The 6:20 Man

Chapter 39

Devine was leaving the building for his meeting with Ellen and Fred Ewes when the woman hurried up to him. She had obviously been waiting outside for him to appear.

Rachel Potter looked fired up and itching for battle as she approached him, microphone in hand, while her beefy cameraman hovered behind her filming it all.

“Mr. Devine, Rachel Potter, Channel Forty-Four News. I understand that NYPD is investigating you in connection with the murder of Sara Ewes, a story I previously broke. Do you have a comment, Mr. Devine?”

“No.” He pushed past her as people on the street gawked and started whispering.

Potter raced after him, the power pack on the back of her waist jiggling with the movements.

“Are you denying that you are a suspect in Sara Ewes’s murder? Are you denying that you had a relationship of a sexual nature with her? Are you denying that you are the father of the child she aborted? Are you denying that you had a motive to kill her?”

It was like machine-gun fire, only with words.

Devine allowed this barrage to go on for a half block as more damaging and lurid statements in the form of questions that the woman never expected answers to rained down on him like explosives from carpet-bombing planes.

“Is this live?” he asked, suddenly whirling around so fast she bumped into him.

“Would it be a problem for you if it were?” she said in a simpering manner. She stuck the mic in his face. “So, talk to our viewers, Mr. Devine. Here’s your chance. Tell us your side!”

“Okay, do you deny taking me prisoner in your news van while attempting to coerce me into giving you a scoop because you said you wanted to get away from shitty Channel Forty-Four and make it to the big-league single-digit stations?”

He stood there, and Potter stood there, her face shedding color like a landing plane did altitude, while the camera shot was jumping due to Beefy’s trying hard not to bust a gut.

“How dare you make such an accusation!” she wailed.

“Took the words right out of my mouth, lady.”

He turned and stalked off. This time Potter did not follow.

He dialed up an Uber and took it to Ewes’s old home in Park Slope.

Old home. It makes it sound like she’s been gone for decades instead of days.

Ellen Ewes answered his knock. She was dressed in jeans, a sleeveless white blouse, and sandals. The inside of the house was warm. It would be winter in New Zealand now, he thought. Maybe they were trying to take in as much heat as possible before heading back.

Fred Ewes was in the living room drinking what looked to be lemonade. He had on jeans, too, and a lavender polo shirt. He looked up absently at Devine. Ellen and Devine sat across from each other.

Ellen began: “The police have told us some things.”

“Really, such as?”

“They traced the clinic that Sara used for the abortion.”

“How did they do that?” asked Devine.

“I’m not sure. It was a place outside the city.”

“Were the doctors able to provide any information to the police? Do they know who the father was?”

“No, at least not that they’ve told us.”

Devine sat back, looking and feeling disappointed.

“If they had, would your name have come up?”

“Why would you ask that? Is it something Sara mentioned?”

“No, she was not very transparent with me on her relationships.”

“I thought you two were close. You said you talked pretty much weekly.”

Ellen looked uncomfortable with the question. “The fact is, Sara and I were estranged over the last year or so. She seemed to have changed.”

“Changed? How so?”

“She was not the girl that I raised,” replied Ellen.

“I don’t understand.”

“You don’t have to. I just want to know if you could have been the father.”

“Okay, do they know how far along Sara was?” asked Devine.

“Eight weeks. At least that’s what we were told.”

“And when did she have the procedure done?”

“In December,” Ellen replied.

“Then I was not the father. I hadn’t even met her at that point.”

“But you had sex with her? Outside of marriage?”

“Is that the reason for the estrangement? Sara was having sex outside of marriage?”

“That is not how we raised her.” She glanced at her husband. “Fred?”

He didn’t look at her or Devine. He merely said, “Young people sometimes make... poor decisions.”

Ellen rolled her eyes at this mild rebuke and shook her head. “Yes, very poor. She took the life of our grandchild, which is a mortal sin.”

“I’m sure it must have been an incredibly difficult decision for her,” said Devine.

“It shouldn’t have been her decision at all,” Ellen said heatedly.

He put up a hand. “I’m not going to get into all that with you right now. But she must have had a good reason. The woman I knew was kind and gentle.”

Ellen exclaimed, “Then you obviously didn’t know her. But, no, you did know her. You slept with her like the slut she was.”

“How can you say that? She was your child,” Devine snapped back. “She was a good person. And she didn’t deserve to be murdered!”

“Neither did that poor, innocent baby.”

Silence lingered for a few moments until Devine broke it. “Did anyone check Sara’s social media accounts? I know she was on Instagram.”

Fred said, “The police looked at all that and found nothing helpful. No pictures or references to current or past boyfriends.”

“But that could mean nothing, since you weren’t on any of it, Travis,” noted Ellen sharply.

“Did the police tell you that specifically?”

She looked down and didn’t answer.

“Did they ever find her diary?” asked Devine.

“They found nothing like that, as I told you before.”

“How about on her electronics? Or in her personal cloud?”

“So were you two dating?” she asked.

“Relationships like that aren’t allowed at Cowl and Comely,” said Devine. “That gets you fired.”

“You kept it secret, then?” persisted Ellen.

He ignored this. “Do you know the name of the doctor who performed the procedure on Sara?”

“Yes, why?”

“Can I have it?”

“You say you’re not the father, so what does it matter to you?”

“It matters to me because a friend of mine, someone I cared about, was killed. I’d like to find out why and by whom.”

Ellen looked at her husband. He pulled something from his jeans pocket and handed it across. It was a slip of paper. On it was a name and address of a clinic in Westchester.

“Thank you.”

“I’ll see you out,” said Ellen.

They stood on the stoop for a moment. Ellen said, “I can see you do not approve of my beliefs.”

“They’re your beliefs, so I have to respect them.”

“But not agree with them?”

“Like I said before, Ellen, this is really not the time or place to have that discussion. You have the absolute right to believe what you want, and so do I.”

Her mouth suddenly twisted in disgust, but she wasn’t looking at him, Devine observed. He looked over his shoulder to see two women on the pavement holding hands and kissing.

Devine turned back to her. The disgusted look was gone, but she said, “I can’t wait to get the hell out of this town.”