Earlier, when he’d left to look around, he’d walked down the hallway that led behind the guest reception counter.
She grabbed her things and headed toward it.
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I exited the elevator and started down the hallway.
There were only two possibilities—either Mollie was still inside the hotel or she was not. That much was obvious.
I passed room 804.
An axiom came to mind, one I’d taught in my seminars a hundred times over the years: what is obvious is not always what is true.
809.
Either Mollie was alive or dead.
Either she was here or she was not.
812.
What other options were there?
I arrived at the room.
For a moment I thought about the ways the Academy students had come up with on Wednesday for committing the perfect murder: take precautions to avoid leaving physical evidence . . . contaminate the scene with other people’s DNA . . . dispose of the body outside, don’t allow the body to be found at all . . .
Don’t allow the body to be found at all.
I snapped on the latex gloves that I’d brought along.
Pulled out my lock-pick set.
Despite what hotel managers might tell you, keycard locks are some of the easiest ones to pick. Hotels use them because they’re cheap, not because they’re secure. It’s one of the best-kept secrets in the hotel industry.
Most people feel safe in their hotel rooms.
If only they knew.
So, although in my haste to get up here I’d forgotten to get a keycard, it only took me a few seconds to get the door open.
The curtains had been drawn across the windows at the far side of the room, and the muted sunlight that had managed to slip through gave everything a yellowish, pasty glow.
I knew that Doehring and his team had looked for Mollie Fischer in every room of the hotel, that the ERT had processed room 809, that Margaret had sent agents to recheck all the eighth floor rooms the maids had serviced, but as far as I knew, no forensics unit had been in this room.
But the maids had.
Unwittingly vacuuming up the evidence.
Wiping it from the countertops.
Scrubbing it from the sink.
When you’re looking for something in a room that’s already been searched, you need to consider the conditions under which that initial search occurred, and then alter those conditions so that your attention isn’t drawn to the same objects or areas the previous searchers would have focused on.
And since room lights always throw shadows in the same places, they’re one of the main determinative factors to alter.
So now I left the lights off and clicked on my Mini MagLite.
The flashlight beam cut a slim crease through the pale, jaundiced light of the room.
I slipped off my shoes to avoid leaving dirt particles on the carpet. Then I stepped inside, closed the door, and began my search for something that might lead us to Mollie Fischer.
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I knelt and shone my light across the carpeting and, as I’d expected, saw neat rows of tilted fibers that told me the room had recently been vacuumed.
No visible footprints, so apparently the maid had vacuumed the room as she backed toward the door.
I checked the closet, the desk, the chairs. Nothing.
Then the drawers, under the bed, behind the curtains.
Nothing.
I went though the entire room, carefully, methodically, searching each area from different vantage points and various angles until I was satisfied.
And so.
Only one place left to search.
I walked to the bathroom door.
We were looking for Mollie’s body, for a corpse.
But this room has already been searched . . .
If Mollie had been killed in this hotel, and the killers didn’t have time to transport the body to another location, it was obvious that her corpse had to still be here somewhere.
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.
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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 . . .
My fingers trembled slightly as I rolled the suitcase away from the others in the stack and tilted it toward the floor.
It was very heavy and settled onto its side with a disquieting, moist thump.
Heart hammering, I reached for the zipper.
A bellhop rolled these suitcases right past everyone . . .
Right past you.
Carefully, I guided the zipper along its track, making sure it didn’t catch on the fabric, didn’t snag on my glove. Or get caught on anything else.
Why those two rooms on the eighth floor?
What’s the connection between these killers and the assassination attempt six years ago?
The zipper reached the end of its track.
Heart beating.
Beating.
I took another picture with my phone.
Then I braced myself.
And lifted the unzipped flap of the suitcase.
Just as the door behind me swung open.
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I quickly closed the suitcase.
I’d only needed a glimpse to confirm my worst fears—the killers hadn’t used just this one suitcase. Based on what I saw, I suspected they would have needed most of the ones in this stack.
Trying to hide the torrent of grief and anger I felt, I turned to see if it was Marianne at the door behind me.
