dripping, and from the fury on it, she expected the skins were kicking ass. Leon panted like a dog as he ran cross-court. Even with the distance she could see his chest heave in and out.
“They’re cooked,” Eve said. “Bottoming out, winded. They couldn’t outrun a one-legged toddler.”
“Backup, four minutes.” When Eve only nodded, Peabody shifted in her seat. “Okay, let’s take these assholes.”
“Looking forward to it.”
Eve stepped out of the car. A few of the fence sitters made them as cops halfway across the street. Some sneered, some looked nervous, others tried the blank look she assumed meant an attempt to be invisible.
On court Bruster stole the ball by ramming his elbow into his opponent’s gut. The short, vicious war that broke out gave Eve and Peabody time to cross the street, ease through the gate of the fence.
Eve kicked the navel ticklers lightly with her foot. “Beat it.” She tapped the weapon under her jacket to add incentive. They scrambled up and out, and clear, she thought, of any potential harm.
She ignored the others who suddenly decided they had better places to be and sidled out of the gate. She focused on Bruster, but took the opportunity to plant her boot on Slatter’s chest where he lay wheezing and bleeding on the ground.
“Stay down. Get up, try to run, I’ll stun you enough to drop you, enough so you piss your pants.” To emphasize the point, she drew her weapon and watched Peabody try to avoid jabbing elbows and flying fists from the combatants still on the ground and reach through to grab Bruster.
Jimmy K sat on the ground nursing a busted lip. “We ain’t done nothing. Little white bastard in there punched me.”
“Yeah?” He’d forgotten, she concluded, all about the Ochis, the market. The lives he’d broken into jagged bits. “Sit, stay,” she told him.
But Bruster hadn’t forgotten. She saw his eyes fire when Peabody hauled him off the kid he was currently pounding. She dodged the swing, avoided the kick, all while trying to identify herself as a police officer.
Slatter tried to roll out from under her boot. Eve merely increased the pressure. “I can crack a couple ribs,” she told him, “and say it happened during the game. Think about it.”
Instead of drawing her weapon, Peabody blocked a punch. Some of it got through, glanced off her shoulder, and the follow-up connected, fairly solidly in Eve’s judgment, with her ear.
Th
e rainbow shades slid, cocked crookedly on her face.
Peabody managed a half-assed jab that had Eve shaking her head.
Heavy on her feet, she noted, telegraphing her moves.
When Bruster grabbed the jammer out of his pocket, Eve lifted her weapon, prepared to fire. And Peabody said, “Oh, fuck this!” and kicked him in the balls.
The jammer spurted out of his hand as he dropped, retching. Eve gave Peabody reflex points for managing to catch it on the fly.
“You are so completely under arrest.” Peabody dropped down, rolled Bruster over, and slapped on restraints. “You want some of that?” she shouted as Jimmy K started crab-walking backward.
He froze. “Uh-uh. Come on, man. Just a b-ball game. No deal.”
“Bet your ass no deal.” She pulled herself up, glanced over as Eve cuffed Slatter. “On your face,” she ordered, and finished the job with Jimmy K as their backup screamed in.
“Call for a bus,” Peabody ordered the first officer to reach them. “A couple of these guys need medical attention. Get names,” she added. “We’ll add assault on these bleeders to the mix. And get a wagon for these three.”
“Yes, sir.”
Peabody glanced at Eve, grinned. She mouthed, “He called me ‘sir.’” Then cleared her throat. “Lieutenant, will you inform these jerkwads of the charges and read them their rights?”
“Absolutely. Bruster Lowe, Leon Slatter, Jimmy K Rogan, you’re under arrest for murder—”
“We done no murder!” Jimmy K nearly screamed it as a couple of uniforms hauled him up. “You got the wrong dudes, man. We playing b-ball.”
“Additional charges include attempted murder, assault, destruction of property, theft, and in Bruster’s case resisting arrest and assault on a police officer. We may be able to bump that one up, just for fun, to attempted murder of a police officer.”
