Deadly Assets (Badge of Honor 12)

Payne grunted.

“Don’t they all have their head up their ass?” he said, then added, “So, this guy is supposed to be our big lead, but now my time’s wasted?”

Kennedy grimaced.

“Key word supposed. Say hello to eighteen-year-old Michael Hayward, aka Jamal. Turns out Antwan ‘Pookie’ Parker lied—”

Payne, making his eyes wide in mock horror, slapped his hand to his chest and said, “

A CI lied? I’m shocked!”

“And—brace yourself—one of the things he lied about was this guy wanting to see the famous Wyatt Earp of the Main Line.”

Payne thought: I knew the bastard was blowing smoke.

He said: “Well, in addition to being shocked, now Jamal the Junkie has really hurt my feelings.”

Kennedy chuckled.

“What’s more,” Kennedy went on, “Jamal said he doesn’t have a clue who the famous Wyatt Earp of the Main Line is. In fact, with his high level of maybe an eighth-grade education—he got thrown out of Mansion barely into his first year—it wouldn’t surprise me if he ever heard of the actual Marshal Earp and/or the Main Line.”

“Mansion”—Strawberry Mansion High School, its student body of four hundred coming from deeply impoverished families—struggled to overcome a reputation as one of the most dangerous schools in the entire United States. The addition of metal detectors manned by armed school police officers, and the running of students through them throughout the day, had helped create a somewhat safer learning environment. But that hadn’t stopped the fights in the hallways and the cafeteria from breaking out daily.

“When we frisked him,” Kennedy went on, “he had that belly pocket full of packets of smack and pills. And in his waistband there was a .40 cal semiauto, a Smith & Wesson M-and-P with—get this—only one cartridge. The fifteen-round magazine was empty. When I asked him about it—while doing my little show you said to do—he told me that one bullet was all he had left.”

“Did Jamal get tested for gunshot residue?”

“Yeah, and there was none on him. And it’s not like he washed his hands and clothes of it. I mean, look at him. Washing would have actually cleaned some part of him. And I’m not going to ruin your day and describe what we saw passes for a toilet on his street.”

“The street probably is the toilet.”

Kennedy grunted.

“Right. Close enough . . .”

“Well,” Payne said, pointedly getting back on topic, “if there was no GSR on him, then someone cleaned the gun.”

“Yeah, but only wiped down the exterior. When I glanced down the barrel, the bore was filthy. Someone ran a lot of rounds through it. Way more than just the one magazine.”

“He say where he got the gun?”

Kennedy shook his head.

“He hasn’t really said anything. But I’m betting it was from Pookie. He has a reputation for that. Where Pookie got it is another story. We do know that the street and sidewalk at the scene of Dante’s drive-by was riddled with .40 cal casings.”

“And nine-millimeter, right?”

“Right. And there was plenty of lead recovered, by the Crime Scene guys and a couple during Dante’s autopsy. That’ll keep ballistics busy looking for a match. Especially if they find any of the recovered .40 cal bullets are full metal jackets that had been scored.”

“Cut so they can flatten more like hollow points?”

Kennedy nodded. “Looks that way. That’s what the lone round in Jamal’s gun had. Obviously, a match won’t point to the shooter, but it would at least place the gun at the scene.”

“Sounds like it would be a helluva lot easier having a heart-to-heart chat with ol’ Antwan ‘Pookie’ Parker and getting him to confess,” Payne said, then glanced above the mirror.

Mounted on the wall at the top of the mirror’s window frame was a twenty-inch flat-panel monitor. There were six images, two rows of three, on it, the cameras of the interview room showing its entire interior from various angles. A line of text at the bottom of each image had a date and time stamp and showed the names of the officer conducting the interview and the person being interviewed. All of it was being digitally recorded.

Payne looked at Jamal through the two-way mirror. He knew that the thermostat for the interview room was generally set around sixty degrees. Yet the teenager had beads of sweat on his forehead and the armpits of his sweatshirt were darkened by more moisture.