Second Guessing

by K. J. Emrick

  Her world. Her world was ruined, her life is hard, everything is about her without a single thought for her dead lover. Yeah. She can talk about how people change all she wants but she’s just as selfish as I remember. Well. If she’s got nothing else to give me, then I guess it’s going to be up to me.

  “What hotel were you staying in when this happened? I’m going to have to see the scene if I’m going to be able to help.”

  The Excelsius, is what she’s going to tell me.

  “Yeah, I know that one,” I say to her, at the same time that she says out loud, “The Excelsius.”

  She looks at me strangely, because I basically just told her I knew what she was going to say before she said it.

  Oops.

  Every once in a while, I goof and act on something I see or hear with my future-sense before it happens, when I don’t mean to. I’ve lived with this all my life, but it still gets ahead of me sometimes—pun intended. It can freak people out. Then again, people don’t usually see what they can’t explain.

  “What I mean,” I say, talking fast to keep her from asking the obvious question, “is that I can find it. What room were you in?”

  “Room three-oh-four. So… you’re going to take my case? You’re going to help me?”

  “Assuming you haven’t lied to me or left anything out, yes. Amelia, a private investigator is only as good as the information she’s given by her client. If I find out that you’ve been lying to me, or that you’re involved in this, I’ll take whatever information I find and use it to bury you. Now. Knowing that, do you still want me to work this case?”

  She nods her head vigorously. “Yes. Sidney, you have to help me. Please help me. No one else is going to believe me. Not my agent, not my studio, nobody. No one is on my side. At least if I’m paying you then I know you’re on my side.”

  Yeah. For people like Amelia Falconi, money is the only substitute they have for friendship. People like her hire people like me because they don’t have anyone else to turn to when things go bad.

  “Then I’m going to get started.” I stand up, already thinking ahead to what I’m going to have to do next. “I charge two hundred dollars a day, plus expenses. I’m guessing you’re good for it?”

  She drops her hands into her lap. For the first time since I stepped back here this morning, she doesn’t look completely hopeless. “I’ll pay you whatever it takes. My agent says she’ll be able to post bail for me sometime today. I mean, I could do it myself, but the judge froze most of my assets. I can still pay you. Don’t worry about that. I just can’t post ten million dollars as bail. The agency will take care of that for me.”

  Of course they will.

  “Why didn’t your agent bail you out before your arraignment?” I ask her. “Then you could have gone in your own clothes instead of that nice orange jumpsuit.”

  She looks down at herself with a smirk. “You want to hear something funny? My agent thinks me going to jail for a few hours will be good for my image. She thinks it will play on everyone’s sympathies, get the public behind me. That sort of thing. Bad publicity is still publicity were her exact words, I think.”

  Sure. I can almost follow that logic, as twisted as it is. “Whenever you make bail, call me. Hopefully by then I’ll have something to tell you.”

  “Wait, I don’t have your number. Why don’t you just call the number on the card I gave you instead?”

  “Um. I think it would be better if you called me.” Especially since her card is sitting in a public garbage can. “I’m in the book.”

  “In the book? You mean the phonebook?” She actually laughs, which I guess is a good sign considering her situation. “Sidney, this isn’t the late Nineties. Nobody uses phonebooks anymore.”

  She’s not wrong. That’s just one of the things wrong with the world today, in my opinion. “Fine. You can search me up in Google or whatever. Detective Christian Caine has my number, too. He’s the guy I was with yesterday when I turned you down.”

  “I remember. I thought I’d never see you again. What changed your mind?”

  “A couple of things, actually. The really big one was something I realized last night. Or this morning, I guess. I remember how you were with Donnie in the Shake Shack. Like I said, you were trying to hide it from your fans, but I could see the way you two looked at each other. I just couldn’t picture you killing a guy that made you feel like that.”

  Amelia blinks at me as she lets that sink in. “You sound like a romantic. I don’t think I loved Donnie. We were just… we were just having fun.”

  “Tell yourself whatever you want. I know what I saw.”

