by Steven Henry
Still too many.
She kept working it down. Only fifteen percent of suicides were white women. About eight percent were between eighteen and twenty-five years old. That was a tiny proportion of the total.
Erin got up for a cup of coffee. A box of donuts in the break room still had a cruller, slightly stale. She took that, too, and went back to her desk. She gave Rolf half the cruller. He enjoyed his half more than she did hers.
She started pulling up individual files, looking for patterns. Almost immediately, she scored. A young woman back in 2011 had died at the DoubleTree and had been classified a suicide. Erin read the report. All the details fit. Locked room, no sign of a struggle, cyanide poisoning. The girl, Monica Albright, age twenty-one, had been a Junior at NYU. And she'd been found in a black dress with a bouquet of red roses.
“Lieutenant!” she called.
Webb strolled over. “You know, you took the last donut,” he said. “That means you're buying the next box.”
So that was why the cruller had still been there, damn it. “Take a look at this, sir,” she said, pointing to her computer screen.
He leaned over her shoulder and read the file. When he'd finished, he stood back and closed his eyes.
“Well?” she prompted after giving him a minute.
Webb pinched the bridge of his nose. “What do you want me to say? That you were right? Okay, you're right. It's a series. This was, what, two years back?”
“Yeah,” she said. “I haven't finished checking the records, though. There may have been others since then.”
“And this one was declared a suicide,” he said. “Just great. We're supposed to clear murder cases, not dig up cold ones.”
“So, you want me to put it back?”
“Of course not,” he sighed. “Does this help us?”
She shrugged. “It means the killer's using this hotel.”
“Yeah,” Webb said, nodding. “Current employee?”
“Or former. Is this enough for a court order for employment records?”
“I'll take it to Judge Ferris,” Webb said. “He's good for this kind of thing. I'll get you the order by the end of the day, assuming he's awake.”
“Awake?”
“Ferris is seventy-eight,” Webb explained. “He usually takes an afternoon nap. But he's a good man. You need anything else?”
“I'll let you know, sir.”
“Good work, O'Reilly.” Webb went back to his own desk.
She was just getting back to checking the records when her phone buzzed.
“Yeah?” she said absentmindedly.
“Erin?”
His voice might not have been the one she least wanted to hear at the moment, but it was probably in the bottom ten. “Mr. Carlyle,” she said flatly.
“Aye,” Carlyle said. “I hope I've not interrupted anything.”
“What do you want?”
“I'd like to assist you.”
“News to me.”
“I understand you're a trifle upset, Erin,” he said. “But I've something you may want to hear.”
Her jaw was clenched. She took a deep breath and tried to loosen up a little. “Keep talking.”
“One of my lads just told me something interesting. It seems you've acquired an admirer.”
“If this is about Corky...” she began.
“That's not what I mean,” he said. “When you left the apartment, a lad across the street was photographing you.”
Just what she needed. “Goddamn reporters,” she muttered.
“I'm thinking not,” Carlyle said. “My lad's canny. I trust his instincts, and he told me this man was attempting not to be seen.”
“But your guy noticed him anyway?” Erin asked. “He trained in counter-surveillance, or what?”
“He was trained as a scout sniper by the Marine Corps,” Carlyle replied coolly. “He's a fair eye for people out of place.”
“Jesus,” she said. “What do you need a guy like that for?”
“Security,” Carlyle said, and she could hear the sardonic smile even over the phone. “If he says this lad's no reporter, I believe him.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“I want to give you all the help I can.”
“In exchange for what?” she demanded.
“I told you before,” he said. “We're not performing business transactions. I don't do business with coppers.”
“Yeah, you're all heart. What's your game, Cars?”
“The same one you're playing, darling,” he said. “I've no doubt you'll see your way to the end of this round. When you do, we'll talk again.”
“Don't hold your breath,” she said and hung up.
