No One Will Hear You

by Matt Clemens

  A crime-scene tech in the bathroom was working with an electrostatic footprint lifter, while balding assistant coroner Devin Talbot sat at the shabby little writing desk on the far side of the room.

  “Working nights, Dink?” Amari asked cheerfully. “Who did you piss off?”

  “Nobody, if you can believe that.” He shrugged. “Couple people on vacation—we’re stretched thin.”

  “So I noticed. Got anything that might make my life easier?”

  “Not really,” Talbot said, rising to move to the bed. “Fewer wounds this time, but the first one is deeper, certainly fatal. This perp is strong.”

  “So,” Polk said, “he was less angry this time?”

  “Maybe,” Talbot granted. “More likely, he’s just getting better at it. Looks to me like he’s more confident than last time.”

  Amari asked, “What makes you say that?”

  “Last time there were secondary wounds we attributed to extreme rage.”

  “Yeah?”

  Bending over the body, Talbot said, “Maybe we were wrong. Maybe on that first one? He wasn’t sure he’d gotten the job done with that first blow, and kept at it. This time, well, his first try was the kill shot.”

  “If it’s not about anger,” Polk asked, “what is it about?”

  “Not saying anger doesn’t enter in,” Talbot said. “But this kill is also about control … control and power—over both the victims and himself.”

  “Control,” Polk said, like he was tasting the word.

  “Over life and death,” Talbot said. “Whether the victim lives is the killer’s choice. But this is also about … shall we call him Billy Shears?”

  Amari sighed. “Why not? Everybody else is.”

  “Well, this is about Billy Shears and how he sees himself. This time, when he took his trophy of the victim’s genitalia, the cut was more assured, more controlled.”

  Having a peek under the sheet, a grimacing Polk said, softly, “It was more jagged last time.”

  “Right,” the coroner’s man said. “Billy hesitated a couple of times. Not this time—we’re talking one smooth stroke. Like a tree surgeon cutting off a leafy branch.”

  Polk shuddered again and let the sheet down.

  Talbot was saying: “Billy waited longer this time, too, before trophy time. Less blood. Your boy’s getting better at his job.”

  “A fast learner,” Amari said with quiet disgust. She sniffed, turning her head as she did so. “Smells like smoke again, too.”

  The crime-scene tech emerged from the bathroom—Glenn Madlin, an old vet Amari knew well, tall, thin, silver-haired, nearing retirement.

  “Smells like more than one cigarette,” Madlin said in his unemotional tenor, “judging from the bathroom.”

  “Hi, Glenn,” Amari said. “He flush them?”

  “Hi, Anna. Seems to be the case. No fingerprints on anything, and the only footprints are from shoe-covered booties.”

  “So,” Polk said, with an awful sigh and a worse smile, “we got nothin’ again?”

  “Nothing on my end,” Madlin admitted.

  Amari asked, “What say you, Dink?”

  “Nothing yet,” Talbot said. “Maybe another hair’ll turn up. When I get back, I’ll run the prints and do a tox screen. My guess is Mr. Shears roofied this one, too. Who knows, maybe we can at least ID the poor bastard.”

  “Shit,” Polk said. “Nothing?”

  He was asking the coroner’s man, but Amari answered.

  “Something,” she said. “We have at least four video cameras. One had to catch something—I don’t care how careful Billy Boy was.”

  Lee had been lurking around the doorway. Now he stepped in deeper … and he looked sick. “Umm, guys—there isn’t any video.”

  Amari blurted an f-bomb, then calmed herself. “Sergeant, how is that possible? I saw four cameras.”

  “Seven,” Lee said with a shrug, “if you count the ones outside—it’s just … the system was installed when the hotel was still part of the Ramada chain. When the main tape deck … it’s tape, not DVD … busted, about six months ago? The Olmstads didn’t spend the money to fix it.”

  Amari glared at the sergeant. “And you saved this sweet tidbit for me till now why?”

  “It slipped my mind. You didn’t ask and … sorry, Lieutenant.”

