Treachery in Death (In Death 32)

“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.”