“Yeah,” Polk sighed, “pretty much every broadcast since Saturday night. And the newspapers ran it yesterday. So that’s good.”
“It is if we got some hits out of it.”
“We did get hits.”
“Could you be more specific, LeRon?”
“You talking legit leads, or total calls?”
She didn’t like the sound of that. “Legit leads, LeRon.”
“Uh... that’d be zero.”
“Not a one?”
“Not a one, Lieutenant.”
“Out of how many calls?”
“Four.”
“Four? A city this size, and we’re on every newscast, and every paper, and we get four freaking calls?”
Polk nodded. “There were half a dozen obvious cranks. Four were what you might call... sincere. But none amounted to anything. I even checked the FBI Kidnapping and Missing Persons web page. If you were wondering how desperate I got.”
Without realizing it, she began rubbing her right temple again. “Who the hell is this guy, anyway? If he wants his murder solved, why can’t he cooperate, goddamn it?”
“Thoughtless prick.”
“He’s from out of town,” she said grimly. “Gotta be. Let’s e-mail a link of the drawing that’s up on our website to the Doe Network, and the Forgotten Network, too.”
These were websites dedicated to finding the identifies of missing people.
“Somebody somewhere has to know this guy,” Polk said.
They had gone back to the hotel repeatedly to interview staff and guests — nothing. Various routes had been used to try to identify the victim — nothing. With the crime lab in slow motion, this case was already starting to feel like an unsolved murder.
“Okay,” Amari said, realizing she was rubbing her temple, and stopped. “We’re not having any luck with IDing the vic — what about the killer?”
Polk gave her a look that said, What about him?
She answered the unasked question sternly: “This guy’s definitely going to kill again.”
“With us gettin’ no help from the crime lab, he will,” Polk said, shaking his head. “We haven’t got jack. Maybe I should check that FBI Missing Persons web page again and see if our lab rats turn up there.”
“What about video from other buildings, LeRon? Traffic lights?”
“I’ve been taking DVDs home at night like a coach studying game films. There’s nothing there, Lieutenant. The only shot where I saw the guy who rented the room comes from a traffic cam, and he ducks his damn head. Like he knew it was there, and avoided the sucker.”
“He was in his car?”
“Yeah.”
“So this is where you turn the whole case around, right, LeRon? And surprise me with his license number?”
”Wrong. Mud smeared on the plate. Kinda artfully smeared, but smeared.”
“And the car?”
“Silver Honda Accord.”
Amari snorted derisively. “And how many of those in California?”
“Lieutenant... there’s no chance of tracking that car, with no more than we have.”
She rubbed concentric circles on her clean desktop with the same three fingers that had massaged her temple. Maybe the desk had a headache, too. “What have we missed?”
Polk considered that briefly. “Something, probably. This was a brutal, bloody kill. There should be plenty of forensic shit to help us along.”
The lab again.
Amari’s mouth tightened to a slash. “Then... god-damn-it... there’s probably only one way we’re going to catch this son of a bitch...”
Polk’s face was solemn as he nodded. “Catch him when he screws up on the next one.”
Her sigh started at her toes and seemed to make its way through her psyche before emerging from her mouth.
“Okay,” she said. “Let’s back up a step. Our victim was not the guy who registered at the front desk.”
“Check.”
“So... if we assume for the sake of argument that ‘Bailey’ is the killer, we have him registering on the day of the murder, well before the murder. Plenty of time for him to take his weapon up to that room and stow it somewhere... somewhere convenient for his purpose... ready and waiting for when the vic showed up.”
“Yeah,” Polk said. “Maybe what we have is a homophobic killer — he picks up a gay guy, lures him to a hotel room, and then butchers the poor bastard. Because he sees gays as evil or something, and oughta be killed.”
“Don’t get ahead of yourself, LeRon. Same scenario works for a closeted gay man who lures a pickup to that room to have sex with him, and then murders his sex partner out of shame and guilt.”
“Killing himself, in a way.”
“Either of those scenarios makes sense of a sort. But there are others that work just as well. Let’s focus on what we do know.”
“Okay, Lieutenant.”
“The vic is from out of town.” Amari rose. She thought better on her feet, and pacing alongside their nearly abutted desks was a common practice of hers. “That’s not a fact, but is it an assumption we can buy?”
“I buy that,” Polk agreed. “Nobody in Southern Cal seems to’ve ever seen the dude before.”
“So... how does a guy from Bum Fart, Utah, end up at the Star Struck in West Hollywood?”
Polk shrugged. “If he’s a gay man, a closeted one from out of town here to play... or work with a little play on the side... he might well know all about the Star Struck.”
“Granted,” she said. “But remember — he wasn’t booked to stay there. He’s not Jeff Bailey. Or anyway he’s not the guy who checked in calling himself Jeff Bailey.”
Polk frowned at her.
“What, LeRon?”
“We don’t believe he was a guest in room four twenty-five,” Polk said tentatively. “But could he have been a guest in some other room? Who got picked up in the hotel bar by the guy in four twenty-five?”
“That means he hasn’t been around to check out in the last ten days.”
“Not when he’s cooling his jets in the morgue, he hasn’t.”
“Right. Check with the Star Struck and see if there were any deadbeats — any guests there who skipped without paying in the last week and a half.”
“Damn good thinkin’, Lieutenant!”
“If that’s the case, and he was a guest, his stuff would still be there. It’s worth a try, LeRon — call the hotel.”
Polk did so, and he was still holding the receiver in his hand when his expression turned disappointed and he shook his head at Amari.
As he hung up, she said, “Well, the basic idea is a good one. See if you can get a couple of the Explorers to call around to all the hotels in town, starting with West Hollywood and the surrounding area, and see who’s skipped out on their room in the last ten days, leaving their stuff behind.”
The Explorer program allowed interested high school — age kids to learn about law enforcement by helping out doing menial office activities, freeing up officers to get out on the street.
Amari’s cell chirped. She plucked it from her jacket pocket. Caller ID: WOMACK.
The head of the Sex Crimes Division, Captain Charles Womack, owner of the immediately recognizable gruff tenor in her ear.
“You and Polk need to get your butts out to Griffith Park.”
“Care to be more specific, Cap?” Amari asked, not unpleasantly. “Last time I looked, Griffith Park is forty-two hundred acres.”
“Mount Lee. The Hollywood sign.”
“Not really...”
“Really. Dead nude girl.”
It would be.