Deadly Assets (Badge of Honor 12)

A skinny black woman, wearing a thin faded blue bathrobe, sat cross-legged on the bare wooden floor, her elbows on her knees and face in her hands.

“Police, ma’am,” Harris said, his eyes darting between her and the living room behind her. “You okay?”

After a moment, she slowly looked up. Payne guessed she was maybe forty years old, but could easily be mistaken for sixty.

Or older.

“Can we come in?” Payne said.

Between sobs, she said, “Why . . . why not? All those others that just left did.”

Payne saw that the living room was a mess. The couch had been turned upside down, its cushions sliced open, the stuffing seemingly everywhere. Cabinet doors and drawers were open, their contents scattered.

“What’s your name, ma’am?” Harris said.

“Jolene,” she said. “Jolene Hooper.”

“How are you related to Tyrone Banks?”

“He’s my boy.”

“Hooper, you said?”

“That’s my married name . . . first husband, not Tyrone’s daddy.”

“Where is Tyrone?”

She made what sounded like a sarcastic chuckle.

“That’s what they wanted to know, too,” she said. “He ain’t here. But being gone at this hour’s normal.”

“The people who did this to your house, you mean?” Payne said.

“They say they were looking for Tyrone and the stuff they say he stole.”

“How many people?” Harris said. “What did they look like?”

She looked up at them, her face almost contorted.

“You serious, man? I don’t know who they was, but I do know they can come back. I ain’t getting no stitches.”

“Anyone else in the house?” Harris said.

“Not no more.”

“You mind if we look around?” Payne then said.

“Do what ya gotta do.”

She pointed to the stairs that led to the basement.

“His stuff is down there. I keep to myself upstairs.”

Payne, holding his Colt alongside his leg, moved quickly to the stairway, then raised the pistol chest high, sweeping the space as he descended.

The lights in the small basement were still on—a pair of dusty bare bulbs in an overhead fixture that was missing its glass bowl—and Payne stopped at the foot of the stairs.

The room had been gone through like the upstairs. The drawers of the desk were all pulled free and dumped on the floor. The entire cover of the mattress had been cut away, leaving exposed a skeleton of wire springs.