Page 25 of The Evening Wolves

They crossed the bullpen with only the sound of their steps for company. If Jem was still buying time, Emery knew it wouldn’t last much longer—if the problem dragged on for too long, officers would be called back to assist, and that was the opposite of what they wanted. Dulac stopped in front of the unmarked door that led to the station’s small security room, thumbed a code into the ancient push-button lock, and opened the door.

Emery had only ever visited the security room a handful of times; it doubled as a kind of catch-all storage for electronics, and the metal shelves lining the walls held old TVs, dusty radio sets, rotary phones, point-and-shoot 35mms. One wall was taken up by displays, where footage from the station’s security cameras rotated at regular intervals. On one screen, the silver Malibu was pulling back onto the street, leaving behind it the patch of kitty litter and sand that had been thrown down to provide traction. The air smelled like Funyuns and, even more strongly, the hot-dust odor of the furnace. A single rolling chair with pilled upholstery waited at the desk.

Dulac dropped into the seat, clicked through several screens, and began scrolling through a list of time-stamped recordings.

“What are you looking for?”

“I had an idea.” And then, the words wary with something that was a cross between defensiveness and an apology, “I wouldn’t hang him out to dry on this, you know.”

Emery said nothing, and Dulac continued scrolling. He took out his phone, opened an email app, and began cross-referencing. Finally, he pulled up a video. The timestamp said it was from Thursday, November 26. Thanksgiving night.

The recording began to play, and Emery only paid partial attention as Dulac scrubbed forward. Thanksgiving. When the station would have held only a skeleton crew, like tonight. Because everyone wanted to be home with their families. Even the people at the station would have been tired, or tipsy, or sleepy from too much tryptophan, or simply lulled by the fact that it was a quiet night, and a holiday to boot.

“Gotcha,” Dulac said and smacked the keyboard, freezing the video.

In the frame, the security camera from the lobby showed a young man standing in the doorway. Shorter than average, muscular build visible even under the dark pea coat, he had skin the color of boiled leather and his hair buzzed down to dark fuzz. He was carrying a laptop bag over one shoulder, and in the other, he held what looked like a Gameboy—or whatever they were called today. As Emery watched, the man approached the desk, spoke with the officer on duty—Andrea Ehlers—and produced some kind of ID. He signed the log, which meant putting down his Gameboy, and then, Gameboy in hand again, he followed Ehlers off-camera.

“God fucking damn it,” Dulac said to himself.

He cued up several more videos, and they spliced together the man’s passage through the station: Ehlers led him down the hall, past the bullpen, and into the utility closet where, among other things, the station’s dedicated internet line, server, and other network equipment was located. Ehlers appeared to ask the man something, and he shook his head. He looked even younger with a smile on his face; Emery wouldn’t have put him at much older than Auggie. And then, without any apparent concern, Ehlers turned her back on the man and left. He stepped into the utility closet and shut the door.

Shaking his head, Dulac moved the mouse to close the video, but Emery said, “Wait.”

Dulac scrubbed forward, and less than five minutes later, the door opened, and the man emerged. They switched video feeds and watched him return to the bullpen and, without any seeming sense of hurry, open the door to John’s office and step inside. He shut the blinds on John’s windows. The lights stayed off. Maybe, if someone had walked past, they would have wondered if the blinds had been open or closed the last time they’d passed the room. But it was a moot consideration; no one came into the bullpen, and twenty-seven minutes later, the man opened the blinds again and emerged from John’s office. He took a step as though heading back to the utility closet. Then he stopped and looked up, straight into the camera. He smiled a huge, shit-eating grin and flipped the camera off with both hands. For the first time, the angle of the camera revealed a scar on the side of his neck.

“Motherfucker,” Dulac breathed.

The rest of the video was less interesting. The man returned to the utility closet and, four hours later, he left. Ehlers checked on him once. Emery tried to pay attention, but his mind raced with consideration, questions, possible explanations. Ehlers being corrupt seemed laughable—or was it? If she was, why have the man sign the log? Why parade the man around on camera? Why not choose a route with fewer opportunities to be spotted—

Dulac was on his phone again. “Jesus Christ.” He tossed it onto the desk and reached up like he was going to rub his face, but he stopped short, hands still inches away from the red ridges of scars.

“What the fuck was that?” Emery asked. “He walked right in here.”

“Sure, why not?” Dulac gestured at his phone. “He was right on schedule.”

“Gray, what the fuck is going on?”

“Server upgrade. Or network upgrade. Or whatever those tech boners called it. Over Thanksgiving weekend, they upgraded a lot of the department’s computer equipment.”

Emery stared at the display where the video, now paused, still showed the man. A fan whirred to life in the CCTV’s DVR, the small sound filling the silence. Pieces began to tumble into place.

“They put it out for bid,” Emery said. “They told people what they were doing. Jesus Christ, whoever got the contract, it would have been public record.”

“Network Solutions of Mid-Missouri,” Dulac said, pointing at his phone again. “They were doing everything over Thanksgiving weekend.” His mouth slanted in that unfamiliar smile. “Not, by the way, Thanksgiving night. But how hard could it have been? This guy figures out who’s supposed to be doing the job. Hell, he probably even has the dates from the contract. He calls up, says he’s with Network Solutions of Mid-Missouri, sorry for the inconvenience but he’s got to do some preliminary work the night of Thanksgiving, will anybody be around?”

“Fifteen minutes with a color printer and a laminator, and he has his fucking corporate ID. Jesus Christ. How’d he get the files on John’s computer? It’s password protected.”

“You mean, if the department’s IT guys didn’t just hand him all the login information when he called?”

The fan’s high-pitched whine filled Emery’s head.

Finally, he said, “You have got to be fucking kidding me.”

“I kept thinking about it and thinking about it. I kept thinking it’s impossible, no way, how did someone hack him after we just had that big security upgrade.” For the first time all night, the old Dulac smile flashed out again, cocky and wry and all too self-aware. “Only took me twelve hours before I finally heard what I was thinking.”

“You’ve got to talk to Diana about this. If she sees this, she’ll throw the whole thing out.”

Dulac’s silence went on a moment too long. “Emery.”

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