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“You got any enemies, buddy?” asked the other man.
Devine looked at him. “Well, I got at least one.”
* * *
Another team from the gas company showed up later and gave the house a thorough going-over. They also checked the homes next door after getting in touch with the owner. There was no evidence of gas in either of them.
Devine went back into the house after calling the hospital and checking on Speers and Tapshaw. They were both in the ER and being monitored. Their oxygen levels were still low, and the doctors had decided to keep them in the hospital until they were completely out of danger.
Devine looked around the house once more and found no sign of Valentine. Devine had called and texted him but gotten no reply. He went up to the man’s room and found that his bed had not been slept in. They had gotten home around eleven last night, and Devine had fallen asleep pretty much right away. Obviously, Speers and Tapshaw had too.
Nor was Valentine’s laptop or phone anywhere to be found. But a suitcase he had spotted in the closet when he had previously searched Valentine’s room was gone, along with what looked to be some clothes.
He went into Tapshaw’s room and looked around. Then his gaze froze on her computer screen. Taped to it was a diagram on a piece of paper. He sat down and read quickly through it.
It started off with the oddly numbered email sender addresses that he had given Tapshaw to track down. In a flow sheet structure, it went from that line of numbers to a dozen different configurations, which he supposed were the electronic subterfuges the sender had used to disguise their identity and also to send an email without the requisite internet protocols. When he got to the end of the flow he gaped. There was an email address that he seemed to recognize. And under it, in parentheses, was written a name:
WILL VALENTINE. And next to that: HOLY SHIT.
Devine went back down to the living room and stared at the gas fireplace. There were no signs of forced entry. Whoever had manipulated the gas here had been inside the house last night. Clearly, suspicion fell on the man who had not almost died from carbon monoxide poisoning. And who was now AWOL.
Now things started to fall into place for Devine. Valentine was Russian. He had come to the town house about the same time Devine had. A good portion of the money pouring through Cowl and Comely had been identified by Campbell’s people as coming from Russia and countries friendly to it. Valentine was a genius with computers, so it would have been easy for him to put together a very difficult email to trace.
Ironic that I asked him to track an emailhe’d sent. The guy must have laughed his ass off about that one. I was filling him in on an investigation in which he was already a part—only on the opposite side. And he would tell me nothing about Area 51. Of course he wouldn’t.
How could he have been so blind? Valentine also knew about Devine and Sara Ewes dating, the only roommate of Devine’s who had before Ewes had been killed.
That means that the motive for killing them had nothing to do with me. That was just misdirection. It had everything to do with what Sara found out about the Locust Group. And then she told Jennifer Stamos. And Stamos had come here. Valentine had let her in. He might have eavesdropped on their conversation on the front porch. And so Stamos had to die, too. And the Eweses were in their daughter’s house. Valentine and company couldn’t take the chance that they might find additional evidence their daughter had left behind. Just like I thought before. Always go with your gut.
The symbolic murders that Devine had theorized about were all bullshit distractions. This was all about two things: money and power. But in reality, they were one and the same.
Devine left the house and went to the hospital.
