Everybody Wanted Room 623

by Cecil Murphey

  “Please—indulge me.” He looked directly at Ollie. This time I sensed defiance in his hazel eyes as he stared unflinchingly into Ollie’s face. “If that sheet of paper still existed and I could find it and show it to you, what would you do with it?”

  “How would I know until I’d seen it?”

  “Give me the possibilities.”

  “If it was a confession or something incriminating, it would have to go into evidence.”

  “But if it was merely something personal? What would you do? I mean, what would you do after you’d read it?”

  “I don’t know. I suppose I’d give it back.”

  “One more question.” All the time his gaze never left Ollie’s face. He peered at the detective as if he were trying to read his thoughts. “If nothing on the page contained anything of importance to you or to my brother’s murder, would you return it?”

  “Probably,” Ollie said.

  “That’s not good enough.”

  “If it contains nothing that pertains to your brother’s murder, you can have it,” Ollie said. “That’s a promise.”

  “Thank you.” Lucas sat quietly as if he were replaying the words inside his head. He got up and walked around the room and stopped at the large window. He seemed to stare at the lake, but his back was to me, so I wasn’t sure.

  Lucas turned around. “I lied to you. I mean about the sheet of paper. But only about that.” He hung his head. “I still have it. I will read it to you, but I won’t give it to you. I won’t let you touch it.”

  “Now wait a minute,” Ollie said.

  “If you want my memory to improve, you’ll have to agree.”

  Ollie looked at Burton and then at me.

  Ollie nodded.

  “Let’s do this.” I turned to Lucas. “Bring the paper into the room. You stand right where you are and read it. I’ll stand next to you to make sure you’re reading exactly what’s written on the paper. If it has no direct bearing on your brother’s death, you keep the paper. How does that sound?”

  He nodded. “You agree, Mr. Viktor?”

  “If there’s nothing incriminating—”

  “I want your word,” he said.

  “Okay, I agree,” Ollie answered.

  He looked at us a little longer as if weighing whether he could trust us. He smiled before he pulled out his wallet, took out a single sheet of paper, and unfolded it. The page was raggedly torn off at the bottom, but he had folded it carefully.

  “This is, well, almost sacred to me,” he said.

  Before Lucas began to read, I told the others, “The words are printed, single spaced, in 10-point serif and continue for five paragraphs. I didn’t see a printer in the room, but the place was pretty messed up.”

  “No printer. No laptop,” Ollie said. “I saw a list of contents from the room. My men were very careful not to disturb anything, but they checked every area of the room.”

  “So he must have done this before 4:30 Wednesday,” Burton said. “That’s when we knew he was back in the room and called room service.”

  “Makes good sense.” Ollie, notebook and pen in hand, turned to Lucas. “Okay, read it.”

  “Thank you.” Lucas began to read. Stefan apologized to his brother and to the world for his “sinful behavior” (he used those two words) and said he had hurt more people through the years than he could remember. The second and third paragraphs gave a summary of his “born-again experience” and his “entrance into forgiveness and life eternal.”

  Paragraph four said he was in the process of making restitution for his crimes. He admitted having been involved in stealing the diamonds and that he was going to return them.

  The last paragraph read: “A few days after I turned to Jesus Christ, my special friend, Jason Omore, told me to choose a life verse from the Bible, memorize it, and repeat it every day. I have done that.”

  The tear came just below that, and I saw a partial word: mans.

  “Now I get it! I get it!” Burton yelled. “Now I understand the 623. The R-o and 623 didn’t mean room 623.”

  I stared at him. “What did I miss?”

  “He meant Romans 6:23. It’s a verse in the Bible. In fact, it’s such a well-known verse I can quote it for you.”

  “Then please do it,” Ollie said. It was obvious he was disappointed by the contents of the letter. He put down his pad and pen.

  “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

  “That’s it? Just that?” As Ollie said those words, Lucas carefully refolded the page and returned it to his wallet.

