The 6:20 Man(13)

“Excuse me, the next person.”

The suit platoon clapped, and Cowl cried out, “So, what are you waiting for? Get your asses to work. And may the best people win.”

Prompted by this voice command, they had all stood like obedient dogs and filed from the room, while Cowl watched them from his intimidating perch.

The guy just seemed to bask in this shit, Devine had thought at the time. His opinion had not changed.

The Bugatti kept blasting south, through Midtown and next Downtown and then straight to the Financial District. There it turned onto Exchange Place, one block south of Wall Street, to the building where Sara Ewes had died. It turned into the parking garage at Cowl and Comely.

The Bugatti’s window came down, Cowl held up his phone to the reader, and the garage door cranked up. The $3,000,000 muscle car pulled in and the door closed behind it. The man had not only his own parking space but also his own private elevator, right to the penthouse. Devine knew this, because Wanda Simms had told him.

Devine imagined the man going up in his silver tube. As he continued to watch, lights came on, but on the fifty-second floor, because Devine took a minute to count down from the top.

The penthouse was four floors higher.

So why was he on that floor, where Ewes had died?

The next moment he saw someone else he recognized walking down the street. She reached the front doors of the Cowl Building, swiped her card, and entered. He watched as she hurried across to the elevator bank. Devine couldn’t see the security guard. He might be making his rounds.

With this interesting development, Devine parked his bike on the street, locked down the front tire, and walked over to the building. He used his security card to get in. He took the elevator up to the forty-fourth floor, where he knew the woman he’d seen had her office. He looked all around, but she wasn’t there, and the only lights on were the security ones.

Then he thought about the lights on the fifty-second floor, or the “death floor,” as he now imagined it to be. If Cowl was there, was the woman meeting him for some reason? He took the elevator up to that floor, poked his head out, didn’t see anyone, and got off.

The place was apparently no longer an active investigation scene. He imagined Ewes’s parents were frantically traveling here from out of the country. All that way to look at your daughter on a morgue slab.

He could hear nothing other than the sparse traffic from down on the street and the occasional plane going by. He tried to figure out in which direction the light he’d seen come on was located.

He started down a corridor and then turned to the left. And stopped.

The blue-and-yellow police tape was strung across the doorway.

The storage room where Sara Ewes had died.

Devine decided he needed to see it for himself. This didn’t tie directly into what Emerson Campbell had tasked him to do, but if something nefarious was going on at Cowl’s business, Ewes’s death might be connected somehow. At least he couldn’t rule it out at this point.

And Devine had cared greatly for Sara Ewes. He needed to understand why she had taken her own life. Looking at the place where she had drawn her final, tortured breaths seemed like a good start.





CHAPTER





10


HE FIRST NOTED THE CHALKY white fingerprint powder on the lock. He used his shirtsleeve to cover his hand and tried the knob. The door swung open. He was looking at a dark room until he flicked on the light with his elbow.

There was the chair she’d likely stood on, still lying on its side, like it was dead, too. The cord she had used was no longer there, though the ceiling panel was still removed and sitting on the floor, like a tooth missing from a mouth. It had powder on it, as did the chair. Floating through his mind was the image of Sara Ewes standing on the chair, slipping the cord around her neck, and then pushing the chair away.

He wondered if Ewes had had second thoughts, regretted her decision, and pulled and pulled against the cord around her neck that was killing her. At what point did she realize it was useless? That she was going to die? Did she scream for help that never came? And then just . . . ? He closed his eyes and shook his head with the absolute misery of this tragic image.

She had been a wonderful, caring person. But everyone had their dark, unspoken side, of which no one else, not even close friends and family, was aware.

And I’m the poster boy for that.

He looked around the space and observed things one would expect to encounter in a storage room. Cleaning supplies, cardboard boxes, a vacuum, boxes of file folders, reams of copy paper, printer ink cartridges, an old fax machine, Christmas decorations, a whiteboard on a stand. She would have seen all these things while dying. It didn’t seem . . . fair. Staring bug-eyed at Christmas decorations knowing you wouldn’t live to celebrate the next one.

He punched off the light and closed the door, then he heard the noise to his left, down the hall.

Halfway there, he already knew what he would find. It wasn’t hard.

Moaning and groaning and lustful whimpers.

He stopped, looked around, and spotted a door with the necessary sight line. The office in question was in the corner. The lights inside were off and he could well understand why. You would take no chances doing what they were doing, even with the blinds drawn.

He stood behind the door, but left it open a crack so he could see clearly.

Ten minutes went by and the moans and groans stopped. A few mumbled words. Feminine to his ear. Perhaps of praise, or relief that it was over.