When it was done, and the three men were loaded in the wagon, Peabody swiped her hands over her face. “That was good, good work. But ow!” She patted her hand on her ear.
“You’re heavy on your feet.”
“Hey, no fat comments while I’m primary.”
“Not your weight, Peabody—except you keep too much of it on your feet. And you hesitate. Good reflexes, but your moves are slow. You need to polish up your hand-to-hand.”
“Since my ear’s still ringing I can’t argue. I’ll work on it.”
“But you took him down, so yeah, that’s good work.” Eve swung around at the high-pitched scream of her vehicle alarm.
She watched the hopeful booster land on his ass in the street as the warning charge engaged. His lock popper rolled into the gutter.
“It works. Good to know.”
She strolled back, letting the booster limp off—considering it a valuable lesson learned.
“I’m thirsty. I want a fizzy.” Peabody slid a glance at Eve. “I’m stopping on the way to Central for a fizzy. I want to give them a little time to sweat anyhow. I told the uniforms to keep them separate, and to book the interview rooms. Jimmy K’s the weak link, right? I thought we’d take him first.”
“Works for me.”
“I want to be bad cop.”
Eve shifted to look at her partner—the cop with rainbows in her eyes. “I worry about you, Peabody.”
“I never get to be bad cop. I want to be the über-bitch, and you be the sympathetic one. He was blubbering when they loaded him. I don’t even have to be that bad. Besides,” she muttered, “I’m primary.”
“Fine.” Eve settled back. “You pay for the drinks.”
Jimmy K was still blubbering when they walked into Interview. Peabody scowled at him. “Peabody, Detective Delia, and Dallas, Lieutenant Eve, in Interview with Rogan, Jimmy K, on the matter of the murder of Ochi, Charlie, and connected charges.”
“I didn’t kill nobody!” Jimmy K wailed it.
“Oh, shut the fuck up.” Peabody slapped the file on the table, took out the still of the dead, slapped that down on top. “See that, Rogan? That’s what you and your friends did.”
“Did not. Did not.”
“And this.” She laid out the photos of Mrs. Ochi, the close-ups of her bleeding head, her black eye, swollen jaw. “I guess you like beating up on grandmothers, you asswit punk.”
“I didn’t.”
Peabody started to lunge out of her chair.
“Hold on, hold on.” Playing her part, Eve laid a hand on her partner’s shoulder. “Give him a chance, okay? He looks pretty shaky. I brought you a cold drink, Jimmy K. You want a tube of Coke?”
“Yeah man, yeah.” He took it from her, gulped it down. “I didn’t kill nobody, no way.”
“We got witnesses, you fuckhead.”
“Uh-uh.” Jimmy K shook his head at Peabody. “Nobody was in there when we went in, and Skid, he zapped the cam. So you don’t.”
God, Eve thought, what a moron. “You were in Ochi’s Market today?” she asked him. “With Bruster Lowe—Skid, and Leon Slatter—Slash?”
“Okay, yeah. We wanted some munch, you know? So we go in to get some.”
“You always zap the cam when you go for some munch?” Peabody demanded.
“We’re just playing around, see?”
“Playing?” Peabody roared it, shoved Ochi’s photo in Jimmy K’s face. “Is this playing around?”
“No, man, no, sir. I never did that.”
“Relax, Jimmy K,” Eve told him and made sure he saw her shoot Peabody a disapproving look. “You know jammers are illegal—even homemade ones.”
“Yeah.” He sighed it out. “But see, I was just experimenting, like. Sometimes I pick up some scratch working in an e-store, and you learn shit. Educational shit. I told the dudes I could make up a jammer from some of the shit we got around, and they’re all, ‘Bullshit you can, motherfucker,’ like that. So I showed them. I worked on it for, like, hours, man. We got a buzz going. You know how it be when you’re hanging.”
“Yeah.” Eve nodded. “Sure.”
