The Case of the Guest Who Stayed Over (The M.O.D. Files Book 1)

by K. W. Callahan

  I reached over in bed and grabbed my phone from the nightstand, “This is Robert,” I said, sounding as if I’d been sitting there expecting a call at any moment.

  “Robert, this is Tom.”

  Tom was actually calling me by my full first name, something he rarely did. And Tom was at the hotel on a Sunday, which was unheard of. Something big must be up.

  “I need you to come to room 11-121…now.”

  “I’ll be right there, Tom. What’s up?”

  “Just get down here. Don’t bother getting dressed. Just throw something on and get here as fast as you can.”

  He sounded serious, nervous…definitely not his usual jovial self.

  “Okay,” I said.

  I hung up, rolled out of bed, and threw on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt I’d left on the sofa chair beside my bed the other day. I stumbled into a pair of tennis shoes, gave myself a quick look in the mirror, took a rinse of mouthwash and squirt of cologne, and grabbed my phone, wallet, and M.O.D. key-ring.

  I did a brisk walk down the hall to the service elevators. A minute later, I stepped off the elevator and onto the 11th floor back landing where I was met by an array of first responder personnel – EMTs, police, and hotel security staff.

  “Oh boy,” I said, half to myself.

  I was immediately stopped by a police officer.

  “Whoa, where do you think you’re going?”

  “I’m the hotel manager on duty,” I said, flashing my hotel identification card.

  He eyed the card, then me, then the card again.

  “Our general manager, Tom Hanson asked me to come down,” I explained.

  The officer nodded and stepped aside. “Okay, go ahead. Just don’t touch anything,” he called after me as I pushed the back landing’s swinging double doors open and cut a left down the hallway toward 11-121. Someone was dead…or at least seriously injured in 11-121. I knew that much. Who, how, how many, and what the mess was going to be, I wasn’t sure.

  I took a right as I hit a hallway intersection and saw a crowd of people clustered in the hall ahead of me. Tom Hanson was one of them.

  A few nosey guests had their heads stuck outside their doors as they looked warily down the hallway at the activity taking place. The heads popped back inside like scared turtles as I passed, only to re-emerge seconds later.

  As I neared the clustered group, I could see Tom dabbing at his pudgy face with a handkerchief. He was covered in sweat and swayed nervously back and forth while two police officers stood talking to him. He kept pointing at several nearby hotel security staff, one of whom I recognized as Steve Sukol, the hotel’s hulking six-foot-five director of security.

  As I walked up, Tom quickly turned his attention to me, looking for someone, anyone, to whom he could turn over responsibility for the situation.

  “Ah, Robert, am I glad to see you,” he exhaled deeply. “This is Robert Haze, our hotel’s manager on duty,” he told the officers, hurriedly.

  They looked at me, then back to Tom.

  “I keep telling them to talk to Steve about this mess, Robert, but they won’t listen. They keep asking me questions. I’ve told them that I don’t deal with this type of thing, but they won’t listen. I was at breakfast, and they called me at home. They called me right in the middle of breakfast. ME,” he said incredulously, as if he weren’t the general manager of an 1800 room, world-famous hotel.

  “I don’t handle this kind of stuff,” he went on babbling like a little kid who was scared of being accused of stealing a cookie by his parents. “That’s why we have a security staff. That’s why I have you,” he said looking at me, eyes wide, still dabbing at his sweat drizzled jowls. “But they just keep asking me things. Things I can’t answer. I can’t even begin to tell you…”

  The officers stared at him, waiting for him to finish.

  Steve just stood there, quietly staring down at the fat man, a smug look on his face. He seemed to be enjoying our befuddled captain’s little meltdown.

  “Tom, calm down,” I cut him off. “Just tell me what’s going on? What happened?”

  “I don’t know. That’s what I keep telling these men here. Someone…a guest…has been killed. I don’t know how, or why, or even when. But they want all sorts of specifics. When he checked in. When he was supposed to check out. They want a lock read. They want interviews with room attendants. They want to speak to members of the security staff. I told them, I don’t deal with these sorts of things. I told them, I’m just the general manager. The day-to-day operations are, are…”

  I put up a hand to halt any further rambling by Tom.

  “Tom, listen to me. Go have a drink. Calm down. Steve and I will talk to these officers. I’ll give you a full report once I have all the details, and then we can proceed from there. Okay?”

  He nodded his fat little bobble-head, his cheeks shaking furiously. “Thank you, Robert,” he said, continuing to dab his forehead with the handkerchief in one hand while steadying himself against my arm with the other.

  “Thank you so much. I’m just not used to dealing with this sort of thing, with so much excitement and all,” he blithered.

  “It’s fine. Can you make it downstairs by yourself?”

  “Yes. Yes, I think so. I just need a drink. That’s it. A nice drink…and a little more breakfast! That’ll calm me down,” he said, moving slowly down the hall, an outstretched hand as a feeler against one wall to guide him. “Yes, that will work just fine. Stomach’s still empty. That’s the problem. Can’t think on an empty stomach,” he kept muttering as he wandered away.

  Steve and I looked at each other, then at the police officers.