  Her lip starts to quiver again. “Well… maybe I was faking it. Did you think about that? I could have been acting.”

  “I doubt it. I’ve seen your movies. You aren’t that good an actress.”

  Turning away from me she lets her hair fall forward, covering her face, but not before I saw the tears falling down all over again. I think I struck a nerve. Not about her acting skills. She has enough adoring fans that my opinion isn’t going to wreck her ego. No. It’s me talking about how she was in love that has her upset. I think maybe she wasn’t being completely honest with herself about what she and Donnie had. Now it’s gone, and she can’t have it back.

  That’s the final punchline to any murder. There’s no coming back from death.

  “I’ll be in touch,” I tell her, waving at the security camera so Apollo will know I need him to come let me out of the secure area back here. I don’t say anything else to Amelia. I really don’t have anything else to say.

  When the door slides open, it isn’t Apollo standing there. It’s Lieutenant Nathan Baker.

  Oh… crap.

  “You,” he says, his face stern, those mirrored sunglasses that he wears everywhere—and I mean everywhere—reflecting my own face back at me. “Unless you want to join your friend back there in our cells, you come with me. Now.”

  He’s a tall man, not overly muscular but wide-shouldered, and he has a habit of wearing his duty belt slung low on his right hip like he’s in an old western. There’s a black Stetson that completes the outfit, in fact, although it isn’t standard issue for a Detroit police lieutenant. He wears it when he’s at crime scenes because it plays well in the media. In fact, I’ll bet they just loved it at Amelia’s arraignment. There’s going to be pictures of Baker all over the news tomorrow.

  The rest of the department calls him ‘the Cowboy’ behind his back. Never to his face. I have a feeling he’d fire anyone who had the nerve to say that in his presence.

  He turns and starts walking down the hallway without waiting to see if I’m following. He knows I’m going to follow. He’s got the power to get my P.I. license pulled. Not to mention, I’m not exactly supposed to be here. Amelia’s been arrested and formally charged and at this point, she shouldn’t be having visitors.

  Down the hall and up the stairs we go, this time to a private office with Baker’s name on the door. He strides inside, leaving the door open behind him for me to come in. He doesn’t bother sitting down behind his desk. Just spins on me, his polished jackboots catching the light as he points a finger at my chest.

  “I know for a fact, Miss Stone, that Detective Caine told you that you are not to work on any department cases until the charges against Amelia Falconi are settled one way or another.”

  I’m really sick of people pointing their fingers at me. I mean, if that thing goes off, I’m seriously going to get hurt. “Actually, Chris told me the department couldn’t hire me for anything while I was a witness in the Falconi case. Nobody ever told me I couldn’t let her hire me.”

  Throwing his hands in the air, he runs one hand through his bristle-short gray hair. “You aren’t stupid. You know that as a witness, you can’t work for the suspect.”

  “Hmm. That’s interesting. Can you show me that law?”

  “It’s not a law, it’s—”

  “So it’s like, what? A judicial rule?
”

  “You know that’s not what I—”

  “So it’s just you requesting me not to work for her?”

  Staring at me blankly, his neatly trimmed eyebrows rise up over the rims of his glasses. “You’re twisting my words.”

  I cross my arms, and meet his stare, eyes to sunglasses. “If there’s no law that says I can’t take this case, then I’m taking this case. Dear God, Lieutenant, I’m a witness that she was at a local restaurant with her bodyguards before Donnie got killed. There’s twenty cellphones that were there that can give you the same testimony a lot better than my words on paper will. Just look online. Go to YouTube, it’ll be there. Me working for Amelia Falconi isn’t going to muck up your case.”

  With guys like Baker, you have to stand your ground. I had commanding officers like him when I was in the Marines. They expect more than respect from you. They expect complete obedience. Doesn’t matter how stupid the order, if you don’t do it their way, they take it as a personal insult. Well, I’ll give Baker respect because of the rank he’s earned with the Detroit Police, even if what I want is to spit in those stupid sunglasses, but I won’t roll over and just do whatever he wants me to. As a private investigator I work for myself, and nobody else. If I wanted to keep taking orders, I would have stayed in the military.

