PJ stated emphatically, “Jack and I will go check. Sissy has been through enough trauma already. She doesn’t need to be confronted by a stranger at this point.”
Spencer replied, “Makes sense. I’ll take you.” Turning to Red, “Keep that camera up and call me on the radio if you see anything additional on the playback.”
With that, the three of us made our way back through the maze but rather than exiting into the casino we continued down another wide, brightly lit, corridor that took us past a large noisy kitchen ending at a doorway marked Service Elevator. Rather than the mirrored walls and polished silver and brass rails of the public elevators this one had walls heavily padded for the pounding of heavy service carts. Another notable difference was that it was about one-third the speed of the public elevators. It seemed like it took us forever to reach the fifteenth floor. When the doors finally opened on fifteen, Spencer again led the way.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
We walked the length of the corridor to a door marked Housekeeping. PJ spoke first, “Sissy, it’s Jack, Jeff Spencer, and PJ. You’re safe now. Please open the door.”
There was no sound from inside the closet. PJ again, “Sissy, It’s okay. It’s us. We’re here to protect you. No one is going to get to you again. Please open the door.”
Still no sound from inside. Spencer reached into his jacket pocket and retrieved a ring of keys. There were four keys and each had a different color rubber guard which I presumed was to distinguish them and to keep them from rattling as he walked. He looked toward PJ as he inserted and turned the red key in the lock of the linen closet. PJ speaking toward the door, “Sissy we’re opening the door. Don’t be afraid. It’s us.”
Spencer drew the door open with one smooth motion. The closet was immediately bathed in soft florescent light. I’m glad to know that hotels take the same insufficient approach to lighting their service areas that they do to lighting their guest rooms. The closet was larger than I had expected. It was more like a small room with shelves lining three sides. Stacks of linens were on the shelves on two walls and the shelves on the third had bins containing the little accessories that are found in a hotel room, from the bottles of body care products found in the bathroom to the signs on the desk that tell you how to connect to the internet. Pushed to the back portion of the floor space were two housekeeping carts. Sissy was nowhere in sight.
Spencer stepped from the doorway and called the Monitor Room on his radio. PJ stood to one side of the doorway looking up and down the corridor as if she was replaying everything we knew in her head to determine what we had missed. I wandered into the closet hoping to see something that would confirm that Sissy had at least been there. I looked around the walls of the room and up and down the shelves. I even looked at the ceiling to see if there was any type of opening in the ceiling through which she could have gone. There are openings in elevators why not linen closets. I found nothing.
Spencer finished talking on the radio and turned to PJ, “Monitor Room says they’re nearly through the playback of the corridor camera and they haven’t seen her leave.”
PJ wrinkled her brow in obvious concentration, “Any possibility that we’re in the wrong closet? That the camera identification is incorrect?”
Spencer looked up and down the corridor, “No chance in my mind, but let’s put that possibility to rest.” He withdrew his radio from his belt and spoke into it, “S1 to Monitor Room.” The radio answered, “Monitor Room to S1. Go ahead.” Spencer asked, “What camera do you see us in right now?” The reply from the radio, “H 15 east, sir.” Spencer again, “Monitor Room, what camera did you see the girl enter the linen closet?” Long pause before the radio answered, “Sir, H 15 east. The camera we’re viewing you in right now.” Spencer turned toward PJ and spoke into the radio, “So we are definitely in the closet you saw the girl enter.” Another pause, “Yes, sir. You’re definitely in the closet she entered. And sir, we have now finished the review of that camera. From the time she entered the closet until we see you arriving, she did not exit the closet.” Spencer, lost in thought, “S1 clear.” The radio, “Monitor Room clear.”
Spencer and PJ stood in the doorway looking at each other in puzzlement. I turned to face them, folded my arms across my chest, leaned my back against one of the housekeeping carts and stated the obvious, “How can that be?”
