by K. J. Emrick
Tim fidgeted in his seat. “No. I don’t.”
Jon nodded. “Well, it doesn’t matter. The computer records don’t lie, like you said.”
“Right, like I said. My computer system is tamper proof and it shows nobody went into that room the day he died except him. So. There you go. I think he killed himself.”
“Except, no,” Jon said with a tight frown. “Because our victim was shot, and there was no gun in the room. He didn’t kill himself and then get rid of the murder weapon. Someone killed him. Someone got in that room.”
“But how?” Tim lifted a hand in a ‘show me’ gesture. “The room was locked, and the security bar was in place when your officers broke in. The windows don’t open from the outside. Even if they could, there’s no access to them on the second floor. The computer clearly shows no one else used a key to enter the room. You’ve got a mystery with no solution, and because of that you can’t arrest anyone. Nobody could get in. Nobody could get out.”
“Except they did,” Jon said. He gestured to the square mirror on the far wall, the two-way glass where other officers were watching from the hallway, just like he’d planned earlier. “Someone did get into that room, and we know how.”
“Impossible,” the hotel manager scoffed.
“Not impossible. Just mysterious.”
Darcy smiled again. “The mysterious is all around us, after all.”
Tim didn’t know what to make of that. “Fine. I’ll bite. How did someone get into a locked room to kill this poor unfortunate soul? You can’t tell me that you figured that out in two days, not something that impossible, not something that—”
A scuffling, crinkling sound interrupted whatever he was going to say next and turned their attention to the door of the interview room. A thin piece of plastic was being shoved through the seam between the door and the frame below the bar handle. It curled as it came in, because after all, it had been a two-liter bottle of soda until just about a half hour ago, when Darcy had shown the officers how to shape it into a burglary tool. The red cola label was still attached to it. Darcy almost imagined that she could see little droplets of dark soda on the inside surface.
As they watched, the person holding the piece of plastic from the other side of that door slid it up, up, up, until the curling edge of it wrapped around the end of the slender handle lever. A hole cut into that corner of the plastic gradually worked its way over the tip, and once the user of this makeshift device felt it snag, he applied steady downward pressure, which pulled on the handle, until the door opened.
A Meadowood PD officer stepped in, unhooking the cut-up soda bottle from the handle. He shook his head. “Sure makes me rethink my security system at home. You just cut the top and the bottom off a used two-liter bottle, and then cut a slit in the side and cut out this hole… and there you go.”
“There you go,” Jon repeated, spreading his hands to Tim Ivers. “Just like that. We found a cut up soda bottle in the bathroom of the hotel room, cut just like this. It was odd because the rest of the food in the room was healthy snacks and water. I doubt the victim even drank soda. Kind of a health food nut. You know the kind.”
Tim’s face was hard to read. “Interesting. Where’d you find that trick?”
“YouTube,” Darcy told him, proud of herself for knowing how to use both books and the internet to learn new things. “You should search up ‘how to unlock a hotel door with a bottle’ and watch the videos on there. Some people have way too much time on their hands. See, a locked door handle can still be opened from the inside. You just have to have some way to get to the inside.”
“Well. Aren’t you just the clever one.” Tim dragged his coffee cup closer, spinning around as he spoke. “I suppose someone could have used that trick to open the door to room 203. It wouldn’t leave a record in the computer system, and it wouldn’t leave any marks on the door. Someone would have to be pretty smart to do that, don’t you think?”
“Fairly smart, yes,” Jon agreed.
“Smart enough that the police would probably never catch him.” He spun the cup again, around and around. “I think you’re out of your league here, Chief.”
Jon tapped his finger on top of the table. “I can admire the creative ways people come up with to commit a crime without appreciating the person. And you’re right, this man was pretty intelligent. For instance, he knew that the security cameras are on a twenty-four-hour loop. He knew he had to get into the room where our victim was going to be staying, and wait there for him, at least a full day before the murder took place because otherwise the cameras would see him.”
