Brooks-Lotello Collection

by Ronald S. Barak

  “Thanks to the diligence of TITO personnel, we have assembled a short list of five suspects who are here participating in Thriller Jubilee. In the past, all five were rejected by each of our three victims. We have the names of the five. But we don’t have any descriptions or photographs. Or know the rooms they’re staying in here at the hotel.” Lotello hesitated. “So, we have a few requests for you.”

  Ramirez motioned Lotello affirmatively with a wave of his hand. “Dime por favor. Please tell me what you need. How I may be of assistance.”

  “First,” Lotello explained, “we’d like the room numbers of each of our five suspects.”

  “Eso no es un problema. Not a problem.”

  “I want to investigate our five suspects,” Lotello said. “One at a time. Starting with an examination of their rooms. Actually, Judge Brooks is insisting on personally handling the investigation of one of the suspects on our list, a gentleman by the name of George Enright.

  “Before we developed our list of suspects, Brooks met and visited with Enright here at the conference. Their meeting might or might not have been inadvertent.

  “As you may have noticed, Brooks’s talent is more in the realm of thinking and planning. Not … doing. He is used to others following his instructions … doing for him. But he is stubborn. And his mind is made up that he should be the one to take the lead on Enright since he has already visited with him a bit here and there at TJ.”

  “Eso es ridiculo,” Ramirez softly interrupted. “This is so silly. You and Judge Brooks are welcome to leave the investigation to me.”

  Of course, I knew Ramirez would suggest this. But on this sleepy little island I’m not sure how versed he is in such matters. I have to be careful, however, not to offend him. “Thank you for offering. You are very kind, but chasing killers is what I do in D.C. Brooks knows that, and I have to live with him when we return home. But this does lead me to our second request.

  “We don’t know what we’ll encounter when we carry out our inquiries. Can your team provide us backup in case we are met with any surprises? Not alongside us, but hidden nearby because we don’t want to alert or spook any of our suspects while we’re confronting them.”

  “Otra vez. Again, this is not a problem. However, I think you may have picked up some of Judge Brooks’s characteristics,” Ramirez chuckled. “But you are our guests, and so we will do it your way. We can use the emergency call features on the cell phones we gave you this morning and quickly jump in if anything goes wrong. This should work, no?”

  “Perfect, Diego. Also, can you please give us duplicate keys for the five rooms? If our suspects aren’t there when we knock on the doors, we’d like to quietly enter the rooms and see what we can find.”

  “Ah, you know, amigo mio, my friend, even here on Punta Maya, we recognize the concepts of privacy and due process. We too are civilized. As are your authorities in the U.S. However, our priorities here are perhaps a little different than in your country. Here, we put a greater emphasis on protecting potential victims rather than protecting the rights of the accused. It is a matter of philosophy, no? Of course, this is always a delicate balance. Given that we already have three unexplained disappearances, we would prefer to avoid any more and will not worry about the subtleties of privacy and due process. As you put it … quietly. “Pues,” Ramirez added, “let us put together the details.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Day Three, 1:00 p.m.

  LOTELLO PULLED THE POCKET-SIZED notepad out of his jacket and flipped it open. For him, old habits were like old friends. Tried and true. Worth keeping around. This particular old habit came cheap. Only $5.95 for eight of them. When he needed more, it only required a couple of clicks on Amazon.com. Old friends cost a lot more. And were a lot harder to come by.

  Basic top-bound spiral memo books, 3-inch-by-5-inch, 50 pages per book. They were light. And they fit in his pockets. When he messed up an entry, he could just tear out the page and start over. His Metro D.C. homicide partner back home, Jeremy Barnet, preferred making notes on his cell phone. Barnet laughed at Lotello every time he saw him writing in one of his little memo pads. Lotello could care less. Not everyone liked to read on an ebook device either. It took all kinds. Old habits were hard to break.

  On the first line on each of the first five pages of his notepad, in alphabetical order by last name, he had written one name and one room number. That was it. The notepad was otherwise blank. He expected to add to it as he proceeded with his investigation.

