by L. T. Ryan
“What kind of backlash do you expect?” Bear said.
I shrugged. “Nothing we can’t handle. And if he doesn’t know where we are, he can’t send anyone to apprehend us. Not like he has people he can use right now. He can’t utilize anyone in his own department, and no other agency is going to go out of their way to help him with this situation looming over his head. Leaves him with contractors or guys like us. And as far as I know, we’re the only guys like us left for him to reach out to.”
We exited the highway and found a car rental store. Bear dropped the Audi off in a nearby parking lot while I settled for a much lesser vehicle. We were in for a crowded ride the rest of the way to Amsterdam.
Bear met me out front. “You gotta be kidding. How are we gonna fit in that thing?” The look of disgust on his face at the small blue car matched the face he made the first time I introduced him to Frank Skinner.
“We’ve done worse,” I said. “Plus, parking will be a lot easier. You see anywhere we can get a couple phones?”
“Yeah, near where I ditched the car.”
The vehicle grumbled under our combined weight. It grated against a speed bump at the edge of the parking lot.
“I don’t think this jalopy is getting us to Amsterdam,” Bear said as we pulled up to the little store.
Inside we grabbed three phones and several SIM cards. We each took a phone for direct communication and to reach out to any old friends who might be able to provide assistance. The third burner would be used to contact Frank. The extra SIM cards were to keep Frank from tracking us.
Bear grabbed a couple packs of beef jerky. I filled up on coffee. We got back on the road. The little car barely moved past seventy-five kilometers per hour. Still, the drive into the city took less time than I expected. The vehicle weaved through traffic effortlessly. The guy at the counter had said it was better than a Beemer. I wouldn’t know. Not my preference.
“How do people read these street names?” Bear said. He navigated from a paper map we picked up at the store. Figured it was better that way from now on. Leave no trail for Frank to follow. “I mean, what the hell is wrong with calling it Main Street?”
“I’m sure they say the same thing in the States, big man.”
He managed to wade through the street names and directed us to the hotel. We parked two blocks to the south.
The sun shone down from directly above. The alley smelled of fish. The buildings blocked any semblance of breeze, stifling the smell and effectively raising the temperature. I removed my jacket, draped it over my arm. Bear did the same. The average temperature of the country in the summer was only in the low sixties Fahrenheit. Right now it felt every bit of eighty.
We approached the hotel from the east. The breeze finally found us. The sweat on my forehead evaporated. The hotel looked like it had been built a century or two ago. Its gothic design was unlike the surrounding buildings. A relic, I figured. We approached the entrance. A doorman waited in front. He kept his gloved hand out to the side, ready to open the door for the next patron.
“I’m going straight for the elevator,” I said. “Any one tries to stop us, you deal with them.”
The rectangular lobby was half as wide as it was long. The place smelled like lemon-scented industrial cleaner. The carpet was red and blue with an elaborate design.
There were employees and travelers scattered about the lobby. They stood behind the counter, fake smiles plastered across their faces. Or they sat in ornate chairs, carrying on conversations about their plans for the day. One of the women behind the counter spoke to us. Bear turned to deal with her as I continued on. The elevator doors parted and waited for me. I got on alone, pressed the button for the eighth floor.
Bear turned away from the counter, gave me a slight nod. I saw him head for the stairwell as the doors slid shut.
The old elevator creaked and groaned up the shaft. It wasn’t a smooth ride. Felt like I was moving in six-inch bursts. It was a straight shot to the eighth floor. The doors opened, revealing Victorian-style wallpaper and clashing carpet. It was bad enough to make a drunk man stumble while standing still.
Hell, I was sober and started to get the spins.
I stepped out of the elevator, took note of the room numbers and gathered my bearings. A vacuum ran in one of the rooms. A couple of women spoke in Spanish. I pulled my pistol out and slid my jacket over my hand to conceal it. The room was to the right. I started toward it.
I counted the numbers of the rooms ahead. The one I wanted was halfway down. Right before I reached it the stairwell exit door swung open. I tensed and placed free my hand over the jacket, ready to pull it back and let loose with the pistol.
Bear stepped into the corridor. Judging by the way he held his jacket, he had the same idea as me.
I waited for him to saunter down the hall and we stopped in front of the room together.
“Shit,” Bear said, reaching out and pushing open the slightly ajar door.
CHAPTER 16
Bear signaled with his hand. I waited while he leaned back against the wall, stretched his arm out, and opened the door. Chilled air seeped into the hallway. I silently counted three beats, then whipped around the corner with my pistol extended.
The woman standing there dropped the items she was holding as she threw her hands in the air.
“Don’t move,” I said, advancing toward her. At the end of the short foyer I stopped and checked around the corner.
“Please,” she said with a heavy Spanish accent. “I don’t want to die.”
“Where is she?” I asked the short woman.
She shook her head. Tears streamed down her cheeks. “Who?”
“The blonde woman.” I gestured toward the bathroom. “In there?”
