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“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.”
