He watched until they went into a room down the hall. He then looked around the housekeeping station. On one end there were linen and bathroom supplies locked in a fenced closet. On the other side was a service elevator. Also in the small space was a room service table piled with dirty dishes. It smelled rancid and Karch thought it had been forgotten about all day.
He stepped back into the hallway and went back toward 2001, pausing at the entrance to the elevator alcove but again not hearing or seeing anything that raised his suspicion. He moved on to the door of 2001 and used the card key to go back in.
After thirty seconds the elevator was called to another floor and dropped down the shaft. Cassie stepped off the roof onto the crossbeam and once again worked her way to the door. This time she secured the gym bag when she made the final move to the door ledge. She made it without a sound, then reached up and pulled the spring-release lever. She heard a metallic click and the two panels of the door separated a half inch. She worked her fingers into the crack and then pulled the door panels apart.
She stepped out into the elevator alcove, then turned around and slid the door panels closed until there was a click as they locked back into place.
She quickly moved into the hallway and headed toward 2014, unsure what she was going to do when she got there. But as she passed the door to 2001 she suddenly stopped as she realized something. Synchronicity. Karch had said the word when she had called and he thought it was someone named Vincent on the phone. She had immediately jumped to the conclusion that the Vincent he had referred to was Vincent Grimaldi, director of casino operations. The same Vincent Grimaldi that Hidalgo had referred to. The same Vincent Grimaldi who was chief of security six years earlier. But now who Cassie thought Karch was speaking to seemed less important than what he had actually said. Synchronicity. Cassie knew what it meant. It had been in the Las Vegas Sun's crossword puzzle at least a dozen times during the five years she religiously worked it. The aspect of seemingly separate events occurring in conjunction over time: synchronicity.
She knew Karch's plan. From suite 2001 a man had fallen to his death almost seven years before. Tonight that man's lover – and their child – would do the same. Karch would take the money. All other things could be laid to blame on Cassie, the distraught mother who shot her co-workers and her parole agent, abducted her daughter and then returned to Las Vegas to end it all as her lover had.
The plan was smart. She knew it would work. But knowing it wrested an advantage to Cassie's side of the board. She leaned forward, her head close to the door. She heard the faint sounds of cartoon mayhem coming from a television inside the suite.
Cassie gently placed a hand against the door and whispered, "I'm coming, baby. I'm coming."
43
KARCH unwound the telephone wire from around the two doorknobs and looked in on the girl. She was lying on her stomach at the end of the bed, her hands propping up her head as she fought to stay awake and watch cartoons.
"Everything okay in here, kid?"
"Where's my daddy?"
Karch looked at his watch.
"Soon… real soon."
He closed the door and wound the wire back around the knobs.
"More like where's the goddamn food," he said to himself.
He walked over to the phone and called Grimaldi's number. Again the call was answered immediately.
"Anything?" Karch asked.
"Not on this end."
"Did you call in that room service order?"
"As soon as we hung up."
"Vincent, your four-star kitchen isn't worth a shit. I'm fucking starving up here."
"It's busy down there. But I'll make another call."
"All right. And let me know the minute somebody has her."
"Will do."
"Oh, and Vincent?"
"What, Jack?"
"You better close a few craps tables down there. You don't want anybody getting hit."
"Jesus! Are you sure it has to be this way? Can't we just – "
"Vincent! Vincent! You don't want questions, right?"
"No, Jack."
"Then there is no other way. Synchronicity, Vincent. Call the pit chief. Close the tables."
He hung up and walked over to the window. He banged a fist on it, hoping to get a feel for the tension in the glass. He wondered if he shot the glass out first, to make it easier, if the Metro investigators would be able to tell that. Would they actually gather the glass and examine it? Probably not, he decided. Too much trouble, especially for what looked like an obvious murder-suicide.
He decided the plan would be to shoot the glass out and then immediately drop the bodies. The girl first and then the mother. A classic murder-suicide: distraught mother tosses her daughter, then jumps herself.
In the housekeeping station Cassie moved the room service table into a position directly below one of the panels of the drop ceiling. She then cleared the dirty dishes to one side of the table and climbed onto the other. The table was constructed with large wheels so that it would roll smoothly across the deep carpets in the penthouse suites. This made it unsteady as a platform. Cassie slowly stood up on it and reached to the ceiling. She pushed the panel up and to the side. She then gripped the tracks of the frame that held the panel and tested them against her weight. She was 110 pounds in her clothes, the gym bag another 20 or so. The tracks held secure. She tossed the gym bag up first, then grabbed the frame again and swung her legs up. She climbed into the utility crawl space between the false ceiling and the real one.
The crawl space was no more than four feet top to bottom. It was crowded with electrical conduits, water lines and the fire sprinkler pipes. But what took up the most room was the network of air-handling ducts for the heating and air-conditioning system. Twin return and delivery ducts ran the length of the hallway and branched off in smaller tributary lines that went to vents in each suite on the floor. The main ducts were three feet square and large enough to crawl through easily. The tributary lines were smaller but Cassie knew from experience that the air-return ducts were large enough for her to move through, provided she pushed her equipment bags in front of her. She also knew that if she could make it through, Jodie could as well.
Her plan had serious faults and difficulties. Noise would be a major factor. Any sound in the ventilation tunnels was magnified by the time it got to the room vents. She wasn't as much worried about her entry as she was her exit with Jodie. Keeping a five-and-a-half-year-old quiet in what was going to be a frightening situation would be difficult. She hoped the cartoons were still on the television and could be used as sound cover when they made their escape.
Another problem that Cassie knew for sure was ahead would be the removal of the vent cover once she got to the room where Jodie was being held. The cover would be screwed on from inside the room. The difficulty would be in accessing the screws. Her plan was to use a small pry bar from the gym bag to bend the vent slats. She would then reach out with a screwdriver and remove the screws that held the vent in place. This, she knew, would be laborious and time consuming. If she dropped the screwdriver or even one of the screws the resulting noise could bring Karch right to her.
Its success was predicated on her belief that Karch most likely had Jodie in the bedroom of the suite, while he was in the sitting room. But if she was wrong and Karch was keeping the girl close to him, then Cassie knew her chances of getting a shot at a rescue were infinitesimal.
Despite all of this she pressed on. She carefully moved into the crawl space and slid the panel back into place. Once again she put her penlight into her mouth and directed it along the main air-handling ducts until she found the bolted seam of two conjoining segments. She crawled that way, careful to keep her weight at all times on the framework of the drop ceiling.