Killer Look (7 page)

“But this one is locked now,” Mike said. “How about the one in the bedroom that leads out the other way?”

“They are all locked, Detective. On both sides of this suite and to the ends of the hallway,” he said. “Mr. Savage's secretary called this morning. The company no longer wishes to keep this suite of rooms.”

“What?”

“The rental agreement was canceled today. Mr. Savage's office has made arrangements somewhere else for the big show,” Wetherly said. “We haven't touched this room, of course, at the direction of the NYPD. But the others are back on the market.”

“On whose authority?” Mike asked.

“I didn't ask that, sir. I'm quite familiar with the woman who called.”

“Let me have your master key.”

“Sorry?” Wetherly said. “I can't do that, Detective.”

“You'll have to do it, and you'll have to keep this entire area, including the adjacent rooms, off-limits till I tell you we're done with our work,” Mike said. “Now, dip the card in the hole and open this door for me.”

Charles Wetherly took a few steps toward Mike. He removed the key card from his suit pocket and slipped it into the lock. Mike turned the knob and the door opened.

The room was a mirror image of the one we were standing in. Wetherly went through the doorway, followed by Mike and then
me. Mike passed the manager by and crossed into the bedroom, walking toward the door that connected to 1010.

That was the room the housekeeper believed had showed signs of occupancy on the night that Wolf Savage died.

“Dip it,” Mike said again to Charles Wetherly.

“I tell you there's nothing to see, Detective. A new code has been entered and the cards that Mr. Savage had will be useless now. No one could have accessed these rooms since the detectives were last in here, because the old code is invalid.”

The man hesitated for a few moments, then inserted the card into the hole. Mike twisted the knob and the door swung open.

Charles Wetherly gasped and stood still. There was a tall man with skin the color of ebony standing in the middle of the room, his arms folded across his broad chest.

“Who are you and how did you get in here?” Wetherly asked.

“Mercer Wallace. NYPD,” he said, flashing his blue-and-gold detective shield at the startled manager. “Housekeeping found this key card at the bottom of the laundry chute in your basement.”

Mercer passed the card to Mike with his gloved hand.

“If nobody rubbed them off,” Mercer said, “the card might still be good for prints.”

“Room 1010,” Mike said. “Better check your security system, Mr. Wetherly. Seems the old card still works like a charm. Now all we need to figure out is which one of the three bears was sleeping in
this
bed.”

“I didn't want Wetherly to see me talking to the housekeeper who spilled the beans,” Mercer said after we sent the manager back downstairs with instructions to ask each of the people who serviced the tenth floor to be sent upstairs one at a time. “That's why I let myself in up here.”

“She found this key card?” I asked.

“She went looking for it,” Mercer said. “She actually went looking for the dirty linens off the bed, like Mike told her to, but there was no way to separate them out by this time. When she shook the bundle of sheets from this corridor, it fell out of them.”

“Why would someone go to all the trouble to actually stage a murder that plays as a suicide, and leave his or her room key behind?”

“Better than getting caught with it out on the street, or at your desk,” Mike said. “Besides, you don't know whether it was inadvertently covered by the bed clothes or intentionally tossed in with the laundry. These things get thrown out all the time, and the desk just cuts a new key.”

“Yeah,” I said, “but Wetherly claimed he had all the locks on this floor changed, so why was Mercer still able to get in with an old one?”

“Now, that's what Dr. Parker would call a good question, Coop,” Mike said. “It could simply be incompetence, or that nobody at the front desk followed Wetherly's orders yet.”

“So Wanda is the housekeeper who found Savage's body, right?”

“Yeah. She's on her way over to talk to us right now. Took a few days off to settle her nerves,” Mike said, “but security called her in for us.”

“We can start with your buddy,” Mike said to Mercer. “What's her name?”

“Josie. Josie LaPorte,” Mercer said. “I told Wetherly to send her up first.”

Within minutes there was a knock on the door. A heavyset woman in her mid-forties, dressed in a collared T-shirt and slacks, forced a smile to greet Mercer when he opened the door for her.

“Don't look so nervous, Josie,” Mercer said. “These are my friends Mike and Alex.”

“Pleased to meet you,” she said.

In answer to Mercer's questions, Josie told us that she had worked at the hotel for four years, and for the last two had been assigned to floors ten through twelve, five days a week from Tuesday through Saturday.

“I'd like you to come back to the suite that Wolf Savage used,” Mike said. “We can get started in there.”

He turned and walked toward the connecting interior door, but Josie didn't move.

“I can't do that,” she said.

“It's all right now. The body isn't there.”

