Page 65 of Devil
“She likes to travel, though doesn’t do it often. Based on her passport, she takes a single two-week vacation every year, usually abroad. The last four trips have all been to Europe, including Germany, Switzerland twice, and Italy.”
“What about her finances?” Darius asked, his attention still on his own computer.
“From what I can see, they are what you’d expect. Her salary is direct-deposited into her account; she has an IRA in addition to the pension she pays into. She lives in Arlington, and the rent on her apartment is modest. Why?” Chad asked.
“Because Alex Highborn has some funky transactions in his accounts and it made me wonder if she did, too,” he answered.
“How funky?” Devil asked.
“Fairly regular deposits of a hair under ten grand have come into his account every seven to ten days. It’s been going on for the past eight months, and each one is just under the limit that would need to be reported to the Feds. But the weird thing is, they bounce back out again. Sometimes the same day, but never more than twenty-four hours after the deposit,” Darius replied.
“Any idea where they go?” Chad asked.
“Cash withdrawal,” he answered.
“Can we get confirmation it’s him withdrawing it?” Chad asked.
Darius bobbed his head from side to side. “I imagine we can. We’d need a warrant, though. Or for someone to hack into the account and find out which branch the money was withdrawn from, then pull the CCTV from that branch.” He looked at her as he spoke, silently asking if this was something the club could help with.
She nodded and jotted off a quick group text. A few seconds later, Six and Nora agreed. “Doable, they said. But maybe not tonight,” Devil relayed.
“Did you find anything?” Darius asked her.
“Interestingly, that information on the withdrawals puts one of Jennifer’s to-do items in a different light. Every Wednesday for the past six months, she made a note to go to the post office. I wonder if her trips coincide with how long it would take to send cash via mail from DC to upstate New York?”
“Definitely something we can map out,” Chad said. “If each of you send me the dates, I can do that. What else?”
“Lots of notes on the virus, though not much more than we already know,” she said. “There are notes on the temperature vulnerabilities as well as ones on its general instability. What I did find interesting is that she didn’t seem frustrated by that. It looks like she had an initial version about six weeks ago and has been refining it ever since. I didn’t get the sense from her notes that she was anxious or unsatisfied with her progress, though.”
“That’s not normal?” Darius asked.
Devil lifted a shoulder. “If you’re doing a very long-term project, no, it’s not unusual. But if you’re on a condensed timeline, I’d expect to see a little more frustration.”
“Unless the virus is doing exactly what you want it to be doing, instability and all,” Chad said.
Devil shifted her attention to the former agent and considered his words. Slowly, she nodded. “That’s a very good point,” she said. “Maybe Jennifer wanted the virus to be unstable. I hadn’t considered that maybe it was intentionally designed that way.”
“To what end?” Darius asked.
Devil frowned in thought. “If she wanted to infect a group of people at the same time, but not risk a much larger pandemic, the current state of the virus would likely accomplish that. There would still be some risk, of course, but much less than if the virus was stable.”
“Was there anything in the notebook about other people who may be involved? Any mention of Sonia or Nadia? Or the Lam sisters?” Darius asked.
Devil shook her head. “She did have a note about leaving the paper in her lab, which I assume means the dosage chart we found. There was also a reminder about the Amherst trip the day she and Sonia were in the same restaurant for lunch.”
They all sat in silence for a long moment before Darius spoke again. “What I really want to know is how the hell all these people got connected. How did the Lam sisters meet up with Sonia and Nadia? And how did either of those pairs meet up with Pritchard?”
“And how do Highborn or Crawford come into play?” Devil said. “If I were on my computer at home, I could scan all their phone records and see if any calls connected them. Or for that matter, emails. But I don’t have the power to do that on my laptop,” Devil said.
“What about the club?” Darius asked.
“Six and Nora are running with the banking information. Cyn’s looking into the facial recognition of the man in the picture you took and the Bergdorf purchase. I suppose I could ask her to look into this as well.”
“I have someone,” Chad said. The words were so clearly forced from his mouth, though, that both of Devil’s eyebrows went up. “She’s a tech guru of Stella’s. Irritating as all get-out but really fucking good.”
“Do I sense a little romance in the air?” Devil teased. Chad, who’d scooted down in his chair and was resting his head against the back, slid her a look.
“Right, not going there, Lily,” Darius cut in.
