As McCall drove the wipers on her ’66 Ford Mustang worked overtime to sluice away the pounding rain, and they arrived at the hotel at East 56th Street. The road was already congested by the parked cars and UPS vans, and parking would clearly be a nightmare on any day of the week, let alone a day when the highway was filled with police cars and coroners’ wagons.
Eventually McCall found a parking spot next to a dry cleaner’s shop, its red-and-green sign showing up brightly against the contrast of the rain streaming down the front window. Both detectives made for the hotel. Rushing from the car they entered the large brass-covered front doors of the building. The lobby was quite dark, even though the walls were a mixture of white paint with mirrors, the highly polished floor reflecting the multiple beams of illumination from the small ceiling lights. Before them stood a uniformed officer who directed them to the second floor. Not far behind them Tooms and Tony came through the entrance dripping rain onto the polished floor.
“Did you walk from the precinct or something?” McCall asked with a grin.
“You know parking in this city is a pain in the ass, we had to park round the corner,” Tooms grumbled. He was not happy, and neither was Tony, who bore a resemblance to a drowned rat.
The two female detectives took the elevator to the second floor, and found that the hallway was crammed with uniformed officers making door-to-door enquiries to try to get some information on the ‘vic’ or hopefully to locate the murderer. They moved along, passing uniformed officers until they reached room 208. Once inside they found that the room was large with a double bed that sat in the middle of the room against the right wall. The only light came from the bedside and a lamp on a dresser that sat opposite the bed; while in the corner next to the large window, a standard lamp illuminated the corner. Two armchairs were in front of the window with a small coffee table nestled between them.
Thompson felt a surge of pride as she passed her uniformed colleagues. She had risen through the ranks quickly, some thought too quickly, but she did not care about their jealousy. As McCall and Thompson stood in the doorway, they could see the medical examiner, Tina, looking at a woman on the bed. The detectives put on the blue plastic booties they had found next to the door and donned pairs of blue gloves.
“Okay, don’t touch anything CSU haven’t been in yet,” insisted Tina, and they all nodded in agreement. McCall was a thorough cop, a good cop; she insisted that the other detectives carried at least two things, a notebook and a camera. Some thought the camera was not necessary but she had learnt from her dad that sometimes memories aren’t necessarily reliable when you’re engrossed in a case.
McCall walked up to Tina, who was just noting the body temperature.
“Hey,” she greeted her friend.
“Hey,” Tina looked round at her, returning the greeting with a smile.
“Well, we got a Caucasian female around late thirties, early forties.” The victim was wearing a red dress which went well with her blonde hair; McCall noted that she had been pretty once as she studied the body.
“So I guess she sat on the edge of the bed and took out the .45, put it underneath her chin and...” Tina suggested. McCall took note of the massive blood splatter on the ceiling, most of the back wall and on the bed where she had fallen. The woman lay there staring upwards into nothing, her eyes grey and lifeless. In her left hand she held a nickel-plated .45 revolver, her fingers wrapped tightly round the pistol grip and trigger. McCall moved in closer to get a better look behind the body.
By now the CSU had arrived and were taking photos. McCall turned to see the small woman in CSU coveralls holding the canon SLR camera that had full flash equipment for optimum results. “Sorry,” Sam McCall said, moving out of the technician’s way.
“Can I get copies of your pictures, please?”
The young woman smiled.
“Sure,” she replied as she took another shot. McCall watched as another tech removed the pistol from the woman’s grip, and, clicking the chamber open, removed the cartridges one at a time, checking them and placing them inside a clear self-sealing bag.
“One round fired,” he announced, holding up the empty brass case then bagging it separately.
McCall leaned in and looked at the victim’s face, studying her features. Thompson stood next to her.
“What’s wrong?” the junior detective asked inquisitively. McCall stood up and began to take her own photos of the body. She winced as she watched Tina try to separate the woman’s blood-sodden head from the bedclothes.
“What do you see?” McCall asked the other woman.
Jenny Thompson looked confused. “What do you mean?” She felt as though McCall was picking on her. Ever since her promotion McCall had been hard on her, she thought. Was it because she felt threatened by her, she wondered? She could not say.
“Jenny, tell me what do you see.”
Thompson studied the scene. She felt like saying:
“I see a dead chick on the bed,” but she knew that statement would go down like a lead balloon.
“White female, possible suicide.” She paused.
“Go on.” McCall smiled as she could feel the tension building in Jenny.
“I.....I don’t know. What is this? Are you testing me or something?” With that, she stormed off.
Tina looked up at McCall and gave her a sympathetic look. “Okay, Tina have you got a T.O.D?” McCall asked.
Tina look at the chart. “Well, till I get her back I can’t be sure, but you’re looking at around twelve, twelve thirty last night.” McCall thanked her and smiled, then she turned and went looking for Thompson.
She found her in the hallway, leaning on her knees gasping for breath “You okay?” she asked.
Jenny looked up and gave McCall a bad-puppy look. McCall smiled. “Look. The answer is yes I am testing you, but I am also training you. I need to know what you know and, well, fill in the blanks.”
