Golden in Death (In Death 50)

He broke off as if overcome. Breathed out as if to gather himself.

“When I met Marsh at the club the other night, he was really whacked-out. He was talking about TAG, and how he got a raw deal, shipped off to boarding school, hounded by his grandparents. How smooth everything had been until some of the teachers started pushing in, pushing at the headmaster, how everything went to shit after Rufty came in. And…”

Whitt looked down again, folded his hands together. “How he’d found a way to pay them back, pay them all back.”

He looked up then. Eve imagined he believed he’d worked horror into his eyes, but he didn’t have the skills. They stayed ice-cold. “I didn’t know—I never imagined he meant to hurt anyone. I thought it was just bullshitting. I even got into it some, just joking around. When you came to my office and told me … I never put it together. I never even considered it was Marsh.

“Could I have some water?”

Without a word, Peabody rose, started out.

“Peabody exiting Interview,” Eve said for the record.

“Then he tagged me. We had drop ’links. It was just a kind of gag since school. Just our thing. But he tagged me, and in a real panic. He told me the cops were closing in. I didn’t know what he was talking about, thought he was high. But he begged me to go by his place, get his tablet, his mini, his drop ’links, the jammer. He said he had something to finish, and wouldn’t tell me what. I finally said I’d do it to calm him down. It’s the last time I talked to him. The last thing he said was ‘You’re my best friend, Steve. I’m doing this for both of us.’”

If he tried to work up tears, he failed, but he did manage to make his voice crack a bit at the end.

Eve let the silence hang for a couple of beats. “You stated you’ve been to Mr. Cosner’s apartment many times. In fact, had his codes, and your palm print was programmed for access.”

“Yes. We were close friends.”

“I expect you knew where to find the items he asked you to remove—or he told you where to find them.”

“Yes, sure.”

“It wouldn’t take long, a few minutes, to locate the items, place them in your briefcase and messenger bag. So why did you spend more than thirty minutes inside Mr. Cosner’s apartment?”

Hadn’t thought it through, Eve concluded as Whitt hesitated, calculated.

“Peabody entering Interview.”

Peabody set the water in front of Whitt. He drank deep.

“Keep going,” Eve urged.

“I had the event to attend, didn’t see the point in going home first … And, to be truthful—”

“Yes, let’s.”

“I was worried about Marsh. I looked through his place for illegals. I was going to try to do an intervention, get him back in rehab.”

“Just thinking about your friend. Your best friend, who obviously trusted you. Did you find the illegals?”

“No.”

“Funny, we found his stash in the top left-hand drawer of the master bathroom vanity in about three minutes.”

“My client is not the police,” Kobast began.

“In the bathroom drawer,” Eve repeated, let that hang a moment. “You didn’t explain the false identification, Steve.”

“I found it when I was looking for the illegals. I—I didn’t know what to think. I just grabbed it, stuffed it in my bag. I put everything in the floor safe when I got home, and planned to talk to Marsh about it all today. But he’s … he’s gone.”

“He sure is. So during your thirty-minute search, where you failed to find quite the stash of illegals in a bathroom drawer, you stumbled across false identification that your friend had made for you?”

“Yes, I was baffled. Shocked.”

“But you didn’t find any for him? No fake IDs for Marsh?”