She did.
“Now, turn your phones off, because I don’t like being recorded.” They complied with his order.
“And just so you know, I’ve got a signal jammer in here in case you’re wearing a wire or shit like that. Drink?”
“Not for me,” said Devine. Montgomery simply shook her head.
“Hate to drink alone, but oh well.” He mixed himself a bourbon and Coke and took a sip. “Let’s sit.”
Montgomery and Devine sat next to each other on a couch, while Cowl sat across from them.
“Stamos?” said Devine.
“You got a message that night,” interjected Montgomery. “And you went to meet someone.”
Cowl said, “Okay, I’ll give it to you straight. The message was from Jenn. She was afraid.”
“Afraid of what?”
“She wouldn’t tell me on the phone. So I went over there.” His face twisted with the memory. “And between the time I got the message and made my way there, someone . . . cut her up really bad.”
Devine leaned forward. “And was that someone you?”
“Why would I do that to her? I liked her. A lot.”
“Because Sara Ewes knew about the Locust Group owning the Lombard Theater. And she told Stamos to check it out. And maybe she did and realized what was going on. Or maybe you let something slip during pillow talk and she had to be taken care of.”
“Jesus, Devine, you’re making me out to be some sort of creepy killer.”
“Aren’t you?”
“I’m a businessman.”
“Were you the one to call the cops?”
He hesitated. “Yeah, I called them. But if you tell anyone, I’ll deny it.” He added, with a disgusted look, “What twisted psycho would do that to a woman? They . . . mutilated her.”
“Did you see or hear anyone while you were there?”
“No. I had a key. I let myself in. I called out to her. No answer. I went back into her bedroom, and bam . . . there she was, tied up and cut up. The word bitch was carved into her stomach. I almost threw up.”
He looked like he might throw up now.
“The police said she bled out. It must’ve taken some time, but you couldn’t have missed the killer by much.”
“Yeah, I know. I’ve been thinking that if I got there twenty minutes sooner I might’ve died.”
Now Montgomery’s face twisted. “Or you might have been able to save her, Brad.”
He looked surprised by this. “Yeah, that’s right, maybe. I didn’t think of that.”
“Obviously,” she said with disgust.
Cowl looked at Devine. “So, you said you want to make a deal? Care to explain?”
“Area 51?”
“Oh, that. We were just doing some crypto-mining there and also some carryover high-frequency trading that our facility in Queens couldn’t handle. All totally legit.”
“The place has been cleared out,” said Devine.
“Yeah, we decided to do some operational consolidation and shifted all of that, plus our Queens operation, to a building in Jersey. Again, nothing illegal about that.” He cocked his head and gave Devine an enigmatic smile. “You trying to shake me down somehow? Now, that’s illegal.”
“Money coming in from all over the world and money going out to the Locust Group, Mayflower Enterprises, thousands of other entities. I don’t believe there’s enough soap in the world to do that much laundry.”
“You’re a really funny guy. Where’s your proof of anything?”
“I put a camera up there. Now it’s gone.”
“Oh, right. Illegal search, evidence inadmissible. Thrown out of court or not even filed. In fact, there’s no proof of where that camera was or what it was taking pictures of. Let’s go down to the fifty-first floor and compare what’s on the film to what’s in that room. You want to do that?”
“But the optics won’t look good when people hear what we know.”
“You start spewing lies about me and this firm, I bury you in court for the next twenty years. I bury whoever you’re working for, too. And at the end, I’ll still be rich, and I don’t know what you’ll be, but it won’t be good. And I’ve been doing some digging on you, Devine. You left the Army under a cloud. Guy in your unit killed himself by hanging. Left behind a luscious wife. Then another guy you knew ended up dead. My people tell me he might have been banging the bedsprings with the first guy’s wife. He might have killed the guy instead of it being a suicide. You knew them both. And they’re both dead. And then you dump your career and come into my world. What’s that all about? You got some guilty secret hanging out there?”