Jenny stood up and blew out a gutful of air.
“Okay. Now we go back in and you tell me what you see, but don’t speculate, just tell me what you see.” Thompson nodded and they went in.
The metallic tang of dried blood filled the air, and as they stood there Jenny studied the body. “White female, possible suicide,” she pronounced.
“Why possible?” McCall butted in.
“Because it’s an assumption to say one way or the other without proof.” McCall smiled.
“Go on.”
“We found a purse but it’s empty so it could be she didn’t want to be identified. She comes from moneyed background, judging from the clothes and jewellery, also judging by the way she looks, we can rule out working girl.”
McCall nodded in agreement. “Anything else?”
Jenny’s eyes strained and McCall could see this was a determined expression rather than an intuitive look.
“Okay,” McCall reassured her.
“That’s good. So would you say murder or suicide?”
The younger detective knew that whichever answer she gave she would have to elaborate on her reasons
“Suicide,” she said confidently.
“Because of the note, the door was locked from the inside, and the position of the wound.”
McCall nodded and walked round the body to the other side of the bed.
“I am going for murder,” Sam McCall said.
Jenny looked confused.
“First off, the note was written by a left-handed person, which was obviously faked. Plus if you’re going to the trouble of being unidentified you don’t kill yourself where you can be found.” Thompson looked confused.
“How do you know it was faked?” Jenny’s eyes lit up with the fresh insight that McCall had given her.
“How do you know she was left handed?” McCall inquired, knowing roughly what Jenny was likely to come back with.
Jenny smiled as an idea came into her mind,
“The watch! She wearing it on her right wrist.”
McCall nodded
. “Well done. However...”
Jenny’s expression dropped.
“If you look closely you can see a white line on her right wrist where the sun didn’t get to.”
Jenny leant in to get a closer look.
“No, she was killed and the watch put on after just to throw us.” McCall nodded and smiled to Tina to confirm that she could remove the body. As the orderlies came with the gurney, McCall moved towards Thompson.
“You’re doing well but it’s my job to make you better. Look, you have a lot to learn. Follow the body to the morgue and get the report, okay?”
Jenny nodded and went with the coroner’s crew. McCall spent a while studying the room. Nothing appeared to be out of place apart from the fact that she had no luggage. Sam bit her bottom lip as she concentrated, making pictures in her mind of how the whole thing must have gone down, but the noise of the room broke her concentration. No, she decided she would have to come back later. Instead of staying now she’d have to settle for a hundred shots of the room with her small camera. Tooms walked over to her
“You will be shocked to know that nobody saw anything let alone knew our vic.”
In fact she had expected it. And she also expected that the vic had never rented the room either.
FOUR
The sun was setting, the great fiery orange ball looked almost as if it was slipping into the ocean itself. As it sank, it was leaving glowing splinters of itself resting upon the waves.
Steel stood outside on the balcony of his room. The cool breeze of the evening air cut through the black golf-ball shirt of his tuxedo as he watched the last sliver of light disappear into the horizon, smiled at the beauty of it all, and returned to the comfortable warmth of his room. Walking to the dresser he took out a small contact-lens case, taking the lenses out one by one and slipping them into place over his eyes. The coloured lenses transformed his eye colour to blue. He blinked several times to get used to them, then looked into the mirror at his ‘new’ light-blue eyes. That will do, he thought to himself.
Picking up his tuxedo jacket, he finished dressing, then headed for the captain’s dining room. Tonight he would be dining at the captain’s table along with several other guests. As John Steel walked the many corridors he hoped tonight might reveal something: the days were getting shorter, and he was fresh out of ideas.
The Englishman walked towards the entrance of the impressive dining hall, where the carpet was a deep red with gold patterned inlays, and the dark wood walls stretched up the three stories of the grand area, and a magnificent chandelier hung down the centre, illuminating all three levels.
He made his way through the crowds of people and found the captain’s table in the centre of the room. It was large, with space for twelve chairs around it, in contrast to the majority of the tables, most of which catered for six to eight guests. There were white linen tablecloths and red linen napkins folded into neat towers that sat on the fine quality crockery plates. Wine and water glasses were placed at forty-five degree angles to the plate and the shining metal silverware reflected the countless lights from the monstrous chandelier.
The whole room had an Edwardian feel to it rather than a modern day ambience. As he looked around he could understand how the captain must love this room, for the moment Steel walked into it, it felt as if he had been transported back in time. The detective had done his research on the captain before boarding and found he was what could be described as an ‘old sea dog’, a highly experienced sailor. The man had been on ships all his life, in fact, he was born at sea in the early 1940s, and many members of his family had maritime connections dating back to as far as Steel could research.
Captain Tobias Long was a large man with a barrel chest and a white beard—the type that anyone would associate with the captains in the old galleons, indeed to look at him he encapsulated the archetypal ‘ship’s captain’ stereotype.
