Sudden Vacancies

by James Kipling

  *****

  The next day, Carla was arrested as she arrived at the hotel.

  “Miss Deangelo, you are under arrest for endangering people at the Blue Plate restaurant at the Paradise Hotel,” an officer told her before reading off her rights.

  Carla was silent as she was handcuffed and placed into the back of the police car; it was almost as if she had known this was coming.

  However, as the officers entered the car, she started to talk a little more. “Sir, I honestly don’t know what’s going on, but I can assure you that I didn’t have anything to do with those murders.”

  The policemen did not respond; they instead drove her to the station where she would be kept in custody for the time being.

  *****

  “Miss Deangelo, are you aware of what you’ve been doing?” the detective asked the woman in custody.

  “I know about these murders and I can assure you I…”

  “The fact is that your kitchen at the restaurant has not been up to par with what it is supposed to be doing. We spent many hours in the kitchen yesterday and found numerous health and safety violations. What can you tell us about what’s been going on since you became the manager of the restaurant?”

  Carla explained the problems of the kitchen-such as the broken seal in the freezer and the oven problems.

  She was not happy. “You’re just arresting me because I’m such an easy target-”

  “Madam, please control yourself. This is not the place for you to get all excited about what’s happening here. We insist that you cooperate with us in our investigation.”

  Chapter 26

  Sandra hadn’t lifted the moratorium on reservations because there wasn’t definite proof that the person responsible for the murders was in police custody. However, she continued to hold out hope that the pressure in the case would cause Carla to confess to the murders.

  Still, Carla was steadfast in her belief that she did nothing wrong. She continued to tell everyone at the precinct that she knew nothing about what was going on. Carla began to get the feeling that she was once again being punished for her past and that people were unfairly looking at her for who she once was and not who she’d become. Her anger was prevalent and she felt a strong need to get back at those who felt that she was nothing but a thug.

  *****

  The police continued to analyze the entire kitchen to figure out what was going on. They also reviewed all the necessary paperwork that came from orders for different items, repairs, and other functions.

  Some of the members assumed that this was going to be an open and shut case and that she was indeed responsible for everything—however, all of the information that came from the case proved to corroborate what she originally said. As it turned out, she did indeed order the right things to maintain the freezer and regular checks had consistently been made on the oven and other materials.

  The only problem that showed up was with the vendor for the seal. Apparently, the vendor struggled to make its freezer seals properly. It seems the vendor had run out of some of its materials, and had substituted poor quality materials in their place. In addition, the vendor had received several complaints from people in recent weeks, arguing that their seals were either coming apart or wearing out and therefore ineffective.

  It seems that Carla was telling the truth. Therefore, the police decided to let her go.

  Carla looked relieved at first, but as she left the station, anger began to churn within her at the way she had been treated. She was angry and wanted revenge on the people behind her arrest. The question was, how was she going to get it?

  *****

  Carla was sick of being treated like a thug. She wanted everyone to know that she was a changed woman, someone who wasn’t a threat to anyone. But how was she supposed to accomplish this in a place where there was so much suspicion?

  She figured that the best way to get back at the hotel and all the people who’d been suspicious of her was to file legal action. The question was how? After all, she didn’t have much evidence to prove that she was mistreated or discriminated against.

  She decided that maybe the best thing to do was to protest her work at the restaurant. She refused to come back to work to run the restaurant and starting working to find a position at a different place. She just wanted to go some place where her checkered past wouldn’t be in the way.

  Would anyone at the Blue Plate or the Paradise miss her? It was doubtful.

  Later Captain Charles was discussing with Bruce about local business. “Have you heard anything about what’s happening at the music store nearby?” Charles asked him. “Apparently, they’ve been shy on business lately. They’re struggling, and worried that they might have to shut down for good if this fiasco isn’t resolved. The weirdest thing about this is that people are buying some smaller things these days. They keep buying guitar strings for some reason and returning them.”

  “Really? I haven’t bought any new guitar strings for a month! I did have to return a string once but that was a few weeks ago. Apparently, the string wasn’t staying in tune as well as the others and it was from a brand that I really like. I guess that’s what happens when you replace individual strings, rather than all of them.”

  Charles and Bruce went over to the bar at the restaurant and talked it over while drinking root beer.

  “Tell me, Bruce, what inspires you to keep performing here? Especially with all of the suspicion in the place? I mean, usually someone would just give up and stop working here, simply out of fear. Plus it’s not like you’re getting any people to come over here or anything, what with there being so many restrictions about who’s allowed to come in and out.”

  “I think it’s just because it keeps me from losing my skill. I mean, I’m glad I’m still being paid and all. But - at the same time, if I don’t actually get work not only will I go broke, but I’ll lose my skills. Without my skills I can’t even begin to make a living. What else do I have to provide to the world, other than performing music in random places?

