"Someone with access to the security system."
"Yes." A small silence on the line. "Edward," Howard said quietly, "there are only nine people in this building who have that level of access. You are one of them. I am another. That leaves seven."
Edward closed his eyes for one long second. "Get me the list," he said, "and get me the footage."
He set the phone down and looked across the room at the boy. "Marcus, I need to make one more call. After that, I am going to have lunch brought up to this office. You are going to eat something hot. Then I am going to ask you to look at some photographs and tell me whether any of the faces are the man you saw."
"Yes, sir."
Edward picked up the phone again and dialed a number that was not in any contact list and was not written in any place that could be searched. It was a number he had memorized in 1998 and had used perhaps eleven times since.
The line picked up on the second ring.
"It's Edward. I need a quiet sweep of my building. I need it done within four hours. I am not calling the authorities yet. I want to know what I am dealing with before I decide what to do about it. Send people who can come in as maintenance. Send people who will not ask questions of my staff. I want eyes on every floor by 2 o'clock this afternoon."
He listened for a moment. Then he said, "Thank you, Daniel." And he hung up.
He did not explain the call to the boy. The boy did not ask. They sat together in the quiet office and waited.
43 minutes later, Howard came back. He came up the south stairwell again. He knocked the same pattern. Edward let him in and locked the door behind him.
Howard walked to the desk, set down a slim laptop, and opened it without speaking. Then he turned the screen toward Edward and Marcus and pressed play.
The footage was grainy in the way that internal security footage always was, but the man was clearly visible: he was standing beside a stainless steel cart in a narrow hallway. He was tall. He was wearing a gray suit. His hair was dark with gray at the temples. He took a small brown bottle from his inside left pocket. He unscrewed the cap. He poured carefully, counting under his breath, into a white porcelain cup. He screwed the cap back on. He wiped the bottle with a napkin. He put the bottle back into his pocket. He picked up the cup and walked out of frame in the direction of the executive elevator.
The whole thing took 91 seconds.
Edward watched it twice. The second time, he watched the man's face when he turned his head briefly toward something off-camera—perhaps a sound, perhaps the door of the freight elevator opening. The man's face was visible for two full seconds. There was a small scar along the right side of his jaw, just below the ear.
"That's him," Marcus said quietly from beside the chair.
"That is him," Howard said. "His name is Vincent Marsh. He has worked in this building for fourteen months. He came in through a third-party staffing contract for executive catering. His background check was clean. It was also, I now know, fabricated. The references on his application are real companies. The phone numbers on his application route to a single answering service in Delaware that was set up six weeks before he applied. I have the records. They will not hold up to a serious look. They were never meant to."
"Who is he really?"
"I am working on that. The face is not in any database I can access in the next hour. I will know more tonight. What I do know is that he is not in the building right now. He left through the south service entrance at 8:22 this morning, eight minutes after the cup was delivered to your office. He has not come back. His phone is off. His apartment, the one listed on his employment file, is a short-term rental that was paid in cash through January."
Edward absorbed this slowly. "And the cup?"
Howard exhaled. "The lab called five minutes ago—preliminary only. They will have full results by 6:00. The cup contained a colorless, nearly tasteless compound. It is not a household poison. It is not something you buy; it is something that is made. In the dose that was in that cup, it would have caused symptoms consistent with a cardiac event within forty to ninety minutes of ingestion. There would have been no obvious sign of poisoning. The death certificate would have read 'heart attack.' You are sixty-one years old. You have a known family history of cardiac issues. No one would have asked."
Edward sat very still. "No one would have asked," he repeated quietly.
Howard closed the laptop. He did not sit down. He stood with one hand resting on the edge of the desk and waited, the way he always waited when he had given Edward information that required a decision rather than a reaction.
"Edward," he said, "the list of nine... I have it. Seven names besides yours and mine. I think you already know which of them we need to look at first."
"Show me."