John Steel made his way to the large table where some of the guests had already taken their places. He took note of the name cards as he moved around to shake the hands of his fellow passengers. He smiled as he noticed that the names were on both sides of the place card. Very clever, he thought to himself, realising that this way no one would be embarrassed about forgetting anyone’s names when it came to conversation. His introduction was more to get the up-close-and-personal look at the people than it was a matter of politeness. Sitting there were three couples who could not have been more different from each other if they had tried.
First there were the Dawsons. Mary Dawson was a large plump woman with a pretty face and a beaming smile; her long black locks had been arranged in an Audrey-Hepburn 1950s-style bob and she was wearing a stunning white dress that complemented her large frame. Her husband Ronald was of average height and his large frame was a mix of body fat and muscle; he also had thick dark black hair with streaks of grey at the temples. The man grinned cheerfully as much as his wife did, and with good reason: as they talked Steel learnt that the couple had spent twenty-five years running a small shop in Yorkshire when Ronald’s aunt had died, leaving him a small fortune.
Next to them sat Susan and Alan Metcalf. The former had long thick wavy auburn hair that clung round her bare shoulders, and Steel imagined her to be tall, judging by the way she sat and she struck him as a beautiful woman, dressed as she was in a stylish electric-blue dress. Alan Metcalf was of the same height and build as his wife, and his brown, side-parted hair glistened. They both had a slight tan and looked well-groomed and healthy. Susan, he discovered, had also inherited money: her mother had died when she was quite young, and her father had passed away in Florida around three years ago, leaving her the family business-a ship-building enterprise, plus a fortune.
The Texas ‘Oil King’ Albert Studebaker and his wife Missy sat to the left of the Metcalfs. He was a massive bulk of a man with hands like shovels; even though he was nearly sixty, he looked fit and strong as an ox, his hair and his goatee sparkling white against his tanned skin. Missy was younger than Albert by around twenty years, but just by looking, anyone could tell that she was deeply attached to her husband, and his wealth was simply an added bonus. She had once been a supermodel, and she still retained a model’s figure, even though she’d abandoned the catwalk several years after her marriage. Missy’s hair was blonde and short on the sides with a large fringe that covered part of her face, making her blue eyes appear to glow in the shadow that her fringe cast upon her perfect features. Her silver strapless dress hugged her natural curves.
They all chatted for a while as they awaited the others, including the captain, who was busy on the bridge. As Steel sat down a waitress came to take his drink order. He looked up to see it was the woman he’d met before, so he smiled, pleased to see her again.
“Can I get you anything, sir?” she asked, her eyes not leaving his.
“A large Lagavulin if you have one.” He smiled as she turned slowly and walked away, her eyes still fastened on him until the last moment.
“Goddamn, boy, what aftershave you wearing?”
Steel turned to the large Texan and shrugged innocently as they all laughed at the girl’s obvious interest in him.
“So I guess this is all of us then?” Missy looked around as she spoke. “Or maybe not,” she corrected herself on seeing the approach of what appeared to be two couples. Steel stood up and pulled a chair out for the gorgeous woman with long brown hair, who was to be at the place setting next to him; her red one-strap dress hugged her hourglass figure and her dark eyes sparkled, reflecting the surrounding lights.
“Why thank you, kind sir.” Her voice was soft but had a roughness to it, and as she spoke Steel could feel the hairs on the back of his neck tingle with excitement. After everyone had introduced themselves Steel learnt that the woman to his right was called Tia May and she worked at a small art gallery in New York. She went on to tell him that she had been born in Hawaii, her father had been in the navy and her mother was a local girl. After college, she’d got an art degree and
then found work in the gallery.
Sitting down again, Steel noticed the others. The pair who had taken the seats at his front were called the Stewarts. The Englishman’s interest grew at the sight of their nameplate. Could it be? he thought to himself. No, he answered his own question. Too easy, so he abandoned the thought.
Bob and Jane Stewart were both in their forties and dressed in a similar fashion, almost as though Jane was the female version of her husband. They both had short blond hair and pale complexions, and Steel could not help but think in amusement of the films Bodysnatchers or Village of the Damned. The Stewarts came from Long Island and worked as accountants for a large firm there. As odd as they seemed, the Stewarts seemed to be good company, smiling a lot and telling amusing stories about their work.
That was when John Steel laid eyes on the twelfth guest. It was the man he remembered seeing in the bar. He seemed different from the last time he’d seen him, calmer and he also smiled and joined in the jovial conversation, and his name card said Jonathan Grant. He was in the property business in Los Angeles, or LA as it was better known, and was here to celebrate a massive deal he had just closed. Steel’s eyes searched the group and he considered how strange it was to meet an array of people with such different backgrounds all together at the table. Sure, it made for brilliant conversation, but Steel being Steel read more into it. Nothing happens by chance, he thought to himself.
As the captain entered the room everyone stood in respect, but he simply waved a fond greeting and as he took his seat so did the guests. No sooner had they taken their seats than two waiters arrived, each carrying a bottle of red and white wine. The captain predictably asked them all what they thought of the ship and the facilities, and, as expected, the responses were pleasant. The conversation then turned to the guests, who they were and what they did for a living, and the captain paid deep interest to their stories.
Operation:UNITY (John Steel series Book 2) Page 3