In Death 32 - Treachery in Death

them up a little, break a few things.”
    “Yeah, that’s it. We were buzzing, man. We had a really good buzz going. Skid had the zipzap. It was his turn, and hey, the old guy called the cops on him and all that. Zapped the cam good, too. The old lady, she got all, you know, so Slash clipped her some.”
    “Leon Slatter—Slash—hit her with the sap,” Eve encouraged, “because she was yelling at you to stop.”
    “That’s it. She was yelling and bossing, so Slash sapped her a little to shut her up. Me, I got some candy and chips and shit, and the old man comes out half crazy. He’s, like, attacking me, so I just defended myself and gave him a knock. And he’s going after Skid, and he’s screaming, like, insane shit, so Skid, he gave him a zap. We were buzzing and all so we broke the place up, then we left. See? We didn’t kill nobody.”
    Peabody pulled a paper out of the file. “This is the autopsy report on Ochi. Do you know what an autopsy is, you asshole?”
    He licked his lips. “It’s like when they cut up dead people. Sucks, man.”
    “And when they cut up this dead person, it turns out he died of coronary arrest. His heart stopped.”
    “See, like I said, we didn’t kill him.”
    “It stopped due to an electric shock, which also left electrical burns on his chest. Your fucking zipzap’s the murder weapon.”
    Jimmy K’s eyes bulged. “No. Shit, no.”
    “Shit, yes.”
    “It was an accident, man. An accident, right?” he said, pleading, to Eve.
    She was tired of good cop. “You went into Ochi’s Market, intending to rob, to destroy property, to cause intimidation and physical harm to the Ochis and whoever else might have been present. You went in carrying an illegal device you knew caused physical harm, and weighted bags fashioned into saps. You indeed did rob, did destroy property, and did cause physical harm by your own admission. Here’s what happens when a death incurs as a result of a crime or during the course of committing a crime. It bumps it up to murder.”
    “Can’t be.”
    “Oh,” Eve assured him, “it be.”

2
    EVE LET PEABODY SET THE PACE. IT TOOK A BIT longer than it might have, but she couldn’t say the interviews weren’t thorough. At the end of the long process, three dangerous idiots were in cages, where she didn’t doubt they’d spend many decades of their idiot lives.
    In her office, she gestured to her AutoChef. “I don’t have coffee,” she said, as if slightly puzzled. “When you correct that situation, you can get one for yourself.”
    Peabody programmed two cups, handed one off.
    “Good work,” Eve told her, tapped mugs.
    “It was pretty much a slam dunk.”
    “If it was it’s because you slammed it. You got details and information from a wit, combined that with the information I got from the vic’s wife, with what we observed and compiled from the scene.”
    Eve sat, plopped her booted feet on her desk. “From there, you followed instinct and located the suspects, even though you could have left that part of it to the officers already on the lookout.”
    Peabody lowered to the spindly visitor’s chair. “You’d have kicked my ass if I’d done that. Our case, our vic, our suspects.”
    “You’re not wrong. You, correctly in my opinion, identified the weak sister and played him first, played him well, intimidating him into babbling out a confession, and relating specific details. Who did what, when, how. You got intent, and that was key. You understood to amp up the pressure and the heat on Slatter because he’s tougher than Rogan.”
    “Mashed potatoes are tougher than Rogan, but don’t stop now. Please continue to tell me I’m a mag investigator.”
    “You didn’t screw up,” Eve said, and made Peabody grin over her coffee regular. “You cooked Slatter because he was pissed enough at Rogan rolling—and knew Rogan had because you laid out the details—to try to roll harder on his pals. He figured since Rogan made the murder weapon, and Lowe had the bright idea to go to the market, Lowe used it on Ochi, he’d be something of an innocent bystander. You let him think it.”
    “Yeah. You led him there with the helpful good cop. A mag investigator has to utilize teamwork.”
    “You’ve got a few more minutes to milk it,” Eve decided.
    “Yay. We worked Lowe like a draft horse.”
    “If you say so. It was smart to go with the sneering, it’s already in the bag, asshole, angle. Sarcasm and ugly amusement instead of