Devine walked up to the granite-topped reception console and placed his leather briefcase on it, rubbing a few sweat bubbles off his forehead.
“Hey, Sam.”
“Hey right back, Devine.”
“Pretty crazy shit happening around here.”
“Got that right. Police have been in and out. New developments.”
“Right, I heard. Murder instead of suicide. Pretty damn big difference.”
“Hell yes it is. You knew the woman?” asked Sam.
“A little. You ever see her?”
“Oh yeah. Always a smile and a wave. Nice young lady, damn shame.”
“Understand one of the custodial staff found her.”
Sam shook his head and grimaced, as though something foul had entered his mouth. “Jerry Myers. Thought the poor guy was going to stroke out. He come running in here screaming about this gal hanging in the storage closet. I thought he’d lost his marbles. I mean, in this building, what the hell, right?”
Devine stiffened. “Wait, he came all the way down here to tell you? He didn’t call you or the cops from up there?”
“No, he didn’t, the knucklehead, but he was upset. Poor guy had never seen anything like that. He went into the storage room to get something and bam, there she is. Would’ve shocked anybody. So I cut him some slack on not phoning from up there. I called the cops and then me and Jerry both went up there. I was really hoping the guy was drunk or having hallucinations or something. But nope, there she was. Poor lady. I used to be with the Newark Police Department, but I have to tell you, I felt my breakfast coming back up on me, too.”
“I bet. By that time of the morning there must have been a full house up on the fifty-second.”
“That’s why I hustled up there as soon as I made the 911 call, and had another guy cover the front, to let the cops up when they arrived. I mean, it was a potential crime scene and there are protocols and all. See, at that point I didn’t know how she died, nobody did. But you got to preserve the evidence.”
“Lucky you got up there so fast before anyone knew what had happened.”
Sam eyed him closely. “Well, fact is, I can’t vouch for that.”
“What?”
“Jerry left the door partially open. Least that’s how we found it.”
“Did he say that’s how he left it?” asked Devine.
“Hell, he was so shaken up he could barely remember his own name. The cops got there about five minutes later. I didn’t want that responsibility any longer than I had to.”
“And what’d you do after that?” asked Devine.
“Hung around up there in case they needed anything.”
“Talk to anybody?”
“Just Jerry and one of the cops.”
“None of the office staff or people like me?”
“By the time the staff started trickling in, the cops wouldn’t let them get off the elevator. I didn’t see anybody else.”
“Never mind the admin folks, there must have been the crew like me up there by then. It was going on nine.”
“What can I tell you. I didn’t see any.”
What the hell. He thought about Wanda Simms up there getting people out of their offices. That did not mesh with what he had just been told.
“So I guess Jerry probably quit after finding the body? Or took some time off at least?”
Sam waved this off and sipped on coffee in a mug emblazoned with the New York Giants football logo. “Nah. He’s a single guy with no kids whose job pays real good with benefits and all. You can’t just throw that away. He’s here now, in fact. Up on the thirty-fourth changing light bulbs. Least that’s what he told me a few minutes ago.”
“Okay. Hey, hang in there.”
Sam smiled. “I got it easy, Devine. You’re the one busting your hump. And for what, I ask you? All you need is some food, a roof over your head, a few brewskies a day, baseball in the summer and football in the fall, a missus to watch over you, and you can be a happy man.”
Thinking that Sam was more right about that than wrong, Devine got on the elevator and headed to the thirty-fourth floor.
CHAPTER
27
THE ADMIN CUBICLES UP HERE were not occupied. These folks simply earned a salary, no more and no less, regardless of how hard they worked. So unless there was some sort of apocalypse, they came in at nine and left at five or close to it.
Jerry Myers was up a ladder down one of the halls. The suits hadn’t arrived en masse yet here either, Devine knew. He would have heard fingers clacking on computer keyboards behind the closed doors. Most of his kind got in around eight but didn’t leave until around nine at night. And there were no watercooler breaks at Cowl and Comely. It was pedal to the metal until lights out.