“I don't care. It's still bad juju,” Josie said, shaking a finger in Mercer's face.

“This will only take a few minutes, Josie,” Mike said.

“I didn't work that room.”

“But I'd like you to explain how they connect to each other and what your interaction was with Wanda—who found Mr. Savage—not only on Tuesday but other times before that.”

“When Josie say the juju is no good, you won't get me in there no way, mister.”

Mike wanted to understand her adamant objection.

“There's nothing to be afraid of, Josie,” he said. “You did a really good thing by telling the cops that you think someone was in here the other night, and by looking for the room key. You did a great thing.”

She was trembling the way I did when I got nervous lately. I knew Mike hadn't counted on any hotel voodoo getting in the way of his investigation. He tossed the conversation back to Mercer. “Help me with this, bro.”

“Is it something religious, Josie?” Mercer asked.

“Part that,” she said, taking backward steps toward the hall door. “But only part.”

“Mr. Savage—well, you understand that he's at the morgue now,” Mercer said. “Is the juju because you believe his spirit is still in this hotel, Josie?”

“His people don't believe the same as mine,” she said. “They maybe don't know that his
ti bon ange
has to be put to rest.”

“His good little angel,” Mercer said. “You believe in the Nine Nights, Josie? Haitian voodoo?”

“Yes, I do,” she said. “I do.”

“I don't mean to be rude, but can you explain to me what that is?” I asked. “The little angel, I mean.”

She clasped her big hands together and looked at me. “My people know the soul of a man—le
ti bon ange—
leaves the body, like when Mr. Wolf died. We gotta pray for nine nights, so his soul gets a good place to rest until after a year and a day, when body and soul get reunited.”

“So these nine days are important?”

“Very important,
madame
,” Josie said, pointing a finger at me. “If Mr. Wolf soul don't get prayed over and saved, then he wanders the world.”

“That's better than having him hang out here,” Mike said, trying to encourage her to come with us.

“No, no, no. Then if it don't get taken care, his spirit brings misfortune to us,” she said, making a big circle in the air with her right arm. “To all of us.”

“You want him here, on the tenth floor with you,” Mike asked, “or you don't?”

“Last place I want Mr. Wolf is here,” Josie said. “That's why I won't go in the room, 'case his soul waiting there to trick me.”

“Can I help to calm you down?” I asked. “You said that's only part of why you won't go into Mr. Wolf's room. We'll help you if we can. What else is it?”

“Ask Wanda that.”

“She's not Haitian,” Mike said, his impatience sounding in his voice. “I've met Wanda. She's not afraid of any juju in that room.”

“Mr. Wolf gonna bring me down with him. I can't go in that room with you because maybe he left his spirit there to watch what I do,” Josie said, pausing before she added, “and because he didn't never let me go into his room.”

“That's two different things,” I said. “Why didn't he let you go into his room?”

Josie looked me up and down, not disapprovingly, but as
though she were exploring our differences. “Because he think I'm old and I'm fat.”

I shouldn't have been smiling when I told her that was a ridiculous idea.

“Not an idea at all,
madame
,” she said. “It is exactly what Mr. Wolf told me.”

“I apologize, Josie,” I said. “I wasn't laughing about it. I can't believe he talked like that.”

It looked like we were going to get another side of Wolf Savage from some of the staff at the Silver Needle Hotel.

“I had this hallway when I started cleaning here, before Mr. Wetherly assigned some of the rooms to Wanda,” she said, her eyes widening as she got more and more upset. “And he did that because Mr. Wolf complained about me.”

“About your work?”

“I do very good work. No complaints about my work,” Josie said. “He didn't like me. He told me he liked young women, younger than me, and skinny ones. Mr. Wolf told the manager to keep me out of his room.”

In this day and age of lawsuits brought for every kind of employment discrimination, I couldn't imagine that Savage would open himself up as such an easy target.

“We'll talk to Mr. Wetherly about that,” Mike said. “Don't you belong to a union? Couldn't you fight that kind of prejudice?”

“You seen Wanda?” Josie said, her eyes darting from my face to Mike's to Mercer's. “I didn't tell anyone about it. Not my union rep, not my manager. Nobody. Mr. Wolf, he likes them like Wanda. Pretty girls and skinny, too. Besides, people call me crazy if I repeat what he says.”

She was giving off a distinct vibe of crazy—something that struck close to home with me. I was beginning to think Mike
couldn't go to bat at the ME
's Office with Josie as his star witness. I wondered whether there was any truth to her story that the key card she had passed along had been found with the dirty laundry. Maybe it had opened the door to this room for Mercer because Josie, who had handed it to him, was using the newly issued card.

