Page 27 of Only the Devil

Jake’s at my side, crowding me at the door, probably because I’m standing here staring at a stainless-steel door knob. He unzips his bag, the sound of the zipper insanely loud, as if that one sound could carry through the entire floor.

“I’ve got it.”

He slips on black latex gloves and crouches before the door, a silver tool in his hand. He inserts the pointed end in the lock, jiggles, and the lock clicks. With a twist of his wrist, the door magically opens.

It feels like we’re in a video game. Like this time around, we purchased the tools we needed and now we can get to the next level. Only this isn’t a game. This is real. There’s no music, no flashing lights or movement in the background, and as the door opens, I blink to process. There’s also no body.

The dead woman is gone.

Jocelyn Faribault is gone.

My stomach drops. Cold air seeps over my skin.

Jake pulls out his phone and dials.

I step into the office, listening to hear what he says into his phone while scanning every inch of the office.

Translucent shades are drawn behind her desk. They’re the kind of shades that allow one to see out but not in. I don’t have those in my office, and I know I didn’t see them in use in Sterling’s office. I haven’t spent enough time on the executive floor to know how common they are, but I notice this office is significantly smaller than Sterling’s. It’s also smaller than Ms. Weaver’s.

“Quinn,” Jake says. “Hiya. You got a minute?”

Jake taps me and shakes a rubber glove at me. I take it and slip it on my right hand, understanding what he’s saying. No finger prints.

“Can you run a search for me? Let me know if any emergency calls were made from this vicinity? We’re in Sterling Financial’s offices. Remember when I said we found that body and didn’t suspect foul play? Yeah, well…the body’s gone.”

I pull open a file cabinet. It’s empty.

“Yes, I’m positive she was dead.”

I almost smile at his exasperation. Almost.

Another file drawer is empty. And another.

Are we in the right office?

I loop back to the hall and check the nameplate. It’s still there, the nameplate drilled into the wall.

I’ve been here a week and my nameplate doesn’t yet bear my name. Is there an office handyman or someone like that who updates nameplates? Stepping closer, I see it’s not stickers in the glass, but etched lettering with a white coat of lacquer or paint. They must order these from somewhere. If someone really wanted to disappear her, they would have just unscrewed the nameplate, but she probably has direct reports. They can’t just pretend she didn’t exist.

“Hey,” Jake says, his voice no longer muted. “Anything in the cabinets?”

I shake my head in the negative.

Dammit. I should’ve checked everything when I found her. I should’ve taken photos, the same way I took photos of everything in Uncle Alvin’s apartment when I packed up his things. The same way the police took photos. I wasn’t there when Mom found Reed, but I saw the photos in the police report—when I asked for it a month after he died.

“Right. Okay. Keep searching. Thanks, Quinn.” He hangs up the phone and slips it in his back pocket. “She’s going to do a deeper dive, but nothing came up.”

“Someone removed her body and everything in her office,” I say, stating what’s obvious, but I’m still having trouble believing.

“It’s looking like a clean-up job,” Jake says, stepping out of the small office. “You’re not going to find anything. We might as well clear out.”

“If it’s a clean-up job, then that means she was murdered.” The suspicion that the three deaths are somehow related doesn’t seem as wild as it did an hour ago.

“We didn’t check for needle marks.” He sucks in his bottom lip thoughtfully.

We didn’t do anything we should’ve done. And everyone assumed Uncle Alvin died of natural causes, but what if he didn’t? What if the police didn’t look hard enough? I thought I was coming here to uncover a scam targeting veterans or retirees, but these could be murders. This can’t be a coincidence.

Or is it? I’m drawing connections between an old veteran in Los Angeles and a spreadsheet queen in the suburbs of DC. And I found basically nothing of value on the CFO in Singapore.