Silent Night - By Tom Barber Page 0,82

and go as they please. Visitors have to sign in and out on the call-sheet. It’s on this board.’

He passed her a clipboard and she scanned the page. The list was long.

‘Busy for a Saturday.’

‘Always is. Upstairs we’ve got legal firms, office space, multi-million-dollar corporations, real estate agencies, bio-chemistry labs. This is New York. Saturday night here is like Monday morning to the rest of the world.’

Archer, Josh and Shepherd had just arrived beside her. She turned and saw Archer was back on his feet. She gave him a quick smile then looked back at the desk guard.

‘Any of them catch your eye?’

‘Not really. Girl with a nice ass came in. That’s about it.’

‘Anyone come in for Flood Microbiology tonight?’

‘No one who signed in.’

‘And this is the only entrance into and out of the building?’ Marquez asked.

‘Yes ma’am.’

Archer, Marquez and Shepherd scrutinised the sign-in board. Josh thought for a moment, then pulled a piece of paper from his pocket.

‘This is a Hail Mary, but do you recognise any of these people?’ he asked, unfolding it and showing the four mug shots to the man.

The guard’s eyes suddenly widened.

‘Wait. Yeah. Yeah, I do.’

The team stared at him. The guard grabbed the sheet and tapped it. ‘I recognise this guy. He was in here tonight.’

He was pointing at Finn Sway’s photograph.

‘Are you sure?’ Shepherd asked.

‘Positive. We talked about football.’

The team scanned the check-in board but there was no Sway anywhere.

‘He must have signed in?’ Shepherd said.

The guard shook his head. ‘He swiped his way in. Like I said, only way to do that is with a valid key card.’

‘Did you see him leave?’ Marquez asked.

The guard nodded. ‘Yeah. He was only here for about ten minutes.’

‘What time?’

The guard thought for a moment. ‘Would have been 10:15 or so. The second half of the Giants game was going on.’

‘Hang on,’ Marquez said. ‘You’re imagining this. It’s impossible.’

‘No I’m not.’

Marquez shook her head, pointing at Sway’s mug shot. ‘This man couldn’t have been here. We had him in handcuffs downtown at that time.’

The guard shook his head, adamantly. ‘He was in this building, Detective. I’m positive.’

‘Impossible.’

‘No. You’re both right,’ Archer said.

‘How?’ Marquez asked. Then she thought for a moment and looked at Archer. ‘Oh shit.’

‘What?’ Shepherd asked, confused. ‘How could he be in two places at once?’

‘Because there are two Sways, sir,’ Archer said. ‘Finn Sway has a brother.’

THIRTY NINE

At his girlfriend’s place thirty one blocks downtown, Reese Sway had almost finished packing up his stuff. Or her stuff, to be exact. He was working fast but methodically, going for the most valuable things. Jewellery, money in her bedside drawer, a gold watch. Finn had promised that they would both be millionaires by the end of next week, but Reese had only made it this far by being good at what he did.

And anyway, a grifter stays a grifter, no matter how much money he has.

He and Finn were born three years apart. Before Reese was born, Finn and their parents lived in the middle of Roller, but half-way through her second pregnancy the boy’s mother had found out that their dad was screwing other women in town. She’d packed her stuff, got in her car and driven away, leaving three- year old Finn behind with his cheating asshole of a father.

Reese had grown up moving from place to place, leap-frogging from town to town. Eventually his mother had all but given up, living in a trailer in North Carolina and spending her unemployment on alcohol and drugs. When he was fifteen he’d had enough; he packed his shit and left. Two months later, he’d called his grandma and found out that his mother had overdosed on Oxycontin and died.

The moment he’d left home, Reese had been forced to fend for himself. He bounced from homeless shelters to subways and bus stations. A few weeks after he’d first walked out he’d been sitting in a park in Charlotte in the middle of the afternoon, the same bench where’d he slept the previous night, hungry and tired. A nineteen year old blond girl called Christina had sat down beside him. They’d got talking, and he’d given her his story.

But rather than walk away, which he’d been expecting, the girl had been horrified at what had happened to him. She took Reese home and luckily for him, her parents were equally kind-hearted. They’d let him stay in their spare room, fed him and bought him some new clothes from the local store outlet. After countless nights