Bombshell

“That would be impossible with my software, Agent Savich. You’d seriously have no way.”

“The NSA has access to more of those servers than you’ll ever know. We nailed you, Stony. We can prove the photo was sent from one of your computers.”

Stony Hart sat frozen, his eyes fixed, still shaking his head back and forth. “One of my computers? No, that’s not possible, it’s not.”

Sherlock said, “We know Tommy was dropped from a great height, and not at the Lincoln Memorial. Whoever took that picture probably carried him there and arranged him at Lincoln’s feet for a public display. Was it you?”

“No! I couldn’t do that; I wouldn’t.”

Now, that’s the truth, Savich thought. “But you know who did? You posted that picture for someone else, didn’t you?”

Stony put his face in his hands and began to sob.

Savich sat forward, grabbed Stony’s bony wrist, hauled him close. “Stop crying; it only makes me mad. We’ve got you cold, Stony, so you might as well own up to the contemptible thing you did, posting that picture. Stop being a pitiful coward. If you don’t tell us exactly what you know, that makes you the murderer’s accomplice. You could spend the rest of your life in jail.”

Stony nearly rose straight out of his chair. “Listen, I couldn’t believe Tommy was dead, couldn’t believe someone would kill him and put him in the Lincoln Memorial. It was horrible. I’m not a monster, I’m not! I would never post that photo, not for anyone. You’ve got to believe me, I don’t know anything about it. I want my dad. I want a lawyer.”

Savich drummed his fingertips on the table. “I doubt Wakefield Hart or a lawyer can help you, unless you tell us what we want to know.”

“How do you know my dad’s name?”

“There’s no hiding anything from us,” Savich said, his eyes hard, “even what you did on your supposedly foolproof anonymizer software. It’s about time you realized that.”

“No, no, listen, I told you, I don’t know anything about it. And my dad, he’s smart, and he knows people, important people, people who could stop you from saying these things to me. Where is he?”

“Your dad might as well crawl on the ground and root up worms,” Sherlock said. “What are you trying to do, moron, make us madder with your silly mean-daddy threats?”

Savich turned to look at Lucy and Coop. “Stony’s right about his dad being smart. Did you guys know daddy—Wakefield Hart—makes his money by giving speeches now, blasting Palmer Cronin for ‘facilitating’ the banking crisis when he was the chairman of the Fed? Quite an accusation for Wakefield to make, especially since he was one of the major players in the screw-the-world game while it lasted. Are you proud of your dad, Stony?”

Wakefield Hart’s son stuck his chin in the air. “Hey, I am proud of him. Sure he made some mistakes, but it was business, and there were a lot of events no one anticipated.” Stony fell silent, stared at them.

Sherlock said, “Yeah, yeah, I see. How can it be wrong if everyone’s doing it, is that your dad’s defense? It helps if you’ve got no moral compass, and I’d say that’s a profound lesson for a son to learn at his daddy’s knee. I got the impression from the Cronin family that you’re not like that, and neither was Tommy. Are we wrong? Is that why you didn’t flinch at uploading a photo of your brutally murdered friend on YouTube? That you were involved in killing him?”

“You’ve got to believe me. I don’t know anything about it, I swear.”

“Then why did you try to hide behind an anonymizer?”

Sherlock stood, learned over the table, and got right in his face. “Why did you do it, Stony? What did Tommy ever do to you to make you hate him so much? To humiliate him even in death?”

Stony sat frozen.

“You’ve got to believe me. I wouldn’t do that. I loved Tommy. I can’t believe he’s dead, just can’t believe it. I mean, why? And you think I’d upload that horrible photo?” At their stone-cold faces, his eyes rolled back in his head and he slid out of his chair and landed in a heap on the interview room floor.

Savich and Coop hauled him up, sat him back down in the chair. Savich slapped his face until his eyelashes fluttered and he opened his eyes.

“Better now?” Sherlock asked him. She poured him a glass of water, and he studied it closely but didn’t drink.

“All right, Stony,” Sherlock said, “if you didn’t upload that photo from your computer, that means somebody else did. Where were you Friday night and Saturday morning?”