“Ooh, good point,” Tim said. “Maybe you’re smarter than I thought.”
“Without a doubt,” Jon told him without missing a beat. “As I was saying, our killer got into the room a day before the murder, and he did it without leaving a trace by using that little trick we just demonstrated. Then he waited for Fred Harris to arrive and killed him. The only problem was, the killer had to know which room Harris was staying in.”
“Ah,” Tim drawled. “Which is why you think I did this. Oh, don’t try to deny it. I know what this is. First you detain me over a misunderstanding, a trumped-up charge of assault against Mrs. Darcy Sweet here. You know that will never stick so now you’re trying to bury me by saying I killed a man when I didn’t. You’ve got some crazy theory about how I got in, fine. But even you can’t explain how I got out when the room was locked from the inside. If you can’t prove I was there, you can’t prove I killed him. Your own officers broke down that door, and searched the room, and they didn’t find anyone there. So I think you’ve got no choice at all but to let me go.”
“Or,” Darcy suggested, “Jon could arrest you. Your fingerprints will be on that plastic cutout tool. You should just confess now.”
Tim crossed his arms. “If you can’t show how I managed to kill a man and get away when the room was locked from the inside,” he repeated himself, “you can’t touch me. I doubt your little soda bottle trick would set a security bar in place. Plus, the cameras would have seen me leaving at that point. No. You have nobody on video, and you can’t show how the killer got out. You’re still out of luck.”
“Are we? Here’s the thing,” Jon explained to him. “In a locked door mystery, there’s only two ways that the killer gets away. The first way is if he was never in the room in the first place. We know that’s not the case here because Fred Harris was shot at close range. The killer was definitely in that room.”
Tim cocked an eyebrow. “So what’s the second way?”
Jon took out his cellphone, and swiped through a few screens, and then set it on the table between them. He turned it so that it was facing Tim.
The video surveillance from the hotel was there, paused at the moment the police were about to kick in the door to room 203. Jon pointed to one of the figures on the screen. “That’s the dayshift manager that was on duty that day. It’s not you. Darcy and I both watched this before and we would have recognized you if it was.”
“I work nights,” Tim said, still fidgeting with his coffee cup.
“True, true, but according to that infallible computer record system of yours, you requested the day of the murder off. The day before it as well. In fact, right after you made the reservation for Fred Harris, you called in sick. Odd. You don’t look sick.”
“I recover quickly. Look, Chief, is this going anywhere? I’m not on this video—”
Jon lifted a finger, interrupting him, and then turned that finger upside down to point at the screen. “One, two, three, four police officers at the door,” he counted. “Now. Watch.”
He pushed the play arrow, and then the fast-forward icon, speeding it through the video until the police started coming out again.
“One,” he counted. Darcy saw Officer Mallette coming out, talking on the phone, his expression grave.
“Two,” Jon pointed again, and then, “three.” Those two officers came out and took up a position further down the h
allway, out of sight of the camera.
Jon hummed while he waited. A minute passed by on the surveillance camera’s timer, and then another, and then another.
He pointed again as one more officer came out of the room. “Four.”
Darcy watched Tim for a reaction as Jon waited again.
In another two minutes, another man came out of the room, wearing a police uniform.
“Five.” Jon stopped the video there, showing the image of the man holding his hand up to his face, blocking the camera from getting a good view of him. “My wife noticed the discrepancy. Four officers go in, but five come out. This guy, this one right here, is you. This is the second way a killer gets out of a locked room. He stays in the room until someone unlocks it for him.”
Sweat beaded on Tim’s face. He had the look of a man with his head in a noose, and the rope was tightening.
