15th Affair (3 page)

Damn.

I was disappointed not to see Joe, but as I stepped outside the gray granite building into a luminous summer evening, I formulated a new plan. Rather than chicken for three, I would have a quiet dinner with my baby daughter, followed by Dreamland in about three hours, tops.

I fired up my old Explorer and had just cleared the rush-hour snarl on Bryant when the boss called me.

Against my better judgment, I picked up.

“Boxer,” Brady said, “a bad scene just went down at the Four Seasons. I need you there.”

The only scene I wanted to see was my little girl in clean onesies, and me with a glass of Chardonnay in my hand. But Homicide was understaffed, my partner and I had a fresh gap in our caseload, and Brady was a good lieutenant.

I said, “Were you able to catch Conklin?”

“He’s on the way,” said Brady.

I made a U-turn on Geary, and twenty minutes later, I met up with my partner in the sumptuous lobby of the Four Seasons Hotel. Conklin was as tired as I was, but it looked good on him.

“Overtime pay, Lindsay.”

“Yahoo,” I said with an appropriate lack of enthusiasm. “What did Brady tell you?”

“To be smart, thorough, and quick.”

“Instead of what? Stupid, sloppy, and slow?”

Richie laughed. “He said the Four Seasons wants their hotel back.”

We took the elevator to the fourteenth floor, and when the doors opened, we saw that the hallway was cordoned off and law enforcement personnel were standing at the exit doors, leaning against walls, waiting for us.

Conklin and I ducked under the tape and nodded to uniforms we knew, finally pulling up to the open door marked 1420.

The cop at the door signed us into the log, and I asked him, “Who called it in?”

“Hotel’s head of security. He responded to complaints of gunshots.”

“How bad is it?”

“Bad enough,” he said.

“Let’s see,” I said.

THE FIRST OFFICER
stepped aside, revealing a naked male body lying faceup, about fifteen feet inside the deluxe hotel suite. He had been shot once in the forehead, once through the right eye, and had taken another bullet to his chest for good measure.

I said to Conklin, “What do you think? Midthirties? Asian?”

Conklin nodded and said, “That’s an expensive watch. He’s wearing a wedding ring. We’re probably not looking at a robbery.”

Someone called my name.

Charlie Clapper, director of San Francisco’s forensic unit, came around a corner in the suite. “Boxer,” Clapper said. “Conklin. Welcome to the Four Seasons. How can we make your stay here more enjoyable?”

I said, “Tell me you’ve ID’d the victim and have the shooter in custody. And that by the way, the shooter confessed.”

Clapper is a former homicide cop, a pro who knows what he’s doing and never has to prove it. He laughed and said, “I guess miracles happen—but not here. Not today.”

I peered behind Clapper. Lights had been set up and CSIs were processing the expensively furnished suite, which had soundproof windows and a high city view. There was a lot of blood around and under the victim, but the room behind him looked spotless.

I took in the silvery-blue carpeting and upholstery, the lightly rumpled bed, bedspread still in place. I saw no wine bottles or remains of a room service meal, and the TV was off.

It looked like room 1420 had only been used for a short time before what happened here went down.

Conklin asked Clapper to run what he knew so far.

Clapper said, “To start with, it looks like our victim had company. We found fresh lipstick and a few long blonde hairs on a pillowcase. There’s no wallet, no suitcase, no papers, no clothes, no shoes.”

“Perfect score,” said Conklin.

Clapper went on. “This gentleman checked in under the name Gregory Wang. He used a credit card with that name and the charge went through, but there is no Gregory Wang at the address on the card or anywhere.

“Also notable, the room has been thoroughly wiped down. No prints old or new. Entry was by a key card that was traced to a Maria Silva in housekeeping. Ms. Silva is now off duty, not answering her phone. A patrol car has gone to her address.”

“What about
his
prints?” Conklin asked, indicating the victim.

“We ran the victim’s prints and came up with nothing. He’s not in the system, has never been in the military, or taught grade school, or been arrested. And wait. There’s more,” said Clapper. “There’s a whole other crime scene right next door. Can’t be a coincidence, but right now, I don’t see the connection.”

