The 6:20 Man

Chapter 50

The elevator went down, and Devine hit the button for the fifty-first floor and held his breath. It lighted up and stayed that way. He let out the breath and leaned back against the wall. The doors opened on the fifty-first and he cautiously stepped out. He had checked the phone’s settings. Cowl wasn’t using a time lock right now, probably because he had had to give the phone to Montgomery to get him on the elevator and up to the penthouse, so he was good to go on that score.

The hallway was long and bare of anything. There wasn’t even carpet on the floor, only the building’s underlying concrete slab. He looked around for signs of video surveillance but saw none.

They must count on the fact that no one can access this floor except Cowl. And he wouldn’t want anyone watching.

He checked his watch and hurried forward. There was a door at the end of the hall with an electronic reader. He put his ear to the door and all he heard were hums. No footsteps, no snatches of conversation, no one on the phone.

You’re running out of time, Devine. Just do it. Shit, you took less time to go into rooms in the Middle East, where you knew there were guys inside waiting to kill you.

He held the phone in front of the reader, and the door clicked open. He slipped through. And stopped, again looking around for any sign of video surveillance, but again coming up empty.

The room was vast. All he could see were servers stacked in cabinets and computer screens set on tables across the entire space.

He rushed over and looked at some of the screens. Data appeared on them, much like they did on his computer in his cubicle. He took out his own phone and started taking pictures and then video. Account numbers, maybe, wire routing data, perhaps. Money moving, almost certainly. Names of companies, properties, and other assets, being bought and sold, surely.

He was thinking the whole time, trying to piece together or envision what sort of business was being done here. Illegal, or just highly confidential, he didn’t yet know.

The streams of numbers he was seeing, and the currency symbols attached to them, demonstrated that assets were being moved around the world. If this went on 24/7, the size of the operation, whatever was being operated here, was leviathan in scope. At least from what he could glean on the screens, most of the assets being acquired seemed to be in the United States. But from the bank names and other data he saw, a lot of the money pouring in seemed to be emanating from outside the country.

As he watched one screen, he saw the name “The Locust Group” pop up. Four million had just gone into its coffers from somewhere. He took a picture of that. On other screens properties were being purchased. Big, small, in between. Accounts filled up and then accounts were drawn down. And then they were filled back up, in what seemed like an endless cycle. He took video of all that.

He looked at his watch. He had to get back upstairs to the penthouse, without being seen. He couldn’t make some excuse to Cowl about returning, because the only way he could return alone was if he had a phone he wasn’t supposed to have.

From inside his shoe Devine brought out the wafer-thin device, provided by Emerson Campbell, and looked around for a good place to locate it. He quickly found a spot on the wall. After he affixed it there, the device blended right in. This camera was space-age in its capability and had originally been designed by NASA for use in outer space, but then was deployed by American intelligence for surveillance purposes in the most demanding environments. Area 51 had to have pretty significant protections against electronic eavesdropping from the outside. There were no windows in this room, and underneath the walls were probably copper sheathing and other counterintelligence measures. Valentine had been unable to get through them, apparently. Only Devine had an advantage there. Valentine had been outside trying to peek in. Devine was inside, trying to get intelligence out. And this space-observation device turned spy video camera, he believed, could do the job of stealing Area 51’s secrets. At least he hoped.

He brought the related camera app up on his phone, engaged it, and on the small screen he saw... Area 51 operating on all cylinders. Now he just needed to see if it would do the same when he left the building.

He exited the room and headed up on the elevator. He said a prayer right before the doors opened. He glanced out, saw no one, pushed the button for the lobby and then for the door to stay open, and darted into the foyer. This was it. This was where it was probably all going to go to hell. Because the chances were very good that as absorbed as the man had been, Cowl was probably still on the couch, thinking, or else had the fake phone with him.

Devine did a turkey peek into the room they had been in minutes earlier.

Cowl wasn’t there, and he wondered where the man might be.

He hurried over to the table and breathed a sigh of relief because the phone was still there. He made the switch back after wiping his prints off the case with the sleeve of his jacket. He once more looked around, and that was when he heard it.

Oh shit.

He followed the sounds and saw the door where they seemed to be coming from. When he looked down at the floor he had confirmation. There, in a pile, were the clothes Montgomery had been wearing.

He was sorely tempted to go over there and put a stop to it all, to tell Montgomery that—

But what would be the point?

