Past Deeds

by Carolyn Arnold

  Brandon joined Paige at the window, and she first pointed out the line of sight and then swept the curtain back to expose the hole.

  “What!” Anita spat. “This is…this is…”

  “We’re going to need to lock down this room.” Brandon’s directive left Anita no room for negotiation.

  “Oh…okay.”

  “We’ll also need to speak to any guests in the neighboring rooms—even from the other side of the hall,” Paige clarified. “Any that could have been here at six o’clock this morning.”

  “Sure. One minute.” Anita’s hands shook as she selected a name from her contact list and put her phone to an ear.

  Paige listened as Anita told the people at the front desk precisely what she needed. Paige turned to Brandon. “Let’s call Herrera, get some CSIs in here to process the room.”

  “On it.” He turned his back to her and made the call.

  She returned to staring out the window and pondering. What is our sniper’s motive? And what brought them from New Mexico or even farther away? What is it about Darrell Reid specifically that got their attention?

  “Okay, we have guests in two rooms near this one who were checked in this morning and still are. One across the hall and one next door.” Anita fidgeted with her tablet. “I don’t understand how someone got in here.”

  Paige could appreciate the manager was probably in shock. It wasn’t every day she’d find out a shooter used a room in the hotel as a sniper’s nest. But the answer seemed simple: someone got ahold of an all-access keycard. “It could have been a new hire with access to the room. Do you know of anyone that fits that description?”

  Anita shook her head. “No. There’s a hiring freeze in place right now. Has been for a few months.”

  A few months ago, their sniper—running with the assumption the same one was behind the three previous shootings—had been in Arkansas.

  “Well, someone got ahold of a keycard for this room.” Brandon pocketed his phone and entered the conversation. “Could have been lifted off a maid or janitor.”

  Anita wriggled her red-painted lips and bit down on the bottom one. “I don’t see how. They’re supposed to keep it on their person, not leave it sitting around on their cart.”

  A bad feeling spread over Paige like vines taking hold of brick. “Are all your maids and janitors accounted for?”

  Anita tucked her tablet under an arm and rubbed her shoulder. “As far as I know.”

  “But you’re not sure?” Paige pushed.

  “Let me call Housekeeping.” She took her phone out again.

  “It doesn’t have to be a maid from this floor or assigned to this room,” Paige clarified. “Anyone who would have an all-room-access keycard.”

  “It’s Ms. Cannon,” Anita said into the phone. “Do you—” She looked at Paige for direction.

  “Ask if anyone on shift yesterday didn’t show up today or hasn’t been heard from.”

  Anita nodded and went ahead and asked. “Okay…Uh-huh…” Her cheeks paled in increments, and she was white when she ended the call.

  “Ms. Cannon,” Paige said, “what did they say?”

  “Two maids are unaccounted for.” Her eyes rose to meet Paige’s. “Are you saying that—”

  “I’m not saying anything just yet. Who were they?”

  “Tracy Hogan and Marsha Doyle. Tracy had a falling out with her supervisor yesterday and walked off the job.”

  “And Marsha?” Paige pressed gently.

  “She was to start today at three. That was—” Anita juggled the tablet and her phone and looked at her wristwatch “—over seven hours ago. Guess it’s safe to say she’s not coming in.”

  “Does Marsha Doyle have a history of not showing up?” Paige asked.

  Anita sniffled and shook her head. “According to the Housekeeping manager, she’s usually here a half hour before shift.” She trembled, and Paige would have loved to guide her to someplace to sit, but this room was off limits until it was processed.

  “What was Marsha’s shift yesterday?” Paige asked Anita.

  Anita shook her head.

  “Did she clock out?” Paige was trying to establish a timeline for when the maid could have disappeared.

  “I…don’t know.”

  “Just breathe, okay?” Paige wanted to offer a reassurance that all was well but knew she couldn’t.