With my question came an immediate answer. The cart rolled forward from my weight a few inches deeper into the closet and I heard a distinct, though muffled, groan. I don’t know what startled me more, the cart’s rolling causing me to lose my balance, or the sound. I regained my balance and pulled the cart toward the front of the closet. Between the cart and the back corner of the closet was a pile of bed linens on what looked to be a pile of towels. The linens were folded and looked as if they had slid off the shelves immediately above. I worked my way between the two carts until I was behind the one I had moved. I reached down and picked up the piles of folded linens. The pile of towels was really a Pinnacle bathrobe with two small feet sticking out of it.
I kneeled down and placed my hand on the bathrobe, “Sissy, It’s Jack. You’re safe.”
The robe erupted and Sissy threw her arms around me and began to sob uncontrollably into the nape of my neck. We were rocking back and forth, Sissy was sobbing, and I was saying, “You’re safe now. You’re safe now. You’re safe now.”
PJ and Spencer had both crowded into the closet and were looking down at us. PJ spoke first, “Thank God we found you. You are safe now Sissy.”
Spencer turned to PJ, “Let’s get her out of here. Some place decent. Let me see if I can find a vacant room somewhere close by.” He stepped to the doorway and began speaking into his radio again.
Sissy’s sobs slowed and she withdrew her face from my neck looking up at me with red and swollen eyes, “You . . . you . . . can never leave me alone again Jack. Please. . . please . . . Jack never alone. Never. He was going to kill me.”
I put my hand behind her head and drew her toward me speaking directly into her ear, “I promise. You’ll never be alone again. I’ll be right here with you until this is all over. I promise Sissy. You can count on me.” I knew I meant every word I said, I just didn’t know if I could fulfill my promise knowing all too well that I am sometimes not the most reliable guy.
Spencer stepped back into the doorway and said, “I have a room right below here three floors on twelve. We can take the elevator or the stairs. What ever Sissy would prefer.”
I hugged Sissy tighter struggling to get both of us to our feet and said, “Come on Sissy, let’s get you somewhere comfortable.”
“I don’t want to stay in this hotel. I want to get out of here. Please Jack.”
“Sure Sissy. I understand, but first let’s get you somewhere that we can get you into some clothes.” I looked toward Spencer and PJ, “Maybe we can have someone get her suitcase and bring it to us?”
Spencer looked to PJ, “I’ll have it done in a heartbeat if it’s okay with you PJ.”
PJ held up her hand to Spencer in a signal of stop, “Sissy, when we get to the room I would like for you to tell me what happened. I know that it’s tough to go through it now but it’s really important for us to know exactly what happened so we can proceed with our investigation appropriately.”
I felt her body stiffen against me as Sissy jerked her head up from my chest and with fire in her red eyes screamed, “I’ll tell you what happened.” Her arm shot up from around my back and she pointed directly at Spencer, “One of his God damn so called security guards tried to rape and kill me. That’s what happened.” She stood there with iron in her spine and hate in her eyes.
For a second Spencer’s face looked as if someone had just slapped him. It was only a second and then his face returned to a neutral but compassionate expression. He said nothing. This guy must be one hell of a poker player. PJ replied to Sissy’s outburst, “Sissy we need to know the details of what happened so we can determine who it was that att
acked you. Let’s go to the room and you can tell me everything.”
There was no softening in the rigidity of her body but Sissy lowered her voice, “I can tell you who it was. It was a security guard.” She paused and then continued softly, “At least he said he was a security guard, and he looked like a security guard.”
PJ reached out and took hold of Sissy’s hand still pointed at Spencer, “Okay Sissy. Let’s get to the room and you can give me the details. The details are important.”
I felt Sissy’s body lose its rigidity and again sink into mine. She withdrew her hand from PJ’s grasp and returned it to my back. I thought she was going to start sobbing again but she just took in several deep breaths and said, “Okay. Let’s get out of this stupid closet.”
Spencer pulled the cart Sissy had been behind out into the corridor to make room for us to walk out of the closet. Sissy had cinched the robe tightly around her. She was walking along side of me, her head against my chest, with her arms wrapped around my waist.
