Hard Fall (10 page)

Daggett said, “If the medical examiner is right about that choke hold, then it's possible our killer didn't intend to kill Ward. If we play around with that, then he may have planned to still be in town on Wednesday or Thursday.”

Shoswitz nodded. “Or Friday. Whoever it was gave all four receptionists Wednesday through Friday to book him in. And they were all given a phone number and room number in case of an opening. Two of them left messages, but the guy never got back to them.”

“A phone number?” Daggett asked. “You're telling me we have a phone number?”

“The Mayflower Park Hotel. It's a nice old place over on Olive Way.”

“Can we move on this?” Daggett asked. “As far as the courts are concerned?”

Shoswitz said. “Have to check with your boys over in the Federal Building about that. I don't know shit about search and seizure on this kind of thing. But the way I figure it: They get creative, they'll think of something.” Shoswitz handed Daggett the pad with the names of the dentists. Circled boldly in rings of intertwined ink so that it jumped off the page was: Mayflower Park Hotel, Room #311.

“We've had a couple pieces of good luck,” Special Agent Frank Macalister told Daggett as they shook hands in the lobby of the Mayflower Park. Good luck ran in small schools, as far as Daggett could figure. Bad luck just plain ran out of control.

The man's deep voice sounded forced, as if without the effort it might be high and effeminate. Macalister was black, tall, and clean-shaven, a serious man with concerned eyes. He walked hurriedly, not checking to see if Daggett kept up. From the back, Daggett saw gray in the man's hair. “The guy in three-eleven left specific instructions with the front desk that he didn't want any maid service until he checked out. Said he was going to be keeping weird hours and that he didn't care about fresh towels. That request was made real early Wednesday
A.M
.—Tuesday night, in reality.”

“The time fits,” Daggett said. “We guessing he didn't want anyone knowing he had left? Something like that?”

“It plays.”

“So we may have the right guy.”

“If we do, he cut his own throat without knowing it. His request meant that housekeeping didn't go through the room until this morning,” he said with a casual glance at Daggett over his shoulder. They entered the elevator. The doors closed and the car rose slowly. Macalister smelled of after-shave. “Hotel trash isn't scheduled to be picked up until this afternoon. Whatever housekeeping cleaned out of that room is in one of those trash bags. I've asked them to hold off on pickup to give our people time to do some digging. We know from billing records that the suspect used room service quite a bit. If I'm him, then I do a major clean up before I split. I wipe the place down. I cover myself as best as possible. But if he tossed out a receipt in his trash, then that may ID it for us. His room number will be on the receipt.” He paused. “It's a long shot, but it's something.”

Daggett didn't see it as a long shot. It made a hell of a lot of sense. He suggested a couple other things they could look for to ID the trash: gold and black cigarette butts, an empty bottle of Anbesol, a grocery bag, or a grocery store receipt that listed a potato. Macalister looked at him strangely. Daggett explained, “He blocked Ward's exhaust pipe with a potato.”

“Right.”

“What about a car? You can't get around this city without a car. The hotel must have some kind of parking arrangements for guests. They may be able to give us a license plate number for this guy's car.”

“That's good. I'll follow up on that. We got a license plate number, we might get a rental agency.”

“We should also talk to the maid.”

Macalister nodded. “Already spoke to the front desk about that. They're going to send her up.”

Macalister slipped a piece of plastic into a key slot and unlocked the door. “Electronic keys,” he said in disgust. “When's this shit gonna end?”

It was a tiny but attractive room with a rose-and-teal chintz bedspread, almond drapes, and too much furniture: a couch, a desk, the bed and the bureau. It didn't leave much room for people. Macalister and Daggett both donned plastic gloves. The door thumped shut behind them. The claustrophobic space reinforced Daggett's sense of urgency. Ward's killer may have been inside this room. This was the bed he had slept in, the desk he had used. They were
that
close. No matter how small, it was a victory to be briefly savored.