Jon tapped the phone to enlarge the image. They still couldn’t see this fifth officer’s face, but there was no doubt it was Tim Ivers in disguise. “Like I said before,” Jon continued, “I can appreciate the creativity that went into a crime like this. You knew the surveillance cameras looped every twenty-four hours, so you slipped into the room some time before that. You found yourself a police uniform from somewhere, which isn’t hard to do, and you sat in that room and you waited. I can only imagine his surprise when he got there and saw you. You killed him, and then you locked that security bar from the inside, and you waited for the police to get there… dressed as a police officer yourself. Then all you had to do was just slip out.”
They let that sink in for a moment before Darcy said, “Jon and I were just talking the other day about how easy it is to overlook things in a bigger department like Meadowood. An extra face at a crime scene could easily go unnoticed. You got out of there so fast no one had time to realize who you were, but that’s you, and that’s our proof.”
“And the empty water bottles,” Jon added as an afterthought. “I wondered how Fred Harris would have had time to drink two bottles of water, eat all those pistachios, and get himself killed. Turns out that was you eating and drinking. You were in the room almost two whole days, after all. I’m sure you got hungry.”
Tim pointed at the phone now too, and Jon moved it away just in case he was thinking of doing anything stupid. “No. No, no, no. You can’t prove that’s me. That man has his hand over his face. The camera never sees him.”
“That’s true,” Jon said. “But once we realized how you did this, we did some more investigating. That’s one of the things we police officers are good at. It turns out that across from your hotel is an all-night diner. They have cameras outside that face the street. Know what they saw not five minutes after this guy here leaves room 203?”
He swiped his screen to the right. Another video popped up, ready to play. This one was of a car pulling out of the hotel parking lot, onto the street, passing by the diner. The sole occupant was the driver, and that driver was Tim Ivers.
“Still got the uniform shirt on,” Jon pointed out. “Guess you didn’t have time to change.”
Tim tried to argue. Words and syllables came out, disjointed and mashed together, before he slumped in his chair, defeated. His creative plans had all been undone because Darcy had been here to count the number of officers going into that room, and then coming out.
And she’d only been here, because Colby had gone to the hospital.
Colby had gone to the hospital, because of a ghostly possession by her ancestor.
The same ancestor who had owned the jewelry box that was now sitting back at her house, waiting to reveal even more secrets.
All of it was connected in ways that Darcy hadn’t been able to see before. When it rained, it poured, and Darcy had been dancing in between raindrops just as fast as she could for days now.
“So,” Jon said, collecting up his phone and his notebook and the case file. “We can prove you knew which room Fred Harris would be in. We can prove how you got in. We can prove how you got out. The only thing left is the motive. I’m going to send an officer in here in just a minute and have him take a statement from you. That is, if you want to give one. You have no legal requirement to talk to us. You know your rights? Do I have to read them to you?”
Tim didn’t answer.
“Well, that’s all right.” Jon was obviously enjoying himself. “The officer taking your statement will read your rights to you. Then, if you want, you can tell us all about it. I imagine that since Fred Harris was a relative of the owner of the hotel that he was somehow causing you trouble. Either he was going to take over management of the hotel from you, or you and Fred were working a scam against the owner and Fred threatened to expose you, or something like that. I don’t know, and frankly I don’t care. We’ll find it out on our own after we check your financial records, but you could save us a bunch of trouble if you just told us yourself.”
Tim scrubbed at his face with a hand. “If I tell you… will I get some kind of consideration? Will you give me a break?”
“You killed a man. I’m not really in the mood to give you anything.” Jon stood up and held his hand out to Darcy. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, my wife and I have more important things to worry about. When we leave here, we won’t think about you again, Mister Ivers. I promise you that.”
They walked out of the interview room side by side. Jon gave her a wink. He was kind of being a little smug, she thought, but maybe he’d earned it. Maybe they both had.
She loved this man a little more today than she had yesterday. Now they could go home and be together with their family. Sometimes Darcy felt like there was never enough time for that anymore.
Well, she was going to make time. Colby was growing up, and so was Zane, and everything was changing. For the better, maybe, but she didn’t want to miss anything. Every little thing was important when kids were this age.
