In Death 27 - Salvation in Death

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    “There would have been others,” Roarke commented. “Other fatalities, on both sides of the war, while your victim was a captain. And therefore in charge.”
    “Yeah, got that covered. Stuben’s going to get me the data by tomorrow. I don’t hit here, I’ll start looking there.”
     
    Task complete.
     
    “Display, screen one. Five fatalities,” Eve said. “There’s another whose injuries were severe enough I’ll need to look at. Guy lost an arm. Three of the fatalities were members of the Skulls. Of the other two, one was the manager and one was a part-time counter guy. All fatalities were minors, except the manager.”
    “Four children dead.”
    “Yeah. Well, two of the gang members, according to Stuben’s file, had done time in juvie, had been arrested for assault with deadly—and released when the wits failed to identify—and had been suspects in the bludgeoning death of a Soldado.”
    “Boys will be boys.”
    “And scum will be scum. The manager . . . Computer, display data for adult victim. Kobie Smith, some bumps in his teens and early twenties. No time inside. Employed there for three years, manager for six months. Left a wife of eighteen months and a kid. Kid was two at the time of his father’s death, making him about twenty now. Too young to fit Mira’s profile, or my gut, but we look.” She ordered the data.
    “Well, well,” Roarke commented as he read. “It seems he’s attending the Police Academy in Orlando, Florida. In the land of speculation, his father is killed in what is believed to be gang violence, and the son sets a goal to become a cop. To serve and protect.”
    Eve frowned thoughtfully at the data on-screen. “No criminal. Two half-sibs. Mother married again. Huh. Married a cop after relocating to Florida, three years after husband’s death. Can’t see Penny tracking her down, getting her hyped enough to come back and poison Lino. But the vic had parents, too, and a brother.”
    She ran their data, studying it, considering it. Parents divorced, she noted. Mother residing in Philadelphia, father in the Bronx, as was one brother. The second brother in Trenton. “None of them stayed in the neighborhood. It’s going to be someone in the neighborhood.”
    “That’s most likely, I agree, but it’s very possible your bad Penny—”
    “Ha-ha.”
    “That she went out of the neighborhood to add more distance between her and the murder. I would have.”
    “She’s not as smart as you.”
    “Well now, billions aren’t, but it’s good strategy, and she had plenty of time to work on that strategy.”
    “Yeah. Damn. I see hikes to the Bronx and Trenton in my future. Possibly Philadelphia because it’s poison, and poison skews most often as a female weapon. And look at that, the mother’s never remarried, works as a medical assistant in a rehab facility. Medicals can access poisons easier than the rest of us.”
    “She lost not only a son, but a grandson, as the mother took him to Orlando, remarried. Of course, it may be there’s been effort to maintain a relationship on all sides.”
    “And it may not be,” Eve finished and blew out a breath. “Okay, top of the list goes Emmelee Smith. I may be able to work a warrant for checking her communications and travel over the past few weeks.” She yawned. “I need coffee.”
    “You need bed.”
    She shook her head, rose. “I just want to run through the others. I can start looking into the ones that give me the buzz tomorrow.”
    She hit the kitchen and the AutoChef for both of them.
    “I called up the data on the counter boy,” Roarke told her when she returned. “He was barely sixteen.”
    “Quinto Turner. Quinto. That sounds like a Spanish name. Mother Juanita Rodrigez Turner. Hmmm. Father Joseph Turner. He was mixed race, Mexican and black, straddling a line between gangs, racially and geographically. No sibs. Father deceased. Look at that. Self-terminated by hanging, on the one-year anniversary of his son’s death.”
    “So the woman lost two.”
    “Computer, all data on Juanita Rodrigez Turner, on-screen.”
    “She lives three blocks from the church,” Roarke began.
    “Wait. Wait. I’ve seen her. Computer, enlarge ID photo, twenty-five percent. I’ve seen her,” Eve repeated. “Where was it? It was quick, it was just a . . . Goddamn, goddamn, the youth center. She works at the youth center. Day-care manager, on-site medical. She wasn’t pissed and irritated, she was nervous. That’s