DR. CLAIRE WASHBURN
, chief medical examiner and my best friend, was waiting for the three of us in the room next door to the murder room. She held up her bloody gloves to show me why she wasn’t going to give me a hug.

“Take a good fast look,” she said. “I’m ready to remove these bodies.”

Bodies? Multiple?

This room was smaller but looked in every other way identical to the one we’d just left. Same color scheme, same made-up bed, and same view of the city.

But twice the number of victims.

There were two bodies lying on the pale blue carpet, a young black man and a young white woman; both looked to be in their twenties.

Both were clothed in what you might call middle-of-the-road casual. Girl wearing a pastel plaid cotton shirt and jeans, her red hair fanned out around her head, a look of surprise on her face. Boy wearing black cords and a T-shirt under a blue V-neck sweater. Running shoes.

It looked to me like the male victim had been sitting at the desk, the female in a chair near a coffee table. From the way their bodies had fallen, I thought they’d jumped up when they heard an intruder and had been gunned down, all the shots going into the trunks of their bodies and the chairs they’d been sitting in.

Their blood was spattered on the walls and furnishings, but I saw no spent brass.

I asked Claire, “How long ago did this happen?”

“An hour, maybe.”

“Any ID?”

“Nothing in this room but those kids and the clothes they’re wearing.”

Clapper said, “I ran their prints and got nothing. Their registration info is bogus. Same wiped-down surfaces. I’d venture to say this room is cleaner now than it has ever been.”

As Claire and her techs wrapped the two unidentified decedents in sheets and zipped them into body bags, I noticed cords and battery chargers on the floor behind the desk.

I said to my colleagues, “Look at that. These kids had laptops. As I understand it, high-end surveillance equipment is Web-connected. You can activate audio and video plants with an app.”

“You think the victims were PIs?” Conklin asked.

“If so, there should be microcameras in the murder room.”

Clapper said, “I’m on it.”

He left to check and returned a few minutes later with three small bugs: one he’d pulled from a light socket above the bathroom mirror, the second from the desk lamp, and the third from the air duct.

“And just to be totally consistent, no prints on them,” said Clapper.

I called Lieutenant Jackson Brady and brought him up to speed. Then I texted Joe, saying I might be pulling an all-nighter. After that, I called Mrs. Rose, a sweetheart of a grandma, who lives in the apartment across the hall from ours and had become our daughter’s nanny.

“Can you stay late?” I asked her. “I think dinner might be in the fridge.”

“I cooked that chicken for
you
,” she said, laughing.

“With spaetzle?”

“Of course.”

I promised Mrs. Rose that I’d give her a heads-up when I was on the way home. Then I called and texted Joe again. No answer, no return text.

Where was my husband? Why didn’t he call me?

Conklin said to me, “Security needs us, Linds. Urgently.”

LIAM DUGAN WAS
a stocky man in his fifties, a former sergeant with the LAPD and now the hotel’s head of security.

He said to me, “What a living, freaking, blood-curdling nightmare,” and walked us down the hall to the fourteenth-floor supply closet. He opened the door, and there, jammed behind the cleaning cart, was the body of housekeeper Maria Silva.

She had short dark hair and was wearing a blue and gold hotel uniform with soaking blood on the shoulder that I could see from where I stood.

Dugan said, “She was a nice woman. Has a husband, two kids. I’m sorry, but I was hoping she was alive. So I touched her. I probably touched the cart and a few other things so I could get in there. Anyway, she took a bullet to the back of her head. Her key card is gone. The girls keep them on cords around their necks.”

We taped off the new crime scene, and I met with the cops on the floor, telling them they were on duty until relieved by the night shift.

After that, Conklin and I huddled in room 1418, where the supposed PIs had been executed. We looked at the blood spatter at the otherwise tidy murder scene and tried on scenarios.

Every way we turned it, it came down to a professional job, all four hits connected. Mr. Wang had been the target and Maria Silva had probably been the first victim.