  The five names were the only registrants at the Thriller Jubilee retreat refused representation by each of the three prominent program speakers who had vanished—Lasko, Llewellyn and Simpson. The five names had been painstakingly assembled the night before by TITO personnel. Not for attribution, the corresponding room numbers of the five potential suspects had been clandestinely provided to Lotello by Security Chief Ramirez.

  Lotello knew that calling these five individual suspects—even potential suspects—was a bit of a stretch. First, there was no evidence that any of the three missing persons had actually met with foul play. They simply weren’t accounted for.

  Merely being turned away by each of the three was hardly determinative of anything. For starters, TITO had also accumulated longer lists of registrants rejected by one or two of the dignitaries as opposed to all three. Still, Lotello recognized they had to begin somewhere. They couldn’t just wait for the possibility that more people might vanish.

  Although Lotello knew Brooks wanted to take the lead on Enright, he was opposed, but there was no dissuading Brooks once he had made up his mind on something. Anything actually. At least Ramirez had assigned one of the hotel security officers to tag along with Brooks. Close by but out of sight. Lotello scribbled Brooks’s name next to Enright’s on the page assigned to Enright in his notepad. He returned the notepad to his pocket.

  That left the other four on the list to Lotello. And the other hotel security officer Ramirez had assigned to covertly back up Lotello, positioning his backup discreetly down the corridor where he could come running if Lotello sounded the alert on his cell. Not his original cell, but rather the alias new one that hotel security had arranged for him. Lotello approached the door of the first of his four suspects, Rochelle Jackson. Out of an abundance of caution, before knocking on Jackson’s door, he looked back down the hallway once more to be sure his backup was watching him.

  BROOKS TOOK A DEEP breath. He knew where the security guard was stationed in case he needed to summon help. He reviewed once more what he would say if Enright answered his knock. He had fabricated an excuse for why he was there. What he wasn’t sure of was an explanation of how he had acquired Enright’s room number. I’ll just have to say TITO personnel gave it to me. I’ll sell it. He won’t know otherwise. Not for sure. Not now anyway. If he turns out to be innocent, I can explain it all to him later on. He’ll understand. Hopefully. If he’s innocent. But what if he isn’t innocent?

  I UNDERESTIMATED BROOKS. HE was smarter and faster than I expected. Not falling for my attempt to deliver an anniversary gift from the hotel management to him. He’s clearly the brains behind the operation, and Lotello is the brawn. Brooks can’t hurt me without Lotello around to do his bidding. Lotello, on the other hand, may not be as sharp without Brooks around, but he can still function damn well on his own. He may even become a greater threat to me if I take out Brooks. Much smarter for me to dispose of Lotello first. Time to hack into the hotel computer system again.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Day Three, 1:10 p.m.

  THE TITO AWARDS COMMITEE had just finished a scheduled meeting to run through and fine tune the program for the Saturday night banquet. As the others were leaving, Hart glanced at Lewis and signaled her to remain behind.

  He asked her to fill him in on what had transpired since the board’s meeting the night before. She summarized the results of her staff’s outreach to the New York offices of Lasko, Llewellyn, and Simpson. It had been a lon
g night, but by this morning they had developed alternate lists of retreat participants whose representation had been declined by combinations of the three missing TITO directors. “Especially promising was an additional list we generated of five TJ registrants who were turned down by all three. I gave the lists to Lotello this morning. With backup from hotel security, Lotello is looking into the five commonly rejected registrants as we speak.”

  Hart nodded, affirmatively, but also pensively. After a moment, he replied: “I guess we’re doing all we can. Still …” His voice trailed off.

  “I know what you mean,” Lewis said. “I did some online research this morning. I read the actual lawsuits filed against the gymnastics organizations and against USC. I’m a little nervous about the board’s decision not to be forthcoming to everyone here at TJ about what’s going on.”