  “Oh…’kay.” The word came out on two deep exhales. Anita fumbled with her phone, and Paige put her hand on the manager’s.

  “Do you want me to ask Housekeeping?” Paige offered.

  Anita shook her head slowly. “I can do it.” She placed the call and, less than a minute later, was finished. “Marsha clocked out at eleven last night.”

  Paige passed a look at Brandon, and he went into the hall and called for the officer there to come into the room.

  “We need to have the hotel checked—every room, every closet,” Brandon told the officer. “We believe we might be looking for the body of a maid by the name of Marsha Doyle.”

  “Dear God,” Anita exclaimed and slapped a hand over her mouth.

  The officer turned to leave, and Paige called out to him. “Can you see Ms. Cannon to somewhere private where she can sit? A nearby vacant room, perhaps?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Paige cringed at the address, but the more she dipped into her forties, she supposed she better get used to being called ma’am.

  “Ms. Cannon,” the officer addressed the hotel manager, “if you’ll come with me.”

  Anita was staring into space and blinking slowly.

  “Ms. Cannon,” Paige said, breaking the manager’s daze.

  “Ah, yes. Coming.” Anita gave one more look at Paige before leaving the room with the officer.

  Brandon came across the room to Paige. “There’s nothing in the previous cases that indicate collateral damage.”

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

  “You know as well as I do the maid’s probably dead.”

  She did; she just didn’t want to think about it and what that meant.

  “Our killer is starting to unravel. Are they getting sloppy?”

  And Brandon puts my fear into words…

  “Could be, but they still managed to take out one target on a busy street, from three blocks away.” She’d try to cling to hope, but she wasn’t one to live in denial, either. “Assuming we’re right about the maid, our sniper took her out sometime between the end of her shift last night at eleven and six this morning.”

  “Well before six, so the sniper could set up, but if the maid was taken out, where did that happen?”

  Paige hated talking about Marsha Doyle as if she was already deceased, but it seemed more likely they’d turn up a body than find her alive somewhere.

  -

  Twenty-Four

  Herrera had picked up some extra-large pizzas and brought them into the conference room down at the station, declaring they came from the best pizza joint in the city. Kelly was having a hard time getting more than a slice in. Not that she was blaming that on the pizza, rather some homesickness. Tomorrow night—or tonight technically, as it was pretty much midnight—she’d be missing the first dinner in six years with her friends, Brianna and Jessica, back in Miami.

  Herrera was seated at one end of the table, Jack at the other. It could have been construed as a struggle for power, but Kelly thought Jack took that crown hands down. There was no doubt there was still some tension from Jack’s failure to communicate with Herrera about the previous murders. And for that, Kelly couldn’t blame Herrera for being upset.

  Before heading here, they’d requested video from the Colonial Hotel be sent to Nadia. She’d have to wade through the last five days to see who had entered room 850 and when. If they were lucky, they’d get a face.
<
br />   Brandon and Paige talked to neighboring guests before coming to the station, and no one had heard or seen anything helpful.

  “As we briefly explained earlier, we—” Paige glanced at Brandon “—think the sniper arranged to meet Sherman and then used the opportunity to take him out.”

  “With Sherman’s cheating ways, it’s possible the sniper is a woman.” The thought excited Kelly for some reason she couldn’t pin down.

  “Right,” Paige confirmed.

  “I’m still not on board with that yet,” Jack said. “Sherman was unemployed at the time of his death. It could have been an interview or something business-related.”

  Brandon’s eyes met Jack’s. “We thought of that, too.”

  “Yet it sounds like all of you are giving real credit to the sniper being a woman.”

  “It would allow her to get close to her victims without them suspecting,” Kelly rushed out, not understanding how Jack could close his mind to the possibility of a female sniper. Really, it made complete sense. Male victims shot through the heart—adulterous men, at that. It smacked of a woman scorned, but it didn’t mean the victims had wronged the female sniper directly. They could have just been surrogates for the actual person who’d caused her pain. Question would then be: what had her traveling from New Mexico to Virginia?

