Bombshell

He looked at her quickly and only shook his head.

“Bill said a Detective Moffett of the WPD just drove up.”

They found themselves in a not-quite-gentrified neighborhood of mid- to low-end apartments that left very few trees to soften the scene. Instead, there were stuffed garbage cans lining the street, and piles of filthy snow packed back against buildings. Four cop cars blocked the street. Officers were already out canvassing the neighborhood wherever they saw a light.

“I hate this,” she said.

Detective Lorenzo Moffett, a fireplug topped with a short halo of hair hugging his head, and eyes that had seen too much, met them at Stony Hart’s apartment door on the second floor, waved them in. “So you’re Agent Savich. There’s a lot of talk at the Daly Building about that poor kid found at the Lincoln Memorial. I’d say this one is a suicide, first glance, but given the circumstances, we’ll see. Hart’s in here.”

“Our forensic team and the FBI ME will be here soon, Detective Moffett,” Sherlock said.

“My Loo’s got no problem with you guys taking over the forensics once he heard it’s connected to Tommy Cronin’s murder. I’ve got officers out speaking to the neighborhood, and I want to be kept in the loop. I’ve got the girlfriend in the kitchen. She was pretty drunk when we got here, since she’d been out partying with girlfriends. She told Agent Sparks she decided to surprise him with a return visit, all unplanned, according to her, and this is what she found. Needless to say, she’s stone-cold sober now. Naturally, she didn’t know about an FBI agent sitting in front of the building. Did Hart know?”

Savich shook his head. “I assigned Agent Sparks to keep watch here.”

Moffett didn’t say a word about that, although they could tell he wanted to. “I ran a check on the girlfriend while I waited for you guys,” Moffett said. “Janelle Eckles is twenty-two; she’s a clerk at State part-time and finishing up her senior year at George Washington, majoring in history. Parents live in Independence, Iowa, work in Cedar Rapids, both engineers in a biotech company.”

As Moffett spoke, he led them into the good-sized living room that had a lovely view of an alley. The living room furniture looked to be college dorm seconds Stony had gathered over the years, from a fifties-modern coffee table to a beat-up early-American sofa. Stacks of CDs covered an entire side of the sofa, and there was a bowl filled to the brim with shrink-wrapped flash drives on the coffee table. Along one wall was a long cafeteria-style table, mostly empty except for a lonely keyboard, a printer, and a beehive of computer wiring. Layers of dust in geometric patterns were scattered around the table, where Stony’s computers and routers had stood before Spooner and his crew had removed them all that afternoon.

Moffett waved his hand around. “You can see Hart was really into his computers. Agent Sparks told me the FBI hauled away his stuff. I’d like to know what that was about. First let’s see if you agree this is a suicide.”

He ushered them into a long, narrow bedroom that held only a single dresser, a leather chair, and a king-size bed. No computer paraphernalia in here, maybe on orders from his girlfriend, only a big flat-screen TV hung on the wall opposite the bed.

Walter Stony Hart was lying on the bed on his back with his arms at his sides, dressed in old jeans, a blue-and-white Magdalene sweatshirt, and black Nikes on his feet, his arms at his sides. His eyes were open and staring at the ceiling. Beside him on the bedside table stood two empty pill bottles. Savich looked closely at the bottles, saw the prescription labels had been ripped off so no one would know where he’d got them? Or because he didn’t want to be saved if the pills didn’t kill him? Next to the bottle was a piece of white paper.

“Ms. Eckles said she read it,” Moffett said. “She said it was neatly set beneath the bottles.

“We didn’t touch it again,” Moffett said. Sherlock leaned down, read aloud, “I can’t live like this. I’m sorry.” It was signed “Stony Hart.”

Sherlock studied the scene, studied Stony’s face. “Where is the pad this sheet of paper came from?”

“It’s here, on the floor beside the bed.”

“And the pen?”

Moffett said, “It’s on top of the pad of paper. It’s really a journal sort of notebook, but funny thing is, there’s nothing written in it.”

Sherlock took the journal, thumbed through the pages. “It still smells new,” she said, and gave it back to Detective Moffett.

“Devil’s advocate here. It’s suicide; look at him, he didn’t struggle, he’s all peaceful, like he came to a decision and followed through, even left a note. Hard to fake all that.”