“High-quality. The Pagans and their competitors, all four of them still alive, aren’t known for their finesse. That’s why so many innocent bystanders go down when they’re settling scores. But this shooter put all his blasts into kill zones. The first shot was about forty feet, dead center to the chest, and it had to be made fast. He came around the door low on Reggie, put one into his knee, to bring him under the table, then the other into his balls. A fourth shot, close-range, finished him. Muzzle distance: zero feet. Ejected shells were all twelve-gauge double-aught Remington. We also found an empty box of shells in Reggie’s room, so presumably one of the bad guys filled his pockets.”

“Anything on the gun?”

“Probably stolen. That’s where the Pagans strap up, mostly. By the spray pattern, I’d say a shorty, sixteen inches. As I say, well-shot. He hit what he was shooting at dead solid perfect. The guy knew what he was doing.”

“How much do you think they clipped?”

“Plenty. Fifteen, twenty, twenty-five thousand, small bills. On a weekend, much bigger, so if the point was to hit a stash house, they would have waited till Saturday night. Hitting one on a weeknight doesn’t make any sense robbery-wise.”

“They needed the dough to get out of town,” said Nick. “Strictly travel money. What about the woman?”

“Different guy. Unarmed. Theola was a formidable woman; she’d been shot three times, and we believe she had at least four kills on her, two bare-handed, but nobody would think of snitching her out. Anyhow, this was amateur hour. He kicks her in the head after she fell down, jumps on her face like it’s a pogo stick. You can see his tracks in the blood. Size: about ten and a half. I’ve seen plenty of those tread marks, they’re Vans, a shoe suburban kids think is cool. It’s not a ghetto icon. The other guy was in size eleven cross-trainers, probably New Balance or Nike. So it’s an odd combo of a pro and someone suburban with zero experience.”

“But they knew where to hit. How’d they know where the stash was?”

“Followed the runner’s car, I’d guess. He’d been out servicing the street pushers.”

“So I think we’d like to talk to the street pushers. They might have something.”

“Sure, so would I, but I can’t do that right away. After something like this, they’ll all go to ground, because they don’t know how it’s going to come down from here. They don’t want to be standing on their corner when the retaliation starts turning the air blue.”

“Got it.”