The 6:20 Man

Chapter 28

Devine left the floor and headed to another using his security card. Right now he needed to answer a question, and he thought he knew who might be able to help him. When the cops saw that entry log, things were going to go from bad to infinitely worse for him. He was surprised they hadn’t already seen it and arrested him.

He got off on the forty-first floor and found Wanda Simms about a minute later. She normally got in early, he knew, and she had her office on this floor. She was striding through the halls making sure that everything in her domain was ready to go for when everyone arrived. He imagined her home would be spotless and well organized right down to the kitchen cutlery drawers and the kitty litter box.

“Hey, Wanda.”

She saw him, and her expression changed to a look of terror, all professionalism ripped right from the woman. She rushed forward and gripped his arm.

“Did you hear about Sara?”

“Yeah, I did,” he said grimly.

“I can’t believe it. There’s a killer somewhere around here.”

“I’m sure the police are doing all they can.”

“I just wish they’d do it faster.”

“I had a question about something here at the office.”

“What?” she said, all efficiency again.

“I talked to some folks who said there was no one on the fifty-second floor the morning Sara was found. You said you were up there looking for people, but I don’t think anyone was there. At least that’s what I heard.”

She was already nodding. “There was a seminar for the M and A Division that morning. They were all over at the Ritz, well, all except the support staff, of course. The police found me and asked me to make sure the floor was clear. I told them about the seminar, but they still insisted I go office to office with two police officers. But I wasn’t surprised when no one was there. It was an all-hands seminar, you see, no exceptions.” Her expression grew sad. “Sara didn’t deserve to be killed like that.”

“No one does,” said Devine.

The cascade of financial data washed across his computer screen, but Devine wasn’t really focused on it. He was just treading water in a shark tank. It couldn’t be long now, could it?

He still flinched when the knock came. The door opened and a woman’s face appeared. She was one of the staff here. He couldn’t recall her name at the moment. His mind was already moving past her.

He started to rise even before she spoke. “Mr. Devine? Someone wants to speak to you.”

He slipped past the other cubicles. Several heads lifted to glimpse him for a moment before falling back to their screens and the pursuit of vast wealth thereon.

He followed her down the hall toward the elevators. There were two men there, both in suits that looked more like his than most of the other suits here, meaning rumpled and cheap.

One was a little taller than him, about six two, beefy, around fifty with grayish hair parted on the side. His partner was in his forties, balding, five ten and lean, with an expression that gave away nothing. The woman didn’t make introductions. She just scurried off while the men showed Devine their badges and identified themselves.

The tall one was Ralph Shoemaker, the shorter one Paul Ekman. They were assigned to the NYPD’s Homicide Squad and were investigating Sara Ewes’s death, Shoemaker said. His voice was low but sharp. Ekman’s was even sharper, with a helping of falsetto on certain words. Whether that was for effect or had something to do with his vocal cords, Devine didn’t know or care.

“We’d like to talk to you, Mr. Devine,” said Ekman.

“Okay. Seems like lots of people want to talk to me lately.”

“We have a room. This way.”

He followed them down the hall and into a space not much larger than the storage closet Ewes had been found hanging in. There were three chairs. Ekman told Devine to sit and he did. Both men sat across from him. There was no table separating them. They were nearly knee to knee. Devine knew this was intentional. Take away personal space and you got your target on edge from the get-go. He had done this very same thing interrogating Taliban and Al-Qaeda fighters they had captured. Even with a translator present, you could still put the screws to people. And they were doing it to Devine right now, or at least trying to.

Ekman took out a notebook, while Shoemaker leveled his gaze at Devine.

Shoemaker said, “Ranger, huh? My son’s in the Army. Infantry. He’s in South Korea.”

“Yeah, I did a stint there, too.”

“You earned lots of medals. Wounded. Twice. Served your country well. Helluva soldier.”

“I did my job.”

“You were friends with Sara Ewes?”

“I knew her.”

“That’s not what I asked.” The man’s expression didn’t change, though the tone of his words had. It was neatly done, thought Devine. He had sat through these sorts of interrogations before, when he was having his security clearances updated, and was being grilled on whether he’d ever had sex with animals. He could appreciate skill when he saw it.

“We went out to mixers. I saw her at group events. I liked her. I think she liked me. If that’s being her friend, then I was her friend. But so were other people.”

“You went to her place. Visited with her parents. Out of all the people here, you’re the only one who did that.” Shoemaker sat back and unbuttoned his jacket. Clipped on his belt was a holster with a Glock riding in it and his shiny badge on the other side of the belt clasp. He looked like he was ready to stay here all day, if need be, and just let Devine stare at that gun and that badge, two powerful symbols for sure.

“I was walking past her place and saw them—”

“How’d you know where she lived?” interjected Ekman, the falsetto notes boomeranging around Devine’s head.

