Sherlock lightly touched her fingers to Stony’s gray cheek. “Poor boy, you should have told us the truth, but maybe in the end it didn’t matter.”
Savich was studying the pill bottles. “Since he ripped off the prescription labels, it will take a few hours to know what they were. From the size of the bottles, I’d say maybe narcotic pain relievers, like oxycodone, and some kind of sleeping pills or tranquilizers. Either Stony stole them or someone else did.”
Sherlock said to Moffett, “If it turns out it’s not suicide, we’ll have a suspect. Peter Biaggini, and that would mean Peter killed one of his best friends and danced out all pleased with himself for stage-setting a perfect suicide scene.”
“Talk to me,” Detective Moffett said. “Tell me who this Peter is.”
Savich saw no reason not to tell him. By the time he finished speaking, Moffett was shaking his head. “But you don’t know yet.”
“No,” Sherlock said. “We don’t. Something I do know, though, is that Peter Biaggini will be alibied up to his tonsils if he had anything to do with this. We’d appreciate it if you’d keep this all close to the vest, Detective Moffett. We don’t want it to get out to the media.”
Detective Moffett said, “Not a problem.”
Savich lightly touched his hand to Stony Hart’s flaccid hand. Another life gone, simply snuffed out. The waste of it all made him want to weep. He said, “Murder or suicide, the ME can tell us for certain.”
Ten minutes later FBI crime scene techs swarmed into the bedroom. Savich and Sherlock walked with Detective Moffett to the small kitchen that smelled faintly of day-old garbage and unwashed dishes, with an occasional whiff of lemon.
An untouched pizza with congealed cheese, still in its box, looked ready to topple off the kitchen counter. Janelle Eckles sat in one of the two cane-backed chairs at a small laminated green table with salt and pepper shakers shaped like kittens sitting on top of a pile of napkins. A gift from her to Stony, Sherlock thought, and felt her throat close. A WPD officer sat silently with her.
Janelle wasn’t crying. She was sitting tall, her face and her eyes blank, and Sherlock realized the only thing tethering her here was her body. She nodded to Dillon, and he and Moffett and the officer left the kitchen.
Sherlock sat beside the young woman. “Janelle Eckles? Did I pronounce your name correctly?”
“Yes.” She didn’t look at Sherlock, but continued to stare blankly toward the sink filled with dirty dishes. “Some people say it Eck-less, not Eckels, like I do.” She waved a hand. “I was going to clean up this mess before I left because Stony was so upset all weekend after Tommy died. But then Stony acted like a jerk this afternoon. He hardly talked to me, so I told him he could be a pig on his own time. I called some friends and we went to a rave at the DC Star on Queens Chapel Road, you know, in the warehouse district. I guess I got really drunk.” She raised blank eyes to Sherlock’s face. “I’m not drunk now.”
A rave at the DC Star, Sherlock thought, down and dirty, so not the shy conservative girl she’d expect to be with Stony. Either that or she was so angry she was out experimenting.
Sherlock took Janelle’s hand in hers, held it firmly when Janelle resisted, then felt her slowly ease. “What time did you leave, Janelle?”
“About nine o’clock. Stony was pacing around, groaning, pulling on his hair. He was obviously upset about something. I kept asking him what was wrong, asking him where he was this afternoon, who’d upset him like this. I’m not blind, I saw all his computers were gone. And I asked him what happened to them, but he shook his head and wouldn’t tell me, muttered something about getting them replaced. It was like he didn’t think it was any of my business to ask him. And that was after I spent most of the weekend with him to show him how sorry I was about Tommy. Finally I told him it was time he talked to me or I was going to leave. You know what he did? He punched a wall with his fist and walked out of the room. I called my two girlfriends to come pick me up right after that.
“You know he was always on one of his computers—have you seen the living room, imagine what it looked like? He wouldn’t put any of that crap out of sight. I swear all that junk would breed from one week to the next; there was always more. He spent all day at work in front of a screen, and then he came home and didn’t want to do anything else.” Her voice broke, but still she didn’t cry, merely swallowed, and was still again.
She doesn’t know anything about Stony coming to the Hoover Building, doesn’t know anything about the anonymizer or Stony’s involvement with Tommy’s death.