  “He runs this place?” one of the officers asked, an eyebrow raised.

  “He’s the general manger,” Steve said stiffly. “‘Runs’ is a strong word.”

  The officers nodded, knowingly. “Yeah, well, our boss is going to want to talk to…one of you,” the other officer said. “Which one is up to you.”

  I looked over at Steve. He remained impassive.

  “You want me to handle this one?”

  “Sure,” he shrugged. “Go for it.”

  The officers stepped aside, allowing me entry into room 11-121.

  As I entered, it looked as any occupied room should look. There was an open suitcase on a wooden fold-out luggage stand in one corner. A pair of rumpled slacks was tossed haphazardly onto one of the sofa chairs. A pair of brown leather shoes sat askew on the floor at the foot of the bed. The room’s window curtains were half open just as the room attendants had been instructed to leave them after cleaning. The bed was rumpled and appeared to have been slept in, but no one was in it. On the nightstand, there was a pile of loose change, a half-filled glass of water, and a pair of nail clippers. Nothing appeared out of the ordinary. It looked no different than a thousand other occupied rooms I’d seen over the years.

  A photographer was walking around the room snapping pictures while another man was taking measurements over by the window. A gentleman in a dark blue suit was kneeling at the end of the bed, peering under the bed-skirt, a cardinal red tie tossed back over his right shoulder to keep it from interfering with his inspection.

  “Thought there’d been a murder here,” I said, stepping closer. “Everything looks normal to me.”

  The man in the blue suit and red tie looked up at me and then stood and took off a white latex rubber glove. The tie slid back down over his shoulder and into place between his open suit jacket.

  He was slightly taller than me – maybe 6’2 – but thinner. He had piercing brown eyes and close cropped hair that matched in color. His cheeks were slightly sunken, but not unattractively so, and it was obvious by the tailored fit of his suit that he took some pride in his appearance.

  I always kind of thought that a hotel manager and a detective had to dress somewhat similarly. We needed to look good, but we also had to be ready to respond to and work comfortably in all sorts of situations; situations that could easily r
esult in damage to a nice suit. Therefore, it was a fine balancing act between spending enough money on our attire to look good, but not so much that we were out a bundle should we destroy our apparel during the day’s work.

  “And you are?” the man hit me with a knife-like gaze.

  I suddenly realized that I was not in my usual work garb, and that I was missing my embossed Lanigan Hotel lapel nametag.

  “Robert Haze,” I said, stretching out a hand, “hotel manager on duty.”

  The man inspected me a moment. “Detective John Marino,” he said, shaking my hand. “This how you usually dress for work?” he asked, nodding to my informal attire.

  “Not typically, no, but this was kind of a spur of the moment thing. I’ve been working the night shift lately. Didn’t expect to get hit with a murder at this time of day,” I half joked.

  “Well, Mr. Haze, first off, not every murder needs to be gruesome to be a murder. And murder certainly doesn’t play to convenience, I can attest to that.”

  I nodded, “True enough, but every murder does needs a victim, right?

  “You do have me there, Mr. Haze.”

  “Robert, please.”

  “Then Robert, yes, you do need a victim,” he said as he stepped over to the large armoire beside the television stand. He opened one of its double doors to reveal a middle-aged man leaning stiffly against its wooden interior, his lifeless eyes staring upward, his mouth agape.

  “And here he is,” the detective gestured. “I just didn’t think he needed to be viewed by the world. My way of showing a little respect for the deceased until he’s taken away.”

  “Fair enough,” I nodded. “How did he die?”

  “It appears that he died of asphyxiation – strangled with a tie – but I’m not willing to guarantee that until an autopsy has been done.”

  “Okay,” I said, as the detective closed the armoire door. “So how can I be of assistance in this matter?”

  “Well…Robert, I’m going to need a number of things from you.”

  I walked over to the nightstand and grabbed a pen and a pad of hotel stationary upon which to jot the detective’s needs.

  “What are you DOING? Put those down IMMEDIATELY!” the detective boomed behind me.

  I jumped, dropping them in the process as I realized my mistake. I felt like a scolded school child and a complete idiot.

  “This is a crime scene, he said incredulously. “Do NOT under any circumstances touch anything else.”

  “Sorry, sorry,” I said backing away from the nightstand. “I typically carry a notepad and pen with me but…”

  The detective backed off as he held up a hand, “It’s okay. I realize that most people don’t spend their days working at crime scenes. Here,” he said pulling a pen and small notepad from his jacket pocket, “you can use mine.”

  “Thanks,” I said, taking them. “I appreciate it.”

  He nodded, looking less annoyed as security escorted two members of the coroner staff into the room.

  “He’s in there,” the detective said, pointing them to the armoire. “He’s been dead a while.”

  They went about extracting the body and placing it on a rolling stretcher while Detective Marino and I moved over to the windows and out of the way to continue our conversation.

  “I’ll need to speak with the room attendant or attendants who cleaned the room during the gentlemen’s stay, the floor manager in charge during the same days, and anyone else who may have come into the room during that time. I’ll need a lock read and an incoming and out-going call list. I’ll also need you to make sure that you retain any video surveillance from this floor, a room history report, and any other pertinent reports or information you think might be helpful in identifying who might have been to this room during this guest’s stay.

