Their blood was spattered on the walls and furnishings, but I saw no spent brass.
I asked Claire, “How long ago did this happen?”
“An hour, maybe.”
“Any ID?”
“Nothing in this room but those kids and the clothes they’re wearing.”
Clapper said, “I ran their prints and got nothing. Their registration info is bogus. Same wiped-down surfaces. I’d venture to say this room is cleaner now than it has ever been.”
As Claire and her techs wrapped the two unidentified decedents in sheets and zipped them into body bags, I noticed cords and battery chargers on the floor behind the desk.
I said to my colleagues, “Look at that. These kids had laptops. As I understand it, high-end surveillance equipment is Web-connected. You can activate audio and video plants with an app.”
“You think the victims were PIs?” Conklin asked.
“If so, there should be microcameras in the murder room.”
Clapper said, “I’m on it.”
He left to check and returned a few minutes later with three small bugs: one he’d pulled from a light socket above the bathroom mirror, the second from the desk lamp, and the third from the air duct.
“And just to be totally consistent, no prints on them,” said Clapper.
I called Lieutenant Jackson Brady and brought him up to speed. Then I texted Joe, saying I might be pulling an all-nighter. After that, I called Mrs. Rose, a sweetheart of a grandma, who lives in the apartment across the hall from ours and had become our daughter’s nanny.
“Can you stay late?” I asked her. “I think dinner might be in the fridge.”
“I cooked that chicken for you,” she said, laughing.
“With spaetzle?”
“Of course.”
I promised Mrs. Rose that I’d give her a heads-up when I was on the way home. Then I called and texted Joe again. No answer, no return text.
Where was my husband? Why didn’t he call me?
Conklin said to me, “Security needs us, Linds. Urgently.”
CHAPTER 6
LIAM DUGAN WAS a stocky man in his fifties, a former sergeant with the LAPD and now the hotel’s head of security.
He said to me, “What a living, freaking, blood-curdling nightmare,” and walked us down the hall to the fourteenth-floor supply closet. He opened the door, and there, jammed behind the cleaning cart, was the body of housekeeper Maria Silva.
She had short dark hair and was wearing a blue and gold hotel uniform with soaking blood on the shoulder that I could see from where I stood.
Dugan said, “She was a nice woman. Has a husband, two kids. I’m sorry, but I was hoping she was alive. So I touched her. I probably touched the cart and a few other things so I could get in there. Anyway, she took a bullet to the back of her head. Her key card is gone. The girls keep them on cords around their necks.”
We taped off the new crime scene, and I met with the cops on the floor, telling them they were on duty until relieved by the night shift.
After that, Conklin and I huddled in room 1418, where the supposed PIs had been executed. We looked at the blood spatter at the otherwise tidy murder scene and tried on scenarios.
Every way we turned it, it came down to a professional job, all four hits connected. Mr. Wang had been the target and Maria Silva had probably been the first victim.
The woman who had left blonde hair on the pillow could be a witness, the killer, a coconspirator, or a victim. Or she’d walked out before things got sticky and still didn’t know what happened. It was possible.
Conklin and I went with Dugan to the hotel security offices and were given a file room with two desks and computers. We sat side by side and cued up the surveillance footage that had been shot over the previous four hours in six key locations.
Dugan said, “Here’s a hard copy of the floor plans. I’ll keep the footage coming and if there’s anything you need, just find me. Nothing’s off-limits.”
At eight, room service brought us roast beef sandwiches, pickles, chips, and coffee. At ten, I used the ladies’ room, washed my face, and looked at myself in the mirror.
My hair was all over the place, not in the sun-kissed beachy blonde tradition. More like my hair hated me. I reset my ponytail while staring deep into the reflection of my red-rimmed eyes. I needed a shower. I’ll just leave it there.
I returned to the security department, and as soon as I put my butt in the chair, Conklin pointed to an image on the screen of a man who looked like our male victim in 1420, who had checked in as Gregory Wang.
Wang came through the elevator entrance from Market Street to the hotel lobby, which is on the fifth floor, and crossed through toward reception. He was alone, wearing dark pants and a gray sports jacket, a ball cap shading his face, and he had a computer bag hanging from a strap over his right shoulder. He checked in at the desk, and then we lost him on that tape. Another camera picked him up at the elevator bank for the guest rooms upstairs.
The footage was high-quality. But apart from the spring in Wang’s step, there was nothing useful to be gleaned from what we’d just seen. I backed up the tape, watching Wang cross the lobby to the elevators again. Then I watched the lit numbers next to the elevator door rise, make several stops before landing on fourteen, then go back down.
I slid the disc that held the fourteenth-floor footage into the drawer. The time dating read 4:30 p.m. The camera, positioned across from the fourteenth-floor elevator, caught Wang getting out of the car and walking away from the camera, down the hallway. He swiped his key card and opened the door to 1420.
“He didn’t knock,” I said. “His guest hasn’t arrived yet.”
We fast-forwarded fourteenth-floor footage and watched people coming and going from their rooms, getting in and out of the elevators. No one raised suspicion. We paused the tape to check out the housekeeping cart; at 5 p.m., Maria Silva was still alive.
At 5:52, a blond-haired woman exited the elevator.
“Well, hello,” I said to the screen.
I stopped the video. She was on her phone. Between her haircut, her glasses, and her holding the phone close to her mouth, I couldn’t see much of her face. Her overall appearance was stylish, and she seemed self-assured. I started up the video and we watched the woman walk down the hallway and knock on the door of room 1420. The door opened and she went inside.
I kept the video rolling, looking for bad guys to appear, to put a gun to the housekeeper’s head, to go into the room next door and take out the PIs.
Then, when the time code read 6:23—something happened. The screen went gray. The picture was just—gone.
We ran the tape all the way to the end, hoping the video would resume, but there was nothing.
Nothing, nothing, nothing.
All we had were four dead people and no clue as to who had killed them, how they’d done it, or why.
I didn’t like this.
I didn’t like it at all.
CHAPTER 7
BY THE TIME I got home, it was three in the morning and I had a headache the size of a mushroom cloud.
Martha, our border collie and best furry friend forever, greeted me at the door. She woke up Mrs. Rose, who was sleeping on the couch, but thankfully, Julie slept on. I hugged our lovely sitter, and after she’d gone home, I checked the caller ID log.
Still no call from Joe.