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While she waited, Eve added the new crime scene shots, pinned on Fan Ho’s ID shot, the witnesses.

“Coffee, please,” Reo said as she walked in, and Eve held up two fingers.

“Does your DB relate to the others?”

“He was part of the team who killed Pickering and Duff. They dumped him in the alley behind the family restaurant and residence of the captain of the Dragons.”

“Not even subtle.” Reo passed Eve the coffee and, knowing the dangers of the visitor’s chair, sat at the desk. “Cohen hired an attorney, who came in to speak to his client. Quit in very short order. Cohen’s now back

to being a fool and representing himself.”

“Should make the job easier. Feds?”

“My powers of persuasion?” Reo fluffed at her already fluffy hair. “Are awesome. In addition to that, after some mumbling and claim staking, they liked your plan. Didn’t love, but liked. My awesome powers turned the tide.”

“They’ll leave Eldena Vinn out of it?”

Reo smiled. “Powers of persuasion. Awesome. She’ll have to testify, but I’ve already had a talk with her lawyer. She’s not only willing, she’s eager. Agents should be, as we speak, at her place getting her statement, confiscating Cohen’s electronics and records.”

“Good. That keeps them busy while I lay a third body at Cohen’s feet. This guy?” She tapped Aimes’s photo on the board. “He murdered two people, participated in the brutal beating and gang rape of the woman who assisted in the first murder. He had her earrings, with her blood still on them from where he ripped them out of her ears, in a purse he stole from Rochelle’s closet after murdering her brother.”

Eve looked at Aimes—defiant young face in his ID shot, dead and drained at the dump site. “Lab’s confirmed Duff’s blood and tissue on the earrings. We’d have put him away for the rest of his life. Now he’ll never see eighteen.”

Hissing out a breath, Eve rubbed the back of her neck. “And now I’ve got to send cops and a grief counselor out to the fricking Sky Mall to notify his mother because I didn’t scoop him up, lock him up, before somebody slit his throat.”

“Are you looking at Jones for that?”

“If Jones found out Aimes went around him to kill Pickering and Duff, he’d execute Aimes. But I don’t see him ordering the body dumped at the back door of a Dragon captain.”

She gestured with her coffee. “Jones is a fake. Sure, he’s beating the Banger drum—but he’s cheating his fellow gang members while he’s at it. Banking profits, going into a partnership outside the group to make more. For himself. He doesn’t want attention focused on him, and sloppy murders tend to do just that.”

“And if Cohen went into partnership with him, and Jones started cutting back on the percentage…”

“Cohen might have gone into a partnership with someone else,” Eve finished. “Someone in the position to, and with the ambition to, take over if they could depose Jones.”

This time Eve jabbed a finger on Jorgenson’s ID shot. “It’s going to be him. He wants the war. He wants to lead.”

“If so, why not just kill Jones?”

“A harder target, but that may be coming.” She polished off her coffee. “So. Time to get to it.”

“I’m on tap if you need my awesome powers of persuasion.”

They parted ways in the bullpen. From Trueheart’s desk—he and Baxter were on their way to the Sky Mall—Strong signaled Eve.

“I know you want to get to Cohen, but I reached Ho’s sister’s ex-boyfriend. Good timing on that. Hugh Lanigan’s younger brother’s in his first year of college in Cambridge. Smart kid, got into Harvard. The parents moved to South Carolina a few months ago.”

“You’re going to tell me Ho threatened his family, so he kept his mouth shut.”

“You should be a detective. Stay away from my sister, or you’re dead. Go to the cops, and your little brother’s dead. And, hey, your mom looks pretty good. Be a shame if somebody messed up her face.”

“Now Lanigan figures they’re out of reach so he can talk.”

“He’s ready to file charges, testify, do whatever it takes to put Ho away. He talked to his family about it just a few days ago, and they’re behind him. He was just building up the guts for it.”

“Reo’s in Observation. Go get her, set this up.”

With a nod, Strong rose. “Dallas, if this goes our way, we’re going to put a hurting on two gangs. We won’t wipe them out, but they’ll hurt.”


Tags: J.D. Robb In Death Mystery