Chapter 9 #2
“No one in the lobby at that time of morning. He walked to the studio,” I said. “Dana said he always arrives around six thirty. It’s only a couple of blocks.”
“Right.” He clicked through several angles. “Quiet morning. Residents leaving for work, a couple of deliveries, nothing that stood out. I’m assuming this is the building manager.”
A woman crossed the lobby, keys in hand.
“Jessica Contreras,” I said. “Lives on the same floor as Wade.”
“She goes to her office, comes out twice before noon—once to get the mail, once to talk to the concierge.” He pulled up the concierge camera. “Speaking of which.”
Brett Callum was behind the desk. He answered a phone call, waved a couple of residents through, checked something on his screen. It was a quiet building on a quiet morning and there wasn’t much to manage.
“Brett Callum,” Jack said. “Firefighter. Picks up shifts here for extra money.”
“Around noon, the manager and the concierge order lunch.” Doug toggled to the conference room camera. “Some local place. They eat together in there. Twenty minutes, then she goes back to her office and he goes back to his phone.”
“How’d they seem?” Daniels asked.
“Lots of conversation. Seemed friendly, like it’s something they do frequently,” Doug said.
He scrubbed forward. “Afternoon is quieter. Except for her.” He slowed the footage on the gym camera.
A woman in a sports bra and tiny shorts had a ring light set up next to a weight bench, her phone clipped into it and aimed at herself. She wasn’t working out.
“That’s the woman from the lobby this morning,” I said.
“She’s in 203,” Doug said. “She’s got an OnlyFans.”
I looked at him. “I thought OnlyFans was eighteen-plus?”
“Oh, I know,” he said, coloring slightly. “Just doing some research.”
“Mmm,” Jack said.
“Douglas, did you subscribe to her channel?” Margot asked.
“Of course not.”
“She seems to spend a lot of time licking her lips and flipping her hair,” Margot commented. “She went to the pool after the gym. Busy day. Why even bother wearing a bathing suit?”
Doug toggled to the pool camera. Same woman. The ring light and phone were positioned at the edge of the pool to capture her getting out of the water. Why wear a bathing suit indeed?
“She uses the whole building,” Doug said. “Gym, pool, lobby. Wherever the light’s good.”
“At least someone’s getting their money’s worth out of the amenities,” Daniels said.
“Move on, Doug,” Jack said.
He kept moving. “Other than the influencer, the afternoon is pretty quiet. A few residents in and out. Package delivery. Nothing.” He kept moving. “Then here.” He slowed the footage. “6:43 p.m. Front entrance.”
Wade Rivers came through the door carrying two bags of groceries, something in each hand. He said something to Brett that made Brett laugh, then moved toward the elevators.
Nobody said anything for a moment. There’s always something unsettling about watching a dead man go about his last ordinary evening—picking up groceries, exchanging a joke with the concierge, not knowing. It doesn’t get easier no matter how many times you see it.
“There he is,” I said. “Just like Brett said.”
Doug tagged the time stamp. “Right here.” A woman came out of the ground floor office just as Wade was heading toward the elevator. She said something to him and he smiled and held the door.
“Jessica Contreras,” I said. “Her office is on the ground floor.”
Doug toggled to the elevator camera. We watched them ride up together. Jessica said something and touched his arm. Then she laughed at whatever he said back and leaned in closer than she needed to. Wade smiled and said something back. He looked like a man who’d done this a hundred times.
“She’s working pretty hard in there,” Daniels said.
“She told us they were just friendly,” Jack said. “That looks very friendly. At least on her part.”
“The evening is quiet after that,” Doug said.
“The concierge does a final check and locks the front door, then he gets his bag and leaves through the back entrance where he’s parked.
We’ve got three residents using their key fob.
One at 7:17, another at 7:52, and the last at 8:23. Then things get interesting.”
“In what way?” Jack asked.
The screen went dark.
Not a flicker. Not a glitch. One frame there was a lobby. The next frame was nothing.
“At 10:00 p.m. the system logs a clean shutdown command. Not a malfunction, not a power issue. Someone turned it off. It doesn’t come back on until 6:00 the next morning. Eight hours.”
“From the on-site control panel?” Derby asked.
“That’s how it’s supposed to work. But Axiom Security—that’s the system in the building—has been in the news for the last six months.
” He pulled up a browser tab on the side of the screen.
“It’s been publicly demonstrated that the system can be accessed remotely.
The vulnerability is in the API layer. It’s actually fairly simple to get into the Axiom system and issue shutdown commands without ever setting foot in the building. ”
“Easy for you, or easy for anyone?” I asked.
“For anyone with rudimentary tech skills and the internet,” Derby said. “This is a global company with major leaks in its AI capabilities and systems. There are forums discussing how people have overridden the system to prove they could do it. Things aren’t going well for Axiom right now.”
“What about the key fob?” Jack asked. “How’d they get around that?”
“Those are mostly for show,” Doug said. “There’s not really any protection or added security by using them. It’s just a selling point to make residents feel better. There’s actually a device that clones a key fob in about thirty seconds. Available online for around ten dollars.”
“Good to know,” Jack said. “Daniels, you have an update?”
Daniels set her plate down and pulled out her folder.
“My team went through the condo this afternoon. DNA was found on the sheets—we’ll be testing to determine if any of it belongs to the victim and what belongs to a separate source.
Results are pending.” She looked at Jack.
“The dumbbell canvass came back empty. Most likely the killer took it with them or dumped it along their route home.”
“Agreed,” Jack said. “What else?”
“The condo inventory turned up testosterone injections and what looks like performance-enhancing steroids in the pantry. Prescription labels on both, along with syringes.”
I looked at Jack. It looked like Sloane had been right.
“And then there’s this,” Daniels said.