“Looks like sex to me,” said the Kid.
Sci set his scene kit on the floor and went to work running an alternate light source with variable wavelength filter over the sheets.
“Right you are. We’ve got sex,” he said.
“No wallet in here either,” said Cruz, pawing through a small pile of personal items on the nightstand. A ballpoint pen, spare change, rental-car keys.
The Kid took his webcam into the bathroom. I saw swim shorts and goggles on a hook behind the door, toiletry kit on the vanity, towels on the floor.
Emilio Cruz took a seat on the closed toilet lid and spoke into the lens.
“Jack. This killer was cool, maybe professional. There’s no sign of a fight. Like I said, the dude let his killer into the room. Had a drink with him, and then maybe he said or did something to piss the guy off. The killer got behind him and strangled him. Bingham never had a chance.”
CHAPTER 17
While I viewed the Bergman Suite from ten miles away, Cody kept me informed about incoming phone calls, his messages popping up on the left-hand side of my screen.
I typed back to him as I watched Del Rio scrutinize the scene for evidence. He was only feet from the deceased when something caught my attention.
“Kid, what’s on the desk?” I asked.
“Phone book,” he said. “Local type. Beverly Hills.”
He moved in tight on the phone book, which was open, face down, and lifted the book with his gloved hand, showing me the pages the book was opened to.
I could read the print as clearly as if the book were in my hand.
The category was Escort Services.
“Interesting,” I said. “Maybe Mr. Bingham paid for the party in his bedroom.”
“Could be, Jack. You think a woman did this? She had to be strong to strangle a guy this size, though.”
“Sci, you’ve got Bingham’s prints?”
“Yep. Couple hundred other prints on the furnishings that could belong to anyone. DNA up the wazoo.”
“Need anything else?”
He shrugged as if to say, “What can I do?”
If the cops found us at this crime scene, Private was out of business.
“Okay. I’m calling it time to go,” I said.
My people snapped their cases closed and headed to the door. The Kid turned the camera on his own intense, heated, twenty-two-year-old face and said he was going to shoot the hallway and the exits.
When the video feed was shut down, I called Jinx Poole.
“Jinx, you can turn the security cameras back on. And I need a backup of last night’s tape of the fifth floor.”
“I already made you a copy.”
“Fine. Leave it for Rick Del Rio at the desk. It’s time to have housekeeping discover the body and call the cops.”
“Oh, no.”
“It’s got to be done.”
I was telling my new client that I’d be at the hotel’s bar tonight, when another of Cody’s instant messages popped up on my screen.
The text read, “Lieutenant Tandy and Detective Ziegler are here to see you.”
My stomach dropped to the basement. What was this about? Did they have a lead in Colleen’s murder?
I told Jinx I’d see her later.
Then I asked Cody to send in the bad lieutenant and his partner.
CHAPTER 18
Mitch Tandy and Len Ziegler entered my office and looked around as if they’d just bought the place at a blind auction and were seeing it for the first time.
I showed them to the seating area, and Tandy and I sat down. Ziegler wanted to look around-at the view, the bookshelves, the photos on the wall.
Tandy said to me, “Why did you mess with the crime scene, Jack? It’s just a little too neat, you know what I mean?
“Girl dies in the middle of the bed with her shoes on. Doesn’t leave any fingerprints, not even in the bathroom. In my experience, the girl always uses the bathroom.”
The cops hadn’t come to bring me news. They were here so that they could read me, scare me, catch me in lies or deviations from what I’d told them last night.
“She was dead when I got home,” I said. “What you saw is what I saw.”
“Jack, I’m a fair guy.”
Aside to self: No, he wasn’t. He was a poisonous human being. His unexamined lack of self-respect and his envy of others made him that way. Dangerous.
He said, “Tell me what really happened so you can get ahead of this thing.”
“Mitch. I told you everything I know.”
“Okay.”
He leaned over the coffee table, straightened a stack of books, and said, “Now I want to give you my theory of how this girl got killed. Colleen Molloy was in love with her boss. That’s not in dispute. Not unusual. Happens all the time. But this particular girl, Colleen, she tried to kill herself after you and she broke up. That’s a fact. Attempted suicide tells me she was emotional. Unstable.”
“Slashed her wrists about six months ago,” Ziegler said from across the room. He had a pocketknife, about six inches long, pearl handle. He tossed it in the air and caught it. Did this throughout as he went on. “Colleen survived. Quit her job and moved back to Ireland, returned to LA two weeks ago to see friends.”
“That’s right,” said Tandy. “Now we’re up to date. So last Wednesday, Colleen has lunch with you at Smitty’s, but whatever went down wasn’t entirely satisfying to Colleen. She knows your schedule, when you’ll be coming home, et cetera, and last night she takes a cab and shows up at your house uninvited.”
His tone was even. No rough stuff. No threats. But Tandy was laying out his theory, that it was me, and he was setting it in concrete.
I said, “You’ve got a good imagination, Mitch. But Colleen had a boyfriend in Dublin. She wasn’t stalking me.”
“Not saying she was stalking. She wanted to talk. She knew when you’d be home. She uses her access code and waits for you. You walk in. She says, ‘Surprise, I still love you, Jack. I’ll always love you.’”
“Tandy, you’re making me sick, you know that? Nothing like that happened. Colleen and I were friends. Just friends.”
“You were tired when she showed up. That’s what you told us. That long flight, all those layovers. You’re not in the mood for the needy ex-girlfriend, but maybe you try to be a gentleman.”
Ziegler was on his feet, knife in his back pocket now, moving around toward my desk. I got up, went over to my desk, shut down my computer, and said over my shoulder to Tandy, “Nothing you’ve said is true.”
“It’s just talk,” Tandy said pleasantly. “Just talk. When I’ve finished telling you my theory, you can tell me yours.”
CHAPTER 19
Tandy enjoyed spinning his “Jack Morgan did it” storyline. He sat there on my couch, smelling like curry, moving his hands around as he got to the crux of his “theory.”
“So now the girl is crying, I don’t know, or maybe she’s giddy. Was that it? Was she all lit up? Manic?
“At any rate, Colleen is worked up. And here’s where it gets painful,” Tandy said. “You say you’re not interested in her anymore. ‘Thanks but no thanks. Let’s be friends.’ And she doesn’t want to be rejected by you again. So she’s going to kill herself. That’ll show you.”
What Tandy was saying hurt. Yes, Colleen still had feelings for me. I’d still had feelings for her too.
I said, “Very theatrical, Tandy, but as I keep telling you, I didn’t do it.”
“So, as I’m telling you, Colleen knows where you keep your gun. She goes for it. You struggle with her. The two of you fall on the bed-and the gun goes off. Hair trigger. Bam. Bam. Bam. She takes it in the chest.”
“That never happened.”
“Colleen has been shot. It was an accident. I know you well enough to say that, Jack. But you can’t change the events. And now this poor mixed-up girl is dead in your place. Sure, you could dump the body, but you gotta ask yourself. Maybe Colleen told a friend she was coming to see you; you can’t know. Or maybe you’re scared. You panic. You lose it-”