  “As much as I would like to be more popular, that’s not where I am right now. I wish my career was in a better space but at the same time, there isn’t really much of a need to argue if you’re actually going to get somewhere in your job.”

  Bruce then took a drink real quick and continued, changing the topic a bit. “I was actually talking with that guy who’s also looking at the case. Michael, right?”

  “Yeah, Detective Michael Young.”

  “I noticed him and he seems like a nice person. We just talked for a bit about stuff, nothing much about the case in particular. I know that he seems to be steadfast in trying to find out what’s going on around here. I really do appreciate how he tries so hard to get in touch with everyone and wants to work on getting people to help figure out what’s happening for a change.”

  While he was happy, there was still that sense of fear over what was going on behind the scenes. He wondered how far Michael Young was willing to go when trying to figure out what was happening in the case. Is he just going to start randomly picking people out of the employee list, or would he fix his attention on people who he thought might have a history, or need cash?

  Then again, would Sandra let him just start randomly accusing people?

  *****

  When Bruce went out to perform that night, it seemed as though there was a sense of happiness in the hotel that hardly anyone had noticed in the last few days. He actually felt joy and was happy to be there.

  The restaurant was only one-quarter of the way filled; normally the place would have been at least three-quarters capacity or more, depending on the night. However, the fact that there were actually some people coming to watch him perform that night was a real surprise considering everything that was going.

  Charles didn’t seem to see anything unusual with Bruce; with that fact uppermost in his thoughts, he struggled to think about others that might have been responsible for all these murders. One thing was for certai
n, until proven otherwise, he wasn’t prepared to trust anyone.

  Chapter 27

  Michael Young was still looking at his notes trying to figure out who to question next. While he was happy that he could definitely rule out Randall and all the people at the custodial department, he was still worried about what crucial piece of evidence he was missing. He didn’t feel like he could just throw Sally, Bruce, or any of those other people out of the equation. Knowing his experiences, he felt that there was no real way he could possibly trust just anyone. For all he knew, Randall could have done it, even though he was seemingly cleared.

  He did look at Tina’s records and found that she didn’t appear to be hiding anything. In fact, he found that as the murders were taking place, she was not even in the hotel at the time. She was instead, back on campus; in fact, she was attending late-night study sessions during two of the evenings when the murders took place.

  He did contact one of her roommates in her dorm for information on this. He used a strict code of privacy to make sure the conversation was confidential. The last thing he wanted to do was to tell her that he was looking at her in this case; after all, she was already losing money to pay for her college bills, with the work dramatically dwindling at the hotel.

  As he sat there, the time for lunch came and he ordered a Red Bull with vodka from the Blue Plate. He normally didn’t drink while on the job, but as he was pretty much done for the day, he figured it couldn’t hurt. As he watched Bruce perform, he noticed that Carla was nowhere to be seen. He didn’t know she was refusing to go back to work for the hotel and was looking for employment elsewhere.

  He didn’t look different from anyone else who was dining there. He had taken steps to ensure he wouldn’t stand out. He was wearing standard street clothes but adhered to the semi-formal policy used around the hotel. The last thing that he wanted to do was to make people feel as though he was being overly analytical. He didn’t even think about whether or not anyone who worked at the hotel even recognized him at the time. Maybe he should have done.

  *****

  Several minutes later, he walked out to his car. Having finished his drink and watching Bruce perform, he still had not seen Carla anywhere.

  “Maybe she’s someplace else,” he thought to himself. “I mean, she’s a woman with a bad history but you know deep down inside she’d want to do anything she could just to prove herself.”

  She had been able to answer every accusation and question presented to her, yet he still wasn’t ready to remove her from his list of suspects. He would have liked to have spoken with her again, and was disappointed that she had not been working today.

  Bruce had stopped and spoken with him briefly after finishing his set, and Michael had inquired about Carla’s whereabouts. He was concerned when Bruce had told him that Carla was refusing to come back to work, and in fact had not been in to the restaurant since her arrest. Maybe she just didn’t like being singled out?

  He reached his car at the nearby garage. It was a green hatchback; he didn’t want his car to give away any details suggesting that he was with the police force and had brought his own personal vehicle to the hotel.

  He started to feel short of breath. The feeling seemed odd and not one he associated with the drink he had just consumed. The caffeine from the Red Bull normally offset the depressant effect brought on by the vodka.

  As he headed for his parking space on the fifth floor, he started to have serious heart stress. He wondered what was going on but assumed it was because he took the stairs up to the car. The elevator was out of order so he had to walk a few flights of stairs to the fifth floor parking level.

  Getting into his car, he started it up, wanting to get home as quickly as possible and lie down. His heart was racing; he couldn’t control himself and he started to experience some physical tics. It was like nothing he had ever felt before.