“What?” Her hands were shaking. She shifted from foot to foot as though she had to urinate and was trying to keep it in. Her dark skin dampened with sweat. I thought she might pass out soon. “I’m only the maid. There’s no one else here.”
“Jesus,” Bear said from behind me.
I echoed the sentiment.
“You can put your hands down,” I said. “When did she leave?”
“Who?” the woman said, lowering her arms and rubbing her hands and wrists as though I’d cuffed her.
I pulled out the little plastic case I’d stored the memory cards in and inserted one into the burner phone. I found a picture of Katrine and showed it to the maid. She leaned in close, placing her clammy hand on mine. I fought the urge to pull away as I watched her face for signs of recognition. She shook her head, pursed her lips together. There were no tells that made it obvious she knew Ahlberg.
“I don’t think I’ve seen her before,” the maid said, looking up at me.
I studied her for a second. She was lying. Her pupils were dilated.
“It’s in your best interest to be truthful with me,” I said. “We know she was here. We know she stayed in this room. I know you saw her.”
She looked away. The steel facade faded by the second. “I can’t lose my job. I can’t.”
“No one’s going to lose their job here.”
“I will,” she said. “I’m not supposed to reveal any information about our guests.”
“It’s OK,” I said. “We’re investigators. The woman that was here might be in danger. We need to find her before someone else does. Someone very bad. The kind of person you don’t want to run into. Now I need you to tell me when she left.”
The maid fell back onto the bed. It squeaked as she sank into the mattress. Her gaze drifted to the window, which offered a view of the side of another building.
“They left yesterday afternoon,” she said. “It was well after checkout time, and it didn’t appear they were checking out. They, or their stuff, should have been here this morning. But it was all gone. And so were they.”
“They?” I said. “Who else was with her? And what time is well after checkout?”
“The other woman,” she said. “The dark-haire
d one. And I guess it was around four in the afternoon.”
I stepped into the hallway and spotted cameras at each end of the corridor, as well as positioned in front of the elevators. It had been roughly eighteen hours since Ahlberg left. If the hotel used a modern security system, footage from yesterday might still remain on the hard drive.
“I need your help with something,” I said.
“What?” she said.
“I need to get to whatever room they keep the security footage.”
She shook her head, again trying to look resolute in her defiance toward me. But the way she rubbed her fingers non-stop gave her feelings away. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I walked up to her and knelt a few feet away, putting us eye to eye. “We’ve already established that I can tell when you’re lying.”
She glanced down at the floor, back at me. “I told you, I can’t lose my job. I’ve got three kids and my husband passed away just two months ago. This is all I have. If I lose this, I don’t know what will happen to us.”
I glanced back and nodded at Bear. He reached into his pocket, pulled out his wallet and produced a thick wad of cash.
“Just give us the key to the security room and tell me where to go,” I said. “No one will ever know.”
She accepted the money and handed over a key ring that she held by a single key. I had feared that the security footage was in the manager’s office behind the main counter. Instead, there was a room in the basement.
I pulled out my phone and snapped a picture of the woman. I kept it up for a few seconds as I acted like I was sending it. “There’s two men downstairs. If they see your face, you will not go home to your kids tonight. If they see the front desk take a call that results in them contacting security, you will not go home to your kids tonight.”
The tears returned and slipped down her cheeks following the dried pathways from minutes ago.
“Understand?” I said.
She nodded. “I’ll keep quiet.”
We left the maid behind and took the elevator down to the basement level. In retrospect, we’d have been better off using the stairs.
“Maybe we should ask the people at the counter,” Bear said. “They might know where Ahlberg was traveling next.”
“They won’t say,” I said. “And they’ve got less to lose. Even if they know, they’re not going to be as easy to overcome. Not like we can go in there, guns out, demanding they tell us. Let’s check out this security system and see what we can find.”
The doors opened, but instead of a dim basement, we looked out on the lobby. There was nobody there. They must’ve grown tired of waiting and took the stairs. The lobby looked exactly as we had left it, except for the two police officers at the counter.
“Dammit,” Bear said, shifting toward the front corner of the lift. “We should’ve brought her with us.”
The door remained open for what felt like ten minutes. I homed in on the cops. One held a photo out for the staff behind the counter. It was large enough to make out the image.
“They’re not here for us.” I put my hand on Bear’s back and urged him forward. “Go up there to get us a couple rooms and see what you can figure out.”
He stepped out, though he didn’t seem to want to. Turning, he said, “Jack?” as the doors closed.
They weren’t there for us. No, my gut said they were looking for the same woman we were.
CHAPTER 17
I stepped into the dimly-lit basement. The yellow hue cast from the overhead fluorescents made the walls look as though they were stained with urine. If the hotel wasn’t so nice, I’d have been sure of it. My eyes adjusted with every step forward. The marks on the wall were old glue from where wallpaper had once been hung. I wondered if they housed people down here at one point in time.