We made our way to the elevator, I guess Spencer was not going to risk the ire of Sissy by asking again if she would prefer to take the stairs. We took the short ride to twelve and walked down the corridor to a room with a black clad officer standing in front of it. I felt Sissy stiffen when she saw the security officer. The officer handed Spencer two keycards and stepped aside. Spencer looked toward Sissy and back to the security officer, “John, why don’t you take a post down at the elevator lobby.” The officer nodded acknowledgement and walked away in the direction we had come.
We all entered the room. I walked Sissy across the room to the large overstuffed wingback chair in the far corner. She slumped into the chair and drew her legs up under her. I noticed how dirty the bottoms of her feet were. No doubt from the trips in the stair towers. PJ took a perch on the corner of the bed and said, “Jeff and Jack, how about you give us a few minutes.”
Sissy looked up at PJ. I couldn’t read Sissy’s expression. It was some combination of question and fear. She spoke, but without force, “Can’t Jack stay?”
“How about he waits out in the corridor. Just until we get a chance to go through what happened to you.” It dawned on me that PJ was concerned that Sissy had been sexually assaulted and that she wouldn’t want to talk about it in front of me. Until Sissy’s outburst upstairs I had never considered sexual assault. I felt an anger begin to well up inside me that I hadn’t felt in years. Not since my early days in the prosecutor’s office when I had handled several sexual assault cases. Those cases were the most stressful of my tenure as a prosecutor. At least they were the cases that brought out the most emotion in me. I could just never get past the view that these defendants were animals who deserved more vengeance than justice. Fortunately, I never handled many sexual assault cases, finding my calling in prosecuting criminal predators who killed other criminal predators.
I patted Sissy on the hand and said, “I’ll be right outside the door. It’s best if PJ talked with you alone. We want to do this right so when we catch this slime ball we can put him away. I’ll be right outside.” With that I walked toward the door behind Spencer.
“Right outside the door.” Sissy called to me.
“Right outside the door.” I responded.
As I was pulling the door closed, Spencer’s cell phone chirped. He answered, listened, asked a couple of questions, and snapped it closed. “Monitor Room has picked up a guy on the recording of a camera in one of the outer surface lots that looks a lot like our perp. Lighting is not good but it looks like him. If so, he was probably headed to his car. In the recording he seems to bump into another guy who was walking with a woman. Looks like they exchanged words. These people may remember him. We’ve put the description of this couple out. If we find them on the property maybe we can get lucky and confirm that it was him.”
I stated, “At least we’ll have a good idea that he left the property so Sissy is safe for the time being.”
“Better than that. We’ll have an approximate time and location. Only two exits from that parking area. We have license plate readers on both. We can pull the records of all plates leaving during the time frame we have him in the lot. We give the plate numbers to PJ and presto...maybe we get lucky and ID the asshole.”
I was surprised, “You record every license plate leaving the entire property?”
“Entering and leaving. Not that big a deal really. We have cameras set to capture and record the license plates as every vehicle enters and leaves the property. The cameras don’t catch the occupants or even much of the vehicle, just the plates. We just store the information for use as an investigative tool. Situations like this. Something happens on property and someone flees it can be very useful in identifying suspects.”
“Why record the ones that enter?”
“The system has a feature that allows us to enter a plate number that we want to be on the lookout for. You know computerized BOLO.”
I had to ask, “BOLO?”
Spencer replied, “Sorry, be on the lookout. Cop lingo.”
“Have you ever used that?”
Spencer scratched the top of his head, “Only once that I can recall. One of our blackjack dealers was being threatened by her ex-husband. Hollywood was taking it very seriously and gave us the plate number of his car. We entered it in the computer and sure enough one night the system caught him entering the property. Only took the Monitor Room thirty-seconds after the entry alarm to locate the vehicle with the cameras. They watched him park and advised Escapade PD who caught up with him just as he was entering the casino. Shook him down and took a loaded thirty-eight off of him. Also found a suicide note in his jacket pocket. Clearly prevented a murder suicide.”
