Calculated in Death

by J. D. Robb

  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.”