CHAPTER FOUR

Liam’s jaw dropped open so far that Jessie worried it might unhinge from his face.

“What?” he asked when he was finally able to speak again.

“A guest was murdered here last night,” Ryan said. “And it appears that you checked him in, though there’s some confusion about that. We were hoping you could clear it up.”

Liam gulped hard before responding.

“Of course,” he said, apparently happy that he was no longer under suspicion about the beer.

“Yesterday evening at nine thirty-seven, you checked in a man identified only as John Smith. The card associated with the transaction was listed under a company called City Logistics, which appears to be a shell company.”

“What does that mean?” Liam asked.

“It means,” Ryan said, “that the company is owned by another company which is owned by another company, all with multiple people listed as executives, each of whom seem to be lawyers known for setting up shell companies.”

“I don’t get it,” Liam said, looking genuinely confused.

“Liam,” Jessie said, speaking for the first time,” this means that the person who gave you the credit card didn’t want his real name connected with booking the room, so he used this company card with the complicated history. That’s probably why he signed in as ‘John Smith.’ And since the card was never charged, I’m assuming he paid for the room in cash, correct?”

“That sounds like someone who checked in last night,” Liam conceded.

“But here’s what I don’t get,” Jessie pressed. “Even if he paid in cash, the card would have been charged for incidentals like the small bottle of brandy from the mini-bar. How did that get paid for?”

“If we’re thinking of the same guy,” Liam said timidly, “it might be because he slipped me two hundred dollars and said any incidental charges for the room should be taken out of that. He also said that I could keep whatever was left over.”

“How much was left over?” Jessie asked.

“A hundred eighty-four dollars.”

Ryan and Jessie exchanged glances.

“That’s a lot of money, Liam,” Jessie said. “Why would John Smith leave you such a massive tip? And remember, right now you’re just a potential witness. But if your answers end up being less than truthful, we might have to bump you up to suspect.”

Liam didn’t look like he wanted any part of that.

“Listen,” he said, barely able to get the words out fast enough. “The guy never said anything obvious. But he hinted that he might have a friend visit him that evening and the less of a paper trail there was, the better it would be for him. He wanted to keep things off the books, you know?’

“And you were okay with that?” Ryan pushed.

“It was two hundred dollars, man. Times are tight. Even if he had gotten five mini-brandy bottles, I’m still bringing home north of a hundred bucks for doing nothing. Am I supposed to be the moral judge of whether some dude can use this hotel to meet up with his mistress? Worst-case scenario, he rips the room up and I have the corporate card on file in case of emergencies. I figured it was a no-lose situation.”

“Unless he ends up naked and dead on the bed,” Ryan noted. “That ends up being a loss for everybody, including you, Liam. Regardless of the whole beer case thing, I’d say you’re going to need to dust off your resume.”

A knock on the door prevented Liam from responding. It was Chester the manager. Ryan motioned for him to open the door.

“Sorry to interrupt,” he said. “But security has pulled up the footage you were interested in.”

“Perfect timing,” Ryan said. “I think we’re done here for now, right, Liam?”

Liam nodded, looking despondent. As Ryan and Jessie left the room, he tried to follow but the manager held up his hand for him to stay.

“I’d like you to stick around a bit longer, Liam,” he said. “We have a few things to discuss.”

*

Jessie put Liam’s problems out of her head as she stood in the security office, leaning in behind the young woman operating the system so she could get a better look at the monitor. Ryan and another hotel manager stood next to her.

Just as Liam had described, the man booking the room handed him a card and a wad of cash. He was alone. As he waited for Liam to complete the transaction, he glanced around and seemed to nod at somebody off camera.

“Can you get a look at who he was motioning to?” Jessie asked the technician.

“I already tried,” the woman, whose name was Natasha, said. “I looked at every camera shot in the area he was focused on. No one seemed to respond physically. In fact, no one seemed to even be looking in his direction.”

Jessie found that intriguing but she said nothing for now. The man had clearly been nodding at someone. But that someone was aware enough to avoid being captured on camera.

Who would know those kinds of details?

“You have the hallway footage for the fourteenth floor?” she prompted.

Natasha pulled it up. The timestamp read 10:01 p.m. as the man walked down the hallway and entered the room. Jessie heard Ryan inhale sharply and looked over. He leaned in and whispered in her ear.