  “Now, about the room at the Colonial—” Paige swallowed a mouthful of food and dabbed her lips with a napkin “—how did our sniper know the room wouldn’t have been rented out?”

  “If possible, we need to find out if their computer system was tampered with.” Jack dropped his pizza crust on his paper plate. “I can have Nadia get on that. Now, the other rooms the sniper used…You had mentioned they were rented. Do you have anything more on the stolen credit card that was used to pay for the room in Albuquerque?”

  “The card belonged to Edna and David Mavis, a couple in their seventies, out of California.”

  “Did any of these other hotels, where the sniper set up their nest, have video that could have captured the shooter?” Kelly asked.

  Brandon met her gaze. “The ones in New Mexico and Arkansas didn’t have video. The hotel in Tennessee did, but the video file was corrupt and of no use.”

  “We need to get on the ground. Talk to the investigating officers, find out more about any possible eyewitness accounts. That goes for all three shootings, but if I were to focus on one, it would be the first,” Jack said.

  Kelly fiddled with her greasy plate and eyed her half-eaten slice, but she wasn’t hungry anymore. “Any update on the maid, Marsha Doyle?”

  “Nothing yet,” Herrera said. “Officers have been sent to her apartment, and there was no answer. The building manager, who has keys, has gone out of state for a couple days. Guess his mother fell ill, but the officers got ahold of him by phone, and he said he’d come back tomorrow.”

  Kelly nodded. And she knew there hadn’t been any update from CSIs working over room 850 of the hotel, which she found strange. What hotel room had no hits for DNA or fingerprints? The answer was simple: one that had been wiped down. She supposed that shouldn’t shock her, really—not when they were looking for a skilled sniper who seemed to take pride in remaining invisible.

  “Was there anything else found on Reid’s person or of note from the autopsy?” Jack asked Herrera.

  Herrera bobbed his head, swallowed his mouthful of food. “There was epithelial under his fingernails and hair taken from his suit. Besides his keys, Reid had his wallet in his pocket and three individually wrapped breath mints. We collected his cell phone, and a preliminary check shows nothing useful—all business correspondence. His wallet contained his ID, as you know, but also credit cards and two recent receipts.”

  Kelly sat up straighter. “Where do they tie back?”

  Herrera brushed his hands together, ridding them of crumbs from the pizza slice he’d polished off, and opened a folder in front of him. A few seconds later, he said, “Spencer’s Sports Bar—it’s downtown—and a Starbucks.”

  “When were the charges made?” If they were lucky, they might be able to piece the last moments of Reid’s life together before he’d shown up at Wilson Place on Wednesday night. She was surprised they were just hearing about the receipts now.

  “Starbucks yesterday afternoon about three and—” Herrera squinted and held the report a few inches from his face “—the bar was at eleven.”

  Kelly glanced at Jack. If this information excited him, it wasn’t evident. She hesitated to voice her thoughts on the matter for fear of being shot down, but she’d regret it if she didn’t say anything. “We need to go to Spencer’s and see if Reid was there by himself or had company.” Maybe their sniper had shown his or her face again. It does seem that the sniper had arranged the meet-up with Sherman.

  “I agree,” Paige said. “If we’re lucky, he was there with his mistress, or the mystery woman from Pryce’s condo, if they are different people. The staff at Spencer’s might have some names for us so we can track her—or them—down.”

  “It’s definitely a lead worth following,” Jack said.

  Kelly smiled inside because she’d been the one to suggest going to the bar in the first place, but she refused to let the expression show, thinking it would come out as a goofy grin. Jack must have been more interested in the receipts than he’d let on.

  “On the topic of the mistress, how did the CSIs make out at Pryce’s condo?” Jack asked, his attention on Herrera.

  “They have a bit of a goldmine there. Semen on the bedsheets. You know about the lipstick on the wineglass. That left us some DNA, and there were also prints there. If the woman’s in the system, we’ll find her.”

