The security office was in the basement of Meridian Tower, a room with no windows and twelve monitors that hadn't been dusted since the building opened.
"I'm telling you, Detective, nobody came in," the guard said. He was fifty-something, name tag said Doyle, and he had the look of a man who'd been explaining this for an hour already. "We got cameras on every entrance. Lobby, parking garage, loading dock. Nobody."
McGee leaned over his shoulder. "Show me the stairwell camera. Fortieth floor."
Doyle clicked through feeds. The monitors flickered — empty hallway, empty hallway, empty hallway — and then a figure stepped out of the stairwell door.
McGee's breath caught.
Not a dark coat. A suit. Dark, well-fitted, with a black tie. Black leather gloves — not latex, leather, the kind you buy because you like how they look. The timestamp read 9:14 PM.
"That's him," she said quietly.
The figure walked down the hallway toward the camera. And then he did something that made McGee's stomach drop.
He looked up. Right at the lens.
His head tilted — just slightly, to the left.
And adjusted his tie.
Just a small tug, straightening it. Like he was checking his appearance before a meeting. Then he kept walking, out of frame.
"Did you see that?" McGee said.
"See what?"
"He looked at the camera. He knew it was there." She leaned closer to the monitor. "Can you zoom in? On his head?"
Doyle fiddled with the controls. The image pixelated, then resolved. Under the edge of the mask — short black hair. That was it. That was all they had.
"Average height, average build," McGee said, more to herself than Doyle. "Looks fit, but — nothing. There's nothing to go on. Short black hair. That's it."
Doyle fast-forwarded. The figure — the suit, the tie — walked out of frame toward Kane's office. "He goes in here. See? Door opens, he goes in."
"And then?"
Doyle kept the footage running at high speed. Hours compressed into minutes. The hallway sat empty. 10 PM. 11 PM. Midnight.
At 12:17 AM, the figure came back out of Kane's office. Same suit. Same unhurried walk. He went to the stairwell and went in.
"That's it," Doyle said. "He doesn't come out. We checked every camera. Stairwell, lobby, garage — nothing. It's like he vanished."
McGee stared at the frozen frame — the empty hallway, the closed stairwell door.
"Three hours," she said.
"What's that?"
"He was in there for three hours." She straightened up. "He looked at the camera, fixed his tie, and walked in like he owned the place. He knew the cleaning crew comes at midnight. He knew when the body would be found." She looked at Doyle. "Can I get copies of all of this?"
---
She drove back toward the precinct with the USB drive in her cupholder and the image of the empty hallway burned behind her eyes.
Three hours. What do you do for three hours?
It was 5 AM when she passed Rosa's Coffee — her old spot, the place she'd practically lived in during college and the academy. She hadn't been in weeks, not since midnights started. On impulse, she pulled over.
The bell over the door jingled. The place smelled like espresso and cinnamon, warm after the cold parking lot.
"McGee!"
Molly was behind the counter, same as always — mid-forties, sleeves rolled up, a streak of flour on her cheek from the morning pastries. Her face lit up.
"Oh my God, look who it is. I was starting to think you died."
"Almost," McGee said, sliding onto a stool. "Just midnights."
Molly was already pouring. "The usual?"
"The usual."
They'd known each other for years. Late-night study sessions in college, McGee camped in the corner booth with textbooks. Then the academy — she'd come in after long days, exhausted, and Molly would slide a coffee across the counter and a muffin she "couldn't sell anyway." Molly had watched her go from student to recruit to cop without ever making a big deal about any of it.
"So," Molly said, leaning on the counter. "How's the detective life?"
McGee wrapped her hands around the warm cup. "I'm on my first case."
Molly grinned. "Look at you. Detective Summers, solving crimes."
"It's..." McGee stared into the coffee. "It's got me stumped, honestly."
Molly's smile faded a little. "That bad?"
"I can't talk about it. You know that." McGee looked up. "But yeah. It's bad."
They talked about normal things after that. Molly's kid's soccer game. The new pastry supplier. Whether the city was ever going to fix the pothole on Fifth. Normal things, in a warm shop at 5 AM, while outside the windows the sky started going gray.
But McGee kept seeing the empty hallway. The stairwell door. Three hours.
What do you do for three hours with a dead body?
"You okay?" Molly asked quietly. "You look like you haven't slept."
"I haven't. Since yesterday." McGee finished her coffee. "I should get back."
Molly put a muffin in a bag and pushed it across the counter. "On the house. And McGee?"
"Yeah?"
"You'll figure it out. You always do."
McGee nodded, but she didn't believe it. She was thinking about a man sitting at his desk with his eyes open, hands folded, waiting to be asked a question nobody would ever ask.
She took the muffin and walked out into the gray morning.
Three hours. He knew the cleaning schedule. He knew when the body would be found. He'd staged it — the chair, the hands, the eyes — and then he'd waited for the curtain to go up.
He wasn't hiding from the police.
He was inviting them.
Chapter 2