6
THE MAID HAD CONFIRMED that the man who had rented the hotel room for the night had not used the bed, and that she had not touched it at all this morning. Looking at the bed while Danny Messer crawled on his hands and knees on the floor, Stella Bonasera was sure the man had not even sat on the bed.
The two of them had examined the few pieces of furniture in the room- bed, chair and small desk, cabinet containing three drawers and holding a small color television- the door handle, even the rod and walls in the small closet. They hadn't found what they were looking for.
Stella moved to the window.
Don Flack had interviewed the rest of the hotel staff, including the clerk who had been on duty the day before when Wendell Lang had checked into the room. The man had paid in cash in advance with two hundred dollars extra to cover phone calls or use of the refrigerator/bar. He had made no phone calls, had not used the bar, and had not bothered to pick up his two hundred. He had simply checked out electronically. The clerk hadn't been able to give a good description of the man.
'It was storming,' the clerk had told Flack. 'He had his hat down and a scarf around his chin. He was big. I can tell you that. Big. At least two hundred and fifty pounds, probably quite a bit more. The other man was small, very small.'
'Other man?' asked Flack.
'Yes,' said the clerk. 'I think they were together. The other man stood back, hands in his coat pocket. He had his collar turned up and his hat, one of those old Fedora types, was pulled down.'
'But this Wendell Lang who took the room only signed for himself, one person?' asked Flack.
'Yes,' said the clerk, 'but it didn't matter. Double and single occupancy cost the same. The room is a single. One bed. They were an odd-looking pair, one huge, one small.'
One who didn't weigh much and one who could hold the little man's weight at the end of a steel link chain, Don had thought. He'd immediately gone back up to the room and related his encounter with the clerk to Stella. She nodded in acknowledgement and kept working.
Stella examined the window sill from which Don Flack had taken the sliver sample of steel. She dusted the inside of the window and the handle for prints and then opened it. She leaned out into the frozen air and dusted the outside of the window. She pulled the tapes with the prints into the room and closed it.
'I'll have to remove the carpet,' Danny said from where he knelt on the floor. Stella turned to him. Danny, white-gloved hands rubbing together, looked as if he were praying.
'Do it,' she said.
Danny nodded, got up, moved to the wall near the door with his toolbox, found a hammer, and went to work. Neither he nor Stella expected to find anything under the carpet, but they were looking for something specific or for some evidence that what they were looking for didn't exist.
'I'm going back to the lab to check out the fingerprint and see what I can find about whatever made that rut in the window sill. 'You want to come?' she asked Flack, who declined, saying he would exhaust all possible leads at the hotel.
Danny nodded. In his left hand he held a high power-trace, evidence-collection vacuum. In the vacuum was an evidence bag designed for one-time use. The room wasn't large. Stella knew that tearing up the carpet should take him no more than an hour if he was lucky. On a normal day, he would probably have time after that to go home and shower, but the snow and slow traffic would mean at least an additional hour.
As the first strip of carpeting pulled away from the floor revealing an assortment of dead bugs, including a flattened black roach, Stella said, 'Call me when you know either way.'
'Right,' he grunted.
Aiden and Mac met a very agitated Ann Chen at Whitney's in the Village. She wasn't hard to spot, the Asian woman coming into the almost-empty coffee house alone soon after them.
When she came through the door bringing a rush of frigid air in with her, she looked around and saw the two CSI investigators sitting at a table in the corner, coffee mugs before them. Mac held up a hand, and Ann Chen acknowledged him with a nod of her head. She peeled off her coat and woolen cap revealing an oversized, thick, white turtle-neck woolen sweater underneath. She dropped the coat and hat on the empty seat next to Aiden.
'Coffee?' asked Mac.
'Espresso, double,' she said.
Mac placed the order by calling over to the young man a few feet away behind the counter.
Ann Chen was thin, about thirty, pretty but not beautiful. She was also clearly nervous, shifting frequently in her chair in a fruitless effort to get comfortable.
'I usually sleep late on weekends,' she said. 'Unless Louisa needs me.'
'Does she need you a lot on weekends?'
'Not really,' said Ann. 'Mr. Lutnikov is really dead?'
'You knew him?' asked Aiden.
Ann shrugged as the young man brought her double espresso. Mac handed him three dollar bills.
'I saw him around the building,' Ann said, cradling the hot cup in her lean fingers.
'Did he ever come to Ms. Cormier's apartment?' asked Mac.
Ann looked down and said, 'I've got to tell you I'm uncomfortable with this. Louisa has been so good to me that… I'm not comfortable with this.'
'Did she call you this morning?' asked Mac.
Ann nodded.
'She said I could expect to hear from the police. Then you called.'
'Was there anything she asked you not to tell us?' Mac asked.
'No,' said Ann vehemently.
'What do you do for Louisa?' asked Aiden.
'Correspondence, set up radio and television interviews, print interviews, signings, tours,' said Ann. 'Pay bills, answer Website E-mail.'
'You don't work on her manuscripts?' asked Mac.
'Yes, when they're finished. On some days I arrive at the apartment and she says something like, 'The new one's done.' Then she hands me a floppy disk, and I take it to the computer at the back of the apartment off of the kitchen and copyedit it. They're usually in good shape though, and there's not much to do. It's still a thrill to be the first one to read a new Louisa Cormier mystery.'
'Then?' asked Aiden.
'Then I tell Louisa I'm done and I love the book, because I always do.'
'And how does she respond?' asked Mac.
'She usually smiles, says 'Thank you dear' or something like that and takes the floppy.
'I was an English major at Bennington,' said Ann Chen after another sip of coffee. 'I've got two novels of my own finished. I've spent the last three years trying to decide if I should ask Louisa to read them. She might not like them. She might think I took the job with her just to get her to help my writing career. I did try a few times to let her know that I wanted to be a writer. She never picked up on it.'
'How tall are you?' asked Aiden.
Ann looked surprised.
'How tall? About five two.'
'Ms. Cormier have a gun?' asked Mac.
'Yes, I've seen it in her desk drawer,' said Ann. 'The only thing that really bothers me about working for Louisa is the number of real nut cases out there. You wouldn't believe the fans who write to her, send her E-mails, gifts with cards saying they love her and want her to put garlic around her windows to keep out alien invaders,