  I can’t tell if I win the staring contest, because I can’t see Baker’s eyes, but he takes a step back, and huffs out a breath, and hangs his fist off the handle of his gun in its holster. “I see why Detective Caine keeps you around.”

  That did absolutely nothing to make me like him better. “Chris doesn’t ‘keep me around.’ Nobody ‘keeps’ me.”

  Very slowly, his lips twist up in a sneer. “You know what I meant. You’re always around here, always trying to get scraps from Detective Caine. You’re like his little trained dog.”

  Oh, this man really needs to have his face slapped. And those glasses smashed under my boot heel. I can picture myself doing that just as clearly as if I was seeing it in my future-sense. Except, there’s still the threat of him putting me in a holding cell. Or getting my license yanked. Let’s not get put in jail this morning, I tell myself, or lose your job either. Let’s just walk away and trade insults with this arrogant jerk another day.

  Discretion, after all, is the better part of valor. There’s a time to go in guns blazing, and a time to smile sweetly while your anger simmers to a boil just beneath the surface.

  “I’m going to go now,” I tell him, “unless there’s some more insults you’re just dying to get off your chest?”

  “That, Miss Stone, was actually a compliment.”

  Before I can explain the difference between a compliment and a put-down, his phone rings on his desk. Turning his back on me like I’m not still standing here he picks up the receiver. “Lieutenant Baker here. Yes, Apollo, what is it?” Then he sighs, almost angrily. “Tell Clancy Whitaker that we don’t have time to listen to him confess to the Kennedy assassination, or whatever it is he thinks he did today.”

  Clancy. That’s the guy Chris had been interviewing at his desk yesterday. The one with the pathological need to confess to everything. Chris had treated the guy with respect. Baker won’t give him the time of day. That pretty much tells you everything you need to know about the differences between those two. This arrogant bastard, and my friend Chris.

  Whatever. If he’s done with me, I’m done with him. I’ve got stuff to do.

  I’m not all the way out of his office yet before he puts the phone to his chest and looks over his shoulder with one last thing to say. “Miss Stone, if you step into this case, you’d better make real sure you play it by the book. Don’t go breaking any laws in my city for your friend Amelia Falconi. Step sideways, just once, and I’ll make sure you never work in Detroit again. Ever.”

  My hands are curled into fists behind my back, where he can’t see them. “Amelia’s not my friend,” I remind him. “And I’ll go wherever the truth leads me. I doubt I’ll see you there so staying out of each other’s way shouldn’t be a problem.”

  I slam the door on him before he can answer.

  It’s when I’m on the stairs, steaming over a man like Baker having any right to be a cop, let alone a lieutenant, that I remember something Arnie Chen said to me.

  You know, you remind me of Luduan. You seek the truth, whether or not it is in your best interest.

  Maybe so, but in my world the truth matters. If I find out Amelia really is innocent, I’m going to work my cute little tail off proving it to Baker and everyone else.

  And if she’s guilty, then I’ll bring the marshmallows when they send her to the electric chair.

  Chapter Six

  The Excelsius is an upscale hotel near the RenCen in the Downtown area. The RenCen—the nickname of the GM Renaissance Center—is a group of seven interconnected skyscrapers. They were constructed over four decades to create most of Detroit’s iconic city skyline. They cast a long shadow, but a lot of other beautiful buildings have grown up here, some places meant for the everyday tourist, and some places meant for people who have more money than they know what to do with.

  Places like the Excelsius.

  I got to the hotel two hours after I stormed out of the Seventh Precinct. At midmorning it was still early enough that I could find a place to park Roxy just down the street. My reliable old car would clash with the image the Excelsius was trying to convey. I can change my clothes, but Roxy will always be Roxy.