Judge Ferris had been awake. It took Webb less than an hour to get the court order in hand. By that time, Erin had a list of three more suspicious hotel-room deaths that had been classified as suicides. She also had a serious case of the creeps.
“One more at the DoubleTree,” she said to Webb. “Last year. Same MO. Nicole Winslow, twenty-one. And two at motels, a Super 8 and a Motel 6, both near the Jersey border. Those are four years old.”
“You sure about all of them?” Webb asked.
She shrugged. “Hard to be sure. The ones here in Manhattan, absolutely. The other two are sloppier. The first one was partially nude.”
“Strange,” Webb muttered, looking over her shoulder at the file on her computer. “A killer who evolves to give his victims more clothes? Typically they escalate to more violence, not less.”
“I think he was figuring out what he likes,” she said. “If he gets a sexual thrill out of it, maybe it took the first time or two to learn it wasn't about seeing the women naked.”
Webb nodded. “That's not the point for this guy,” he said. “It's the killing that gets him off.”
“Not quite,” Erin said. She'd been staring at the photos from all of the scenes. “It's the act of watching them die. It's pretty impersonal, right? How do most serial killers do it?”
“Strangulation. Blades. Blunt-force trauma.”
“Right,” she said. “But this guy uses poison. He drugs them, dresses them up, injects them, and sits back to watch them die.”
“You think he films them?” Webb suggested.
“He could,” she said. “Yeah, probably. That'll help us when we catch him. He'll have the film. Should be a slam-dunk.”
“But he's not going to stop until we run him down,” Webb said. “He knows what he wants now. These last three, they're all the same. He's got the taste for it.”
Erin stood up and took the court order. “Rolf and I are going to the hotel,” she said.
“Let me know if you need anything,” he said. “We have to keep looking for Rüdel, but I want to nail this son of a bitch as bad as you do. It won't be long before he finds another victim.”
Chapter 14
The hotel manager wasn't happy to see Erin again. She knew why. A guest who committed suicide was an embarrassment and could be bad for business. A murdered guest was much worse. No hotel liked having police detectives wandering around in any case. It made the guests edgy.
The court order permitted Erin to access guest and employee lists and to search the premises, though not to search any occupied room without the current occupant's permission. She'd need a warrant specifying any guest she needed to search. Unless the management evicted the guest, in which case the hotel could give her the necessary permission. The Fourth Amendment sometimes made her head hurt.
She wasn't expecting the killer to still be at the hotel, though. The guest list was the main thing, combined with one other idea she'd had. In her pocket was her bottle of Heartbreaker perfume.
The manager accompanied her to the fourteenth floor. He chattered nervously the whole way up. Erin didn't really listen. When the elevator doors slid open, she went straight to Room 1410.
“Could you take the tape down soon?” the manager pleaded. “It spoils the aesthetic of the hallway terribly. Ou
r guests expect to feel secure, safe, not as if they're staying in... in...” He couldn't finish the sentence.
“We'll have it taken down as soon as the CSU guys are done,” she said over her shoulder. “Shouldn't be long.”
“Good, good,” he said. “It's not that I don't appreciate what you're doing here. This whole thing is awful, awful. Such a terrible accident.”
She stopped and turned to face him. “This wasn't an accident.”
“Oh, yes, of course,” he stammered. “A tragedy, I should have said.” He handed her the passkey.
“Stay in the hallway, please,” she said. The real tragedy for the manager was the bad publicity, Erin thought sourly. 1410 had already been gone over pretty thoroughly by the techies. They'd taken the bedding, the wine bottle, the glassware, even cut out the section of carpet the wine had spilled on. She stood in the middle of the room and thought things over, trying to reconstruct the crime.
