The 6:20 Man

Chapter 80

Tapshaw looked weak and shaky. Her eyes fluttered open and then closed.

Devine studied her vitals on the monitor and noted that her oxygen levels were improved, but not nearly back to normal. She was very thin and probably didn’t have a lot of robust reserve to overcome this easily.

He sat next to her bed and held her hand and watched her slight chest rise and fall.

“I’m so sorry this happened, Jill,” he said. First she had lost the investment from Chilton and Mayflower Enterprises, and now she’d almost died. And it was probably all connected to what Devine was looking into. With Will Valentine as the unknown factor.

“Is... o-... kay, T-ravis.”

“I saw your information on the email, Jill. I saw that you traced it to Will.”

“W-Will... e-ma...”

It now occurred to Devine that that was the reason Valentine had made a run for it and tried to kill them all. He had somehow discovered that Tapshaw had found him out.

“I’ll follow up on that, Jill. Don’t worry about that. We’ll find him. I promise. But I think I should contact your family. I know your mom lives in California. But what about your dad? And your brother, Dennis? Do you have contact info for them on your phone? Or in your room?”

He knew he couldn’t get on her phone or laptop without her passwords.

She mumbled something incoherent and then fell back asleep.

He glanced at her monitor, where everything seemed to be holding its own but didn’t seem to be improving. He wished her color looked better.

He left her there and ventured to Helen Speers’s room.

Only she wasn’t there.

“She checked herself out AMA about two hours ago,” the nurse told Devine when he made inquiries.

“ ‘Against medical advice’?”

“Yes, but I think she’ll be fine. She was already recovering nicely when she was brought in. She’s a very fit young woman. The other woman is a lot frailer and she’s also anemic. We’re watching her closely.”

“Did Speers say where she might be going? We room together.”

“She didn’t.”

He wondered if Speers and Valentine had met up. And if they had, why.

I might have enemies on both flanks right in my own camp.

He went to work the next day and sat beside Burners who were openly weeping in front of their computer screens. Word had obviously gotten around that the firm was going under.

He had contacted Caltech, because he remembered that was where Tapshaw’s mother taught, and left a message for her explaining a little of what had happened. He had heard nothing from Speers.

He then received a text from Montgomery, and they arranged to meet later in the city.

When he got to the café in Tribeca she was already waiting. He filled her in on what had happened at his town house.

“Oh my God,” she exclaimed.

“So, two of my roomies are now missing. And Valentine wasn’t there when the gas got turned on.”

“Was he working with the laundering operation? With Cowl?”

“I think so.” He went on to explain that Valentine had been the one to send him the emails.

“Then he must be working with them.”

“And he tried to get rid of me, and my other roommates were collateral damage. But Jill tracked him down online, and Campbell’s men have an APB out on him.”

“And Speers?”

Devine shook his head. “She checked herself out of the hospital. She hasn’t answered my texts or emails or phone calls.”

“That is so odd.” She reached out and took his hand. “Look, the stuff Brad was talking about. With you and the other soldiers in the Army?”

“What about it?” he said curtly.

“Is that why you left the military?”

“Yes. It ended with both of them dead, and I have a level of guilt from all of it that will haunt me until my dying day.”

She sat back and studied him. “Whatever happened there, I believe that you did what you thought was the right thing, the honorable thing.”

“Why do you believe that?” he said earnestly.

“Because, despite your best efforts to make yourself out to be a shit, you’re actually a really good guy. A really nice guy, Travis. I can tell. Trust me. I’ve seen the whole spectrum of men. And you’re definitely one of the good ones.”

He took her hand and squeezed it. And she leaned over and kissed him.

“Now what will you do?” she asked.

“The mission’s not finished yet.”

“I mean after that.”

“Not sure. Keep working for Campbell. I don’t think I have a choice, really.”

“Do you want company?”

“I’m not sure Campbell would go for that. No, I am sure he wouldn’t.”

“I meant on the personal side.”

“You can do a helluva lot better than me, Michelle. While I hope I am a nice, honorable guy, I’m also a washed-up soldier with daddy problems.”

She gazed at him. “You’re a West Point grad. Army officer. You defended this country in combat. You have an MBA. I have a high school diploma and look great in a bikini and I have serious mommy problems. I think you can do a helluva lot better than me. But we could make it, if we worked at it.”

“What I need to work at is finding out who killed all those people.”

She sighed and sat forward. “But I thought Jerry Myers did it.”

“I think he killed Sara. But I’m not sure about the others.”

“Do you really think it could be your missing roommate?”

“Which one? Valentine or Speers?”

“Could they be working together?”

Devine thought back to the night at the bar, where Speers and Valentine just seemed to have an odd connection. But then she had searched his room. And he had left Speers for dead.

“I don’t know. I really don’t.”

“Have the police found out anything more on Jerry Myers?” she asked.

“Detective Shoemaker contacted me. The killer spiked the bottle of whisky with enough cyanide to kill an elephant.”

“Wow, taking no chances. But if you think Myers was paid to kill Sara Ewes, why wouldn’t the person who killed him have gotten him to kill all the others, too? I know you have your gut feeling on this, but Myers could have killed everybody.”

“Sara, I think, had to be hanged. At least in the killer’s deranged mind. Sara was about five nine and athletically built. Not so easy to hoist someone like that up on a rope. And then the person had to strangle her first. Myers was my size, big and strong. And he had access to the building. The others? Stamos was drugged and then killed. A knife was used on the Eweses, too. Anyone could have done that. Including a woman.”

“A woman?” she exclaimed. “But now I thought you said Valentine was behind this? Although I guess it could be Helen Speers who killed Jennifer Stamos and the Eweses.”

He looked at her inscrutably, certain thoughts, uncomfortable thoughts, running through his mind. “I don’t think Will would know which end of a knife to stab someone with. And with his big gut he’s not crawling through windows. He can barely walk up the stairs. And if he was working with the people behind the money laundering they’d have plenty of skilled foot soldiers to do the deeds. But—”

“But what?”

“Why pay off Myers to kill Sara? Again, why not just use one of your own people, like Hancock?”

“Well, Myers had access to the building, like you said,” countered Montgomery.

“So did Brad Cowl,” retorted Devine. He fell silent. At first he had thought Cowl had been behind the killings. Then he had changed his mind and thought there was a different killer, who had had a grudge against him and who had sent him the weird emails, and killed his victims symbolically. Then he’d changed his opinion again, and decided it was the people behind Cowl and now Valentine who had done the killings, or at least he was involved, and all the rest was just misdirection.

But now I’m not sure. Again.

There was something off here, really off. And he just couldn’t figure out what it was.

But I have to. Eventually. Or else a killer walks free. To kill me.