He ran back into the elevator, released the hold, and the elevator shot down to earth.

All the way, the only thing Devine could envision was the door to the bedroom opening and Cowl walking out, zipping up his pants with that triumphant expression that made Devine want to punch his lights out. And Montgomery would be in the room, flat on her back, legs akimbo, like Stamos had been, and wondering what the hell she had just done.

As Devine left the building he couldn’t remember feeling more miserable with himself.

God, let it be worth it.

Then he engaged the camera app on his phone and said a silent prayer. One... two... three.

Popping up on his screen were real-time images from Area 51. He let out a lungful of air.

Bingo.

As he stared back into the building where the night security guard was at the front reception desk, an idea struck him.

He used his card to get back inside and walked over to the man.

It was the same guy as always. He grinned at Devine. “Trying to get a jump on tomorrow so soon?”

Devine smiled back. “No way. I’m done, but I did have a question.”

“Shoot.”

“You were on duty the night that Sara Ewes was killed?”

The man’s smile faded. He shook his head and closed his eyes for a moment. “That was some sick shit, man. Sick.”

“Yeah, it was. The cops have been talking to me and others here. Apparently, they said someone came into the lobby at midnight and then left at one ten a.m.”

“Nobody came in during that time.”

Devine looked startled. “What do you mean?”

“I make my rounds exactly at twenty past the hour. Takes me about twenty minutes. I have to key into certain areas so there’s an electronic trail. That means I was in the lobby at midnight and at one ten. Nobody came into the lobby that night. I can count on one hand the number of times someone came in that late, and I’ve been working here six years.”

“And you told the cops this?”

“Yes, I did. And I also told them what they needed to look at.”

“What was that?”

“The service entrance and elevator in the rear. Same security cards get you in there. And there’s a camera back there.” He pointed to the console, where there were video feeds on six different screens. “The one on the right over there. Shot of whoever’s outside that door. That’s one of the places I check every hour, just to make sure it’s secure. But you need a security card to get in and there’s a phone outside the door. During business hours, contractors have to call and we have someone go and let them in, verify they’re supposed to be there and all that.”

“Did the police check the feed from that camera to see if anyone came in that way the night Ewes was killed?”

“Since I was the one who suggested it, I did it for them.”

“So did anyone come in that way at the time window in question, midnight to four?”

“I figured if the dude didn’t come in the front, because I would have seen him, he came in that way. I ran the video feed back to like eleven o’clock, just to be sure.” He shook his head. “But there was nothing. Nobody was there.”

“Could the video have been manipulated, doctored?”

“I don’t know, man. I’m just the security guard. Not a computer whiz. After business hours no contractor rings that bell unless they got some special job and have to come in at night. But that’s all arranged beforehand. I don’t usually look at that camera during my shift. But the feed was clear, I can tell you that.”

“But won’t the security card show what entrance the person came through?”

“Not to my knowledge. Front or back door, it’s all the same. But the point is you need a card to get in. And the cops would have checked the entry log for that time. But I can tell you that the cameras were clear and I saw no one come in during the night. So I think whoever killed the lady was already in the building.”

What Devine knew that the guard didn’t was that the video had been doctored to make it look like he had come into the building during that time window. And his card had been cloned and the log manipulated to further incriminate him.

So the entry log and surveillance cameras are basically useless.

But the guard had suggested an intriguing possibility: Was the killer already in the building? That certainly could be the case, because it was really impossible to confirm that every single person had left Cowl and Comely that night. Including Brad Cowl.

The cops had made no mention of Ewes having had sex or being sexually assaulted or raped. Had Cowl tried to have sex with her and she refused? And in a fit of rage he had strangled her and then hoisted her up to cover up his crime? Cowl was physically capable of doing that. And he had clearly been frustrated by her rejection of his advances.

And Speers might have hit it on the head. Despite his denials, Cowl could have erased his own info from the electronic log, put Devine’s in, and then had someone at Cyber-Surgeon show Devine coming into the lobby at that time. Only the security guard would have blown that scheme all to hell. So even if the NYPD had gotten the entry log showing Devine coming in and even seeing him on the video camera, they would have been confronted with a real, live person saying that did not happen.

Electronic skullduggery apparently had its limits.

And maybe I have my limits, too. And I might be just about to reach them.

Devine walked off into the darkness.