Daggett walked over to the window and looked down at the cars, trucks, and buses below. “We want as many of the details as we can put together,” he told Macalister, “what this guy ate, the quantity and especially the
brand
of cigarette he smoked, whether he showered or bathed—anything and everything that might shed some light on him.” Macalister nodded, accustomed to such requests. The two men searched the room, wandering it slowly, heads craned down. The lab boys would find something—they always did. Whether or not it would help the investigation remained to be seen.

A knock came on the door and Macalister answered it. A shy Vietnamese woman introduced herself as Karen Xi. She was a tiny, flat-chested woman with callused hands, her hair held back by a white plastic clip with blue flowers. She had twisted teeth and flawless dark skin. Her frightened eyes seemed to occupy half her face.

“You're in no kind of trouble,” Macalister explained.

“Yes.”

“In fact, you may be able to be a tremendous help to us.”

“Yes.” Looking at him out of the corner of her eye, skeptically.

“You cleaned this room this morning.”

“Yes. Check-out.”

“You clean more thoroughly when it's a check-out?”

“Yes.”

Daggett wondered, was it too much to ask that this woman remember this room in particular?

“You clean a lot of rooms,” Macalister said, reading his mind.

“Many rooms.”

“You probably don't pay much attention, one room to another. Is that right?”

She nodded, shrugged her shoulders, and offered them both an innocent expression. She still seemed scared.

“
I
wouldn't pay much attention, I can tell you that,” Macalister encouraged.

She smiled, but raised her hand to cover her mouth, not allowing those awful teeth to show.

“You wouldn't happen to remember anything in particular about this room?”

“Yeah, sure I do.”

“The guest?” Daggett blurted out, interrupting, drawing a look of annoyance from Macalister.

“Did you see him?” Macalister asked. “Do you remember the guest?”

“Not him. Don't remember
him
. Remember
room
… clean room. Very neat and tidy. Easy to clean.”

“Neat?” Daggett asked. This was just the kind of information he had hoped for—it shed some light on the man's personality.

“You notice when you clean rooms.”

“I'm sure you do,” Macalister said. His eyes asked Daggett to stop, but Daggett couldn't. “He smoked,” Daggett said.

“Yes.”

Now Macalister glared, but Daggett was unrelenting. “Do you, by any chance, remember what the cigarettes looked like? What color?” Daggett asked.

“No. Don't remember. He smoked. He left the window cracked open.”

Daggett walked over to the window and studied the building and its fire escapes more closely. If pressed, could a person escape from that window? Yes, he thought it possible. Edge your way over there, drop down to the overhang. Possible. Leave the window cracked open to speed up your exit. “We'll want the latent-print team to pay special attention here.

“Did you ever see a gun, a knife, anything like that?” Daggett asked her.

“No. Nothing like that.”

“Did he speak to you?” Macalister interrupted.

“No. I never even saw him. He done something, this man?”

The killer's invisibility bothered Daggett. First at Duhning, now here.

“
Anything
unusual? Anything at all?” Daggett blurted out in frustration, further annoying Macalister.

“Oh, yes,” she said, drawing their attention with her sharp voice and suddenly bright, anxious eyes. “The tooth!” She beamed. “Not every day you find a tooth.”

Anthony Kort cringed as he explored the gaping wound at the back of his gums with the rubber tip of the toothbrush. It was ugly back there. His jaw was so swollen on that side that he had taken to stuffing an enormous wad of tissue between his opposite cheek and gums in an attempt to balance the look of his face. If ever there was a chipmunk, he thought, it's me. He didn't mind it so much: he looked like a different person, and that had its advantages.

He felt exhausted from the train ride; he had been unable to sleep, too preoccupied with the repercussions and subsequent preparations resulting from Roger Ward's unintended murder. The last several days had been hectic; he didn't like Los Angeles.

He rechecked his watch for the date: August 27. Two weeks to the day since the explosion that killed Bernard. Hopefully, by late this afternoon the unfortunate loss would mean something. Bernard had made himself briefly immortal: he still lived in the form of the detonators he had left behind.

