Chapter 16

WHILE PEABODY WENT OUT FOR FIELD KITS, Eve stood studying the scene, the body, the spatter patterns on the freshly painted walls, the gleaming floor.

She calculated they’d missed the killer by minutes, missed preventing murder by perhaps thirty.

She could see how it happened, the movements, the horror, the brutality—see it before the field kit and the tools and instruments.

The contact via ’link, text only, or with video blocked? She’d have lured her target that way. A simple statement, a flat demand. Mr. Alexander needs to speak with you, right away. He’ll meet you in the apartment of the new building.

If the vic questioned, some cryptic or impatient answer could be given. Alexander said now, that means now.

Odds were the killer made the ’link tag from inside the apartment, gaining access through the hacker’s skills, or because Ingersol had already passed on the new codes.

“Vic comes down after the ’link tag,” Eve said out loud as Peabody walked back in with the kits. “The killer’s already here. That’s how he’d work it. He’s a coward at the core. He’d take him from behind, an ambush. We know he’s got a stunner, so he’d use it. He stuns Ingersol, takes him down, then beats him to death when he’s helpless. That’s his way.”

“Why not quick and easy, snap his neck like he did with Dickenson? Or smother him, like Parzarri? Why this kind of ugly, personal mess?”

“Personal, exactly. And because he’s experimenting now. He’s into it now. He’s not killing a stranger now.” She took the kit from Peabody, began to seal up.

“So he not only knew Ingersol, but...” Like Eve, Peabody studied the body, the spatter. “Really didn’t like him.”

“Possible. Very possible. Ingersol pissed him off, or insulted him at some point, or he just didn’t like his face. That gives him a reason—maybe it gives him permission—to whale away. Dickenson? That was thoughtless, ruthless. Swat that fly and walk away. The attack on us? Following orders. But was there a little thrill in there at the prospect of taking out two cops, in a public place? Maybe.”

“Major fail on that one.”

“Yeah.” Taking out her gauges, Eve performed the basics—confirming ID, determining TOD. “Alexander wouldn’t have been very pleased. Maybe he took his muscle to the toolshed.”

“The toolshed? For the hammer?”

“No, you know. You go to the toolshed to get your ass whipped.”

“You do? Oh, oh, you mean woodshed.”

“Why does wood need a shed?”

“I don’t know... well, to keep it dry. You can’t start a fire with wet wood.”

“Eighteen minutes. He’s been dead for eighteen goddamn minutes.” Anger spurted inside her, needed to be tamped down. “They came directly here from the underpass and Parzarri. He’s riding on the boost from doing the accountant. Does he already have the hammer? Was it here?”

She looked around again but saw no tools, no materials. They’d finished in here. “The crew had cleaned up, so why would there be a hammer? Did he bring it with him? Did he stop to buy it? We find out. Either way, one of them, killer or hacker, makes the call.”

She looked at the door again, calculated, then carefully lifted the victim’s bloody, ruined shirt. “Yeah, stun marks. ME to confirm, but I think...” She fixed on microgoggles, all but put her nose on the broken chest. “Looks like it to me. He doesn’t stun Ingersol from behind. Maybe he couldn’t get in position to, or he just wanted to see Ingersol’s face when he went down. So. Vic walks in, all rush, all business, and the killer stuns him.”

She closed her eyes a moment. “If the hammer was here, using it was impulse. I don’t think so, not this time, and a stray hammer’s just too damn convenient. He’s pumped up, wants more. He’s greedy, just like the rest of them. All of them just want more. He could’ve walked over, put the stunner to the carotid, ended it. But he beat him to pieces.”

“He’d have gotten blood all over him.”

“If the hammer was here and it’s impulse, yeah. But if he bought it, he bought protective gear, or he brought both with him. We need to know which. It’ll play into profile.”

She sat back on her heels. “Let’s have EDD check the locks, get uniforms for a canvass—big guy with another guy, the vehicle. Maybe this time we’ll get lucky.”

“There’s nobody left to kill, is there? As far as we know this involved Alexander, Ingersol, and Parzarri. And the hacker.”

“Maybe they take out the hacker. More stupid waste, but why stop now? Alexander has other employees running these projects and scams. And maybe Alexander’s through ordering kills, for now. But you do this.” She nodded down at the body. “You’ve found another, very satisfying line of work. He’s not giving it up.”

She left Peabody to wait for the uniforms and sweepers, and went back upstairs to inform the partners.

“He’s still not answering,” Newton told her. “I can only think his ’link got turned off somehow. Otherwise—”

“He’s not going to answer. He’s dead.”

