What is obvious is not always what is true.
I pressed the bathroom door open, and it angled away from me into the dark.
Because of the bathroom’s orientation to the window, almost no light filtered into it, just shadows of different depth, different intensity.
I dialed my MagLite’s lens, widened the beam, and targeted it inside.
The bathroom appeared empty, but I noted that the shower curtain had been pulled all the way across the curved, silver shower rod, thereby hiding the tub from view.
Unconsciously, I found myself sniffing the air, but I didn’t smell the odor that I feared I might find.
I went to the tub.
Holding the flashlight in one hand, I grasped the edge of the shower curtain with the other.
Images from past crime scenes flickered like an old movie reel through my mind. Images of death and terror and gore Slowly, I slid the curtain along the rod while shining the light toward the tub.
Empty.
I let out a small breath of relief, but it was tainted with frustration. I wanted so badly to find something. There were just too many passages in this cave that I hadn’t been able to connect.
You might have been wrong about this room. About all of this.
I took a breath.
All right.
I’d finish looking around, then get going.
Evaluate the scene systematically, start at the sink.
The flawlessly shiny faucet and clean counter told me that the surfaces had recently been wiped down-the shampoo bottle, soap, lotion, were all new.
Towels folded.
Mirror, spotless.
The maid had done a thorough job.
I turned my attention to the commode. The spotless handle shimmered. No smudges.
No prints.
The bowl held nothing but clear water, but when I knelt and looked behind the base of the commode, I did find one thing.
A small, balled-up facial tissue.
It might have been left behind by the killers, but when I narrowed my flashlight beam and inspected it more closely I saw that it was covered by a thin layer of undisturbed dust, so it had almost certainly been in the room for more than the last twenty-four hours.
The killers might have planted it. They’re into that kind of thing.
We would check it for DNA, but whether or not the tissue had been left by the killers, its presence did indicate one thing: there were areas of the bathroom that were easy to miss even for a meticulous maid.
I turned again to the tub.
A little soap scum near the faucet, a few hairs caught in the drain. Hair itself doesn’t contain DNA, but hair follicles do, so if we had roots of the Mollie was unconscious in the wheelchair…
It takes a few hours for drugs to get into the root of someone’s hair, and if Mollie had been drugged for more than an hour and this was her hair, it was possible we might find traces of the drug.
And if so, the guys at the lab could test it, identify it, match it.
Mollie is either inside the hotel or she is not.
I stepped into the tub and tugged the shower curtain across the rod again.
Using the MagLite, I carefully investigated the shower curtain itself. A small amount of soap scum. A few water spots. Nothing else.
Only when I knelt and peered at the far end of the curtain, in between two of the curtain folds, did I see it.
A tiny speck.
Dark.
I leaned closer.
Dried blood.
The only way to notice it was from inside the tub, an unlikely place from which to clean, even for an experienced maid.
It might be nothing. Might not be related. Maybe. Maybe.
I phoned Doehring, told him what I’d found, and he said he’d send the CSIU guys over here immediately. We hung up.
Sure, it might be nothing, but at the moment it seemed like too many tunnels were converging in this room for me to believe that.
The blood.
The lack of DNA in 809.
The proximity of the two rooms.
I closed my eyes and pictured what I’d seen when I arrived on the eighth floor yesterday: two security guards… two maids… three children in swimming suits…
A thought, out of nowhere: Could they have been the Rainey children?
No, the children in the hotel were older.
But I’d seen one other thing.
A bellhop pulling a luggage cart.
62
A slow chill crawled down my back.
I called Marianne and asked where the bellhops store the luggage for guests who arrive early, or who need the hotel to hold their bags until a later checkout time.
She told me the location-a room on the lower level near the storage room where I’d been shot. I didn’t tell Marianne what I suspected, just asked her to meet me there, then I ended the call.
And, trying to convince myself that I was wrong to suspect what I did, I left for the basement.
“Here we are,” Mr. Lees declared as he and Tessa arrived at the hotel’s control center.
It’d taken her longer than she’d thought it would to convince him to take her to Patrick, but finally she’d told him how upset Special Agent Bowers FROM THE FBI would be if he found out the hotel’s president wasn’t allowing his daughter to see him, and Mr. Lees had asked her to kindly follow him.
“I believe our head of security is meeting with him right now.” He knocked on the door, and a moment later, a slim, sharp-dressed woman in her late twenties appeared.
Mr. Lees said, “Marianne, this is Tessa Ellis, Agent Bowers’s stepdaughter.”
“I need to talk to him right away,” Tessa said.
“Well, I’m on my way to meet him now. Why don’t you come along?”
I made it to the luggage storage area before Marianne, and I decided not to wait for her.
After clearing all the bellhops out of the room, I entered it alone and closed the door.
In contrast to the splendor and extravagance of the rest of the hotel, this was a vast, boxy concrete chamber that smelled of dust and mold and stale air. Industrial florescent lights. No carpeting. No windows.
Twelve luggage carts stood empty and waiting in a line along the east wall. Filling the rest of the room were piles of suitcases of various shapes and sizes. With nearly a meter of space between each stack, they’d clearly been arranged to keep the items of the different guests separated.
Yesterday, I’d only momentarily seen the suitcases on the luggage cart that the bellhop was pulling down the hallway, and I wasn’t certain what brand they were. So now, as I scanned the piles, I started by looking for the luggage collection with the biggest suitcases. I figured that would be the most likely And I saw it.
At the far end of the room.
A cluster of large suitcases that, as I thought about it, did appear to match the style of the ones I’d seen on the luggage cart.
We’d been looking for Mollie’s body.
Her whole body.
But that might not be what we were going to find.
I crossed the room toward the pile of suitcases.
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The luggage looked brand new.
Using new suitcases would make sense if you were a killer who was trying to avoid leaving physical evidence that might be traced back to you-not just DNA, hair, or trace evidence, but also scratches or scuff marks that could give us clues as to where the luggage had been.
I had a feeling these killers would have thought of that.
Using my cell phone, I snapped half a dozen photos of the arrangement of the four suitcases.
Then I stared at the largest bag.
Knelt beside it.
As I did, I caught the faint whiff of the odor I’ve smelled at far too many crime scenes. And though I tried to reassure myself that the smell would have been more pungent, more sickening by now, I was aware of the methods of taking care of that problem: wrap the item in plastic… use chemicals…