Cold Snap

by Allison Brennan

  “But you said there were nine.”

  “At least nine.”

  “That’s a crime of passion.”

  “You could call it that.”

  “Meaning overkill. The killer stabbed the victim repeatedly even after he or she was dead.”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  Lucy stepped into the bathroom. The sink was tinged with red, and there were streaks of blood on the counter, mirror, and floor. “The killer washed up in here,” she said.

  “There’s also something else,” Kate said. “Something missing.”

  Lucy looked around and saw what Kate saw—or didn’t see. “No towels.”

  They left the hotel room and stood outside the door. Kate called security and asked for a guard to meet up with them. She didn’t want to leave the room unattended.

  She then asked Lucy, “Theories?”

  Lucy frowned. She didn’t like to speculate. She preferred more information before formulating an opinion, though she had a theory. “The victim died quickly, but it was more violent than it needed to be. If theft was the motive, the killer would have stopped after the victim was incapacitated.”

  “But there’s nothing personal in the room, which suggests that the victim might have been robbed.”

  Lucy considered. “What about if it was a guest who had already checked out? Put their luggage with the valet because they had to wait for a plane?”

  Kate snapped her fingers. “Brilliant.” She pulled out her phone again. “Decker? Call the concierge and get a list of all guests who have luggage in storage. Let me know when it’s ready.”

  Kate grinned and turned back to Lucy. “I’m beginning to like that kid. I need a minion.”

  Lucy almost laughed. “Yeah, you do.” She looked around the hall. “Now the big question is, how did the killer move the body?”

  “Laundry cart. Easiest way to get it out unseen.”

  “Then are you thinking that a staff member is the killer?”

  “They’d have a master key. A staff member could also be a victim.” Kate considered. “What if two staff members are having an affair and using empty rooms to get it on, but this time something happened. Girl threatens to leave guy, guy kills her. Girl finds out guy is married and attacks.”

  “But this murder was premeditated,” Lucy said. “A knife that size isn’t going to be lying around.”

  “Except in the hotel kitchen.”

  “Good point.”

  “Okay, I’m going to talk to the manager and tell her to keep this all under her cap, though it might be too late for that. If it’s a staff member, they may already know what we know, so everything else is going to stay between you, me, and Harris.”

  “When he gets here.”

  “Hey, maybe we’ll have the case solved before he arrives.”

  Two security guards got off the elevator and Kate instructed them to not let anyone in the room until she returned with Detective Harris. Then she and Lucy walked to their room.

  Kate pulled her phone from her pocket. “Dillon’s calling.” To Dillon she said, “Did Sean fill you in? Lucy and I are—” She stopped talking and her face turned even more serious. “Okay, we’re coming.” She closed the phone. “We have another body.”

  “Another body?” Lucy asked, her eyebrows raised. “Maybe it’s our missing victim?”

  “No, this victim hasn’t been stabbed. But it’s suspicious.”

  “How so?”

  “A woman was found dead in the hot tub.”

  “And we’re checking this out because?” Lucy questioned.

  Kate shrugged. “We don’t have anything else to do while we’re stranded here. We might as well help the local police until they can take charge. It’s like that game Clue. Here”—she gestured toward the bloody room—“we know that someone was killed with a knife in the bedroom. And in the hot tub. We have the person and place, but not the how.”

  “Dillon didn’t say that the woman in the hot tub was murdered,” Lucy said.

  “No, but crime scene with no body and body with no crime scene? Makes me suspicious.”

  Me, too.

  “We’re a pair, aren’t we?”

  Kate grinned. “Yep. This could be the last time we work together. So, let’s solve the case before Denver PD arrives.”

  CHAPTER 19

  The indoor pool and connecting hot tub faced a wall of windows that, on a clear day, would have framed the Rocky Mountains. Now, all they could see was a sheet of white, glowing from external security lights. Guests were crowding the door, some obviously having been in the gym working out, others not dressed to exercise but here as spectators.

  Lucy loved how Kate seized immediate command of every situation. She told the guests to give their names to the security officer at the door, including their room numbers, and then leave.

  When no one moved, she pulled out her badge and said forcefully, “Now, people, or I’ll have security detain you in the manager’s office.”

  They moved. Kate was one of the most confident women Lucy knew, and she always learned something when they worked together.

  Lucy whispered, “You should go back into the field.”

  Kate gave her an odd look that made Lucy think that she was either surprised at the comment, or had been thinking about it herself. Lucy hoped the latter was the case, because while Kate was an asset teaching at Quantico, she truly thrived as a field agent. Lucy hadn’t realized that Kate didn’t enjoy teaching until after Lucy had her as an instructor at Quantico.

  Investigating was Kate’s first love.

  Kate said to Lucy, “Go do your thing.”

  “Thing?”

  “You’ve seen a lot more dead bodies than I have. Tell me if this is a natural death, or if someone killed the blonde. If it’s not a murder, I can go back to our crime scene upstairs.”

  “It might not be that simple.”