She spoke flatly, coldly, wanting to study reactions. She saw anger surge into Newton’s face, shock freeze Whitestone’s.

“What are you talking about?” Newton whipped out the words. “That’s ridiculous. What the hell are you trying to do?”

“To inform you your partner, Jake Ingersol, has been murdered. I’m sorry for your loss. Now sit down.”

“Why would anyone murder Jake?” Whitestone managed. “It doesn’t make any sense. It’s crazy. Is this about the accountants? Is this some lunatic targeting all of us? A client? I don’t understand. I don’t understand. He was just here. Not an hour ago.”

“Sit down,” she repeated, more gently now as she saw the mix of shock and anger on both, and the dawning of grief.

Newton lowered shakily into an old folding chair. Whitestone just sat on the floor. “How? How?” he asked her. “You have to tell us what happened. He wasn’t just our partner. He’s our friend. Rob. Jesus, Rob.”

“He met his killer in the apartment downstairs. Your apartment, Mr. Whitestone.”

Color drained from Whitestone’s face, leaving it a sickly green. “No. No. He was going out for coffee, meeting a client.”

“No, he wasn’t. He believed he was meeting a client—and more than a client, a partner in a land and investment fraud operation. Chaz Parzarri served as their accountant.”

Newton lurched up from the chair. “That’s bullshit! Fraud? Jake’s dead and now you’re trying to make him a criminal?”

“He made himself. We have significant evidence linking Ingersol, Parzarri, and another individual to fraud in several land and property schemes. You don’t look very surprised,” she said to Whitestone.

“I thought he was kidding around. I thought... The wrist unit, Rob, he said he got at an estate sale for peanuts. The painting he bought a few months ago after he said he’d hit it big in Atlantic City. And... other things. Oh God.” He lowered his head to his knees.

“You don’t seriously believe Jake was involved in fraud?” Newton demanded. “For God’s sake, Brad.”

“I don’t know...” He rubbed shaky hands over his face. “About a year ago Jake and I were out at a club, and we got pretty toasted. You were off with Lissa, so it was the two of us. It looked like I might lose the Breckinridge account, remember? I was feeling pretty low. He laid out this whole idea for making money off land deals. Setting up dummy companies, pulling in groups and selling off more shares than you had, then buying up the land yourself. Inflating or deflating the assessments. He drew up a chart on cocktail napkins.”

With a pleading glance at Eve, he rubbed and rubbed his hands on his knees. “I thought he was joking around. I swear I thought he was just messing around to cheer me up. I said it sounded good if you didn’t mind cheating people, or going to jail for a couple decades. I even added a couple of ideas to it, Jesus. Jesus, Rob, I refined a couple of angles. He wrote them down. I thought it was joking, but he wrote them down. And I said something about it being too bad we were honest, too bad we’d worked all those years to get our license, build our business and our rep, things we didn’t want to lose. And he said...”

“What did he say?” Eve prompted.

“Big money buys big rep. I just laughed at him, and said something like big talk buys shit, and it was his turn to get the next round.”

“It was just talk,” Newton insisted. “He wouldn’t commit fraud or cheat a client. We built this business together, Brad. The three of us. Look at this place. We’ve done this. We’ve done this together.”

“It’s more than fraud,” Eve told him. “It’s murder. We believe Marta Dickenson was killed out of fear she’d discovered the fraud when she audited the accounts she’d taken over after the accident that put Parzarri out of commission and out of contact for several days.”

“You can’t think Jake had anything to do with that woman’s death,” Newton interrupted.

“I know he did. No sign of break-in? Because he gave the killer the codes. Maybe he thought they’d just take her in, rough her up, scare her, take the files. We’ll never know for certain. But he knew, after the fact. He knew who killed her, why, and that he was complicit.”

“I’m not going to believe that.” Newton turned away, but Eve saw doubt and horror blooming on his face.

“But it’s our building,” Whitestone objected. “Why would Jake let anybody use our place for this? Bring this down on us?”

“She was supposed to be found in the morning. He didn’t know, none of them did, that you’d stop by, bring a potential client. They didn’t count on the police investigation inside the apartment, or finding anything if we did. If it had worked out the way they thought, it’s just an address, just the sad story of a woman, a bad mugging, and the city.”

“I can’t believe he could do this,” Newton mumbled. “Any of it. To himself. To us.”

“Both Parzarri and your partner are now dead, within an hour of each other. Do you really believe that’s a coincidence? Can you give me one viable explanation why Ingersol is dead in the apartment downstairs?”

“We built this place together,” Newton repeated. “If you can’t believe in, can’t trust your partner...”

“I understand, but at this time the evidence puts your partner right in the center. It could have put you there,” she said to Whitestone. “It could have put you in the ground.”