“I haven't met Wanda,” I said, “so why don't you just stay right in this room and tell us what you saw yesterday, when you got to work?”

“You gonna make trouble for me too?” Josie asked. “Your detective friend talked to Wanda. He seen her.”

“Let's get this straight, Josie,” Mike said. “You came to us. You said something to the cops when you got back to work this morning, right? Something you didn't tell Mr. Wetherly yesterday. We just want to know what you saw.”

Mercer and Mike kept coaxing her to open up until she finally spoke.

“First thing I saw is tracks,” she said, walking toward the window, understanding that she was not supposed to touch any of the furniture in the room.

“What kind of tracks?” I asked.

“Tuesday—yesterday morning—I come in this room about eight fifteen. I started at this end of the hallway and check each room. They was empty and I just dusted around,” Josie said. “Then I see the track marks on the carpet, and I know I'm gonna get blamed because the Monday cleaning girl, she didn't write about it in her report.”

She leaned over and put her dark finger against the pale yellow wool of the carpet.

“Grease,” Josie said. “That's grease.”

Mike leaned down and separated the carpet fibers with his gloved hand. “What about it?”

“You roll things in from off the streets and it bring grease on the wheels,” she said.

“Could be somebody's luggage,” Mike said, “with wheels on it. They pick up grease from the pavement and from rolling around the airport.”

“I was in this room every day last week,” Josie said, crossing her arms as though she were holding up her ample chest. “No guests. No occupancy. No grease.”

“Then the weekend housekeeper was here?” I asked.

“Yes. But her report was the same as mine. She have to tell me,” Josie said, “if she turned over the bed linens or find any kind of stain that she couldn't remove.”

“You're saying someone came in here Monday night or Tuesday morning,” I said.

“And you want us to think it was with the hand truck that carried—well, that brought the rack of dresses in?” Mike said.

“I just think someone was in this room and made those tracks,” Josie said. “Too big to be from suitcases.”

She didn't seem to know anything about the helium canisters that had been found on the cart in the dead man's room, so I didn't intend to mention them. “The tracks weren't darker than this when you first saw them, were they?” I asked instead, crouching down to look.

“Certainly they were,” she said defiantly. “Before I knew the man was dead, I cleaned them best I could. Is my job to do that.”

I looked up at Mike and frowned. That was a lost opportunity to get an image of the treads from the rubber wheels, which most likely were from the hand truck that brought in the gas that killed Wolf Savage.

“Not to worry, Coop,” Mike said. “The truck is still here.”

He would be able to check the condition of the wheels. He
walked into the room that connected this one to the Savage suite. I'm sure he was examining the floor for any signs that the truck crossed through that way.

“Cleaned the floor of that room, too, Mr. Detective,” Josie called out after him. “Same spots.”

Mercer and I followed Mike into the adjoining room, which looked completely undisturbed.

“Thanks, Ms. LaPorte,” Mike said. “You get some rest now, okay?”

She nodded to him and backed out of the room.

“So there's no video of the hand truck coming into the hotel?” Mercer asked.

“None by the time the detectives started checking video,” Mike said. “The twenty-four-hour loop had recorded over Monday's comings and goings. Besides, it's a common occurrence. The manufacturers send garments over here every day for buyers and the sales force to vet.”

“Savage didn't bring it himself, then?” I asked.

“Nope,” Mike said. “The first responders told me all deliveries like this come through the service entrance on the side of the building.”

“So that's on tomorrow's list,” Mercer said. “Find the dude who brought the truck over from Seventh Avenue.”

“Yeah, I'll be making a real nuisance of myself at WolfWear. Hal's probably busy circling the wagons so nobody gives anything up to the cops, and it's unlikely that anyone lets me stick my nose in the books while I'm there either,” Mike said. “Get off your knees, Coop. What the hell are you doing down there?”

“I saw a glint of something on the carpet.”

“C'mon, kid. Let's find out if Josie has credibility with anyone else in the joint,” Mike said. “Breaking news, babe. Grease don't glint.”

I ran my fingers over the short nubby wool until a tiny metal object scratched my thumb. I pried the gold-toned circular piece, a bit larger than a nailhead, out of the carpet hairs and held it up.

“When you're looking for the hand-truck dudes tomorrow, make sure one of them has gold buttons—tiny ones—on his suit or shirt,” I said.

“What have you got?” Mike said, stepping in my direction.

“It's a tiny piece of gilded metal. The kind of detail item that decorates a piece of women's clothing,” I said. “Looks like a tiny gold button to
me.”