“As I told her parents, I walked her home one night from a nearby bar to make sure she got there safe.”

“Go on,” said Shoemaker.

“I saw them, figured they were her parents. She took after them in appearance, and on the spur of the moment I knocked on the door and things went from there. I just wanted them to know I was sorry about what had happened and if they needed anything to call me. I left them my card.”

Shoemaker reached in his pocket and pulled a card out. “Mrs. Ewes gave this to us this morning when we saw her. She called and told us about your visit. That’s why we’re here to talk to you.”

“Why did she do that?” asked Devine, who was relieved they weren’t here because of the electronic log showing him entering the building in time to kill Ewes.

Ekman leaned forward. “Let’s just say that she felt you weren’t being entirely forthcoming about your relationship with her daughter.”

“In what way?”

“Why don’t you tell us?” replied Ekman.

“How? I can’t read minds.”

“Just read your own, then.”

“I knew Sara and liked her, just like other people here did. Have you talked to any of them?”

“Quite a few,” replied Shoemaker. “But now we’re talking to you.”

“Okay, and I’m answering your questions.”

“Ewes kept a diary, did you know that?”

“Her mother told me she kept one ever since she was young, but that the police apparently didn’t find one at her house. Were her phone and laptop at the office or her home?”

Shoemaker said, “We’ve gone through her emails and other communications and calendar entries on her electronics. And do you know what we found?”

“I have no idea.”

“Ms. Ewes had had an abortion.”

Devine sat up straighter and leaned forward. “What? Sara was pregnant?”

“Abortions are not performed on women who aren’t pregnant,” pointed out Ekman sarcastically.

“Where did she have it done?”

“It was a calendar entry with the procedure listed. We’ll run down who performed it.”

“Did she say who the father was?”

Shoemaker crossed one leg over the other and tapped his wingtips with his index finger. “Was it you?” he said, staring off before swinging his gaze around to Devine’s. It was clearly done for dramatic effect, and Devine had to admit the cop pulled it off nicely.

“I know nothing about any of this.”

“Again, not really my question. Did you have sex with Sara Ewes?”

“I don’t have to answer that.”

Ekman interjected, “No, but your refusal comes with consequences. And she did name you as the father, just so you know.”

Devine now swiveled his gaze in the man’s direction. “And it’s totally legal for cops to lie to suspects to trick them into saying something. So that could be a load of bullshit. Show me where she says that.”

Shoemaker said, “Paul, this guy sounds like a lawyer. Who woulda thought that about a fine Army lad.”

Devine knew all about this because the CID had interrogated him after Hawkins’s death, tried to screw with his head, lied to him, tried to get him to confess, pounded him with everything they had. Only the body had been so torn up by animals that the forensics were of no use in assigning legal blame to Devine, and the injuries he had incurred in his fight with Hawkins were minimal and inconclusive. All soldiers had bumps and bruises and cuts. And any DNA of one man found on the other was also inconclusive, since they served in close proximity to one another. No witnesses, no other evidence, and a time of death that was all over the place allowed Devine to reasonably argue that he had an alibi for the broad time window in question. The CID had finally given up. Devine also assumed that they didn’t want to pursue it more thoroughly because doing so might open up for scrutiny the whitewash investigation they had done of Blankenship’s supposed suicide.

“You can take my prints and my DNA. I did not kill her.”

“How about a polygraph? Will you take one of those?”

Devine sat back. “Which means you found no DNA and no prints at the murder scene. Or maybe you just didn’t find any of mine. And you’re trying to railroad me into a confession so you can clear this one off your list and make your boss happy and Wall Street rest easy. Only if you did pin it on me, the killer would still be out there. But I’ll make a deal with you.”

“I don’t remember asking for a deal,” said Ekman.

“I’ll take a polygraph if you show me where Sara names me as the father and you swear in an affidavit that it’s legit and not made up to get me to confess to something I didn’t do.”

“You watch too many cop shows,” said Shoemaker. “But while we can make deceptive statements to you in an interrogation, we can’t manufacture evidence. That would be a crime.”

“Do I take that as a no-go on my offer, then?”

“Where were you between the hours of midnight and four a.m. on Friday?”

Devine grimaced impatiently. “Come on, I already told the other guy all that.”

“What other guy?” said Shoemaker sharply.

“Hancock.”

“Hancock?” parroted Ekman.

“Detective Karl Hancock with NYPD. I guess he’s working the case with you two.”

The two men exchanged a glance that Devine couldn’t really read, but didn’t like.

“When did this Hancock talk to you?” asked Ekman.

“He was waiting for me at the train station near my place in Mount Kisco, this was on Friday. And he was waiting for me at my house the next day when I got home from work.”

“And you told him where you were that night?”

