“He meant to hit them.”

“Exactly.”

Jennings nodded, thanked him, and asked for his report as soon as possible.

As they walked away, Moreno was the first to speak. “I still don’t see his conclusions helping us much.”

“We’ll see. We know more about what happened now than we did before,” he said. “Maybe the fact that the guy was accelerating and there are no skid marks supports the theory that it wasn’t an accident. Let’s do a background check on the vics. Could be there was someone who had something to gain if either of them wound up dead. Maybe there’s no homeless connection at all. Maybe one of them had a kid in a rival gang. Maybe the driver never did see them until it was too late, and it was just an accident.”

“All right, all right,” she said, followed by a slight pause. “Maybe Saperstein was helpful.”

Jennings walked over to his car and spoke to the desk sergeant via radio, requesting assistance on locating the Mercedes with the partial license plate they had obtained.

“I also need a background check on two people.” He opened the victims’ wallets. “An Otis Silvers, and an Imogene Pringle.” He removed a piece of paper and studied it. “Pringle was carrying around a pay stub for the Homeless Advocate Society. It’s possible Silvers was with them too. See if we’ve got anything on this homeless group while you’re at it.”

“Anything else?”

“Yeah, which judge is on call?”

The sergeant leafed through some papers on a clipboard. “You’re not gonna be happy.”

“Don’t tell me it’s Ferguson.”

“I hear he’s a bear when he gets called in the middle of the night.”

“Just find me the owner of the car and I’ll worry about the damn warrant.”

Jennings hung the mike on its receptacle in his car and turned to Moreno. She threw a hand up to her mouth to stifle a yawn.

“Oh, c’mon, these hours can’t be worse than Vice,” he said.