  She raised a hand to silence any further apology.

  “They’re waiting in the office, just off the front desk.”

  To the coroner’s assistant, Amari said, “Call me when you’ve got something, Dink.” “Will do.”

  In the corridor, Amari accessed the geography—the victim’s room was near the end of the hall. A doorway to the stairs down to the parking lot was nearby. She stuck her head back in the room.

  Madlin and Talbot both looked up.

  Amari said, “Glenn, make sure you dust this exit door, will you? My guess is the killer used it.”

  “You got it, Anna.”

  Madlin was not one of those techs who got irritated when you told them how to do their jobs. Not that either Amari or Madlin expected Billy Shears to leave his prints behind….

  “These cameras being defunct,” she said, pointing at one, as they headed back down the corridor, Sergeant Lee bringing up the rear. “That might tell us something.”

  Polk smirked. “That we are unlucky as hell?”

  “No. That Billy Shears does his homework….”

  Soon Amari and Polk—leaving Lee behind—joined the motel owners in the small, cluttered office off the desk.

  Mr. Olmstad was paunchy but in decent enough shape for his age, his hair barely graying. He must have been working the desk, because he was in a navy blazer with what Amari guessed was a yellow turtleneck dickey.

  In a yellow blouse and navy slacks, Mrs. Olmstad was thin, her shortish hair bottle blonde, bifocals on a black cord around her neck. She was dabbing at red eyes with a tissue, sitting at the metal desk in the small space, her husband towering behind her.

  “I know this was very unpleasant for you,” Amari said.

  Mrs. Olmstad nodded. “We’ve had deaths here before. All hotels do. But this … this….”

  “The guest who was killed—was it Al Roberts?”

  “Who?” Mr. Olmstad asked.

  “Al Roberts is the name on your guest register. Of the man who checked in.”

  Olmstad gave a facial shrug, but his wife said, “No, that was not Mr. Roberts. Mr. Roberts I checked in on Wednesday afternoon. His room is paid for through tomorrow morning.”

  Amari nodded. “How did he pay?”

  “Cash,” Mrs. Olmstad said.

  “No credit card for incidentals?”

  “No. He paid for two nights.”

  “Don’t you usually insist on a credit card for incidentals?”

  “We don’t have room service.”

  “Couldn’t you get nicked on long-distance calls?”

  “Yes, but, uh …”

  “But what, Mrs. Olmstad?”

  “He gave me one hundred dollars on deposit. Said he wasn’t planning on making any long-distance calls, and I could keep the deposit, either way.”

  Polk asked, “What did he look like?”

  “Not too tall. Kind of heavyset, and you might call him handsome, only he had a scar on his left cheek. Ugly one, too. First thing you saw about him.”

  Amari asked, “Could you describe the scar?”

  “Long … jagged. Ran clear from his eyebrow almost all the way to his chin.”

  “Eye color?”

  “Brown, I believe.” She closed her eyes momentarily. “Yes, brown.”

  “Hair?”

  “Brown. Kinda on the long side, but well groomed.”

  This sounded nothing like guy who’d checked into the Star Struck.

  “Do you think you could describe the man who checked in to one of our forensic artists?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Now, about the security cameras …”

 
; Mr. Olmstad jumped in. “I am so sorry about that. We never thought we’d need them here. We just never have any problems.”

  Amari couldn’t help herself—she gave the man an arched eyebrow.

  And he said, “Well … till this awful thing happened. We’re the kind of place you go when you forgot to make a reservation, or your hotel loses your reservation, or … frankly … if you meet somebody you want to spend a few hours with.”

  “The cameras been down for six months?”

  “Yes, ma’am, more or less.”

  “Who might know they were broken?”

  “Chiefly, just the staff. That’s me, the wife, and three part-time desk clerks and four maids.”

  “We’ll need their names and contact information.”

  “Oh my,” Mrs. Olmstad said, fingertips touching her thin lips. “I can’t think any of our help would be involved with anything like this. … They’re all so reliable. A few may not have their green cards. Will that be a problem?”

