An Unwanted Guest

by Shari Lapena

  “Is this a prank?” she asks in disbelief.

  “I don’t think so, ma’am.”

  She can tell from his voice that he doesn’t believe the call was anything but genuine. Good God, she thinks, shocked.

  “We need to get out there, ma’am.” He’s breathing quickly, shallowly down the line.

  “Who’ve you got there?”

  “Perez and Wilcox. We’ll get the snowmobiles ready. No other way out there at this point.”

  “I’d better let the chief know. I’ll be there in ten minutes.” Good thing she lives so close to the station; it’s just around the corner.

  Sunday, 7:35 a.m.

  Sergeant Sorensen pushes the snowmobile hard over the ice-covered snow up the long, winding drive to Mitchell’s Inn. She has gunned it as fast as she can all the way from town.

  A triple homicide. Things like this are rare up here. They don’t even have a detective at the station. She will have to do until New York State Police can send someone. Officer Lachlan had briefed her more fully when she arrived at the station, but the facts are sketchy. Three guests and the owner’s son are dead, and another guest is missing. She is shocked. She doesn’t know what they might be walking into. She’s familiar with the hotel, and with the family. Young Bradley—dead. She can hardly believe it. Her adrenaline is pumping fiercely as they approach the final curve in the long drive.

  She cuts the engine outside the hotel on the brittle, glittering lawn. She reaches for her gun and gestures to the other officers parking their snowmobiles to do the same. They approach the front entrance cautiously, their heavy boots sliding on the ice. It’s so cold she can see her breath.

  Sorensen notices a smear of blood on the ice near the front porch, and silently points it out. She creeps up the side of the porch steps and looks in the window. Finally, she pulls open the front door, her weapon ready. It opens easily. She steps inside the lobby and her eyes automatically turn toward the group around the fireplace. She sees pale faces peering out from blankets, staring back at her. She thinks, I will always remember this moment.

  She hears the three officers coming in behind her. She takes in everything with her quick eyes. The people sitting around the fire look haggard and disheveled, as if they haven’t slept. As if they’ve survived some kind of siege. She recognizes James, blindsided by the loss of his only son. She feels a stab of pity for him. She counts eight survivors sitting around the fire. No, make that seven. On closer inspection, one of the chairs is holding a corpse.

  She approaches the small gathering, holstering her weapon. “I’m Sergeant Sorensen, and these are”—she indicates each with a nod of her head—“Officers Lachlan, Perez, and Wilcox. We’re here now, and we’re going to help you.” She tries to sound authoritative and reassuring at the same time. Sorensen steps forward to look more closely at the dead man. She can’t tell from looking at him whether he was murdered or died of natural causes.

  She takes in the pallid faces looking up at her and wishes fervently that the medical examiner and the forensics team were here with her. She has no idea how long it will be until the roads are passable. She’s on her own here.

  “For now, I’m afraid everybody has to stay put,” she tells them. “There’s no way to get you all safely into town. We’re going to take a look around, then I will have questions for all of you. When the roads are clear, you will be taken into town to the station to give official statements. In the meantime, I need all of you to help me as much as you can.”

  She gets a few weary nods in response. “Before I look around, I need someone to put me in the picture here. Just a quick overview for now.” Her eyes light on a man in his late thirties with an intelligent look about him. “What’s your name?” she asks in a friendly way.

  “David Paley.”

  She pulls up a chair and sits down beside him. “Maybe you could tell me who everybody is, and then tell me what happened.”

  She listens grimly as he gives her the story. When he’s finished, she says to them all, “We’ll look for Riley, just as soon as we can.”

  * * *

  • • •

  After that, Sergeant Sorensen instructs Perez and Wilcox to remain in the lobby to ensure the safety of the survivors. She keeps Lachlan with her, to take notes, and as a second pair of eyes and ears. She does a quick walk through the hotel and its environs, with Lachlan by her side.