  I nodded. “Sounds like you’ve done this before.”

  “I’ve had more than my share of hotel murders,” he said, grim-faced. “Not always the easiest to solve…but we usually do.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Of course we’ll need to have this room locked and sealed…that means no cleaning or selling of the room.”

  “Of course,” I said, amazed that he felt it necessary to tell me something so obvious. Then I remembered my recent pen and notepad faux pas.

  “You’d be surprised,” he frowned. “At one hotel in which we had sealed a room, we came back the next day to find that the director of housekeeping had instructed the attendant to clean the room and had even called in a carpet cleaning company to specially clean the blood-stained carpet so that they could sell the room for an incoming convention.”

  “Jesus, really?”

  The detective snorted, shaking his head, “Yeah. What hotels won’t do to make a buck…no offense.”

  “None taken,” I smiled. “It’s true.”

  The coroner’s people had finished removing the body from the armoire and had now cleared the room.

  “If you’d like to accompany me down to the front office, I can get you most of what you need,” I said ripping the piece of paper I’d been writing notes upon off the notepad and putting it in my pocket. I handed the detective his pen and pad back and he followed me out of the room.

  On the way downstairs, I called Steve Sukol in security and asked him to have 11-121 re-keyed, with only two key copies made, both to go to Detective Marino. I also requested that Steve have the electronic lock on the door read for key swipes during the guest’s stay, with copies of the report forwarded to myself and Tom. I would forward a copy to Detective Marino myself. Then I called Marian Marshall – the hotel’s director of housekeeping – to let her know that Detective Marino would be up later to pay her a visit as well as to give her time to pull the room reports for that floor and determine which attendants and floor managers had been assigned to the room.

  ***

  By the time we got down to the front office, it was obvious that word was out. We were met with wondering stares from the desk agents. I knew that everyone was dying to know the dirty details, but they’d just have to suffer and wait for the security staff to start blabbing. Security couldn’t help but yap about things like this. Word would trickle from security officers as they patrolled the floors and gabbed with room attendants as both sides looked for a break from the daily doldrums. Then word would trickle from the room attendants to the floor managers and from the floor managers to the maintenance men fixing things in rooms. It would then be overheard by the room service attendants restocking mini-bars and clearing trays from the hallways and back landings. And so word would continue to filter throughout the hotel until it reached the far corners of all departments, only to start all over again as the story grew, evolved, and was eventually replaced with a juicy new piece of gossip about a floor manager found in a room making out with someone from property operations or a report that possible layoffs were coming next week.

  “Have a seat,” I motioned Detective Marino to a small sofa once inside my office.

  “I’ll stand, thanks.”

  “Can I get you something to drink?” I asked.

  “Water, please.”

  “Sure.”

  I handed him a bottle of water from the mini-fridge beside my desk and twisted off the cap of another for myself.

  I sat down at my computer and opened the front desk system, pulling up room 11-121.

  Detective Marino stood behind me, inspecting my office while we waited for the room history to open.

  “Are these all the hotels you’ve worked at before?” he asked, pointing to framed pictures of various hotels which lined one wall of my office.

  The pictures all had white trim borders framing a shot of the particular hotel and around which hotel staff members and co-workers had written personal messages and wished me well on my new adventures. These items were kind of trophies among hotel managers, showcasing their experience as well as reminding them of “the good ‘ol days” that at the time hadn’t seemed all that good.

>   “Yep. I’ve worked in a few good ones over the years,” I reminisced.

  “Indianapolis,” he said, pointing to one property in particular at which I had begun my career years ago. “You ever been to the 500 mile race?”

  “Used to be a ritual for me,” I said. “Our hotel actually hosted many of the teams, drivers, and sportscasters. The month of May was always an exciting time of year.”

  “I’ll bet,” he nodded. “I went with a few buddies of mine several years ago. Quite an experience. Totally different than what you see on television. The noise, the speed; it was incredible.”

  “You ought to get into one of the cars.”

  “I don’t think so,” he laughed.

  “No seriously. They have the two-seater experiences out at the track in Joliet. I went last summer. It was a blast. You talk about getting the real deal. At a race, you get the sights and the sounds, but it’s the actual feel of being inside the car that’s really incredible. Everything looks so smooth when you’re watching it on television and riding along through the onboard cameras, like they’re just gliding along, but when you actually get inside the car and hit one of those left-hand turns, the g-forces, it’s like someone’s shoving you up against the wall as hard as they can. It’s completely different from what it looks like on television.

  “Yeah well, so is life,” the detective chuckled.

  “I’d like to take a driving class to be able to take one out on my own, but it’s so damn hard to break away from work.”

  “I hear that,” the detective nodded knowingly.

  “Here we go,” I said, as I finished pulling up all the room information, “11-121, registered to an Allen Doddsman.”

  I printed out the general information such as room number, room type, guest name, address, payment and billing information, room charges, as well as any comments about the room or group in particular, and handed it to Detective Marino.

  He studied it for a minute.

  “What does KNGN mean,” he pointed to a spot at the top of the page just above the room number.