  “You’re saying that’s why he was obsessed with 623?” Ollie asked.

  “Just because of some obscure statement he read in the Bible?” I said. “I find that difficult to accept. That’s not the kind of thing that obsessive-compulsives focus on.”

  “Who said he was obsessive-compulsive?” Burton said. “It’s not obscure, by the way. It’s well-known, but more than that, Stefan Lauber chose a Bible verse. But not just any verse—it was a life verse. Life, get it? A verse that he would use and quote often.”

  “Okay, okay,” Ollie said.

  I was ready to say, “Whatever,” but I decided to keep my mouth shut.

  “No, I don’t think either of you get this,” Burton said. “This is powerful.” He looked directly at me and said, “It tells us that Stefan was serious about his conversion. He had truly changed.”

  Was that a message aimed at me? I wasn’t sure, but I wasn’t going to ask. Instead, I said, “Do you suppose that’s why he was murdered? Not just because he had the diamonds, but because he was going to return them? That way no one would profit from them except the rightful owners.”

  “That’s probably right,” Ollie said. “So we have a repentant thief, and that means someone whacked him to get the jewels, right?”

  “Do you suppose they got them?” Burton asked.

  “Obviously not on the night of the murder,” I said. “If they had, why would they have also killed Deedra Knight and—”

  “And done more searching after killing Deedra,” Ollie said. “That assumes, of course, that it was the same person. The room was worse after her murder.”

  “And do you think the killer found them?” I asked.

  That question hung in the room a few seconds before Ollie said, “Let’s assume not. If the murderer found them, we’re probably out of luck unless some new evidence turns up.”

  “But if the gems weren’t recovered or haven’t been so far,” Burton said, “we have two murders and millions of dollars in missing diamonds.”

  The three of us threw out ideas and theories—a lot of talking aloud that amounted to nothing. I finally turned to Lucas. He still stood by the window with his back to us. He was sobbing softly.

  I came behind him and laid my arm on his shoulder. He turned and stared at me. Abruptly he grabbed me and held me tightly. With his head on my shoulder and his chest racked with pain, he cried with great sobs. After a few minutes, he pulled back. “Forgive me. I’m sorry for—”

  “Thank you for trusting me enough to use my shoulder,” I said.

  The gratitude showed in his hazel eyes.

  Ollie came toward us, and Burton held up his hand. I couldn’t hear what he said to Ollie, but I assumed he told him not to interfere. A few minutes later, Burton brought over the box of tissues and thrust them into Lucas’s right hand.

  When Lucas finally pulled away, he started to apologize to all of us for being emotional. He tried to wipe the tears off my shoulder. “Don’t bother,” I said.

  He thanked me for not pushing him away. “I loved him. I loved him. No matter how much I tried to hate him, deep inside I loved him.” Through tearstained eyes, he said, “When I left his room Tuesday night—Wednesday morning—you know his last words to me? His very last words?”

  “We can’t know unless you tell us,” Ollie said.

  I resisted the urge to stuff a gag into
Ollie’s mouth. “I’d like to know,” I said.

  “Please tell us,” Burton said.

  “We had a lot of talk between us, as I’ve already told you. Most of the time he talked to me about Jesus Christ. I listened, but religion wasn’t something our family ever had much interest in. This was all new talk to me.”

  “And?” Ollie prompted.

  “Just as I turned to go to my room, he hugged me. Then he prayed for me. He prayed for me. Can you believe that?”

  “Yes,” Burton said softly. “Yes, I can believe that.”

  Ollie shrugged.

  That seemed just as odd to me as it probably did to Ollie.

  “He asked me to make him a promise. The promise was that I would give God a chance in my life. When I hesitated, he added please—a word my brother had never used with me before—before our reconciliation.”

  “So you told us,” Ollie said.

  “How did you answer him?” Burton asked.

  Lucas wiped his eyes, and I thought he was going to cry again, but instead he sniffed back his tears. “I said I would consider it carefully.”

