Deadly Assets (Badge of Honor 12)

“Eleven? Robbers and murderers let back out on the street?” the Puerto Rican female said. “Thank you very much, court system.”

“And those are just the victims?” Kuba said. “Maybe we should thank the shooters for taking them out.”

“Yeah,” the female next to him said. “Who are they?”

“Curiously, pretty much the same demographic, just more so,” Payne said. “Males at ninety-three percent. Eighty-three percent black, seventeen white. Half are age eighteen to twenty-four—which is where the Survive to See Twenty-five saying comes from, meaning you’ve beat the odds—or seventy-five percent if you go to age eighteen to thirty-four. And more than ninety percent had prior arrests. Of the total, a third had one to three priors, and a quarter had eleven or more.

“And as far as which guns are used, nine-millimeter is by far the round of choice, with .40 cal and .45 cal being used about half as often. A bit more than one in three wind up shooting multiple shots, hitting multiple parts of the victim’s body. But, following that, curiously, one in four take only a head shot.”

“Nice,” Kuba said, his tone disgusted. “Probably taking their nine and squeezing off the head shot point-blank after making them get on their knees.”

“Execution style is not at all uncommon,” Payne said. “It sends a message.”

Kuba grunted.

The group was quiet a long moment.

“So, Sergeant Payne,” the tall, thoughtful black male said, “using all that real data, is it safe to paint this picture of the typical murderer and victim? That they’re mostly black males between eighteen and thirty-four years of age with at least one prior arrest for robbery and that the crime is committed somewhere between Saturday at eight P.M. and Sunday at four A.M. with multiple shots from a nine-millimeter pistol?”

“Well put. Unfortunately, that is the case—the homicide numbers don’t lie,” Payne said, then glanced at Andy. “And we haven’t even touched on the numbers of attempted murder of innocent people.”

Kuba whistled lightly as he shook his head.

“I was damn lucky I only got robbed,” he said.

[ THREE ]

“But here’s the kicker on this Kensington carjacking,” Kerry Rapier said, pointing toward the image of the crime scene on the ECC wall.

Payne looked at it and said, “You mean as in: Where’s Waldo?”

Rapier snorted.

“Exactly. The uniform who was first at the scene reported an enormous amount of blood on the sidewalk. But no body. And no shell casings—”

“No spent rounds? Then the doer used a revolver,” Payne said.

“That, or the shooter actually stuck around and cleaned the scene of all his spent rounds.”

“Yeah, right. Possible. But it’d be a miracle.”

“Police Radio broadcasted a Flash info with the description of the car—a late-model VW Jetta—but dollars to doughnuts it’s probably already across the river in Jersey or Delaware. Or about to be.”

“Maybe Waldo’s not dead. Maybe he’s wounded and in hiding. With wounds to the chest and throat, there’d damn sure be a blood trail.”

Rapier shook his head. “More like a blood river. According to Moss, his buddy Waldo—Billy Chester—was killed. When Moss broke down talking to the transit cop, he said that right before he had to run for his life, it was clear that his buddy was dead.”

Payne reached toward the conference table, grabbed one of the telephones, and punched in a number.

“It’s Sergeant Payne,” he said after a moment. “Who was on the Wheel when this carjacking case in Kensington came in?” His eyebrows went up as he listened, then he said, “And where’s the kid, this Dan Moss, who reported it?” Then, after another moment, added, “Okay, thanks,” and replaced the receiver in its cradle.

He looked at Rapier and said, “This should be good. Chuck Whaley is on his way to the scene. He couldn’t find his ass with both hands even if he were spotted one cheek. And the Moss kid is in Homicide. He gave Whaley his statement and is now waiting for one of his parents to show up.”

Payne looked up at the wall of televisions. Under the one with the Kensington crime scene, two screens showed surveillance camera imagery of the Lucky Stars Casino just before and during the robbery. Each had date and time stamps and camera identification text in the corner. Another screen showed a social media page on the Internet that had a cracked Liberty Bell icon next to ROCKIN215 and the title LUCKY STARS HOOKUP. The page, top to bottom, had line after line of instant messages.

Payne nodded toward it.

“What’s with the ‘hookup’?” he said.