  They start in the lobby. She pulls a pair of latex gloves out of her pocket and puts them on, then walks over to the bottom of the staircase, feeling the eyes of the survivors on her back. She squats down, notes the blood on the edge of the stair. She looks up to the top of the staircase, and back down again.

  She motions Lachlan to follow her. She climbs the staircase, hardly making a sound. How quiet the stairs are, she thinks. All she can hear is the squeak of her boots. She continues to the third floor, Lachlan behind her. They arrive at the room to the left of the stairs across the hall, number 306. Taking the key that James had handed her, she opens the door carefully with her gloved hands. She flicks on the overhead light. Inside she sees the body of the second victim, slumped on the floor, her scarf still wound tightly around her throat. She and Lachlan take a close look, careful not to disturb her.

  Next they visit room 302, the room that had not been made up. She takes in the messy bed, the unwiped sink. She glances wordlessly at Lachlan, who purses his lips. Forensics will go over this room with a fine-tooth comb, when they get here.

  The two of them make their way back down the stairs and out through the woodshed and the bitter cold and down the path to the icehouse. When they step inside, the first thing she sees is Bradley’s body lying near the back wall, the only color in the glittering, translucent interior. She stops, takes a deep breath. She knew what she was going to find, but still, it’s hard to see Bradley stiff on the snow floor, dead. She takes a closer look. Such a fine-looking boy. Such an awful blow to the head.

  Beside him, another body has been placed on the floor against the wall. It’s wrapped tightly in a white sheet. “Might as well unwrap her,” she says. Lachlan puts on a pair of gloves and carefully pulls the sheet partly away. They look down at the woman’s frozen face, distorted by death. She can see that she was beautiful. She’s dressed in a negligee and a navy satin robe. Seeing her there, dead, lying in an icehouse so scantily clad, Sorensen shivers involuntarily.

  “Christ. What a horror show,” she says, with feeling.

  She leans down and studies the head wound.

  Eventually she stands up. “I want to see where Bradley was killed.”

  They head back inside and then go out again through the front door. Outside, they follow the smears of blood. The spot where Bradley was killed is about thirty yards from the hotel. There’s an impression in the icy snow, and a dark red patch of blood where Bradley fell. She sees the boot scraper in the ice a couple of feet away. She gives it as thorough a look as she can with her bare eyes, and then turns away, sick at heart. She looks back at the hotel and says to Lachlan, “What the hell happened here?”

  Lachlan shakes his head.

  Back in the lobby again, Sorensen pulls Perez and Wilcox aside and explains the situation. “The two of you need to search this hotel thoroughly, from top to bottom. Check all the nooks and crannies, the closets, the cellars, the attic, if there is one. Take James with you, if he’s up to it. Treat him gently; he’s just lost his son. Check outside, too, and all the doors and windows, every outbuilding. We need to be absolutely sure there is no one else here. And that no one else was here.”

  “Will do,” Perez says.

  “Meanwhile, Lachlan and I will search the area in front of the hotel for Riley.” She adds grimly, “She can’t have got far.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Outside, she and Lachlan stand at opposite sides of the broad lawn where the scrub begins and st
art their sweep, working toward one another and out again as they proceed. When they reach the edge of the woods, they must move more carefully, looking for signs that someone has passed this way. Sorensen remembers other searches in woods like these, looking for lost hunters, sometimes for lost children. Occasionally searches end happily; she’s under no illusions about this one. A woman alone, not dressed for the elements—it wouldn’t have been long before hypothermia set in. Unless she knew something about how to survive alone in the winter woods, and Sorensen doubts that. To make matters worse, Riley was in a panic, not thinking clearly. And the first rule of survival is to not panic.

  The branches snap beneath her boots, and the cold, sharp air makes her chest feel tight. She scans the forest, always aware of Lachlan’s carefully moving presence to her left. She usually loves walking in the woods, but not today. Along with the urgency she always feels with a ground search—the simultaneous hope and fear—she knows that there might be a killer here somewhere.