Monique Cheysson arrived at the door of his Los Angeles hotel room precisely at nine-thirty. It had been nearly two years since he had last seen her but he recognized her face immediately, even when distorted by the door's fish-eye security peephole.

He opened the door for her.

She entered in behind a waft of musky perfume and the rustle of fine fabric. She carried a black briefcase.

Kort slipped the
DO NOT DISTURB
sign over the knob and closed the door firmly. The dead bolt insured privacy. She spun around dramatically to face him, the well-practiced turn of a fashion model at the end of the runway. Monique was always onstage.

A curtain of fine black hair fell to just above her shoulders and then curled under stylishly. Low bangs shortened her forehead and framed a face that was all brown eyes, cheekbones, and red lips. She had perfected the demure expression of appearing half asleep—or ready for bed. Her self-confidence drew attention from across a room—it bordered on arrogance. She had square shoulders, high breasts, and a waist so tiny that he thought he might be able to reach around it with both hands.

He had been fantasizing about her for weeks.

“Any problems?” he asked her.

“It is right there,” she said, pointing to the briefcase. She had less of an accent than he remembered. If she tried hard, she might even pass for American. Her voice rang with disappointment.

“What's wrong?” His fantasy collapsed. He had imagined her seducing him. He had imagined a reenactment of Frankfurt.

He recalls that first time he saw her with crisp clarity. He remembers the cold, his breath white, his nose running. So cold that her face is hidden by the mask of frost on the windscreen. It's a silver Mercedes—stolen, of course, with stolen plates. His passport is a forgery, and therefore his identity; everything about him is a forgery. The door sticks with the cold as he attempts to open it. She leans across the front seat and bangs it open for him. He sees her for the first time through the frost-glazed glass, the determination on her face, the rouge on her cheeks, a silk scarf, dark sunglasses. Typical of these operations, they haven't met until this moment the door complains open. How Michael manages this is anybody's guess. The training, the logistics. ... A dozen or so people, all orbiting around him regularly, but not so much as a shadow shared between them.

“The fucking car wouldn't start,” she says angrily, and he likes her right away.

“The suitcase?” he asks.

“In the trunk.” He offers an expression that questions the intelligence of that and she interrupts him before he speaks. “Where a suitcase belongs. Especially
that
suitcase. You think I was going to keep it on the backseat?” Yes, he likes her. Despite her obvious good looks, he is not physically attracted to her. It has been two years since his wife took her own life, and in that time not once has he felt anything like lust for another woman. Only despair. He feeds on the despair, like a tick feeds on the blood of a stray dog. It motivates him. It forces him toward purpose. It is this despair that has turned a grieving widower into a killer. He doesn't know this killer—he doesn't stop to know him—but he doesn't know the other man either, the man of a wife and a child and a workaday life he left behind. He doesn't want to know. He has purpose. That is enough. It will suffice.

“I'm Monique,” she says.

He finds himself staring at her.

“Something wrong?”

“No, nothing.”

“You're French,” he observes.

She ignores this. “I do not know why I should feel so nervous, but I do. It is not so very hard what we are going to do, is it?”

“The bag will match?”

“Of course it will, but I warn you that hotel is impossible. I have never seen so many people.”

“And the schedule?”

“Yes. I double-checked.”

“Then it's done. There's nothing to be nervous about.”

“My insides say differently.” The car stalls at a light. The engine grinds and slows behind the efforts of a drained battery. He knows exactly how that battery feels.

“Wait,” he tells her. He switches off the radio, which she had turned down but not off. He turns off the fan. Like closing off compartments. “Okay. Try again.” Someone honks at them.

“Fuck off,” she says, glaring into the rearview mirror.

“Pay no attention to that.”

At last the engine flutters to life. “This fucking car!” she says. “This fucking cold. I hate Frankfurt. I hate this place.”

“Pull in behind that bus,” he instructs.

“Oh, my God, we are here! And look, the bus is early. Oh, my God.” She glances at him with an expression of horror, as if this were her fault.