Naturally, any number of reporters shouted out questions when he turned it over to Whitney.
Whitney merely stood, silent, until the shouting stopped.
Like Tibble, his statement held brief and concise, focusing first on the victim, the victim’s family before moving to the cooperation and coordination of law enforcement in various jurisdictions and countries.
That segued smoothly into Abernathy. Not as brief, but Eve had to give him fairly concise. Did he like the attention, like knowing he’d be on screens around the globe, have his statement translated into a dozen languages?
Oh yeah, but he kept it professional.
When he stepped back, Kyung stepped up.
“We’ll take questions now. Please wait until you’re called on,” he said even as the shouting started.
Like having a couple hundred baseballs pitched at you, Eve thought, and picking the one ball you could hit solidly.
Tibble hit a couple, and Whitney, Abernathy managed a few singles.
All about the treasures, she thought. Those shiny objects.
Then one pitched a fastball about the victim and his potential culpability.
She stepped up.
“Nathan Barrister’s family has stated he and they were unaware of the vault and its contents during Henry Barrister’s lifetime. It was discovered several months after his death during some remodeling.”
Plenty more flew then, and like Whitney, she waited.
“All evidence gathered by myself, Detective Peabody, and our EDDconfirms this. At the time of his murder, Mr. Barrister and his family were in the process of determining the correct way to return all said items.”
Before she could step back, someone shouted: “Do you have any suspects? Are any of the family or staff under suspicion?”
“If we had suspects, you look old enough to know I wouldn’t tell you. I can tell you Nathan Barrister’s family, and the staff of Barrister House, are not suspects at this time. Our evidence strongly indicates a planned break-in. Mr. Barrister was attacked from behind during the burglary, at which time his attacker fled.”
Someone pitched one regarding EDD’s findings, and Eve threw the ball to Peabody.
“Detective Peabody can answer that more adeptly than I can.”
Peabody’s eyes shouted “Oh, shit” at Eve, but she stepped up.
She handled it.
So it went, and it did bleed past an hour.
Plenty tried various ways to dig out if anything had been removed from the vault, what had been taken if so, what was the estimated worth.
They got nowhere.
Others wanted the combined value of all items assessed, more information on them.
Those got a “soon to be forthcoming,” but Abernathy let them know they considered it the most valuable recovery of stolen items at one time, with an estimated combined value of more than four billion USD.
That caused more salivation until Kyung shut it down.
“That went very well,” Abernathy said the moment they were out of the conference area.
“Yeah, peachy. Did you have to give them an amount?”
“I was authorized to.”