“What are you talking about?”

“If you’d brought Alva Moonie by earlier, say before you went to the bar? If you’d walked in on the killer and Dickenson. What do you think would have happened to you, to Alva?”

Color drained from his face again before he dropped his head in his hands.

“We’ll be confiscating all his electronics,” she told them both. “Whatever he has here, at your other offices, at his home. Believe me when I say if you know anything, absolutely anything, it’s imperative you talk now. Their method of tying up loose ends is murder.”

“You think they could try to kill us?” Whitestone shot a panicked look at his partner. “Why? We’re not part of this, we’re not involved in any fraud. We’re sure as hell not involved in murder. You can look through every file I have.”

“Brad, we can’t just turn over confidential client information,” Newton began.

“They’ll get a warrant, and I’m not willing to risk my life over this, Rob. You can’t be either.”

“Nobody’s got any reason to kill us.”

“Rob.” Eve used his first name, hoping to draw him into trust. “If I’m wondering what Jake might have told you, or let slip, I can promise the people responsible for his death will wonder. They killed Marta Dickenson hours after she came into possession of the files. You’ve been partners with Jake for years.”

“Let me think. Please.” Newton paced the lobby. “I can’t get my head around any of this. This is my partner, my friend. God, Jake introduced me to Lissa. We’ve... Lissa.” He stopped dead. “My fiancée. Is she in danger? Could they try to hurt her?”

“I can have her protected. I can and will have all of you protected. I need your cooperation. Who did Jake spend time with?”

“Us.” Whitestone lifted his hands. “He’s seeing someone now, but it’s not serious, and it’s not exclusive on either side. He likes the clubs, likes the nightlife. Rob’s backed off all that since he and Lissa got together, and, well, the fact is, I just couldn’t keep up with Jake. I guess I didn’t really want to. I like the clubs, too. I like getting out there. But not every night. He’d go out alone, or he’d hook up with somebody for a while.”

“I want to call Lissa,” Newton insisted. “I need to know she’s safe.”

“Give me her location. I’ll send a protection detail now.”

“She’s at work.”

He gave Eve the information, visibly relaxed when she ordered two officers dispatched. “You can talk to her after we’re done here,” Eve told him. “Now, again, if you know anything.”

“I don’t,” Newton insisted. “I... He’s been traveling more than usual in the last few months. He’s largely responsible for bringing in new, out-of-state clients. He’s good at it.”

“Any recent trips to Miami or the Caymans?”

“I’d have to check,” Newton said, “but his last trip was to Miami, about two weeks ago.” He dropped back in the chair. “I can’t believe this is happening. Can we see him? We should... whatever he did, we were partners. We were friends.”

“You don’t want to see him now. I’ll do what I can to arrange it later if it’s what you want.”

“He’s not close to his family,” Whitestone told her. “And they’re—most of them—up in Michigan. I think Rob and I will want to make... the arrangements. I think we should see him when we can. How did he die?”

She could tell them now, or let them find out when the media blasted the details. “He was beaten to death.” She continued when Newton simply covered his face with his hands. “I need the medical examiner to confirm, but I believe he was stunned first, and most likely unconscious. If that’s the case, he didn’t suffer. He didn’t feel anything.”

“If he did what you think...” Whitestone spoke carefully in a voice that wavered. “... if he did these things, it was a game to him. It was wrong, but a game. He liked being a player, liked being important. He made mistakes, bad ones, but he didn’t deserve to die for them.”

···

When Eve went back outside, the business of murder progressed. She watched the morgue team roll the body bag into the wagon, saw the sweepers moving in and out, and the uniforms keep the scene secured from the curious.

“I arranged details to keep an eye on the other partners and Newton’s fiancée.”

“You think he’d go after them?”

“I think he’s unpredictable, impulsive, and having a hell of a good time now. He may not wait for orders, and I’m not taking chances.”

“The team you had sent to the vic’s apartment’s transporting his electronics to Central.”

“Any sign we didn’t get there first?”

“They’re going to review the security discs, but there’s no overt sign of a break-in.”

“Here either,” she said as McNab came up the stairs to the sidewalk.

“Same deal,” he told Eve. “The owner changed the codes, but they breezed right in. Maybe the vic unlocked the door.”

“I think the killer was waiting for him. Ambush is more his style. I need you on the vic’s electronics. The partners are cooperating so you can take everything. There’s a unit here, but they claim it hasn’t been loaded as yet. There’s two more at their other offices. And a team’s bringing in what he had at his residence.”

“We’re on it,” he assured her. “That was some serious overkill in there. Not like the first vic. It doesn’t seem like it could be the same guy.”