  “That was all?” Ollie asked. “Did he say anything else?”

  “One more thing. He said, ‘Lucas, I have been praying for you for several months and for two things. The first is that you would find it in your heart to forgive me. You’ve done that. The second part of my prayer is that one day we’ll be together in heaven.’ ”

  Ollie said nothing, and I couldn’t think of anything to say.

  Burton impulsively hugged Lucas. “I’d like to continue to pray the second part of that prayer on your brother’s behalf—that you’ll meet in heaven.”

  This time Burton got the wet shoulder, and the sobs were even louder than before.

  As I watched, something else happened to me. I had felt it earlier, but now it was even stronger.

  I was hooked.

  I believed, and I had no idea how that had taken place.

  Just then Lucas pulled away. Burton turned his head slightly, and our gazes met. It was a strange, perhaps mystical moment.

  Burton knew.

  He knew I had changed.

  Eighteen

  Lucas asked if he could leave. “I need—I need to be alone,” he said.

  Ollie nodded and said nothing until after Lucas left.

  Burton and I looked at each other. I wanted to say something, but I couldn’t put into words what had transpired inside me. So I stared.

  He smiled, and that face lit up as it always did.

  “Okay, boys and girls, any ideas where we go now?” Ollie asked. He perused his notes, flipping pages.

  “Maybe we all need a break,” I said. I wanted to talk to Craig, and just as much I wanted to get away from Burton for a few minutes. I wasn’t ready to talk to him. What would I say?

  “Good idea,” Ollie said. “I need to check in with my office and do a couple of things.” He glanced at his watch. “I have a minimum of an hour’s worth of stuff I have to do, so take your time.”

  As I turned to leave the room, Burton said, “Mind if I walk with you?” He followed me into the hallway. “Let’s talk with Craig.”

  I didn’t trust my voice, so I said nothing. We walked down the corridor, and I couldn’t tolerate the silence, but I didn’t want to talk about me—about him—about us, so I asked, “You caught that look in Craig’s eyes?”

  “I’m not sure what I caught,” he said, “but right at the end, just before Ollie let him go, I sensed he either lied or held something back.”

  I turned and smiled at him. “That’s exactly what I meant.”

  “You know, you’re pretty sharp,” he said.

  “And you know you’re wasted as a minister.”

  “That’s part of what makes a good minister,” he said. “We ministers listen and try not to condemn others.”

  “Sounds like a therapist.”

  “And we learn to sense when people hold back or when they need to say something.”

  “Again, like a—”

  “And especially, we notice when someone we like needs to talk to us but tries to hide it.”

  Inadvertently I stopped right then and stared. I still wore those four-inch heels that elevated me above him, so I had to look down at his eyes. “You don’t miss a thing, do you?”

  He shrugged, and I burst out laughing. It was a perfect imitation of his old college friend.

  “Whatever,” he said.

  “And whenever,” I said.

  He smiled and arched his right brow. “And that means?”

  “It means you’re right that I do want to talk to you, but not quite yet. I have a few things to sort out inside my head.”

  “Maybe talking will help sort them out.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “But not yet.”

  Burton gave me a quick hug. It wasn’t quite the churchy hug, and it wasn’t what I’d call a romantic hug. It was what I would call nice.

  “I’ll take more of them—and longer.”

  “Whenever,” he said and smiled.

  When we reached the front desk, three people leaned against the counter and five people stood in line behind them. I looked at my watch. It was a few minutes after four check-in time.

  “We’re a little shorthanded today,” Craig announced. “My colleague is ill, so I hope you’ll be patient.”

  He said that to the customers, but when I turned to Burton, the uplifted eyebrow confirmed what I thought. The message was for us. I got in line, and Burton stood next to me.

  “Excuse me,” Craig said a few minutes later and waved at me. “I’m sorry your room won’t be ready for another hour, but here’s the number.” He held up a small yellow Post-it.