  “Why do you say that?” Hart asked.

  “It’s what Brooks said when Jonathan tried to distinguish our situation by saying that those defendants knew who the doctors were and actually employed and empowered them, but that we have no idea who the possible killer is here, and therefore have no control over the perpetrator. Brooks answered that liability might be predicated more on the relationship between the organizations and the victims than on the relationship between the organizations and the offenders.

  “When I read the lawsuits this morning, the language really brought home what Brooks had said, a duty the organizations owed to protect the victims without regard to who actually harmed the victims or the relationship between the organizations and the persons doing the victimizing.”

  “When you think about it,” Hart said, “that makes perfect sense from a practical point of view. The victims filing the lawsuits don’t care who hurt them as much as they care about who might have protected them. And who has money to pay them. The bad guys don’t have the kind of money being sought. It’s the organizations, and their insurers, that are the deep pockets.”

  “That’s the other thing I checked on this morning that has me worried,” Lewis said. “The amount of TITO’s insurance isn’t nearly as much as the victims were seeking in the lawsuits I read. We could have considerable exposure beyond our insurance limits. Worse still, that liability could extend to TITO’s officers and directors personally.”

  “That’s obviously unnerving, but I’m not sure that we don’t have enough insurance,” Hart said. “In each of the gymnastics and gynecology lawsuits you read, there were hundreds of victims over a number of years. Not that I mean to make light of it, but unless our killer sets off a bomb or some other weapon of mass destruction that kills hundreds of people, our exposure hopefully will not be greater than our insurance.”

  “I’m obviously not a lawyer, Ryan, but I have several problems with your analysis. First, our victims are presumably dead. I don’t mean to make light of sexual abuse, but those victims are still alive. Presumably their damages are not as great as the families of someone who is murdered. Second, the cases I read seek punitive damages that can be much greater than actual damages. Third, again from what I read, the insurance companies deny coverage of punitive damages awards. TITO could end up in expensive litigation with its insurers as well as the heirs or estates of our missing victims.”

  Hart grimaced. “Geez, and from what I understand about punitive damages, they’re measured by the financial worth of the defendants. Some of our officers and directors, including yours truly, have substantial net worths.

  LOTELLO SPOTTED HIS COMPANION security officer on the ready, appearing to be occupied with the cleaning supplies cart at his side. Lotello could see the man’s attention was actually divided between Lotello and an object in his hand. Lotello assumed the object was the man’s phone, the one that housed the panic receiver in case Lotello had to signal for backup.

  Lotello’s paired alias phone was in his hip pocket. The matching panic transmitter was open and would call for support with one quick tap. In his other hip pocket was the passkey that would open the hotel room door in front of him if no one answered his knock. He rapped gently and waited. Nothing. He rapped again, this time louder. Still nothing. He took out the passkey, held it against the door and watched the little light on the door handle turn green. He cautiously opened the door and quietly walked into the small entry way.

  The layout of the unit seemed to be the same as his and Leah’s original hotel unit.

  To the immediate right of the entry was the bathroom and closet area. Lotello took a quick look in that direction. At first blush, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. The sliding closet doors were closed. So was the door to the bathroom. He decided he would come back to the closet and bathroom after he first moved though the entry into the main area of Jackson’s hotel room.

  He returned his gaze straight forward. The closet and bathroom layout blocked his view of anything more than a wall desk, a mounted television screen, and a desk chair, all along the left wall.

  He tentatively inched forward, spotting a coffee maker sitting on the wall extension to the left, just beyond the desk, which he now noticed housed a laptop computer and a smartphone as well. Straight ahead was a sofa and a coffee table sitting in front of it and a standing lamp to the side of it. To his immediate right, opposite the sofa and coffee table was a large king-sized bed. Empty.

  At that very moment, he sensed some movement behind him in the entry way. He quickly turned. It was too late. Standing there with a towel wrapped around her, she shrieked at the top of her lungs, “What the hell!? Who the fuck are you!” She pulled the towel around her tighter and quickly darted into the bathroom, slamming the door behind her.

