The 6:20 Man

Chapter 76

The 6:20 train.

It was rainy and foggy and chilly, the opposite of what summer should be, thought Devine, but then so was everything else. He was in his normal seat. He was looking out the window. The train slowed and then stopped. There was Cowl’s mansion.

Empty.

He was heading to Cowl and Clean Money, as he thought of it now. The media hadn’t gotten wind of anything that had happened in Cowl’s penthouse, which had been walled off and preserved for additional processing. The decision had been made to allow the Cowl firm to stay in business for now. Campbell had texted about the progress so far. It was not encouraging.

Devine had gotten that text at one in the morning.

As he neared the city he got a call from Campbell.

“Extremely bad news, Devine. Cowl and Bartlett are both dead. The latter in the hospital. Pillow over his face. Sentry killed, too.”

“And Cowl?”

“Shivved in a holding cell. The CCTV was taken offline. We’ve put a dome of silence over all this. No leaks, no one knows, for now. But that won’t last long. Back to square one, unfortunately, but I think we have them on the run. And DOJ and the other agencies are going after them with all they’ve got, even with the stonewalling going on with some of the politicos.”

Devine was not nearly as optimistic as the retired general. He was sure that Area 51 would be set up somewhere else, or consolidated with another ongoing operation. He wondered how much of America others truly owned.

The world is upside down. Good is bad and bad is deified.

And his instincts were telling him that a killer was still out there. Four people dead and it had everything to do with Sara Ewes, and not Brad Cowl and Area 51.

And it somehow has everything to do with me. I got the emails. They were sent to me for a reason. The killer is speaking directly to me. This is as personal as it gets.

He didn’t get much done at work. His brain was in too much of a fog. All the other Burners were in the process of getting interviews at other firms and venting about their problems. He just tried to tune it out.

When he got home from work that night, he found Valentine on the couch, sucking down beer and eating a hot dog instead of pizza.

“Hey, dude, you’re early tonight. How goes it? You figure all that shit out?”

“I think so.”

“So all is good?”

“I wouldn’t go that far.”

The news finally broke about the murder of Brad Cowl while in police custody. The financial press, already reeling from the string of murders connected to the firm, was covering all of this with astonishment mixed with a bit of glee, even as a few rumors started to circulate about possible financial improprieties at Cowl and Comely.

As Devine read through these news accounts on his phone in his room after coming home from work one night, he shook his head.

Possible financial improprieties? Just wait. This will make Bernie Madoff look like a third-rate grifter if it ever sees the light of day.

Later, he texted Montgomery and arranged to meet her at a hotel the next day, where she was staying with a security team.

In the city, he cleared her armed guards and knocked on the door of Montgomery’s room. She opened it immediately. She had on jeans and a white T-shirt. She looked like she’d been crying.

He closed the door behind him. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

She dabbed at her eyes and sat on the bed. “My mother called. She heard about Brad and also about Christian. She wanted to know if I was involved somehow. My own mother!”

He perched on a chair opposite her. “That must’ve been a difficult conversation.”

“Well, at least it was a short one, since I hung up on her.”

“You’ve still got your retirement portfolio.”

“I’m not sure that’s going to be enough, Travis,” she said dully. “Apparently I’ve got a bull’s-eye on my back. You too.”

“Maybe, maybe not. They probably don’t want to make more waves. They know the big guns are out for their blood.”

She brushed the hair out of her face. “Do you really think so?”

“I can’t guarantee it, but the truth is these guys just care about getting their money clean and using it to buy property and people. And the fact is, we’re not that important, Michelle. They go somewhere else and set up shop, and the pipeline opens up again.” He sat back. “But that doesn’t get us any closer to figuring out who killed four people.”

“So, what are you going to do?”

“I was thinking of going back to the scene of Sara’s murder.”

“Can I come?” she said quickly.

“Why?”

“Because right now I don’t want to be alone.”

Devine hesitated.

“My ass is on the line too, Travis,” she snapped.

“Okay, let me clear it with Campbell before your security team freaks out.”

“After seeing what you did in Brad’s penthouse I feel safer with you than I do with them.”

He got permission from Campbell, and they left the hotel. Devine used his security card to get into the Cowl Building. It being a weekend and the firm probably going under, the place was pretty much empty. They rode the elevator up to the fifty-second floor and got off. Devine led Montgomery over to the storage closet and opened the door.

“That’s where she was found?” said Montgomery.

“Yes. By the custodian. She was hanging from that pipe you can see in the ceiling. The chair was knocked over. Her shoes were on the floor. They tried to make it look like suicide but failed.”

She glanced nervously at him. “Murder disguised as suicide, like Brad was talking about with you and those men in the Army who died?”

“That’s a long story that I hope one day to be able to share with you, but not right now.”

“And the guy who found Sara’s body?”

“Jerry Myers, the custodian who works here. Freaked him out. There was no one else on the floor because there was an all-hands-on-deck seminar at the Ritz that morning. And the admin folks hadn’t arrived yet.”

“Is that a coincidence?” said Montgomery. “That her body was found on the morning when no one would be up here?”

“I don’t think so. I believe it was planned that way, which smacks of inside information.”

“When was Ewes killed again?”

“The previous night, between like midnight and four.”

“So whoever killed her was long gone by the next morning. But you got the email in the morning telling you about her being dead.”

“That’s right.”

“Well, I doubt whoever killed her snuck back up in that time window you were talking about to look at the crime scene so they could write you that email. They already knew what it looked like.”

Devine thought this over. “You’re right about that. But the message did mention that a custodian had found her body. That led me to believe that the person was there that morning, because how else would they know about who found the body and when?”

“But why would it be important for you to know who found the body? Wasn’t it enough to tell you that she was hanging in a storage room?”

Devine started to say something and then stopped. “You’re right. I just never thought about that.”

“So why wait until the next morning to tell you about it? Why not email you that night, as soon as she was dead? You would have called the cops and they would have found the body.”

“I don’t know. The way you set it out, it makes no sense.”

“But it does make sense if the killer and email sender were two different people,” said Montgomery. “The killer murdered Sara. And told the email sender about it.”

“But we get back to the same issue. How would the killer know a custodian found the body the next morning? And if he didn’t know that, how could the person who sent me the email know about it?”

She looked around the space. “So this guy Myers found her. Why did he come into the storage room in the first place?”

“To get a printer cartridge that someone on the floor told him they—”

Devine stopped and looked around at the supplies on the shelving units before glancing at Montgomery.

She said, “Only you just told me there was no one on this floor on Friday. Then who told Myers to get a printer cartridge?”

“Let’s go ask him.”