A little bit more so, when those kids were your own.
Chapter 13
Ice cream and Oreo cookies at their kitchen table. There was nothing better at the end of a long day. Except maybe a foot rub, Darcy told herself, but that would have to wait until the kids had gone to bed.
“What time is it, anyway?” she asked Jon, spooning melty chocolate and vanilla swirl from her bowl and into her mouth. “I don’t even know.”
He leaned past her to check the clock on the wall. “Past Zane’s bedtime. Close to Colby’s. You want me to put them to bed?”
She pushed what was left of her dessert around with her spoon before shaking her head. “Nah. Let’s let them stay up a little longer. It’s been a long couple of days for everyone.”
“Sure has. It always pours when it rains.”
Darcy tilted her head thoughtfully. “Is that how you learned that saying?”
“Well, sure. That’s how my mom always used to say it. Why, how do you say it?”
She laughed and dug her spoon in again. “You know what? That’s close enough for me.”
Their jackets were tossed carelessly over the backs of their chairs. Their shoes were more or less lined up at the door. After wrapping everything up in Meadowood they had gone back to the hospital for Colby. She was awake, and feeling tired but fine, but the doctors had insisted on running their tests anyway.
Darcy had felt her hand to her daughter’s forehead. She was relieved when nothing happened.
Nicholas Malik had been wonderful about it as always, but Darcy was glad when they finally got to leave a few hours later. There was nothing medically wrong with her daughter. No reason for her to stay in the hospital.
No medical reason at all.
Spiritually and physically, Colby was exhausted. She’d fallen asleep in Darcy’s car on the way back. Jon had to drive his car back as well, but Darcy had insisted on having Colby with her. She wasn’t ready to let their daughter out of her sight. The danger might have passed, but a mother never stops worrying.
Now, she looked out into the living room for the hundredth time, where C
olby and Zane were eating their ice cream from bowls on the floor. The television was on, but they weren’t really paying attention to whatever show it was playing. They were too busy laughing and joking with each other. Family was still a big thing in the Tinker-Sweet household.
Cha Cha barked and chased his tail in circles, making Zane laugh in hysterics, ice cream smeared around his face. Tiptoe watched from the couch, curled up with one eye closed and one eye open, acting disdainful of the noise and the commotion but still wanting to be right in the center of it.
“It’s a nice picture,” Jon said, following Darcy’s gaze. “We did good, Mrs. Sweet.”
She smiled at him. “Yes we did, Mister Tinker. This is one of those times when everything is just perfect.”
“Hmm,” he murmured, stabbing his spoon into his own half-eaten ice cream.
Darcy narrowed her eyes at him. “What are you hmm-ing about? Don’t tell me you just thought of another problem.”
“Well, no. Not another problem. Kind of the same one from earlier. The jewelry box, I mean. In all of this excitement I kind of forgot all about it.”
He motioned with his chin over to the shelves above the refrigerator. For now, Darcy had put the jewelry box up there where the kids weren’t likely to get at it and where she could still keep an eye on it. She should probably keep it in her room, she supposed. Somewhere close and safe. Knowing that it once belonged to the same ancestor who had been possessing Colby, however, kind of made her wary of having it nearby while she was sleeping. Down here, away from everyone in the kitchen, was close enough for her. At least for now.
And no, she did not think she was being paranoid. In the world of Darcy Sweet, this was called being reasonably cautious.
“There’s lots of secrets still to learn about the jewelry box,” she said. “I know who its original owner was, so that tells me who the ‘dearheart’ in the letter was. But why was the letter hidden? Why was the box so important to Willamena? To tell the truth…” She lowered her voice to nearly a whisper. “I’m not even sure if she’s gone for good. She’s gone from Colby, sure, but she hasn’t crossed over yet. We might not have seen the last of the ghost of Willamena Duell. I don’t even know why she brought that box with her when she was escaping from Europe, chased by people who said she was a witch.”