  Oh, shit. What the hell do I do now? “I’m with building security, ma’am.” He couldn’t think of what else to say. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t think anyone was in the room.”

  “Get the hell out of my room, you creep!” she shouted through the bathroom door. “I’m calling the front desk.”

  Lotello needed no encouragement. He rapidly exited the woman’s hotel room and closed the door behind him.

  HIS HEART WAS POUNDING. Whether or not it technically amounted to trespass, Brooks was not in the habit of sneaking into people’s homes or hotel rooms. He thought he could hear it beating away, thump, thump, thump. He knew it was just his imagination. But there it was: thump, thump, thump. He concentrated on the door in front of him, the only thing that stood between him and Enright’s room. And possibly Enright himself. Possibly … a serial killer.

  He paused and looked around for the security guard who was supposed to be backing him up. If the man was in place, he was good because Brooks couldn’t see him anywhere. I assume he’s there. I hope he’s there.

  Brooks stared at Enright’s door. He wondered if he shouldn’t have left this to Lotello. Nonsense! He took a deep breath and slowly exhaled. In through my nose; out through my mouth. Just like when I’m exercising. He knocked on the door and waited. There was no answer. Come to think of it, Enright did say he was attending Pitch Gala this afternoon, hoping to find a new agent and a resulting entry to one of the larger publishing houses.

  His thumb was on the panic button on the alias phone in his left hand. He held the passkey in his right hand, ready to open the door. He needed two hands to work the passkey and push the door open. He had to put the phone in his pocket. Hope I don’t need it. Maybe I’m not cut out for this physical stuff after all.

  He used the passkey, got the door open, and slowly entered Enright’s hotel room. He didn’t hear a thing. He walked further into the quarters. Everything looked perfectly ordinary. The bathroom was empty. Some clothes were scattered on the bed. A suitcase lay opened on the floor nearby the bed.

  All of a sudden, Brooks noticed he was feeling somewhat lightheaded. And then it dawned on him. He was holding his breath. He remembered his self-admonition. In. Out. In. Out. He remembered that he was only supposed to question Enright, if he found him. Otherwise, he was to leave the physical investigation to Lotello.

  Needing no
further convincing, Brooks quickly backed out of the room, and closed the door. He felt better already. For the moment.

  THE THREE SAUCY LADIES sat sipping their drinks out on the veranda. Their moods were as downcast as the ocean panorama in front of them was magnificent.

  After their joint presentation, they had dutifully reported to the TJ bookstore, along with the other speakers who had made presentations during the same hour, to autograph their books bought in the bookstore and presented to them to sign.

  “Not one sale, not one request for an autograph,” Pappas reported to her two partners. “How about you guys? You make out any better than I did?”

  “Not me,” Lonergan responded.

  “Ditto,” said Rutledge. “But we can’t get discouraged,” she added. “People come to Thriller Jubilee to buy novels written by their favorite storytellers. Not many are here to buy ‘how to’ technical non-fiction books.”

  “That’s right,” Pappas agreed. “But they didn’t bring me my novels to sign either.”

  “Yeah, but our panel presentation was a ‘how to’ thing, not about your novels,” Rutledge countered.

  “And I actually did meet with a prospective new client after our presentation, a retired judge by the name of Cyrus Brooks,” Lonergan said. “He wants a website. So, The Three Saucy Ladies may have landed their first client here at Punta Maya, even if our Punta Maya ROI isn’t yet positive.”

  “A judge wants a website?” Pappas asked.

  “He’s looking to write novels.”

  “You’re kidding, a retired judge is going to become a big time novelist?” Rutledge questioned.

  “Hey, cut him a little slack, huh. He didn’t say anything about ‘big time.’ So he’s not big time—so what? I’m not big time either. He was a very nice man. I can build him a simple little starter website.”

  “Why not?” Pappas said. “We still have to pay the bills until our ship comes in.”