CHAPTER NINE
The lobby of Garrett and Dehan Holdings looked nothing like a place where someone could die violently. Glass everywhere. Marble floors buffed to a mirror shine. The kind of moneyed quiet that told you the people who worked here tolerated no unpleasantness in any flavor.
Except this morning, unpleasantness had flooded the building.
Crime scene technicians moved in quick, purposeful arcs—snapping photographs, sweeping for trace, bagging evidence. The slow strobe of alternating camera flashes ricocheted off the marble. A portable generator hummed in the corner, feeding extra lighting into the cordoned-off executive suite.
A woman sat on a bench near reception, shoulders hunched, hands trembling around a paper cup. She was wrapped in an emergency blanket, a trauma counsellor crouched beside her murmuring gentle Spanish. Even from across the room, Kate could see the shock etched into her features.
“She find the body?” Kate guessed.
“Consuela Reyes,” Detective Sullivan confirmed, stepping toward them as Kate and Marcus pushed through the elevator doors.
“Cleaner. She opened up at five this morning. Found him like that.” He jabbed a thumb toward the frosted glass door marked THOMAS GARRETT — PRESIDENT the surcoat displayed a lavish coat of arms—a stag rampant over a field of azure, a section featuring three birds; cormorants, she suspected.
The knight’s expression, though small in scale, was serene. Dutiful. Knightly.
A symbol.
A statement.
Another sermon.
“Who’s the art historian now?” Marcus asked quietly.
Kate shook her head. “The coat of arms… the posture… he’s building a language.”
Behind them, Sullivan entered, rubbing a hand across his jaw.
“We’re trying to confirm whether that painting belongs to the victim or if our guy brought it with him,” he said. “But I’m guessing where your money is.”
Kate nodded faintly, still staring at the symbols.
“No forced entry,” Sullivan went on. “But here’s the kicker—CCTV’s dead. The whole system. Gone.”
Kate turned. “All of it?”
“Every camera in the building,” Sullivan replied grimly.
“Switched off around 10.30 last night. Twenty years ago, we’d have narrowed this down to a handful of trained electricians.
” He shook his head. “Now any ornery hermit with a grudge and an internet connection can download a How To from the Dark Web. Makes our lives a little more exciting.”
“Exciting isn’t the word I’d pick,” Marcus muttered.
Sullivan continued, “We’re pulling footage from every street camera within a half-mile radius. Guy didn’t teleport. He got here somehow. Then we think he got in through the service entrance at the back. Picked the lock, judging by the scratch patterns.”
Kate nodded. “He’ll slip up somewhere. They always do.”
Marcus’s phone vibrated. He checked it, brows lifting.
“Well,” he said, “here’s one bright spot—Martin Shepherd disobeyed our order not to leave town.”
Kate looked up sharply. “What?”
“Yeah,” Marcus said, almost amused. “To his advantage. Turns out he drove to New York yesterday afternoon to attend a fundraising seminar. Stayed overnight. Left a digital trail from his hotel, his phone, his parking app. He was at a Midtown Hyatt when Garrett was killed.”
Kate exhaled slowly. “So he’s not our guy.”
“Nope. Still a freakin’ idiot, though.”
Before Kate could respond, Sullivan reappeared in the doorway, phone held up like a chalice.
“Got something,” he said.
They followed him to the tech station in the hall, where a grainy, black-and-white frame was frozen on a laptop screen. A figure moved through the field of view—caught by a storefront camera about a block up from Garrett Holdings.
The timestamp read Tuesday 10:40 p.m.
The figure was bulky. The same, or very similar, ill-fitting, overalls. It wasn’t possible to tell the colors, but it seemed there were two involved. A baseball cap shadowed the face almost entirely. In one hand, he carried a canvas bag that sagged heavily at the bottom.
He walked with the unhurried pace of someone who had planned this moment down to the breath.
Kate felt a cold thread tighten at the base of her spine.
Marcus made a low sound, almost a growl. “That’s him.”
Sullivan didn’t look away from the screen. “He walked toward the building. Never came back the same way. We’re tracking all possible exit routes now.”
They watched the figure advance—steady, purposeful, anonymous.
The moment before murder.
A silence settled over them, thick and electric.
“We’re behind him,” Kate said softly. “But not by much.”