  As he started out of the parking area, the muscle tics became so pronounced that his right foot slammed down on the accelerator, thus causing the car to burst through the guardrail on the fifth floor. His car sailed off the parking level, nose-diving towards the ground, nearly sixty feet below.

  A large fireball came from the car as it landed, pinning one passerby. The passerby was killed instantly; Michael’s body was completely burned up in the resulting fire.

  Chapter 28

  At the coroner’s office, a toxicology report was done on Michael Young. The state of the body made it very difficult to determine the cause of death. His internal organs were charred and the body was so badly burned that the family opted for a closed casket funeral.

  The toxicology report found traces of the caffeine and vodka he had recently ingested. Along with it was the cause of his death – cyanide. While it did not kill Michael instantly, cyanide poisoning was a very painful and sometime drawn out way to kill someone. Most people eventually die from it, and Michael had enough in his system that he would have died, even if he had not driven his vehicle off the fifth floor.

  While the police department quickly arranged a traditional funeral for one of their own, their focus turned to the case and the —concern that two other people died that night. They had visited the Blue Plate, ordered Red Bull with vodka, and died violently from cyanide poisoning.

  Investigators immediately descended upon the hotel restaurant again and confirmed that each individual had ordered Red Bull with vodka, but no food. The poison had come from the drinks.

  A thorough toxicology check was made on the vodka supply at the hotel and it came back clean. The investigation then turned to the Red Bull supply. Because the hotel participated in the Columbus green project, a recyclable container was located in the kitchen and all aluminum cans were deposited there when empty. When investigators looked, they found the three empty cans from the day before.

  A full check on each can found that all three of them had small holes punctured into the top. This was enough to make it so the can would not leak while it was stored upright as usual. Whoever had added the cyanide into the cans clearly used something like a syringe to poke a hole into each can and injected the cyanide. If someone inspected the can thoroughly they might have noticed the tiny hole, but obviously, Michael hadn’t.

  All the Red Bull cans in the restaurant were taken and tested. It turned out that the fourth can in the four-pack also had cyanide in it. None of the other cans had cyanide in them.

  No presence of cyanide was found in any other item or surface of the hotel. Whoever had done this had access to the hotel restaurant. Who could have done this? By poisoning all four cans, were they trying to ensure Michael would definitely die? Michael had visited the hotel restaurant enough times towards the end of the day, that it was common knowledge that he always ordered Red Bull and vodka. Whoever had committed this murder wanted to make sure Michael died. Anyone else who died would have been expendable casualties; the key was to get rid of the man who could have been onto something.

  “I’m beginning to think that he died at the hands of the same person who killed all those people in the hotel rooms,” Sandra said. “What do you think?”

  “Oh yeah,” Andrew said. “Whoever did this probably got to talk with him about the case. Do you think that he’s in this hotel right now?”

  “Probably. We’ve got six days to go before the last reservation comes in. I just had to let several people go.” Sandra’s head was reeling.

  Chapter 29

  Sandra was forced to lay off about a fifth of the staff at the hotel. The hotel had lost so much business, and the last reservation was very near. It had finally become apparent that she had no choice but to get rid of a few people because of the lack of business.

  Sandra knew that right now she needed to save money wherever and however possible. Not knowing how long it was going to take to remedy this situation, and given the fact that four more people were killed as a result of the murderer’s actions, she knew that the nuclear option was coming closer and closer than ever.

 
; Would she have to sell the hotel altogether? Would she be able to sell the hotel right now? If she sold it then what would happen to it? Would someone demolish it and build a new place on the piece of land? Would the entire staff lose their jobs? If the new owner kept the hotel, would they change the branding and functionality people had come to expect from the Paradise?

  There’s was no way of telling what would happen to it.

  Charles Henderson was shocked to learn about Michael’s death. He was such a talented investigator who really knew how to keep the family tradition of working in the police department going. He worked hard to help the police office and wanted to do whatever it took to help everyone out with all their cases.

  But why did he have to die so young? Could it have been the person who tried killing him a few years ago…or was it someone who felt that he knew enough and was a threat; someone who could have blown the case wide open and revealed a new clue?

  Charles had been in the force for a few years more than Michael had but he was especially interested in helping people. However, he always had a personal philosophy to his work: “You fuck with someone in the department and you’re fucking with me.”

  Charles never had the best mouth but he always worked hard to make sure he kept it clean around younger people. That was not normally a problem because he tended to avoid younger kids as he was always bothered by them. He always seemed to take a W.C. Fields approach to children—they might be nice in theory but they are simply annoyances.

  Even with this in mind, he still went around to help people when they were in trouble. He was extremely protective of the members of his department and he never wanted anyone to mistreat their partners.