  When they’ve been at it for a while and Sorensen is really starting to feel the cold, they enter a little clearing where the snow is deeper. She lifts her eyes across the clearing for signs of human trespass, noticing nothing, but then Lachlan calls, “Over here.”

  Just from the tone of his voice, she knows.

  Nevertheless, she hastens over to him as fast as she can, clumsy in the deep snow. Lachlan is standing over something darker against the white, a shape huddled up against a large boulder. As she comes closer, she sees that it’s a woman, approximately thirty, face an eerie white, lips blue, eyes open but crusted in ice. She’s dressed in jeans and a gray sweater. Running shoes. No coat, no hat. She’s crouched up against the boulder, stiff as a board, her knees to her chest and her arms around them, as if hiding, or waiting for something inevitable. Her hands are tucked into her sleeves. It almost breaks Sorensen’s heart, but she’s careful not to show it. Instead, she bends forward to examine her more closely. There are no visible signs of violence. She pulls back again.

  “Shit,” Lachlan mutters.

  Crows gather and fly overhead, dark against the pale sky, and Sorensen watches them for a moment.

  “No signs of trauma,” Sorensen says finally, glancing at Lachlan.

  “But who was she running from,” Lachlan says, shaking his head, “out here without a coat?”

  “I don’t think she even knew.”

  THIRTY-TWO

  Sunday, 10:05 a.m.

  Sorensen and Lachlan return to the hotel and deliver the bad news. Sorensen doesn’t think anyone expected Riley to still be alive, but it is difficult nonetheless. Predictably, her friend Gwen takes it the hardest. She sobs loudly and begins to rock, wailing uncontrollably. Sorensen sits beside Gwen, a hand on her shoulder until she calms down.

  Finally, she and Lachlan leave the group and go to the privacy of the dining room, where Perez and Wilcox soon report that they are certain there is no one else in the hotel other than the people they know about. There are no signs of anyone having left. They tell her about the broken window and the branch, but they feel the branch likely broke the window on its own. Which means, Sorensen realizes, that it is highly likely that one of the people here is a murderer. For now, each one of them is a suspect. “I’d better caution all of them,” she says to Lachlan. “To be safe.”

  Sorensen’s first interview is with the hotel owner, James Harwood. She calls him into the dining room, where she has set up an interview table. Some of the warmth from the kitchen filters through. It’s taking awhile for the heating to come back up. The shutters have been opened so that the room is filled with daylight. In the natural light, James looks terrible. She wonders how he will be able to go on without Bradley. He sits down in front of her. Beside her, Lachlan has his notebook out. She advises James of his rights, and he indicates that he is willing to proceed.

  She begins gently. “James, I’m so sorry about Bradley.”

  He nods, his lips firmly together in a deep frown, fighting back tears. She knows he’s no stranger to misfortune. His wife died of cancer some years back, and he’s raised Bradley these last few years on his own. He’s had his struggles with Bradley.

  She leans forward a little and says, “This might be difficult to talk about, James, but you know I’ve known you and Bradley for a long time.” He looks up at her with red-rimmed eyes. “You know I liked Bradley.”

  He nods. “You’ve been good to us,” he says, his voice a broken whisper.

  “So don’t take this the wrong way.”

  He hunches his shoulders warily, as if he knows what’s coming. Of course he knows what’s coming. She’s certain he’s had these same questions himself, especially since Bradley was killed.

  “Is there any way Bradley could have been involved with this—this situation?” She looks at him intently, with compassion.

  He looks back at her tearfully. He takes his time answering. “Bradley was a lot of things, but he would never be involved in something like this,” James says, his lips trembling. “He had his problems. You know that. You know what he was like. He was impulsive, he liked excitement—he thought he was invincible. Driving too fast, running with the wrong crowd. The drugs.” He sighs heavily. “He liked money, and what it could buy. He didn’t want to have to work too hard for it. And he didn’t always know when he was crossing the line. But he was a good kid.” His eyes flood with tears. “He wouldn’t do anything really bad,” James says.