“We tried it out, and it fucked Slash’s comp good. That’s some funny shit, man. Skid and I busted gut. Slash was a little pissed, and so he starts to grab it from me, and I try to hold it, and I, like, hit the control. Zapped him. Jesus, shoulda seen him jump. Laughed our asses to the ground. We just fooled around, zapped each other a few times, did more Ups. And you know, we got hungry, and we decided, hell, we’d go hit Ochi’s, get our munch, play with the zipzap. That’s what we called it. Zipzap. I made it myself.”
He said that with no little pride, and Eve could see Peabody felt sorry for him.
“That’s a real talent, Jimmy K,” Eve said, and gave Peabody a kick under the table.
“You asshole.” Peabody toughened her face. “You went to Ochi’s Market to steal from them, to bust their place up, to bust them up carrying an illegal device that jammed security and emitted an electronic charge? Carrying saps?”
“Okay, listen, okay, just listen.” He patted the air down with his hands. “We were buzzing, had the munch on. Ochi has good munch, and that old man, he’s always running us off, even had the cops go to Skid’s old lady’s place once just because we knocked a few things over. We just wanted the munch, and to show them not to keep messing with us. Just spook them up, get me?”
“So it was just going to be a robbery,” Eve said, picking up the rhythm. “The three of you took your zipzap, the saps, and went in intending to steal, to intimidate, maybe, if they gave you grief, rough them up a little, break a few things.”
“Yeah, that’s it. We were buzzing, man. We had a really good buzz going. Skid had the zipzap. It was his turn, and hey, the old guy called the cops on him and all that. Zapped the cam good, too. The old lady, she got all, you know, so Slash clipped her some.”
“Leon Slatter—Slash—hit her with the sap,” Eve encouraged, “because she was yelling at you to stop.”
“That’s it. She was yelling and bossing, so Slash sapped her a little to shut her up. Me, I got some candy and chips and shit, and
the old man comes out half crazy. He’s, like, attacking me, so I just defended myself and gave him a knock. And he’s going after Skid, and he’s screaming, like, insane shit, so Skid, he gave him a zap. We were buzzing and all so we broke the place up, then we left. See? We didn’t kill nobody.”
Peabody pulled a paper out of the file. “This is the autopsy report on Ochi. Do you know what an autopsy is, you asshole?”
He licked his lips. “It’s like when they cut up dead people. Sucks, man.”
“And when they cut up this dead person, it turns out he died of coronary arrest. His heart stopped.”
“See, like I said, we didn’t kill him.”
“It stopped due to an electric shock, which also left electrical burns on his chest. Your fucking zipzap’s the murder weapon.”
Jimmy K’s eyes bulged. “No. Shit, no.”
“Shit, yes.”
“It was an accident, man. An accident, right?” he said, pleading, to Eve.
She was tired of good cop. “You went into Ochi’s Market, intending to rob, to destroy property, to cause intimidation and physical harm to the Ochis and whoever else might have been present. You went in carrying an illegal device you knew caused physical harm, and weighted bags fashioned into saps. You indeed did rob, did destroy property, and did cause physical harm by your own admission. Here’s what happens when a death incurs as a result of a crime or during the course of committing a crime. It bumps it up to murder.”
“Can’t be.”
“Oh,” Eve assured him, “it be.”
2
EVE LET PEABODY SET THE PACE. IT TOOK A BIT longer than it might have, but she couldn’t say the interviews weren’t thorough. At the end of the long process, three dangerous idiots were in cages, where she didn’t doubt they’d spend many decades of their idiot lives.
In her office, she gestured to her AutoChef. “I don’t have coffee,” she said, as if slightly puzzled. “When you correct that situation, you can get one for yourself.”
Peabody programmed two cups, handed one off.
“Good work,” Eve told her, tapped mugs.
“It was pretty much a slam dunk.”
“If it was it’s because you slammed it. You got details and information from a wit, combined that with the information I got from the vic’s wife, with what we observed and compiled from the scene.”