  Why am I not surprised that Amelia Falconi decided to stay here? The front is all white sandstone with—I kid you not—Roman-style columns around the entryway. The inside is just as overdone. Thick red carpets, backlighted glass panels, soft muzak playing over the intercom, staff in black vests and red bowties. Every surface gleams. These guys must dust and polish every other hour.

  Nobody comes to this place unless they want to spend the equivalent of a new car on a weekend getaway. Maybe I’m exaggerating a little bit, but only a little.

  When I walk in, the concierge behind the front desk gives me a smile and a nod and lets me walk right on past. I can feel his eyes on me all the way to the elevators, but I know he’s not going to stop me. He’s not going to tell me I don’t belong here.

  And why not? I’m dressed like a high-priced escort, in a black pencil dress with frills at the neckline and a matching clutch purse and three-inch heels. Black gloves that reach up to my elbows. I put a quick curl in my hair back at my apartment and made sure to apply my makeup just so. In a place like the Excelsius—where rich men come to spend time away from their wives—everyone’s used to seeing women who, um, work for a living. Five minutes from now, this guy won’t even remember my face. I’ll just be one more escort in an endless line of them waltzing through these halls.

  Now the dress he’ll remember. Nobody could forget this dress. I look absolutely stunning in it. I definitely have the calves to pull it off. And the ass.

  The elevator brings me up to the third floor. The hallway, thankfully, is empty. There won’t be any security cameras, either. Places like this are more concerned with the privacy of their guests than with security. There were cameras in the lobby, of course, but I knew enough to keep my face turned away from them. All they’ve got, if anyone comes looking later, is a picture of a leggy blonde in a fine dress. I keep this at the back of my closet for special dates. For the record, it hasn’t seen the light of day in about a year.

  Well. My personal life isn’t the issue here. I need to focus on Amelia’s case, and her murder charge. Room three-oh-four is right… here.

  It’s definitely not hard to find, with the yellow notice on the door that the room is currently out of order and not to be entered by anyone except authorized hotel personnel. That’s a polite way of saying “Crime Scene—Stay Out” but in a hotel like this they aren’t going to announce that there was a murder in one of their rooms. That would be bad for business. Until the police release it, this room is going to stay just like it was when the
crime scene techs got done with it. That’s also how I know that I don’t have to worry about anyone being in the room while I do a little investigating of my own.

  Once I get inside, that is.

  Modern hotel rooms are pretty much burglar-proof. You can’t just pick a lock and get in. They have pass card locks and deadbolts and other security measures that keep your ordinary, run-of-the-mill thief from getting in. For a while, there was an issue where a magic marker held to a sensor on the bottom of the pass card reader would bypass it, but they’ve solved that flaw. Now, you need special tools to get in.

  Thankfully, I thought ahead.

  Hotel locks use pre-programmed, magnetized cards that send a signal to the lock on a specific room, authorizing that one particular card to open that one particular door. For the most part, that’s a perfect system and people all around the world can rest easy in their hotel rooms without worrying about someone breaking in and killing them in their sleep.

  Except, just like with every other system out there, nothing is absolutely one-hundred-percent perfect.

  These locks work on the principle of RFID signals. Radio Frequency ID. At its essence, it’s the same thing that allows a remote control to work. When I was younger, some of us used to play a game where we would take our garage door remotes and ride down the street on our bikes, pushing the ‘open’ button until we found another garage door in the neighborhood that the remote would open. Two doors, same signal.

  Breaking in uses the same concept. Find the right signal, and the lock will open.

  Making sure I’m still alone in the hallway, I reach into my purse and pull out a palm-sized, black device just a little bigger and bulkier than my cellphone. The little black clutch is more than just an accessory. It’s also my way of sneaking burglar tools in and out of places like this with no one noticing. This device, when I turn it on, transmits RFID signals in a rotating sequence until it hits on the right one to open the lock. It has a very limited range, so I don’t have to worry about opening every lock on the floor and alerting the other guests that something’s amiss. If you’re a professional hacker with brilliant programming skills, building a device like this is easy.