  I took the Post-it from his hand and read the number. “Thank you,” I said. “I’ll be back.”

  As I walked away, I held it up for Burton.

  He snapped his fingers. “Of course! I had totally forgotten about them.”

  Craig had written Room 624.

  We didn’t speak until after we both got out of the elevator. I wondered why we hadn’t checked on that room before.

  “Why didn’t Ollie remember?” Burton said. “It’s not like him to miss a detail like that.”

  “And Craig made it obvious this morning that the rooms on either side were taken and so was the room across the hall. He emphasized that room as much as either of the others. He wanted to tell us something even then.”

  We reached 624 and Burton knocked. The rooms were fairly well insulated, so we couldn’t hear any movement inside—it wasn’t that I didn’t try. I leaned my ear against the door. I pulled back when I heard the interior lock being turned.

  A man gazed back at me. I guessed him to be in his late sixties. His bristly white hair curled thinly across the top of his head and thrust out around his large ears, but his neck was scrawny and wrinkled; his shoulders were slight, and he was about as thin as anyone I’d ever met. He wore a simple sport shirt with vertical lines that made him look even thinner. He might have been five six but no taller.

  “I would like to ask you a few questions about room 623,” Burton said. “You probably know a man was killed there—”

  The man stared at him for a long time, his gaze moving from head to foot. After he scrutinized Burton, he did the same with me.

  “Who is it?” called a voice from inside.

  “The good cop-bad cop team has arrived,” he said.

  Before Burton could tell him we weren’t the police, I impulsively threw myself into the part. “Look, just move back inside, answer a few questions, and we’ll be on our way.”

  “Do you have some kind of warrant?”

  “What TV shows have you been watching?”

  The woman, obviously his wife, came behind him. With nearly white hair, a thin, pretty face, and alert blue eyes, she looked almost as thin as he did and even more wrinkled. She nodded to Burton. “You come inside. We won’t talk to the bad cop.” She stared defiantly at me. “One is
enough, but at least we assume you’ll be polite.”

  “Oh, I’ll be very polite,” Burton said.

  “I’ll be at the front desk,” I said.

  Strange people, I thought as I walked down the hallway. Did I look like someone from the police? Were they just freaked out? It didn’t matter anyway. Burton would find out.

  I went back to the front desk. Two people were in line. Craig looked up, our gazes met, and he shifted away quickly. I didn’t move out of line, and he said nothing. It may have been my imagination, but it seemed that Craig slowed down a little. A man came up behind me to stand in line. I motioned for him to get in front of me. “I’m in line, but I’m waiting for someone, so go ahead.”

  He smiled and thanked me. I had said the words loudly enough that Craig got the message.

  While I waited, one more person came to the line, and I let her in front of me. She wanted only a duplicate key to her room.

  I finally leaned against the desk. Before Craig said anything, I blurted, “I don’t want you to get into any trouble—please believe me.”

  “I believe you,” he said.

  “Tell me what you know. And you were holding back, weren’t you?”

  “I’d rather see someone get away with a crime than tell that—that—”

  “You don’t like Mr. Viktor,” I said. “Sometimes he rubs people the wrong way.” I focused my attention on Craig and determined not to look away. I wasn’t trying to intimidate him, but I wasn’t going to let him hold back this time.

  “Okay, listen, I get a break in a couple of minutes,” he said. “Wait for me in the parking lot.” He pointed to the one that he had used for his cigarette break.

  “Burton might be coming down before we get back.”

  “I’ll leave a message with my relief,” he said and pointed the way.

  Just then a man and woman with two children came up to the desk with several suitcases.

  I walked outside and waited. I stood among the roses. The day was warm. The late-afternoon light was golden—and utterly mysterious. The sky was partially overcast, so the landscape was dappled with sunshine and shadows. I couldn’t focus on the weather. I kept replaying the events of the day inside my head—especially that moment. I had to sort that out before I could talk to Burton.