A line had formed at the main reception desk of 875 North Michigan Avenue, men and women in stiff suits checking in for meetings at the law firms, telecom, and other companies housed in the impressive one-hundred-floor tower. Keller waited patiently, then displayed her badge to the security guard working the desk. Without hesitation or questions, the guard gave her a key card. He didn’t work for Marconi, and his job was just to make sure no one unauthorized made it to the elevator banks. He wasn’t about to give the FBI a hard time. No analysis paralysis for this guy.
Keller rode the elevator up with a throng of smartphone-staring executives. She smiled at the twentysomething in wrinkled slacks who held a cardboard tray filled with four coffees. Keller’s ears popped from the elevation.
She’d just spent two hours with a team from the Chicago field office, getting them up to speed. As Stan had warned, the Chicago SAC was a bit of a bull in a china shop, and more than willing to bust into Marconi swinging his dick. She’d convinced them to exercise restraint. She’d send a signal—the single click of a pen that was actually a transmitter—if they should storm the offices. She didn’t want to do that. She’d prefer to continue building the case. But she supposed they already had the goods. Payments from various cartel-controlled accounts. The intricate web of investments and shell companies to wash the funds. The return of the money, less a hefty commission. But they didn’t have a single witness who could put the story together for a jury. R. Stanton Jones, their original inside man and the tipster who’d gotten them started with the investigation, had vanished. It was possible he’d been rammed through a wood chipper or dissolved in a barrel of acid, favorites of the Sinaloa Cartel. Or maybe he’d just decided to change his identity and start anew. The taps on Marconi phones revealed no clues about what had happened to the middle-aged accountant. The Marconi executives seemed as baffled as everyone else at Jones’s disappearance.
Keller’s team had approached other former employees and gotten some good intel, but no one who knew the nitty-gritty, as Keller did after spending nearly two years tracking and analyzing the records. She’d intended to talk to Evan Pine because fired employees were always the most prone to turn on their companies, but he’d died before she got to it. Was he murdered, as the filmmakers speculated? Or was it a murder-suicide? Based on an analysis of internet history artifacts, the Bureau’s computer forensics team believed that Evan, not Liv, had made the searches suggesting he was planning to off himself. Maybe he was. But murder his wife and kids? Everything she’d learned about the man said he wouldn’t kill his family. Most of his internet searches related to caring for them when he was gone.
She stepped off the elevator and into the Marconi complex. It was as she’d expected: not too sleek, not too extravagant. Understated elegance. No one wanted someone flashy handling their money.
Correct that, the receptionist was showy—strikingly pretty, with a model’s symmetrical features. Keller watched the woman closely as she approached. Much could be learned in these initial encounters. The receptionists of companies—particularly smaller branch offices like Marconi Chicago—usually knew where the bodies were buried. They saw who came and went, were tapped into the secretarial gossip circles, and needed something to make the boring job bearable. Would the woman look worried? Scared? Nonchalant? Or excited at the break in her routine?
“Hi,” Keller said, friendly enough. “I’m Special Agent Keller. I’m here to see Devin Milbank.” Keller showed her badge, watched the woman’s face.
“One moment, please,” she said. The woman smiled, but Keller saw a twitch. A barely discernible flash in the eyes.
The receptionist tapped on the keyboard, and in her headset mic said, “Sheryl, I have a Special Agent Keller from the FBI here to see Mr. Milbank.” A long silence followed as she listened on the other end. “No, she didn’t say.” The woman’s glance returned to Keller. “If you’d like to have a seat, Agent Keller, someone will be right with you.”
“I prefer to stand,” Keller said, if only to see the woman’s reaction. Another smile, a nervous twist of her hair.
Keller waited patiently, gazing out at the spectacular view, the tops of other skyscrapers and the green water of Lake Michigan spanning out to the horizon. It was nearly ten minutes before another woman, pretty again, appeared in the lobby. The delay meant the executives were having a pre-meeting. Probably a panicked one. The woman escorted Keller to the door of a glass-walled conference room. The glass was frosted so Keller couldn’t see inside.