  “James, I don’t mean to suggest that Bradley could have had a hand in these killings,” she says. “But perhaps he stuck his nose in, perhaps he knew something, something that got him killed.”

  “I’ve wondered that,” James says at last, exhaling heavily. “He had this look that I recognized, the look he had that time he got caught dealing drugs. Remember? He was always so cocky, but he knew when he was in over his head. That’s the way he looked after we found Candice’s body.” He shakes his head. “And I thought he looked tired, like he hadn’t slept that night, the night Dana went down the stairs.” He looks up at her. “What if he saw something? What if he saw who did it?”

  “Did you ask him about it?” Sorensen asks. James nods, tears running freely down his face now. He wipes them away. “What did he say?”

  “He said he was just freaked out about the murders, like everybody else.” He looks down. “I didn’t push it.”

  She puts her hand on his shoulder. “James, I doubt there was anything you could have done to make things turn out differently.”

  He sniffs loudly. “Maybe if I’d tried harder to talk to him. I should have. And now he’s dead!”

  She lets him cry, her hand resting on his shoulder. Finally, he wipes his eyes and blows his nose. He looks up at her and says, “Room 302, with the unmade bed.”

  “Yes?”

  “There’s no way that room was missed,” he says. “There’s no way it wasn’t made up properly after the last guest left. That has never happened before. And once you can talk to Susan, the housekeeper, I think you will find that she says the same thing.”

  “So what do you think?”

  “I don’t think there’s anyone in the hotel we don’t know about. I never did. I know this hotel like the back of my hand. If there was someone else here, I think I’d sense it somehow. Or Bradley certainly would have. And he was certain there was no one else here. Maybe he knew who the killer was.” He chokes back a sob. “I think that one of the guests is the killer, and whoever it is got into that room and messed it up to make us think there was someone else in the hotel. Bradley thought so too. He told me.” He looks at her harshly. “One of them killed my boy.”

  She’s already come to that conclusion herself.

  “Thank you, James.” She looks at him sympathetically as she stands up. “We’ll find out who did this.”

  She dismisses James and calls in David Paley next.

  “Ser
geant,” David Paley says courteously to her, as he takes the seat across from her and Officer Lachlan.

  “Can I get you anything? Water?” she asks.

  David shakes his head. “I’m fine.”

  She’s pretty certain he is the same David Paley who was charged and released a few years back in the murder of his wife. She remembers the case; it remains unsolved. She’s not going to ask him—yet.

  She has already had his brief account of what happened. Now, after cautioning him, she leads him through all of it again, each painful step, each awful detail.

  “Had you ever met Dana Hart or Candice White before this weekend?”

  “No, never.”

  “Ever heard of them?”

  He shakes his head. “No.”

  “Ever met anyone else who was here this weekend?”

  “No.”

  Finally she tilts her head at him and asks, “What do you do for a living?”

  “I’m an attorney.”

  So, it is him. “Who do you think committed the murders in this hotel?”

  He hesitates, and then says, “I don’t know.”

  She remains silent, waiting for him to continue.

  “The others—Beverly and Henry and Matthew, especially Henry—seemed convinced last night that it was Ian. They were looking at him as if they thought he was going to murder us all.” He rubs his eyes tiredly before going on. “Perhaps it was relief at finally having someone to blame. They desperately needed to know who it was and they thought they did.” He looks up at her. “In my experience, the human mind doesn’t like to deal with uncertainty.”

  He tells her, then, what he hadn’t told her before, the way they turned on Ian.

  “Jesus,” she says, imagining it.

  “They calmed down. I’ll never forget how relieved Ian looked.”

  “You may have saved his life.”

  “I don’t think it would have actually come to that.” He shrugs and looks up at her cynically. “But that’s me, protector and defender of the accused, no matter how heinous the crime.”