I was impressed, “Score one for the good guys.”
“Sometimes things just work out.” Spencer turned in the direction of the elevators and continued, “I’m going down to the Monitor Room and check on things. I’m hoping we can locate the couple and they can describe the guy they bumped into. Confirm that he was our perp. John will be right down the hall. Do you want me to have a chair sent up here for you? Hard to tell how long PJ will be talking with Sissy.”
“Thanks. I’ll be fine. Do me good to stand up for awhile.”
“Okay. You’ve got my cell number if you need anything.” With that Spencer walked down the corridor and disappeared around the corner toward the elevators.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
I hadn’t looked at my watch in the beginning of my sentry in the hallway so I really didn’t know how long I had been there. Finally, the room door opened and PJ came out into the hall. She pulled the end of the security swing bar to the outside of the doorway so that the door wouldn't latch. I asked, “How’s Sissy doing?”
“She goes in waves. One minute she’s fairly composed and the next she’s nearly hysterical. I convinced her to take a hot shower. She’s in the shower now. They’re bringing her suitcase up. The crime scene techs have arrived and taken their pictures of the room on ten so there is no reason to hold her suitcase. It didn’t have any significance in the event.”
“What happened?”
PJ let out a deep sigh, “Pretty much like we surmised from the video. He came to the door and told her he was security and had a picture he needed her to look at. She opened the door and he was all over her. Said he was going to kill her but he was going to have some fun first. As he reached to unzip his pants she brained him with the lamp. She thinks she hit him a couple of times. Definitely his blood in the room. Sissy has no real physical injuries. She ran from the room and the security guys downstairs had it exactly right. She was hiding in the stairway when she heard him open the door so she fled down a couple of more floors and ran the length of the corridor to the other stairs and went up several floors. She didn’t even know what floor she was on. She came out of the stairway and saw the linen closet door closing as the housekeeper was pushing her cart away. She grabbed the closet door and slid inside. When she closed the door the light wen
t out so she felt her way around until she got to the back corner where you found her.”
“So she wasn’t sexually assaulted?”
PJ frowned, “I didn’t say that. She wasn’t penetrated, but he did grab her breast. Although, I think the motive was more brutality than sexual.”
“Son-of-a-bitch. We’ve got to get this bastard.”
Those penetrating green eyes locked on me, “Oh, we’ll get him. Don’t ever doubt that. We’ll get him.”
A security officer came walking down the hall carrying Sissy’s suitcase. I was so focused on my conversation with PJ that I had not heard the elevator chime. PJ reached out and took the suitcase from the officer. He nodded to us, “Ma’am, Sir.” He turned and left the way he had come.
PJ glared after the departing officer, “I hate it when they do that.”
I inquired innocently, “What, call me Sir?”
PJ replied with a low guttural voice that struck me as very sexy, “No. Call me Ma’am. It makes me feel old.”
Interesting. She projected the no nonsense exterior of a tough cop but had the soft interior of all women. “You certainly don’t look old. When I first met you I questioned the fact that you were old enough to be a cop at all. Much less a detective.”
“You’re so full of bullshit Jack.” With that she pushed the door open with her shoulder and carried the suitcase inside with her. The door closed and I was again standing my post in the empty corridor.
My conversation with PJ left me with a cocktail of emotions I was having a hard time aligning. On the one hand I felt rage from learning the details of Sissy’s attack. The logical side of my brain knew that it could’ve been so much worse. Sissy could be dead right now. Yet, even though she doesn’t have physical injuries she no doubt has psychological injuries. Who wouldn’t. That son-of-a-bitch, I’ll find him and cut his balls off. Then I’ll kill him. Then I’ll visit Muskof in prison and rip his heart right out of his chest. My God Jack. What has become of you? You are an Officer of the Court. You have sworn to uphold the law. Now you are casting justice aside for pure vengeance. Damn right I am!
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