  Polk said, “We’re not Immigration.”

  Amari said, “Mr. Olmstad, could you tell me one thing—and I promise it won’t get you in trouble. You admitted this is the kind of hotel where couples can go to spend a few hours together.”

  He shrugged uncomfortably.

  “Did you ever have a guest ask about the cameras? Whether they worked? Maybe how long the tapes were kept before they were disposed of, or reused?”

  “Well … sometimes guests say something in a kind of joking way. Guy checking in with a girl … or even a guy checking in with … a guy. Might kid me, and say something like, ‘I don’t have to worry about these cameras, do I?’ “

  “Oh-kay,” Amari said. “And what might you say?”

  “I might … I guess I maybe might kid ‘em back.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah, I might say … don’t worry about those cameras. They been busted a long time.”

  Amari and Polk traded tortured glances.

  “But,” Amari said to Olmstad, “you wouldn’t know who any of those guests would be?”

  “Sorry. No. Well, there’s probably some named ‘John Smith,’ that kind of thing. But as far as our staff, I’ve got a list out front that we can photocopy for you.”

  “Oh,” Polk said innocently, “your photocopy machine works?”

  “Oh yes.”

  “That’s nice.”

  Amari gave her partner a look, but she could hardly blame him for the dig, not that either of the Olmstads picked up on it.

  “That staff list will be helpful,” Amari told the couple pleasantly. “We need to rule them out as suspects and see if any might’ve mentioned the broken cameras to anybody who innocently passed that information along.”

  Soon Olmstad was handing Amari a photocopy of the single-page list, which she folded and slipped into a pocket of her Windbreaker.

  “Thank you,” Amari said. Then to both: “Can you think of anybody not staff who might know the cameras were out of commission?”

  “We don’t advertise that they’re not functioning,” Mr. Olmstad said, as if joking with guests about it didn’t qualify. “We figured if no one knew they were busted, the things’d still work as a, you know, deterrent.”

  “All due respect, sir? You might want to reconsider that policy.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  With her pale complexion and skinny frame, Jenny Blake might be taken for an anemic. But there was nothing anemic about her—as a teen, she’d engaged child molesters online. Then when they showed up at her foster parents’ house, she would call the cops. She’d done this on her own, and after a few times, law enforcement had stopped scolding her and hired her.

  So Harrow telling her to keep digging into the background of Wendi Erskine had been entirely unnecessary; she figured he probably knew as much, but bosses liked to give orders to make them feel they were in charge.

  Since facial recognition software had matched the victim’s face to DMV records, Jenny started there.

  Twenty-five-year-old Wendi Erskine had blonde hair, blue eyes, weighed one hundred eighteen pounds and owned a silver 2007 Honda CRX. She

  had a couple of parking tickets (paid), but no moving violations. Her address was in Pomona. She was an organ donor.

  There had been only one red flag, but it was very, very red….

  Harrow came through her open door. “Tell me what you’ve found.”

  She liked that, him assuming she’d found something. She gave him the DMV info.

  “Any employment?”

  Nodding, Jenny said, “Actress—a few indies, a little TV, quite a few infomercials.”

  “You don’t go to Julliard hoping to work in infomercials.”

  “I don’t have anything saying she went to Julliard—”

  “I just meant—little girls don’t dream of growing up and starring in a Juice Master spot.”

  “Probably not,” she admitted, “but Wendi was making better money at it than you’d think.”

  “Why, is that significant?”

  She hesitated.

  The straight line of his mouth curved faintly into a smile. “Okay, Jen—who’d you hack?”

  “Her money was in a small savings and loan in Pomona. Their security isn’t exactly … secure.”

  “So?”

  “So Wendi had a checking account with a little over two hundred dollars, a savings account with just under twelve thousand, and a Roth IRA she started last summer. Less than three thousand in that.”

  Looking thoughtful, Harrow leaned a palm on her desktop. “Wendi wasn’t rich, but she was doing pretty well for a kid only twenty-five.”