And it was.
And Tessa was with her.
“What are you doing here?” I shouted.
She was quiet, staring past me at the luggage I was kneeling beside.
“Tessa, you need to leave this room. Now.” I didn’t intend for my tone to be so harsh, but I did not want her anywhere near this place.
Marianne put a hand on her shoulder. “Let’s go, sweetie.”
Tessa’s face was flushed. She was a smart girl, she could put two and two together. “Is that . . . ?”
“Come on.” Marianne ushered her out of the room.
Before joining them, I quickly phoned Doehring and told him to send another forensics team. I felt sick having to say it: “I found Mollie Fischer’s remains.”
After making sure the bellhops knew not to enter the room, I hurried to the hall and caught up with Tessa and Marianne near the elevator at the south end of the basement. Marianne gave Tessa’s shoulder a soft squeeze, said a few words of assurance to her, then left us alone. We entered the elevator quietly, watched the doors close. Stood beside each other in a shroud of silence.
I didn’t want to ask Tessa the question, but I knew I had to, so just before we reached the ground floor, I said, “What did you see in there?”
“Just . . .” She hesitated. “A suitcase. A bunch of suitcases.”
The elevator dinged.
“That’s all?”
The doors slid open.
“And the look on your face.”
I felt a deepening sense of failure—first, for not finding Mollie alive, then for letting Tessa see the ragged anger in my eyes. “Come on,” I told her. “Let’s get you out of here.”
As we were leaving the hotel, the first wave of officers, including Officer Tielman, the CSIU member whom I’d met at the primate center on Tuesday, were already rushing through the front doors.
While she was sitting at her desk at the command post, Margaret Wellington got word that Patrick Bowers had found Mollie Fischer’s body at the hotel.
Slowly, she set down the phone.
Earlier in the day Rodale had notified her that Bowers was back on the case. She’d felt a wave of indignation toward both Bowers and Rodale, and it hadn’t gone away all afternoon.
But now that Bowers had found Mollie, something even she’d failed to do, she felt conflicted.
She’d never liked Bowers’s headstrong attitude or his unconventional approach to law enforcement, but she could hardly believe he was the kind of man to go behind her back to Rodale like that. Not only wa
s it a direct challenge to her authority, but it showed contempt for the Bureau’s chain of command and its motto: Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity.
She saw none of those three in his actions.
And none in Rodale’s decision to contravene her orders and reinstate him.
Just another example of Rodale’s inept leadership at the helm of the Bureau.
However, despite all of that, apparently, Bowers had done his job, done it well.
So it was up to her to make the call.
She picked up the phone again.
Congressman Fischer’s wife was still on her way back from Australia, so at least she wouldn’t have to traumatize her, but as the head of the task force, Margaret did need to call the congressman to ask him to identify his daughter’s remains—the second time he’d been asked to do so this week.
She took a deep breath, and then, with a stark mixture of sadness and frustration—both toward herself and at the Bureau for not saving Mollie Fischer—she dialed the number.
On the way home, I tried comforting Tessa, but she told me she didn’t want to talk and if I could just leave her alone that would be good.
Over the past year she’d explained to me more than once that usually the best way to help her get through stuff is to just let her be—advice that sounded counterintuitive to me but actually did seem to work.
So for the moment at least, I let things rest and allowed my thoughts to return to the case.
Right now the team would be interviewing the bellhops for a description of the people who’d had suitcases taken from their rooms. Officers would be checking the suitcase for prints, DNA, trace evidence; tracking the luggage claim tag to see if they could tie it to any of the guests who’d recently checked into or out of the hotel; processing the luggage storage room and the hotel room containing the spot of blood.
The nuts and bolts of police work.
But based on what I’d seen so far, the killers this week would have known all that, would have anticipated it.
I was reminded of Sevren Adkins, the killer in North Carolina who called himself the Illusionist and had attacked Tessa and then tried to kill us both. He’d taunted the authorities with clues from future crimes and always seemed to find a way to hide in plain sight, even managing to be at crime scenes without raising suspicion. Right before he died he’d challenged me to a rematch—