“Seeing the way the guy walked jogged something in memory. I just realized who he is. He is a politician. I’ll fill you in when there aren’t so many ears around.”

Jessie nodded, curious. Natasha fast-forwarded through the footage of the hallway, stopping periodically when someone walked by. No one approached the man’s room. But at 10:14, exactly thirteen minutes after the man had gone into his room, the elevator opened and a woman stepped out.

She was a statuesque blonde, with hair that cascaded down to the middle of her back. She wore huge sunglasses that obscured her features and a cinched trench coat with a high collar. She wandered down the hall, glancing at the room numbers before coming to a stop at the man’s door. She knocked. It opened only seconds later and she stepped inside.

Nothing happened for the next thirty-one minutes. But at 10:45, the women exited the room and returned the way she’d come. This time she was walking toward the camera so Jessie could get a better view of her.

She still wore the sunglasses and coat. But even with them, Jessie could tell that the woman was well put together. Her cheekbones appeared sculpted by an artist. Her skin, even on this small monitor, looked flawless. And it was clear that underneath that jacket she had the kind of figure that could easily make a wealthy, horny man put his political future at risk.

Jessie noticed something else too. The woman seemed to be…strolling toward the elevators. There was nothing hurried about her demeanor. It was quite possible that only minutes earlier she had drugged and strangled a man to death. And yet nothing about the way she carried herself suggested any worry or anxiety. She looked confident.

And that’s when Jessie became certain that they were dealing with something more than just a crime of passion or a robbery gone wrong. If it had been a physical encounter that went south, she would have looked much more harried and rushed. If it was a simple robbery, she could have been in and out of the room in less than ten minutes.

But she’d stayed a half hour. She’d lingered. She’d smashed his phone and taken all his cards, cash, and ID, even though she had to be well aware that his identity would be quickly uncovered. She’d even left family photos in the wallet.

Even more notably, she had apparently left no prints on anything in the room; not the glass, not any surface in the room, not the man’s neck. This was the work of a woman who had carefully planned what she would do, who had taken her time, who had enjoyed herself.

CHAPTER FIVE

Jessie couldn’t get the image out of her head.

As Ryan drove them to their next stop, she kept thinking back to the final footage that Natasha the security tech had shown them. Now that they knew what the woman looked like, she was able to scan through video from earlier in the night.

There was no recording of the woman arriving or leaving the hotel. But there was footage of her settling in at the Lobby Court—the very bar Jessie had noticed the men in suits drinking at earlier that morning.

She had arrived a little after nine p.m. and waited for fifteen minutes, sipping a drink she’d purchased with cash and drinking with leather gloves on. The thing that jumped out at Jessie was how relaxed she looked. She didn’t have the bearing of someone who would murder a man less than two hours later.

Eventually her “date” arrived. He walked straight up to her as if they knew each other but strangely greeted her as if it was the first time they’d met. He ordered a drink of his own and sat down beside her. They talked for a half hour as he ordered two more drinks and she continued to nurse her first.

Around 9:50, he paid his bill and got up. Cameras tracked him to the bathroom and then the front desk. The woman stayed at bar a little longer to finish her drink, and then walked out of frame, not to be seen again until she got out of the elevator to go to his room.

“What are you thinking?” Ryan asked, interrupting her silent meditation.

“I’m thinking that we’re dealing with someone who enjoyed what she did. And that makes me worry that she might do it again.”

“Legitimate concern,” he agreed. “Can I tell you what I’m worried about?”

“Please,” Jessie said.

“I’m worried that this guy’s wife is going to lose it when we tell her what happened.”

Ryan was referring to the inevitable unpleasantness they were about to face. After they’d left the security office he’d told her who the dead man was: Gordon Maines.

When Ryan had called his suspicion in to the ME, they confirmed it for him. The victim was indeed Gordon Maines, a councilman representing Los Angeles’s fourth district, an area that included Hancock Park and Los Feliz.

Ryan had finally remembered him because of his jaunty walking style. It was the same style he’d had when he’d come to the station once several years ago to dress down Captain Decker for not giving him enough officers for security at a neighborhood parade.

“‘Jerk’ is the kindest word I can think of to describe the guy,” Ryan had said.