“Yes, and he wrote it down.”

“Describe him,” said Shoemaker.

“Black guy, around six one, bald, athletic build, in his forties. Dressed like you guys, and he said he was driving a coffee-and-cigarette motor pool piece of crap, at least in so many words. Because NYPD hadn’t bought new cars in ten years, at least that’s what he said. He also told me he lived in Trenton, New Jersey.” He looked between the two men. “Don’t you know him? How many homicide detectives are there in the city?”

“Manhattan South Homicide, where we’re from, has ten of them, down from twenty-six in 2001. And you’re looking at two of them.”

“He had a badge that looked real. And he talked like a cop. He was the one who told me that Sara hadn’t killed herself. That she was murdered.”

“He said that?” exclaimed Ekman. “On Saturday?”

“Yeah. And he knew all about my background in the Army.”

“Exactly what about the crime did he know?” asked Ekman.

Devine told them everything, including the straight-line ligature versus the inverted. But he didn’t tell them about the similar case in the Army that he had mentioned to Hancock. “He said that proved it was a murder and not a suicide.”

Shoemaker gave his partner a nervous glance, one that showed he was no longer fully in control of the situation. His partner seemed to read this like a cue card.

“Okay, let’s move on for now. Where were you between those times?” asked Ekman.

“At home in bed until four. Then I was doing my workout at the high school next to where I live. Then I showered, dressed, and took the six twenty train just like always. Must be cameras in the station to show me coming in. Not that many people are there at that hour.”

Shoemaker said, “You could have killed her that night, taken the train home, and come back into town on the six twenty.”

“But again, the train station may have cameras, and the office building has a security guard.”

“You didn’t have to take the train,” Ekman pointed out. “And the guard makes rounds.”

“But you need a security card to get in the building. There’s a record of coming and going because of that.”

And it shows me coming and me going at the critical time in question, so why are you jerking my chain on all this other crap? wondered Devine.

“We’re checking all that,” said Shoemaker. “It’s taking a little time to pull the records.”

And I won’t be happy with what you find.

“You get up at four a.m. to work out?” said Ekman.

“Doesn’t everybody?”

“Anybody corroborate this?”

“No. I slept alone and I worked out alone. Nobody else around.”

“No roommates?”

“Yeah. Three. But they were asleep at that hour, like most normal people. They can’t alibi me.”

“How do you know?” asked Ekman.

“Because I asked them if they could when this Hancock guy showed up and seemed to be trying to pin all this on me. But they couldn’t. And I wouldn’t ask them to lie.”

Shoemaker studied him so closely that Devine was sure the man was going to read him his rights and cuff him. “What a nice guy you are,” he said, but there didn’t seem to be much acid behind it. The big cop just looked truly confused.

“If you saw this Hancock again, would you recognize him?” asked Ekman.

“Hell yes I would. I don’t like getting played. And why pick on me in the first place? That’s what I don’t get.”

“Well, maybe there’s something special about you, Devine, at least when it comes to Sara Ewes,” said Shoemaker.

Devine didn’t like any bit of that remark.

The two men rose as though connected by string. “You don’t leave the area,” warned Shoemaker.

“I have no intention of doing that. I have a job to do.”

Shoemaker looked around. “Yeah, making dough at this place.”

“That’s not the job I’m referring to.”

And it wasn’t. He was thinking about Emerson Campbell and the mission. He was also thinking about dead Sara Ewes.

Shoemaker and Ekman exchanged curious glances and then left.

Devine sat there for a few minutes digesting everything that had just happened and trying to place it neatly into certain boxes in his mind that would make the most sense. Some of it did, much of it didn’t.

Sara was pregnant and then had an abortion? This news was staggering to him.

He ran a hand through his hair and closed his eyes for a moment, trying to process all this: Was I the father? We slept together once. I didn’t use protection because she said she was on the pill, but maybe she wasn’t. They didn’t say when she had the abortion. Did I lose a child and not even know about it?

He rose and looked out the small window. Staring back at him was another building of equal height. He felt boxed in, trapped, blindsided beyond all reason.

And they’re going to look at the entry log and they’re going to see my name as the only one. And then they’re going to be back. With an arrest warrant. And who the hell is Karl Hancock?

But now it made sense why the guy had approached Devine away from the office both times. If he wasn’t a real cop, it was much safer that way.

He lifted his lanyard from around his neck and looked at his security badge. He had not been in the building when Ewes had been murdered. So maybe someone had stolen his badge and then returned it before he woke up at his home in the suburbs, which he did not think was likely at all because the timing was just too tight. Or maybe someone hacked into the system and set me up as the fall guy. That was also not easy to do. But for the person who had sent an email that could not be traced by the best in the business, it might be a piece of cake.

He shuffled back to work, with what felt like a knife sticking right in his gut.