  While security processed everyone who had been in the adjoining gym, Lucy and Kate walked into the pool area. Lucy’s brother Dillon, a forensic psychiatrist, was standing to one side talking to a petite gray-haired woman in a conservative business suit. A female wearing a one-piece black swimsuit was lying faceup next to the Jacuzzi, her skin red and slightly bloated. She was obviously dead.

  Lucy approached the hot tub. Dillon introduced them. “Lucy, this is Abby Granger, the assistant manager. She’s also certified in first aid and CPR. Security contacted her when the call came in.”

  Abby’s short gray hair and wrinkled hands suggested she was in her fifties, but her face was smooth with a peaches-and-cream complexion.

  “Two guests found her and pulled her out,” Abby said, “but she was dead by the time I got here.”

  “Did the guest try to revive her?”

  “Yes, but the gentleman said she wasn’t breathing when he pulled her out.”

  “Where are they now?”

  “It was a husband and wife, they’re in Lynn’s office. The manager.”

  That was going to be a crowded room. “No one saw what happened?” Lucy asked.

  “No one was here when the couple arrived. The pool closes at eleven, they came in ten minutes to. The hotel card key should confirm the time.”

  Lucy looked over the body. The reddened skin and slight bloating suggested she’d been in the water, dead, for a while, but Lucy couldn’t till if it was an hour, more or less.

  Abby said, “She looks like she’s been submerged for hours, but I think it’s because of the heat of the hot tub.”

  “It is. See, her palms and the soles of her feet are already showing signs of maceration.”

  “Dear Lord, how long was she dead?”

  “I can’t say with certainty, I haven’t recovered a body from water this warm before. And we don’t know how long she was in the water before she died. In temperate water, like a lake in summer, it can be seen in an hour or two. In cold water and in winter, it can take a few days. So I’d say she wasn’t in there for longer than an hour.�
� But that was a guess.

  “One time we had two college kids who nearly drowned when they got drunk and started playing in the pool,” Abby said. “One hit his head and knocked himself out. Maybe she fell asleep?”

  Lucy barely heard her. She was staring at the distinct discoloration on the woman’s neck and shoulders.

  “No, I’m pretty sure she was held under.” Lucy’s eyes settled on Dillon. “This woman was murdered.”

  * * *

  Kate had Decker’s security team seal off the pool room while Lucy covered the body. “We need an ID on the victim,” Lucy said. “Did you find anything in the area? Her room key? A purse?”

  Abby shook her head. “I didn’t see anything when I came in.”

  “I looked when I arrived,” Dillon added, “and the only thing was a hotel towel.”

  “How’d she get into the spa?” Lucy asked. “You need a card key, correct?”

  Abby nodded. “Except a lot of people will come together. If she was with someone, she may not have needed her key. Or someone held the door for her.”

  Or the killer took her key for some reason.

  “No one can leave the hotel,” Abby said. “The roads are closed until morning, only emergency traffic.”

  Lucy understood what that meant, and by the fearful look on Abby’s face, so did she.

  “The killer may still be here,” Lucy said, trying to keep the staff calm, “but we still need to ID the victim. That may point to someone else. Can you get a water sample of the hot tub, and a reading on the temperature, then shut everything down? The steam is going to compromise evidence.”

  “Certainly. The maintenance staff should have test tubes and a thermometer.”

  “Go ahead, we’ll wait here until you return.”

  Abby left, and Kate started waving at Lucy.

  Dillon said, “You go with Kate, I’ll wait for Abby. Anything else?”

  “Take a couple pictures, as good as you can get of her face. We can show it to staff and hopefully get an ID on the victim. We also need to get the body moved to a drier, cooler area.”

  “I have an idea,” Dillon said. “I’ll talk to security.”

  Lucy left Dillon with the body and approached Kate, who was waiting by the door. She said, “Sean has something, let’s go to the security office.”

  They were alone in the elevator when Kate said, “I finally got through to Harris. He’s a year from retirement and has more experience in his little finger than the two of us together, but he’s never heard of anything like this. He doesn’t know Decker, but says the head of security is a retired cop from Denver PD and there’s never been any problems like this at the hotel. By Denver standards, it’s a smaller facility and on the high-end side.” She rolled her eyes as they stepped off the elevator. “I should have figured Sean would book us in a five-star hotel.”

  Sean was waiting for them and heard the last part of her comment. “Five-star hotel with a one-star security system,” he said. “Whole system is down. Someone intentionally disabled it, but it was far too easy to do, and because the system goes down regularly, no one thought it was a concern when the system shut down at eight o’clock tonight.”

  That was only thirty minutes before they’d arrived from the airport.

  “Do you know how? Are we looking for someone with technical skills?”

  He shrugged. “Maybe, but not required. Someone went into the server room in the basement and literally pulled the plug on the internal cameras. All the other security is working just fine, but the internal cameras—no.”

  “Can you get them back up?”

  “Of course,” Sean said as if it weren’t a question. “But it’ll take a little time. I have to shut down the whole system, plug everything back in, run a couple tests, then reboot.”

  “Then maybe we can see who pulled the plug,” Kate said.

  “No,” Sean said. “Someone destroyed the archive.”