  Jack tapped his shirt pocket that housed his cigarettes. “All right, here’s the plan. Kelly and I are going to work the case from here in Arlington.”

  Brandon and Paige stiffened in unison.

  “And I want you two on a plane for New Mexico. Dig around and find out anything you can about Robert Wise’s life before he was shot. His interactions, his relationships. Let’s see if we can figure out a trigger for our unsub.”

  “You don’t think it has something to do with cheating men?” Kelly rushed out and regretted doing so immediately.

  “Nothing is ever the way it seems on the surface.” Jack latched eyes with her as he spoke.

  She nodded and felt foolish—and angry. She’d been a homicide detective for six years and a cop for four years before that. She knew very well that things weren’t always the way they appeared. She was tiring of being corrected at every turn just for speaking her theories aloud. He was hot and cold; one minute acknowledging the validity of something she said, the next reprimanding her. If things didn’t change with Jack, she wasn’t sure how she could go on being a part of his team.

  -

  Twenty-Five

  Undisclosed Location

  Friday, October 25th, 12:35 AM, Local Time

  Driving had always calmed the sniper, and so she had driven needlessly, mindlessly for hours—around and around. But that’s what happened when there was nothing left to do, and she hated being idle. It was in those moments the darkness crept in and grabbed on with a viselike grip. Any spark of humanity that sometimes ignited was then snuffed out before it could catch flame.

  She didn’t need to arrive at her last destination until Sunday, and it was barely Friday. There would be plenty of time to drive to her heart’s content, but she needed rest, and she needed a drink—something the doctors advised against, but sometimes she preferred booze to medication. Sure, the former amplified the taunting voices and crystalized images, but it also provided a therapeutic meeting ground to face the demons, tucked away in a cloak of impregnability. She already had her drink of choice sitting in a brown bag on the front passenger seat. She was only moments away from tearing it free, like she had done with gifts on Christmas morning as a
child. At least there were a few happy memories of the festive season. Like everything, though, good times had a way of disappearing—if they showed up at all.

  She pulled into the lot of a motel that advertised hourly rates and had a flashing neon-green vacancy light. A place like this would probably take cash and ask no questions because with the clientele they’d attract, they wouldn’t want answers.

  The male clerk behind the desk looked like the walking dead, high on something—or a combination of somethings.

  “You take cash?” the sniper asked.

  “Yep.” The clerk continued staring at the phone in his hands like it held the secrets of the universe.

  “I need a room for the night.”

  The clerk mumbled the rate, and she slapped the bills on the counter.

  “Here.” The clerk swept the money into his palm and handed her a key. “Room 13.”

  Superstitiously unlucky, and she didn’t want to take any chances. “What about room 8? Is it available?”

  “Sure.” Indifferent, he swapped out the keys, and she left.

  The room smelled like an ashtray and looked like one, full of what appeared to be unwanted furniture plucked from a vintage store for ten dollars apiece or less. But she didn’t really care; it was just a resting place, nothing more, nothing less. Much like her life had been in reflection.

  She shucked the bottle of Jack Daniel’s free of the bag and unscrewed the lid. She took a long pull and closed her eyes as she let herself sink out of reality, into the space of unconsciousness, blissfulness, nonjudgment, nonconformity, freedom. All of this was a lot of pressure on the drink, but it was nothing the 80 proof couldn’t handle.

  The TV was a little tube television, and she half-expected it to be a black-and-white model, even though “Color TVs” was something that had made it on the sign out front of the motel. She turned on the TV and settled in, drinking until everything around her blended and blurred into indistinct shapes. The one TV becoming two and morphing into the dresser it sat on, the picture on the wall flattening and amalgamating with the wall. Yes, this moment was bliss, where regrets and painful memories weren’t allowed to exist—and yet they came. At first seeping into awareness and then rushing in like water overtaking the Titanic.