The woman who had left blonde hair on the pillow could be a witness, the killer, a coconspirator, or a victim. Or she’d walked out before things got sticky and still didn’t know what happened. It was possible.

Conklin and I went with Dugan to the hotel security offices and were given a file room with two desks and computers. We sat side by side and cued up the surveillance footage that had been shot over the previous four hours in six key locations.

Dugan said, “Here’s a hard copy of the floor plans. I’ll keep the footage coming and if there’s anything you need, just find me. Nothing’s off-limits.”

At eight, room service brought us roast beef sandwiches, pickles, chips, and coffee. At ten, I used the ladies’ room, washed my face, and looked at myself in the mirror.

My hair was all over the place, not in the sun-kissed beachy blonde tradition. More like my hair hated me. I reset my ponytail while staring deep into the reflection of my red-rimmed eyes. I needed a shower. I’ll just leave it there.

I returned to the security department, and as soon as I put my butt in the chair, Conklin pointed to an image on the screen of a man who looked like our male victim in 1420, who had checked in as Gregory Wang.

Wang came through the elevator entrance from Market Street to the hotel lobby, which is on the fifth floor, and crossed through toward reception. He was alone, wearing dark pants and a gray sports jacket, a ball cap shading his face, and he had a computer bag hanging from a strap over his right shoulder. He checked in at the desk, and then we lost him on that tape. Another camera picked him up at the elevator bank for the guest rooms upstairs.

The footage was high-quality. But apart from the spring in Wang’s step, there was nothing useful to be gleaned from what we’d just seen. I backed up the tape, watching Wang cross the lobby to the elevators again. Then I watched the lit numbers next to the elevator door rise, make several stops before landing on fourteen, then go back down.

I slid the disc that held the fourteenth-floor footage into the drawer. The time dating read 4:30 p.m. The camera, positioned across from the fourteenth-floor elevator, caught Wang getting out of the car and walking away from the camera, down the hallway. He swiped his key card and opened the door to 1420.

“He didn’t knock,” I said. “His guest hasn’t arrived yet.”

We fast-forwarded fourteenth-floor footage and watched people coming and going from their rooms, getting in and out of the elevators. No one raised suspicion. We paused the tape to check out the housekeeping cart; at 5 p.m., Maria Silva was still alive.

At 5:52, a blond-haired woman exited the elevator.

“Well, hello,” I said to the screen.

I stopped the video. She was on her phone. Between her haircut, her glasses, and her holding the phone close to her mouth, I couldn’t see much of her face. Her overall appearance was stylish, and she seemed self-assured. I started up the video and we watched the woman walk down the hallway and knock on the door of room 1420. The door opened and she went inside.

I kept the video rolling, looking for bad guys to appear, to put a gun to the housekeeper’s head, to go into the room next door and take out the PIs.

Then, when the time code read 6:23—something happened. The screen went gray. The picture was just—gone.

We ran the tape all the way to the end, hoping the video would resume, but there was nothing.

Nothing, nothing, nothing.

All we had were four dead people and no clue as to who had killed them, how they’d done it, or why.

I didn’t like this.

I didn’t like it at all.

BY THE TIME
I got home, it was three in the morning and I had a headache the size of a mushroom cloud.

Martha, our border collie and best furry friend forever, greeted me at the door. She woke up Mrs. Rose, who was sleeping on the couch, but thankfully, Julie slept on. I hugged our lovely sitter, and after she’d gone home, I checked the caller ID log.

Still no call from Joe.

It wasn’t the first time I hadn’t heard from Joe over the course of a day. He had a consulting job with airport security. He could be in a series of meetings or lost in the details of keeping outbound planes secure.

It was a great job and he loved it—but it was after
three
. He hadn’t texted me a single line since noon.

Of course, I was worried. Was Joe OK?

I checked on our little Sleeping Beauty and threw a sigh that relaxed my whole body. I watched her breathe. I rested my hand on her back. I made sure there was no draft, that she was dry and sleeping soundly. I pulled up her blanket, then softly closed her door.