  “Yeah,” Jenny said with a few nods. “Plus, she’d been doing infomercials since she was eighteen, and the TV and independent film stuff I mentioned. And she didn’t spend much.”

  “Okay. What aren’t you telling me?”

  “The Roth is fine, but the other two accounts aren’t.”

  “What’s wrong with them?”

  “They’re empty.”

  “As in … somebody emptied them?”

  “Yup.”

  Harrow’s eyes narrowed. “Somebody was stealing from our victim. But was that part of why she was killed?”

  “Yes.”

  “You sound confident.”

  “She was murdered over the weekend and the accounts weren’t emptied until Monday morning.”

  Harrow’s eyes widened. “Holy … you’re saying Don Juan did it? He wiped her out?”

  “We have no evidence that says that,” she admitted. “Everything else does, though.”

  He half sat on the edge of her desk. “Okay, Jen. Now you’re going to tell me how he did it.”

  She was loving this. “Sure. Easy. He went online as Wendi, then just wire-transferred it all to an off-shore account. He had her passwords and everything.”

  “How the hell did he get her passwords?”

  “There are a couple of ways,” she said. “First, he could have sent her a Trojan horse e-mail that allowed him to capture her log-ons, keystrokes, basically everything that she did with her computer.”

  “Well, that’s scary. And second?”

  “He found a way to get her to give them up while he held her.”

  “That’s scarier.” Harrow thought for a few moments. “Of course, there were no signs of torture….”

  She said nothing. Harrow had emphasized the word “signs,” she knew, because there were lots of ways to inflict pain and instill fear that didn’t show.

  Harrow asked, “Can you trace the computer activity?”

  “This guy knows his stuff, boss. I followed the video he sent us through seventeen countries and fifty-two remailers, then the trail died. I’ll try. Gonna be tough, savvy as Don Juan seems.”

  “You’re saying you can’t do it?”

  She cocked her head and gave him a look. “You’re just trying to push my buttons now, aren’t you?”

  “Maybe. Let me know when you have something m
ore. Get some sleep, though—tomorrow is show day, remember.”

  “Watch me sparkle,” she said deadpan.

  They both knew she’d likely work most of the night.

  From the doorway, he said, “One other thing?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Would you please get a visitor’s chair? Guy my age likes to take a load off, now and then.”

  “We’ll see.”

  Jenny got back to it. Hacking the credit union had been hard, even for someone with her skills. The off-shore account in the Caymans was maybe a hundred times worse, and after two more hours, she was barely any closer to her goal.

  A knock at the door frame made her jump, and she looked up to see Chris Anderson standing there in a pale yellow polo and chinos.

  “Sorry, Jen—didn’t mean to startle you.”

  “That’s okay. Kinda woke me up.” She rubbed her eyes, then stretched in her chair as he strolled in.

  “Gonna be much longer?”

  The bottom right of her computer screen told her it was just shy of midnight. Suddenly she realized her back ached, her eyes were sore, a dull headache was going, and here stood her cute chemist, in whose arms she could curl up …

  … when she got her work done.

  “A while,” she said at last. “You shouldn’t wait.”

  He came around the desk, gave her a quick, awkward hug, then a little kiss.

  “Get a room,” said a voice from the doorway.

  Anderson jerked away and Jenny backed up in her chair.

  Carmen Garcia came in, laughing gently, looking typically professional in a silk pale blue blouse and navy skirt.

  “Good Lord,” she said, “but are you two jumpy.”

  An embarrassed Anderson was heading for the door. “Night, Carmen. Jenny. See y’all in the morning.”

  The California sun had baked most of Anderson’s southern drawl out, but it still turned up now and then. Usually that made Jenny smile. Right now she was giving Carmen a dirty look.

  Carmen caught it, and called after Chris, “Hey! Don’t go away mad! Chris….”

  From the hall, he gave them both his shy grin. “No, really, girls, I should go. Jenny here’s got work to do.”

  And he was vapor.

  Carmen made an “jeesh” face and said to Jen, “I’m sorry, honey. Spoiled things, huh? Boy, is he touchy.”