Golden in Death(115)

She sent Eve a wide-eyed, incredulous look. “It doesn’t sound like a balanced relationship.”

“You’re right. Maybe Marsh didn’t trust Steve as much as Steve thought.” From the evidence box, Eve took the paperwork on the building, laid it on the table.

“I don’t understand this. He would have told me.”

In a snap, Peabody switched from incredulous to sympathetic. “I guess it’s hard to find out all this, but addiction can make you do strange and destructive things,” said Sympathetic Peabody. “If he’d been thinking straight, he would have told you—a friend, a financial adviser. He’d have wanted you to see the property, and yeah, advise him.”

“Of course he would.”

“But he didn’t.” Eve slid the paperwork toward Kobast so he could study it. “So you never knew about it. Never went there.”

“No, never. What in the world was he doing with a warehouse? And in that neighborhood.”

“He set up a place for Sanchez to live, set up a lab for Sanchez to work. That is until Sanchez created the formula, the agent—and was murdered.”

“Loco’s dead?”

“You didn’t know?”

“No, why would I? I haven’t seen Loco in years. I know he supplied Marsh, but I didn’t associate with him. This, all this, had to have been Loco’s idea. Marsh would never have done something like this on his own. He had to have Marsh whacked on illegals.”

“Lieutenant, Ms. Reo, as your evidence—and my client’s cooperation in this matter—clearly points to Mr. Cosner’s culpability, we demand the charges against Mr. Whitt be dropped.”

“Mmm, there’s just a little hitch with that. Well, a few really,” Eve amended. “Did you know a human being sheds between fifty and a hundred hairs every day?”

“What nonsense is this?” Kobast demanded.

“Just a fun fact. A fun forensic fact. Since you’re a criminal defense attorney, I imagine you’ve had an occasion to cross-examine our hair and fiber expert, Ms. Harvo.”

Carefully, Kobast kept his face blank. “Please get to the point.”

“Harvo’s the point. You’d know just how good she is. So good, in fact, she found, identified, and matched DNA with two hundred and twenty-three hairs Mr. Whitt left in Mr. Cosner’s converted warehouse. The one he’s just stated, for the record, he knew nothing about, had never seen, had never been to. And one of them—bonus point—was found caught in the strap of the air mask he used to protect himself when he killed his old pal, Marsh.

“How’d your hair end up there, Steve?”

“This is more bullshit. Broward, they’re still trying to screw me. I’ve had enough.”

“Quiet.” Kobast put a hand on Whitt’s arm. “Be quiet.”

“You’re probably going to ask for another little confab with your lying sack of a client, but you might as well have more forensics before you do. Like the thumbprint you left behind the shelves when you removed the spy camera you’d placed in the lab where Sanchez cooked up the nerve agent that killed three people.”

“I was never there. You’re the liar.”

“Two hundred and twenty-three hairs and a thumbprint,” Eve said. “Oh, and you haven’t seen Loco for years, didn’t know he was recently deceased? Murder by stabbing. Our sweepers are really good, too.”

Eve took a bagged steak knife out of the evidence box. “And yet this knife, found in your kitchen drawer, has traces of blood still on it. People think they clean it all over, but almost never do. Our ME—he’s a genius, as your attorney knows, I’m sure—matches this knife with the stab wounds on Lucas Sanchez’s body.”

“Marsh must have used it. Taken it, used it, put it back.”

“Not a balanced relationship,” Peabody repeated with a sad shake of her head. “Poor old Marsh.”

“Yeah, poor old Marsh,” Eve agreed. “You should have walked a few more blocks before catching the cab when you left Cosner’s apartment, Steve. You only gave it a block, then took said cab to your cousin’s garage. You left fingerprints on the keypad, on the door, on the scooter. We actually check these things.”

“You think you’re so smart.”

“Yeah. I think you’re not as smart as you think—but a hell of a lot smarter than your dead school pal.”

She slapped a hand on the table mostly for the satisfaction of seeing him jolt. “You were the brains behind this. He went along with you, the way he always did. Like when you beat Miguel Rodriges, put him in the hospital.”

“Who?”

“I don’t doubt you don’t remember him. He remembers you, and your pal documented the beating—and the consideration of just killing the kid—in this book.”

She took it out of the box. “You missed this when you went through Cosner’s place.”

“That’s not proof of anything.”

“It starts adding up, as your attorney knows.”

“Be quiet, Stephen. Put your cards on the table, Lieutenant.”

“It goes back to Gold Academy, to Grange. Your father had a sexual relationship with her. It didn’t bother you she had sex with some of the teachers, some of the other fathers. But yours?”