  “What do you mean?” Lucy asked.

  Kate said, “The cameras feed into a hard drive to store digital data. If there’s a problem, security can retrieve anything that was seen by the cameras at a later date. So someone really is smart. As smart as you?” she teased Sean.

  “Hardly. More destructive. Literally destroyed the hard drive. No technical skill needed to whack the box with a hammer. However, the culprit left the hammer. I asked one of the security guys to bag it for the cops when they show up.”

  “How long until you can get the cameras back up?”

  “I’m working with their IT guy, we’ll have them up inside thirty minutes. But that’s the bad news.”

  “You actually have good news?” Kate asked.

  “I wouldn’t have called you for just that. I traced the company that rented the room. It’s an architectural design firm based in Chicago. They specialize in high-end residences. The owner is James St. Paul, born and raised outside Chicago. Thirty-two, won a bunch of awards.” He handed Kate a notepad. “His cell phone, home phone, secretary, associates. Plus, I took the liberty of running a quick background. There’s no sign of him leaving Chicago, but his business credit card was used at the airport three days ago, and for food here in the hotel. I could find out if he was on a flight—”

  “No,” Kate said. “You wouldn’t be able to legally. I’ll have Denver PD run it and see where he went. Good work.”

  Lucy said, “I don’t suppose you have a picture?”

  Sean smiled. “Of course I do.” He pulled a photo off a color printer in the security office. “There you go.”

  James St. Paul was blond and stunningly attractive—the kind of good looks that only get better with age, like Paul Newman’s. The picture was from his Web site.

  “Do you think there’s a connection between the bloody hotel room and our Jane Doe in the hot tub?” Sean asked.

  Kate and Lucy answered simultaneously, “Yes.”

  “Good to know you’re both on the same page.”

  Lucy said, “We have a better timeline now. All the cameras went off at eight. The blood is more than two hours dry, and it could have been there for four hours or longer, but not all day.”

  Kate said, “The manager is retrieving all access logs into the room.”

  “Why didn’t you just ask me?” Sean sat at a desk and ran a report. “Before the blood was discovered, the room was last accessed by a master key at eight-nineteen this evening. The key code sends a notation to the system every time the door is opened and by which key.”

  “What about St. Paul’s key?”

  “The last time it was used was today, early in the morning. He checked out at noon.”

  “Maybe he was able to get a flight out before they shut down,” Kate said. “This might have nothing to do with him, but a staff member who knew the room was vacant.”

  Lucy said, “Can you run all card keys that were used to access the gym from the time the computer system went down until the body was found?”

  “Yes, boss,” Sean said.

  “Are the master keys coded by staff member?” Kate asked.

  “Unfortunately, no.”

  Kate made a note. “I’m going to have Decker find out who is missing a master card.”

  “I think the million-dollar question that we’re all dying to know: where is the body?” Sean said.

  Kate said, “Security is searching the hotel top to bottom.”

  “Unless someone used the incinerator,” Sean said.

  “Aha! I thought of something before you.” Kate grinned and gave herself a point in the air. “I already looked into that possibility. The incinerator is in the basement and is separately monitored and regulated. The room is accessible only by a physical key, not a card key, which is in the possession of the head of maintenance and his assistant. Plus, it’s on a separate security system.”

  “Okay, you win that round.” Sean gave her a quick bow.

  “My guess is that the body is still in the laundry bin,” Kate said, more to herself than anyo
ne in the room. Lucy agreed, which meant it should be easy to find the victim. But so far, nothing.

  Sean handed Lucy a printout of everyone who’d accessed the gym during the time she specified. “You look a million miles away.”

  “I’m listening,” she said, and she was. But she was also thinking. “Why move the body? They made no attempt to clean up the crime scene, only to make the body disappear.”

  “Forensic evidence,” Kate said. “Maybe the victim fought back and there’s evidence on the body. Or they didn’t think the room was being used, and didn’t want the body to start stinking up the place.”

  “Or,” Lucy said, “they didn’t want the victim’s identity to be discovered. Maybe the identity of the victim points to the killer.”

  One of the security guards knocked on the door. “Agent Donovan?”

  “Here,” Kate said.

  “Chief Decker said you wanted the list of all the luggage being held by the concierge.” He handed her an envelope.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  When he left, she opened it. She scanned the list, then hit it with the back of her hand.

  “James St. Paul. His luggage is here.”

  “But he’s no longer a registered guest,” Lucy said.

  “The hotel is allowing guests who checked out but couldn’t get on their plane to stay in one of the ballrooms since the hotel is sold out,” Kate said. “They brought in cots and blankets. I’ll go to the ballroom and see if he’s there. Lucy, check out his luggage.”

  “Do we need a warrant?”

  “Not if it’s been abandoned.”

  Lucy wasn’t certain Kate was right, but she was more concerned about the safety of Mr. St. Paul than anything else. Kate walked out and Lucy said to Sean, “Can you find out, without hacking into any government agencies, if James St. Paul has any lawsuits, threats, restraining orders? I’d check both Colorado and Illinois.”