“If it’s not, we’ve got a bigger problem. Run those electronics, McNab. Find me that damn fingerprint you told me about. I want the hacker, hopefully before he ends up in a body bag, too. Peabody, with me.”

Eve ignored the fact that Peabody and McNab did a quick pucker-up behind her back. She didn’t have time to dress them down.

“Get Mira the preliminary data, the crime scene record on this and on Parzarri. I want her familiar with the details before I meet with her. Let’s find out where Ingersol stayed when he went to Miami. I want to dig into where he went, who he met with. I don’t know if there’s a reason Parzarri would’ve traveled, same time, same place, but we need to find out.”

“Got it. I figured we were heading back to Central.”

“We are. I want to backtrack to the underpass. Try to calculate our killer’s route. Where’d he get the hammer? Was it impulse? Did he stop along the route, buy it? Does he have his own little woodshed/toolshed?”

“The sweeper who bagged it said it looked new. It has to be processed, but that’s an on-site observation.”

“I had the same one. I have to go with probabilities. They’re going to deal with two people in one morning, then they’d take the most direct and quickest route from the first killing to the second.”

“They sure didn’t stop for coffee and donuts,” Peabody put in.

“Maybe after the morning’s work. So if the hammer was impulse and new, he got the idea en route, stopped, made the buy. He had to see somewhere that sells tools.”

“Okay. One minute.”

“What are you doing?” Eve asked as Peabody went to work on her PPC.

“I’m plotting out the route, then I’m going to do a search for anywhere I can buy myself a hammer.”

“Good thinking.” Meanwhile, Eve kept her eye out.

“I’ve got two places,” Peabody announced. “One’s—”

“Big Apple Hardware.” Eve pulled over, once again double-parking and raising the ire of fellow drivers. As she flipped on the On Duty light, she wondered just how many “fuck offs” she’d amassed just that morning.

She might’ve been approaching a record.

She stepped into the tiny shop with its myriad shelves and Peg-Boards holding various tools, bins full of screws, nails, bolts, stacks of tarps, protective gear, goggles, earplugs. Cans of paint, brushes, rollers, sprayers, toothy blades all crowded into the space.

She wondered how anything got built if the process required so many implements and choices.

A husky guy sat on a stool behind a jumbled counter watching some kind of action vid on a portable screen.

“Help ya?”

“Maybe.” She pulled out her badge.

“Can’t do no cop discounts. Sorry.”

“No problem. I’m looking for a man with a hammer. Big guy, easy six four, two-fifty. Did somebody like that come in and buy a hammer this morning?”

“What kinda hammer?”

“The kind that bangs.”

“You got your claw hammer, your ball-peen hammer, your sledgehammer, your—”

“Claw,” Peabody said before he continued his litany.

“Curved claw, ripped claw or framing?”

“Mister,” Eve said, “did an individual matching that description come in this morning and buy any damn kind and size of hammer?”

“Yeah, okay, I’m just trying to get the details. Yeah, I sold a thirteen-inch, high-carbon steel, smooth face, curved claw to a guy like that a couple hours ago.”

Bingo.

Peabody stepped over, lifted down a hammer from a congregation of others. “One of these?”

“Yeah, that one. You know your hammers, girlie.”

“I’ve got a brother who’s a carpenter, and my father does some.”

“I can give discounts to people in the trade,” he began.

“We don’t want to buy anything, and we don’t need a discount,” Eve interrupted. “We need to see your security disc.”

The man glanced up to the camera. “Ain’t nothing to see. We can’t afford a real camera. That’s just what you call a deterrent. Not that anybody bothers us. They gonna rob somebody, there’s the liquor store down the block. People buy more booze than screws.”

“How’d he pay?”

“Cash.”

“Did you get a good look at him?”

“Nothing wrong with my eyes. He was standing right there where you’re standing.”

“I need you to come down to Central, work with a sketch artist.”

“I can’t close this place down to go work with no artist. I gotta make a living here.”

“I’ll send someone to you, Mister...”

“Burnbaum. Ernie. What the guy do, hit somebody over the head with the hammer?”

“Something like that. Peabody, I want Yancy.”

“I’ll get him.”

“Now, Ernie, why don’t you describe the hammer guy for me, and tell me what the two of you talked about.”

“Like you said, he’s a big guy. Big white guy.”

“Hair? Short, long, dark, light.”

“Short, buzzed, kinda medium.”

“Eyes? The color of his eyes?”

“Ah, brown. Maybe brown. I think brown.”

“Any scars, tats, piercings, anything that stood out?”

“No, can’t say there was. Had a kinda squared-off jaw, I guess. Hard-looking guy. Tough-looking.”

