'Sixty-six, then.'
'And it wasn't necessarily a machete. Something like a machete.'
'He had her strip. Then he butchered her like that, he got so much blood on the walls that they had to paint the room. When did you ever hear of a professional hit like that?'
'Who knows what kind of animal a pimp hires? Maybe he tells the guy to make it ugly, do a real job on her, make an example out of her.
Who knows what goes through his mind?'
'And then he hires me to look into it.'
'I admit it sounds weird, Matt, but—'
'It can't be a crazy, either. It was somebody who went crazy, but it's not a psycho getting his kicks.'
'How do you know that?'
'He's too careful. Printing his name when he signed in. Carrying the dirty towels away with him. This is a guy who took the trouble to avoid leaving a shred of physical evidence.'
'I thought he used the towels to wrap the machete.'
'Why would he do that? After he washed the machete he'd put it back in the case the way he brought it.
Or, if he wanted to wrap it in towels, he'd use clean towels. He wouldn't carry away the towels he washed up with unless he wanted to keep them from being found. But towels can hold things— a hair, a bloodstain— and he knew he might be a suspect because he knew something linked him to Kim.'
'We don't know for sure the towels were dirty, Matt. We don't know he took a shower.'
'He chopped her up and put blood all over the walls. You think he got out of there without washing up?'
'I guess not.'
'Would you take wet towels home for a souvenir? He had a reason.'
'Okay.' A pause. 'A psycho might not want to leave evidence.
You're saying he's someone who knew her, who had a reason to kill her.
You can't be sure of that.'
'Why did he have her come to the hotel?'
'Because that's where he was waiting. Him and his little machete.'
'Why didn't he take his little machete to her place on Thirty-seventh Street?'
'Instead of having her make house calls?'
'Right. I spent the day talking to hookers. They aren't nuts about outcalls because of the travel time.
They'll do them, but they usually invite the caller to come to their place instead, tell him how much more comfortable it is. She probably would have done that but he wasn't having any.'
'Well, he already paid for the room. Wanted to get his money's worth.'
'Why wouldn't he just as soon go to her place?'
He thought about it. 'She had a doorman,' he said. 'Maybe he didn't want to walk past the doorman.'
'Instead he had to walk through a whole hotel lobby and sign a registration card and speak to a desk clerk. Maybe he didn't want to pass that doorman because the doorman had seen him before. Otherwise a doorman's a lot less of a challenge than an entire hotel.'
'That's pretty iffy, Matt.'
'I can't help it. Somebody did a whole batch of things that don't make sense unless he knew the girl and had a personal reason for wanting her dead. He may be emotionally disturbed. Perfectly levelheaded
people don't generally go batshit with a machete. But he's more than a psycho picking women at random.'
'How do you figure it? A boyfriend?'
'Something like that.'
'She splits with the pimp, tells the boyfriend she's free, and he panics?'
'I was thinking along those lines, yes.'
'And goes crazy with a machete? How does that mesh with your profile of a guy who decides he'd rather stay home with his wife?'
'I don't know.'
'Do you know for sure she had a boyfriend?'
'No,' I admitted.
'These registration cards. Charles O. Jones and all his aliases, if he ever had any. You think they're gonna lead anywhere?'
'They could.'
'That's not what I asked you, Matt.'