Unevenly-spaced doors lined the narrow corridor. They were marked sequentially, odds on the right, evens on the left. I kept going until I reached number 12. I slid the key into the lock and turned. The bolt slid with a slight click. I pushed the door open and stepped through. The room hummed with electricity. It was ten degrees hotter, and a hundred times brighter. There were twenty-four monitors on the wall. Two for each floor, and four connected to the cameras located at each corner of the lobby. Each screen displayed a continuous feed. The only thing missing were the elevator cameras, but I figured there had to be a way to manipulate the system so they would display.
My guess that the system was hard drive-based was correct. There wasn’t any film to worry about. Our chances of seeing Ahlberg leave the hotel increased.
I pulled the plastic container from my pocket and grabbed the other two memory cards. There were multiple computer systems on and underneath a large desk. A yellow-and-black-handled screwdriver was the only other thing on the surface. I had to find which had the footage for the eighth floor and one of the lobby cameras, preferably the one aimed at the elevator.
I started with the monitors and traced their cables back to individual computers. While doing that, I watched the check-in counter. The two police officers remained in the same spot. Bear stood a few feet away from them. He had the attention of one of the employees, but I knew he was listening in on the cops’ conversation as best he could. Problem was, unless he’d taken some courses I didn’t know about, Bear did not speak Dutch.
I slipped the memory card into the PC tower connected to the eighth monitor. It took a couple minutes to navigate the file system, which was labeled in English. I copied the contents to the memory card.
Before I could retrieve it, the door opened.
The tall, narrow man said something in Dutch. I couldn’t make it out. Had a good idea what he’d asked though.
“I’m a technician,” I said. “The security company sent me out. Said you might have a faulty hard drive.”
He switched to English. “No one told me about this.”
“And you are?” I rose and took two steps toward him. We were about the same height, but I was twice as wide.
He stepped back to the safety of the doorway. “One of the managers here.”
“Well, I’m surprised they didn’t let you know. They booked me over a week ago. I just flew in from Florida. Came straight here.”
“Wait here,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”
The door fell shut. I heard the lock click into place. I pulled the card from the reader and turned back to the monitors. The manager exited the elevator and crossed the lobby. He walked past Bear and stopped next to the cops.
Bear turned toward the elevators, looked up at the camera and made a quick gesture with his head that said “get out.”
The footage I’d retrieved from the eighth floor camera would have to suffice. Hopefully the drive was large enough to have all of yesterday’s events. We might get lucky and wind up with multiple shots of Ahlberg and the other woman.
I secured the memory card and went to the door. It didn’t budge. Worse, the only way to unlock it from the inside was a magnetic card reader mounted to the wall.
I turned toward the monitors. The manager crossed the lobby with the police officers in tow. Bear walked to the middle of the lobby and stopped there. What was he doing? He reached into his pocket, pulled out his phone. A second later, mine rang.
“I see them,” I said.
“They’re heading down,” he said. “They’re waiting at the elevator now. Want me to do something?”
“I don’t want you getting into trouble over this,” I said.
“I’ll fake a heart attack,” he said.
“You’re armed. It won’t work.”
“Bull.” He smiled at me through the camera. “Watch this.”
The line went dead. Bear shoved the phone in his front pocket. He balled up his jacket and tossed it behind a potted plant. Then he took a few steps toward the elevator, stopped, grabbed his chest, and appeared to call out. The manager tossed a quick glance back and stepped into the open elevator. The cops, however, turned t
oward the large man writhing on the floor in agony. The manager stuck one foot out, waved for the officers to join him. They ignored the thin man. Annoyed, the manager exited the elevator and crossed the room to see what the fuss was about. He stood over Bear, wrapped his bony fingers around the back of his head. I couldn’t tell what he was saying, but figured it had something to do with me.
“Can’t believe you pulled that off,” I said to Bear through the monitor.
He’d bought me time. Now I had to find a way out. There was no way the room was closed off completely. I rapped my knuckles against the walls. The thick thud in return told me that the walls were solid. I didn’t see a closet. There was no window.
I grabbed the door knob and yanked. It barely budged. I reached for the back of my head and yanked on a fistful of hair. I stared straight up.
“There we have it.”
Drop tile ceilings.
I climbed up on the desk near the edge and pushed one of the tiles up and tossed it over. I reached through and found that the wall did not continue past the ceiling. I gripped it and pulled myself up so that I balanced on my waist. The ceiling on the opposite side felt the same. I lifted another panel. The next room over was dark. I used the light on my phone to get a better look at the space. There was an old desk. Nothing else. I aimed the light at the door. There was no card reader mounted to the wall.
I lowered myself into the security room. On the monitor Bear was standing in the middle of the lobby. A crowd gathered around him. The manager and cops were nowhere in sight. Bear grimaced as he watched the elevator doors close. They would be at the door in thirty seconds, tops.
In an ideal scenario, I’d crash their system, erasing the hard drives. I didn’t have the time or the know-how to do that. So I unplugged every tower and jammed the screwdriver into the back of each one. I had no idea if that would make a difference.
The room turned a deep blue as feeds cut off and the monitors went to their factory display.