Obsession in Death (In Death 40)

She brought up the next batch of names, and taking Mira’s advice, ran them with the profile. She eliminated two, then one more out-of-towner when she checked the travel and employment.

Two potentials, one in the city, the other in Hoboken—with employment in Midtown. Five minutes with a supervisor over the ’link eliminated Hoboken. He’d been in a meeting with the supervisor and two other software developers from four-thirty to just before six on the day of Bastwick’s murder—then had joined his coworkers for an after-work drink until after seven.

That left a forty-year-old criminology instructor—and she liked that connection. Only five-eight, but he could’ve worn lifts. On the thin side at 148, but padding would take care of that. Brown eyes, mixed race.

The syntax of his correspondence didn’t jibe with the written messages for her, but since everything else did—and it would get her the hell out in the field—she grabbed her coat.

“Peabody, with me.”

“LT.” Jenkinson started toward her as she swung on her coat. “We got ’em. Stupid fucks were riding the airboards. We’ve got two of them in separate interview rooms, sweating it, and the third . . .”

He glanced over toward his desk.

Eve saw the third slumped in a chair, wearing restraints and a sneer.

“What is he? Fifteen? Sixteen?”

“He’s twelve.”

“Oh fuck me.”

“What I said. Big for his age, and mean as a rattler. His older brother took him along, I figure like an initiation. We’ve got him here waiting on his grandmother—she’s custodial—and a child advocate. I took a six-inch sticker off that kid, boss. It had dried blood on it, and I’m damn sure it’s going to belong to one of those kids.”

“Twelve,” Eve mumbled.

She thought of Tiko—junior entrepreneur. Smart as they came and canny with it.

He only had a grandmother, too. One who gave him room to be himself, and rules to live by. And a foundation that meant he’d never find himself in a cop shop with a bloodstained sticker in evidence.

What made the difference, she wondered, between a kid who did things right, and one who killed for a board?

“He won’t flip,” she said, studying the boy and his defiant, self-satisfied smirk. “He likes being here, thinks it makes him a man. Thinks he’ll cruise through juvie with a bad-ass rep.”

“Lawyer, when he gets one, is going to clean him up, dress him like a kid, push the twelve-years-old, was-led-astray bullshit.”

“Yeah, that’s how I’d play it. If that blood on his sticker turns out to be one of the vics’, you make sure the PA sees pictures of the boys they cut up—before and after. They may not be so ready to make a deal with that in front of them. They may not try him as an adult, but you take the shot.”

“We’ll be doing that. The tagalong’s going to flip. Third guy,” Jenkinson explained. “Put on the tough, but he started shaking when we loaded him into interview. Got a sticker, wiped clean, but the lab’ll find trace, and a roll of Jump on him. He’ll flip. Brother of this one, he’ll hold tough. He’s already done five for assault with intent, and did his own stint in juvie prior. Third sticker on him and a shiny new wrist unit I bet he cut some other poor bastard for.”

“Sweat them out, wrap them up. Good work, Jenkinson. Same to Reineke.”

“I’ll tell him. He’s getting an ice pack. Kid there caught him with an elbow shot. We hadn’t had a pair of uniforms with us to help take them down, it would’ve been bloody.”

He shrugged. “That’s the job.”

“It is.”

“The brothers—the dead boys? Memorial’s tomorrow morning.”

“Take the time, go. That’s the job, too.”

“Appreciate that, Dallas.”

She signaled to the waiting Peabody, started out.

“I heard they bagged the three who killed those kids.”

“Yeah. Looks like they’ve got them cold.”