Yancy would get more, she thought. “What did he say to you?”

“He comes in—”

“Alone?”

“Yeah, just him. And he says he wants to buy a hammer. So I say, what kind? He just walks over there, takes the curved claw off the wall. He said, ‘This one.’ Pretty sure about that, how he just walked over and picked the hammer. I asked if he needed anything else, and he said he wanted a coverall. I asked what kind. He got a little irritated, I guess you could say, but you gotta know what kind. I showed him the stock in XXL, being he was big. He took one of the clear, full-body styles. I said something about what kind of project he had going, and he just said, ‘What’s the price.’ So I rang it up, he paid cash, and that’s that.”

“Do you have the money?”

“Course I got the money. You think I ate it?”

“I’m going to need it. You’ll get a receipt, and it will be returned to you in full.”

“Yancy’s on his way,” Peabody told her.

“Get some sweepers in here. Maybe we can get some prints. That wall, the counter. I need the money, Ernie.”

“It’s all together.” He unlocked the under-counter safe, took out a red zipper pouch. “Most people use credit or debit, but we get cash sales. I put the money in with the cash from yesterday and the day before. I don’t know which was his money.”

“All right, count it up. I’ll give you a receipt.”

“It’s over five hundred dollars!” He clutched the envelope to his breast like a beloved child she meant to kidnap.

“And you’ll get every dollar of it back. The man who came in here, bought the hammer, is suspected of killing two people this morning.”

Ernie’s jaw dropped. “With my hammer?”

“One of them. Ernie, your money’s going to be safe. I’m going to put in for you to get a ten percent use fee.”

His grip loosened. “Ten percent?”

“Yeah, and if you work with the artist, and your description and cooperation aids in the arrest of this individual, I’ll put in for another fifty.”

“A hundred bucks?”

“That’s right.”

He held out the envelope. “I still want the receipt.”

After he’d carefully counted the cash twice, Eve printed out a receipt, added her card.

“What do I do if he comes back? Maybe he wants a skill saw.”

Jesus, Eve hoped not. “I don’t think he’ll be back, but if he comes in, sell him whatever he wants. Contact me when he leaves. Did you notice which way he went, if he got into a car?”

“He went out the door. That’s all I know.”

“Okay, thanks for your cooperation.” Eve went out the door as well.

“I’m going to drop you off at the lab,” Eve began as she got behind the wheel. “I want you to take the money straight to Dickhead. He needs to run any prints he finds against military databases, police, private security. Eliminate females, anyone out of the suspect’s age range and race.”

“You want me to tell Berenski to run five hundred dollars in small bills, which have surely been passed through many fingers, for a set of prints. A set belonging to we don’t know who.”

“That’s right. If we get a decent likeness, we can run a secondary search. He’s Alexander’s, we know that, but he’s not his head of security. The head of security doesn’t match the description. I think this is personal security, and not necessarily on the company payroll. Not that it shows. He’s Alexander’s strong-arm, probably travels with him, or travels ahead to clear the road. We’re not going to find him on the company directory. I already tried that. So we’ll try this.”

“He’s going to want a bribe. Dickhead, I mean.”

“Tell him to go...” Eve reconsidered. “No, tell him I’ll clear him for two tickets to the premiere deal tomorrow. VIP section. I think I can do that.”

“That’s a good one.”

“Don’t toss it out until he wheedles, and make it like you’re going to have to pry it out of me. He’ll think it’s a bigger deal. I’ll check with Morris, then meet with Mira. If we’re lucky either Yancy or Dickhead will hit, and we can go after this bastard before he buys a skill saw.”

“Eeww.”

Eve couldn’t argue.

“Feeney and I caught a hacksaw job a few years back, before you. Before he took over EDD. This guy killed his wife—she threatened divorce, and she was the money train. So he bashed her with this brass statue of a mermaid, then oh shit, she’s dead, what do I do? He sawed her up into small pieces with a hacksaw he had in his little workshop, put it all in big waste bags, then dumped her in the river.”

“I repeat. Eeww.”

“It wasn’t pretty. He told everybody she’d gone to Europe. But, oops, one of the bags got caught in this other guy’s boat hook thing. It took awhile to put her back together, and not long to hook the husband. He tried the temporary insanity, diminished capacity, fugue fucking state bull crap. But since we had the saw, and CI determined it would take about six sweaty hours to cut her into the more compact and portable pieces, that didn’t fly.”

Peabody said nothing for a moment. “Do we lead interesting lives or really disgusting ones?”

“Both, depending. Out,” she said as she swung toward the curb near the lab. “Get me prints.”