utal, and loyal above all to the gang—as he sees it. If, again, it’s not Jones, it’s someone who’s already working to depose him. Women are to be used however he chooses to use them. He may have watched his father or another male authority figure abuse and/or humiliate his mother. If she tolerated it, she’s a whore. If she didn’t, she’s a bitch.”
“Peabody’s digging into a report right now. Jorgenson went after his mother, physically. His sister—military—stopped him.”
Mira’s eyebrows lifted. “That’s certainly interesting, and certainly fits. Attacking his mother, being stopped by his sister? It’s likely he has a very skewed view of women.”
With obvious reluctance, Mira pushed off the desk. “I’m going to take a closer look at your reports after I’m done at the—absolutely routine—dentist.” She picked up her coat. “I’ll write up a more cohesive profile once I have.”
“Thanks. And the good luck thing again.”
“I’ll take it. Eve, when you speak to Rochelle, please give her my sympathy. And let her know, though she probably has her own contacts, if she wants the names of grief counselors, I can help there.”
“I will.”
As Mira clicked away on her garden shoes, Eve turned back to her board.
She spent the next hour going over the data Peabody sent her on Jorgenson, picking through Strong’s case files for connections still in the gang to anyone she busted. And after a quick tag, had Strong send her the best guess on the Banger chain of command.
With that, she started runs, played with probabilities.
Glancing over when her comp signaled an incoming, she seized on Harvo’s report.
“All hail the fucking queen!”
She hit her ’link, made the tags while she worked out the steps in her head. Then, swinging on her coat, headed out to the bullpen.
“Officers Carmichael, Shelby, suit up. We’re moving, Peabody. Harvo came through.”
“We got one?”
“Barry Aimes, aka Fist. Reo’s getting the warrant. Dug down into his juvenile for the DNA match on one of the hairs Morris found on Duff. No luck on a second sample. Aimes is only seventeen. Got booted from school for fighting, did a little short time in kid jail for same. And he left his hair on Duff.”
She showed Peabody the image on her ’link screen. “Wears it long, and it’s currently dyed red. He’s got a job listed—stocking shelves at a mini—and a residence. We’ll hit the mini first.”
“Seventeen.” Peabody shoved her arms in her coat. “And he’s already killed twice.”
“Bad boy,” Eve said, looking forward to sweating his co-killers’ names out of him once she had him in the box. “Here’s how we’re going to roll it out.”
11
Eve didn’t care about double-parking on police business, but in this case, she had a purpose to pissing off drivers when she slid next to the beater at the curb in front of the mini-mart.
If Aimes managed to get by her out the front, she’d pursue on foot while Peabody jumped back in the car to cut him off.
If he tried the back, she had her two uniforms waiting.
A big guy at six-three and two-sixty, she’d reminded her takedown team—and one who likely carried sharps and couldn’t be expected to go quietly.
With Peabody, she walked into the mini, a quick shop approximately the size of her closet. Its wares included snack packs of junk food, some canned goods, candy, condoms, a section of cheap makeup and hair dye. She imagined the lottery tickets and black-market tobacco products sold illegally under the table kept the place afloat.
She didn’t see Aimes—and it would’ve been impossible to miss him in a space that size with the only occupants one middle-aged male wearing a do-rag and a sour expression behind the counter, and a lone female with an infant in a sling, a dented basket in her hand.
Eve approached the counter with its short stock of candy bars inside a locked case.
“Help ya?”
“We’re looking for Barry Aimes.”
“Yeah?” His sour expression soured further. “Let me know when you find his lazy punk ass so I can fire it. He hasn’t been in for two days running.”