Calculated in Death (In Death #36)(97)

“Yeah, yeah, it would. Hell.” She sucked in a breath. “I’ll push for the five to ten, house arrest,” she told Milo. “On the hacking, on what we pull from your place outside of the Alexander issue. Give me something to push with.”

“I’ve got a safe room. It’s below ground level, fully secured and shielded. You can’t get in without my palm print, voice print, retina scan. You have to take me back there so I can get you in.”

Eve thought of Roarke, smiled. “We’ll see about that. Peabody.”

“I’m on it.”

“Peabody exiting Interview,” Eve said. “Okay, Milo. Now that we’ve got that tidied up, let’s talk about murder.”

“Huh?”

20

EVE GAVE HIM A MINUTE TO ASSIMILATE, TO sit, mouth agape so his narrow strip of chin hair looked like the stem on a wide glass bowl.

“Murder, Milo. You know, the unlawful killing of a human being. Like say, Marta Dickenson.”

“I didn’t kill her. I didn’t kill anybody. I hacked into her files, okay? I told you that. We made a deal on that.”

“That’s right. Now we’re talking about this.” She drew out the crime scene photo, slid it toward him.

“I didn’t do that.” He shoved the photo away again. “I never touched her. If you’re trying to throw that on me, I’m done talking.”

“Your choice.” She shrugged it off. “Same rules apply. I can’t help you out if you don’t talk. Or if you lie to me. If you try to tell me you weren’t there, you don’t know anything about it, we’ll just stop right here. We can pick it up again after the lineup.”

“What are you talking about? What lineup?”

“The one where we bring in the witness who saw you and your pal, and the van—your Cargo utility van—outside Whitestone’s apartment on the night of Marta Dickenson’s murder. Jesus, Milo, do you think we pulled your name out of a hat? We’ve got a witness.”

He shifted again, swiped the back of his hand over his mouth. “I didn’t kill anybody.”

“You’ve admitted to working for Alexander, for corrupting and destroying files Marta Dickenson was working on. You and your van were seen at the scene of the crime at the time of the murder. You want to contact your lawyer, Milo, because I can promise you he or she will tell you that’s some pretty hot water you’re swimming in.”

“I didn’t kill anybody! Okay, yeah, it was my van, but all I did was drive.”

“All you did was drive?” Eve repeated, pleasantly, and thought: Gotcha, ass**le.

“That’s right. I drove the van. I didn’t know she was going to get killed. I drove the van, and I was supposed to get through the security if the codes didn’t work.”

“What codes?”

“The codes for the apartment, the codes Jake Ingersol gave us. Alexander hired me to use my van, to drive it and get us in if Ingersol pulled any crap, see? That’s all.”

“Okay, I’m getting it. But let’s backtrack a minute. How did Alexander hire you? How did he contact you?”

“Through Ingersol. I’ve done some work for Ingersol before. I only work on referrals, you know? You have to be careful.”

“I bet. So Ingersol brought Alexander to you?”

“Yeah. They had a good thing going, but Alexander wanted some tweaking, and a thicker slice. That’s where I came in. You got a potential mark, or a group of investors. I’d put together a file on them. Financials, other investments, what they spent money on—who they spent it on. If they had something going on the side, if they were into the kink.”

Contradiction, Eve noted, as Milo had claimed earlier not to have been involved in the fraud. She’d give him more rope. “For blackmail purposes?”

“I didn’t blackmail anybody either.” Milo held up his hands. “I don’t do that shit. I just provide the data to the client. What the client does with the data isn’t on me.”

“Got it. But being thorough, you’d have put together files on how Alexander used the data. You’d have that as a just-in-case buffer.”

“Like I said, you’ve got to be careful. He put the screws to some of the marks, sure. Bled them a little harder that way if they started to make noise or tried to back out. Whatever. He’s a greedy bastard. You know he even tried to get me to cut my rates?”

“Imagine that.”

“Yeah, seriously. You get what you pay for, right? And my work made him a whole shitpot of money.”

“I bet it did. How long have you worked for him?”

“Six months. Just doing those tweaks now and then.”

“So you were involved in the fraud.”

He blinked, shifted. “I didn’t do any fraud. I just did the tweaks. We covered that.”

“All right. So you did the tweaks, and helped Alexander make that shitpot of money. But then he was going to have some trouble. This audit he couldn’t get out of.”

“Shouldn’t have been trouble, wouldn’t have been if Parzarri hadn’t gotten banged up, got put out of commission before he fixed the books. Now, see, here’s what I’m saying.” Comfortable now, Milo shifted forward conversationally. “He tells me he wants this new accountant picked up, to hack into her communications, get a line on her so she gets scooped when she leaves the office, before she can dig into the books. All I figure is they want the files, put some pressure on her to clam it up, go along. Maybe pay her a little, though, like I said, he’s a greedy bastard. All I did was monitor her ’links, poke around in her comms.”