The killer rented the room, using fake ID. Janice Barnes came up, either alone or with him. She opened the bottle of wine and had a drink. When the drug took effect, she fell over and spilled what was left of her drink. The killer clothed her in the black dress and injected her with cyanide. She died without ever regaining consciousness. Then he put the bouquet of roses in her hands, posed her, and left, taking Janice's own clothes with him. No, he tidied up a little before he left. A fastidious psychopath. The wine glass had been put back on the table next to the bottle. A single glass, which suggested Janice had been drinking alone.
Erin kept coming back to the wine. It was the house label, with the DoubleTree's logo. She turned to the manager, who was fidgeting just outside the door. “Sir,” she said. “Do you keep records of room service calls?”
“Naturally. They're billed to customers at checkout.”
“Was there an order from this room?”
“I don't think so. I'd have to check.”
“Would you, please?” she asked, managing to only grit her teeth a little.
He used his cell phone to call down to the hotel's billing agent. “No, ma'am,” he said after a short conversation. “There were no additional charges. No pay-per-view either.”
“Do an inventory of your wine stock,” Erin said. “You're going to find a bottle missing.”
“Ma'am, if you're suggesting one of our employees is pilfering our stores, you will find yourself quite mistaken,” he said, his nervousness giving way to indignation.
“I'm suggesting someone stole one of your bottles and took it to this room,” she said. “While you're at it, see if anything else is missing.”
The manager glared at her. She glared right back, and after a few moments, he coughed and looked away. He made another call on his cell. “Herbert? Yes, I need to know of any inventory discrepancies. Of any sort, but particularly the wine stock. Yes, I understand. Thank you.” He hung up and looked back at Erin. “It will take some time. We have a large number of supplies, many of which are prone to wander. Bath towels, for instance, are often taken by our guests when they depart.”
“Let me know as soon as you have an answer,” she said. In the meantime, her partner had a job to do. She knelt beside Rolf and opened the bottle of perfume. The Heartbreaker fragrance filled the air, heavy and sensual. Dabbing a very little of it on a tissue from the bathroom, she held it in front of her K-9's nose.
“Rolf,” she said, “such.”
The perfume on the victim had almost certainly been applied by the killer when he'd dressed her up. He'd have opened it in the room and closed it again before leaving. But that scent would have lingered on him, and just maybe Rolf would be able to find where he'd gone. The smell was almost three days old, but it'd been strong to begin with, and Rolf's nose was pretty damn good.
The Shepherd snorted to clear his nostrils. He cast about for a moment, sniffing the air. Then he put his snout to the carpet and started tracking, tail wagging excitedly. He went straight to the bed, which Erin had expected. Finding no one there, he turned and trotted to the bathroom. He nosed briefly inside, then headed out into the hall. Erin was right there with him, holding his leash but giving him his head.
She thought he'd go to the elevator, then to the lobby and out into the Manhattan streets, where the trail would get lost at whatever point the murderer had gotten into a vehicle. But she was wrong. Rolf went directly to another door. He stopped outside Room 1415, just across the hall and two doors down. He took deep, snuffling breaths at the bottom edge of the door. He scratched at it and whined.
Excitement flooded through Erin. She turned to the hotel manager. “I need to know who rented this room right now.”
Erin called Major Crimes as soon as she had the guest list in hand. She was getting close, she could feel it.
“Precinct 8, Major Crimes,” Kira answered.
“This is Erin. I've got a name.”
“Is it our guy?”
“I think so,” Erin said, tracing the line on the printout next to Room 1415. “Run Bertram Parson for me.”
“Just a sec.”
Erin heard computer keys clacking. There was a pause.
“Erin? You sure this is the right name?”
Her heart sank. “What's the problem?”
“I've just got one hit.”
“Could be our guy, then.”
“I doubt it,” Kira said. “I'm looking at his obit right now.”
“Son of a bitch,” Erin muttered. “When did he die?”
“Six weeks ago.”
“Maybe our man killed him, took his ID,” she suggested.
“Maybe,” Kira said doubtfully. “But the obituary says that he, and I quote, 'succumbed after a lengthy battle with bone cancer.'”
