“I don’t believe a word Lewinsky said on that call.”

Nate, Jessie, and I have stopped at a diner for a very late dinner after leaving Lewinsky’s house. We hung around long enough to get the lay of the land and hear what forensics had to say, pending test results. It wasn’t very encouraging; the murder was obviously done professionally.

“You don’t? The guy said he was afraid for his life, and then he got killed. You don’t think he was scared?”

“I do agree he was scared. But that was the only part I believe.”

“Why?” Jessie asks.

“He was frightened out of his mind, right? Did you see the alarm system in that house? It was state-of-the-art. If he was that scared, it would have been activated if someone broke in, yet it never went off. There was also no sign of any forced entry, yet with his state of mind, he would have locked everything up tight and set the alarm. So he must have disarmed the alarm to let the killer in.”

“Keep going,” Nate says.

“The whole thing happened too fast. I checked; our people were there eight minutes after the call went out, which means ten minutes after Lewinsky got off the phone with us.”

“Plenty of time to get in and shoot him.”

“First of all, even if that were true, it’s quite a coincidence that they happened to be there just as he called us. But besides that, how could it have gone down? Where was he in the house when he made the call to us?”

“I don’t know,” Nate says, and then adds, “probably the bedroom where we found him.”

“Exactly. It’s not on street level, so whoever he was worried about couldn’t see him or shoot him through the window. That’s where he would have been; it would be safer.”

Jessie nods. “And the phone in that room was lying on the bed. The one downstairs was in the charger.”

“Good catch. So he calls us from the bedroom, then he goes downstairs to let them in, and they take him back upstairs to the bedroom to shoot him? Why? And all in just a few minutes? Why not shoot him downstairs?”

“Maybe they somehow got through the alarm or he left something unlocked. So they come in, find him in the bedroom, and shoot him,” Nate says.

“As unlikely as that is, he’d have heard them and closed his bedroom door. There’s a lock on that door as well, but it wasn’t broken into or jimmied in any way.”

“So you think they were there while he called?” Jessie asks.

I nod. “I think they made him call, and told him what to say. It even sounded like he was reading it. Also, I spoke to Ranes at the house; he never spoke to Lewinsky and told him what we had on him.”

Nate and Jessie think for a while, silently considering what I’ve been saying. Finally, Nate says, “You know, you’re not as dumb as you used to be. Falling on your head might have paid off; or maybe not filling up your brain with memories opened up space for it to do other stuff.”

“Thank you, Professor.”

“So the killer was standing there, holding a gun and telling him what to say. Which probably means that everything he said was bullshit.”

I nod. “Exactly.”

“And the main thing he said was that Joey Silva was trying to kill him. If that’s not true, why would they make him say it?”

“Because they want us to arrest Joey Silva for the murder.”

“So what’s our move?”

“We do not arrest Joey Silva for the murder.”