Page 26 of Jina

“Gabe, this is Cole. Do you think his hair is dark brown or black, or is he wearing a hat?”

“Good question. Hang on.” He heard typing in the background. “Okay, I’ll send this cleaned-up version back to you so you can judge for yourself. I think he’s wearing a hat; there’s a bit of a line along the side of his head. He might have dark hair beneath the hat, but again, it’s hard to tell.”

“Thanks, I’ll take a look.” He hadn’t noticed the line Gabe mentioned. “I’m not sure the hair color matters; he could have dyed it to make himself look different.”

“Hair dye works best to make light hair darker, not the other way around,” Jina said. “Hey, Gabe, did you get anything on doing the look back on the perps I’ve arrested in the past few years?”

“I have two names for you,” Gabe said. “Carson Rinko and Jorge Navarro. Both guys have been released in the past year. Rinko was released in November of last year and Navarro in February of this year.”

He made a note of both names as Jina frowned. “I’d have expected the perp to have been released much sooner than that,” she said with a sigh.

“There’s one guy coming up for parole next month,” Gabe said. “His name is Terry Straub.”

“If he’s still in prison, he’s not our guy,” Jina said.

“Is his real name Terrance?” Cole asked, eyeing Jina. “Could be Terrance has a brother or close friend doing his dirty work.”

“If we’re going to add friends and relatives of these perps, we’ll never narrow the list down,” she protested.

He understood her frustration. “We’ll only look at Terrance Straub’s friends and family. Maybe they’re worried you’ll show up at the parole hearing to make sure he’s not released.”

“I don’t usually go to parole—” She stopped short, her eyes widening. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of this before. There was a perp I put away for viciously beating his girlfriend and her daughter.” She dropped her gaze to the phone. “Gabe, check out Martino Hovel. See what he’s been up to.”

“Hold on.” More clicking of the keyboard in the background. “Martino Hovel died in prison last year. Apparently, a blood vessel burst in his brain.”

“That counts him out.” She grimaced. “I guess we’ll just work with the few names we have.”

“Let me know if you need anything else,” Gabe said. “Rhy told me I should help you when I can.”

“We will,” Jina assured him.

“Thanks again,” Cole added, before reaching over to push the end button. “It’s good that we have a place to start.”

“Yes, I’m glad to have some names. But it doesn’t seem logical that either Rinko or Navarro would come after me so many months after they got out. I mean, why would they bother now?”

“I don’t know.” He tapped the computer where he’d taken note of the names. “Let’s focus on Terry Straub who is up for parole.”

“Okay.” She leaned forward, propping her elbows on the table. “We can do computer work on these guys for now, but we need to talk about how to draw this guy out.”

And here it is, he thought with a sigh. “Draw him out?”

“Yes.” Her blue eyes gleamed. “I think we should ask some of the members of my tactical team to stake out the strip mall. We’ll head over there at dusk. You can stay in the car, while I get out and start looking around. When this guy tries to take another shot at me, we’ll grab him.”

“Have you lost your mind?” He didn’t bother to hide his exasperation. “What if he hits and kills you before anyone sees him?”

She waved that off. “My teammates are great. I trust them with my life. They’ll have the place staked out for at least an hour before we head out.”

He didn’t doubt the skills of her team, but the plan was reckless just the same. “Let’s try to make some headway on these suspects, first. Maybe we can go after this guy rather than waiting for him to show up at the strip mall.”

After a pause, she shrugged. “Okay, fine. But if we don’t find anything in an hour, I’m going to make some calls. I’m sure I can get a handful of my teammates to head over.”

“The Brookland PD will not be happy to find out we’re setting up a sting operation on their turf,” he warned.

“Maybe not, but Rhy lives in Brookland. I’m sure he’ll help smooth things over.” She flashed a grin. “I almost dropped his name today with Irving but figured I should wait until we really need the higher-level support.”

He managed to smile back, despite his annoyance. “Good call.”

They spent over an hour digging into Terrance Straub. The guy only had one brother who was also in jail. His parents were divorced and had moved to different cities. After an exhaustive search of tracking Straub’s former friends on social media, they’d come up empty-handed. Based on the posts he’d seen, it didn’t seem as if any of them cared if the guy was released from jail or not.

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