Erin wanted to kick the wall. She settled for squeezing her phone as hard as she could. “Maybe the hotel checked his ID,” she said.
“There's no legal requirement for a guest to even have ID on him,” Kira said. “If he paid cash, he could've been literally anybody. Bin Laden could've gotten a room if he wanted it.”
“Bin Laden's dead,” Erin reminded her.
“So's Bertram Parson,” Kira replied. “Didn't stop him.”
“Very funny. You guys having any luck on Rüdel?”
“Nothing yet. The LT and Vic are pounding pavement, trying to find out if any CIs are willing to talk.”
“What about Rüdel's guy that we've got in custody?”
“Webb just talked to him at the hospital, through an interpreter. All he learned was a bunch of new German curse words.”
“Got anything else?” Erin asked.
“No. Oh! There is one thing.”
“What's that?”
“You didn't order an espresso machine, did you?”
Erin blinked. “The hell?”
“It got delivered right after you left,” Kira said. “Brand new. Looks pretty sweet. I checked with Facilities, they don't know anything about it.”
“Anything on the manifest?”
“Just a one-sentence message, pretty cryptic. It says, 'For drinks you can enjoy on duty.' You know what that means?”
“Yeah,” Erin said under her breath. “Cars.”
“Sorry, I didn't catch that.”
“Never mind. I'll explain later. Do me a favor, could you? Send me Parson's obit and whatever else you can find on the guy.”
“You think there's a zombie killing women in New York?”
“No, our killer may have known Parson,” Erin said. “I'll be back at the precinct in a while. I still need to look into some stuff here.”
According to the guest list, Bertram Parson had checked in a little before nine o'clock. She went to the front desk and flashed her shield to the receptionist. “Ma'am,” she said, “I need to know who was on duty between eight and nine in the evening, three nights ago.”
The young woman brought up her schedule. “That was Vonnie,” she said, cocking her head to the far end of the counter. “She's on duty right now.”
Vonnie wa
s a perky blonde in her mid-twenties. When she saw Erin, her face lit up, but she wasn't looking at the detective. “Oh, a puppy!” she exclaimed. “He's adorable!”
Erin raised her eyebrows. Rolf was on duty. “Adorable” wasn't the first word that came to mind. Alert? Focused? Intense? Absolutely. He hadn't been a puppy in years. “Vonnie?” she said, coming face to face with her.
“That's me,” Vonnie said cheerfully. “We're a pet-friendly hotel, of course, and your four-legged friend is more than welcome. I love dogs! I have a King Charles Spaniel at home. He's Mommy's little marshmallow, a total cuddlebug!”
“I'm Detective O'Reilly with the NYPD,” she said. “Rolf is a police K-9. I just need to ask you a couple of questions about one of your guests.”
“Of course,” Vonnie said. “Can I pet him?”
Erin couldn't help smiling a little. Compared to some of the payoffs informants wanted, this was pretty small change. “Okay,” she said. “But be polite. He's a professional working animal.”
“Oh, that is so precious!” Vonnie said. She made a kissy face at Rolf over the countertop. “Who's a good little working dog? I'll bet you're so good at your job, yes you are!”
Rolf looked up at Erin. She knew he was watching for instructions, but she could've sworn he rolled his eyes just a little.
“Vonnie,” she said, “do you remember a Bertram Parson? He checked in while you were working, three nights back. About nine in the evening.”
The receptionist drummed her fingers on the counter and looked off into space. “I don't think so,” she said, her eyes going back to Rolf.
“He probably paid cash,” Erin guessed.
“Oh, yeah!” Vonnie said. “I do remember that. Most folks use plastic. But he had exact change. It was kind of weird. He'd even worked out the occupancy tax ahead of time, down to the penny.”
That sounded like the behavior of a tidy psycho. “What did he look like?” Erin asked. Her hands were gripping the edge of the counter.