“How did you know you weren’t supposed to go through that door?”
“Shit. I don’t know … I just know it, okay?”
“Not okay, Al. How did you know?”
Al closed his eyes. “Goddammit,” he said under his breath.
“Al.” The sharp tone of Quinn’s voice brought the man back into the here and now.
“He told me, all right? He told me about the room.”
“Who?”
“Mr. Monroe,” Al said. “Who else?”
“What exactly did Mr. Monroe tell you about the room?” Quinn asked.
“That it was dangerous. You’d die if you went in there.”
“So you never tried to see for yourself?”
“Hell no,” the man said. “He made it very clear if you went in there, you wouldn’t come out. He was right, too. Jesus, what a mess.”
“And you didn’t stay around to see if she might need any help?” Quinn asked.
“A fall like that, I figured she was dead. Didn’t want to be here when the cops came and found her.”
“So you left.”
“Yeah.”
“Where’d you go?” Quinn asked.
Al hesitated.
“You went to a bar, didn’t you?”
Al moved his gaze away from Quinn, then nodded. “I needed a drink, you know?”
“Why’d you do that?”
“Mr. Monroe is not going to be happy about this,” Al said. “I was going to get the hell out of here, then I passed the bar, and decided getting drunk would be a first good step.”
“You don’t seem drunk.”
Al licked his lips like he wished there was a bottle nearby. “I stopped after three.”
“Why?”
“Got to thinking about that woman.”
“You felt guilty and decided to come back and check on her?”
“Something like that.”
“Or did you decide you wanted to see if she had anything valuable on her you could hock?”
Al pushed himself up on his elbows, his head shaking side to side. “No. That wasn’t it. Like you said before. I wanted to make sure she was all right. I may be kind of on a downswing, you know, but I ain’t a thief. Never been a thief.”
“So what happened when you came back?” Quinn asked.
“You hear me? I’m not a thief.”
“I heard you. Tell me what you found when you returned.”
Al bit his lower lip, then took a deep breath. “I… I could tell someone else had been here. There were lots of footprints in the hallway. They weren’t there before. When I looked down into the room, I didn’t see the woman anywhere. Figured someone had come and gotten her.”
“So you decided then it was okay to stay? Your boss is still going to find out about the mess.”
“I know that! I went back upstairs to pack my things. I was sitting around wondering if I could stay the night or should just leave. That’s when I heard you all down here.”
Quinn stood. “You can get up, but I wouldn’t move around much.”
Quinn nodded toward Orlando and Nate, then made the shape of a gun with his fingers, and moved his thumb back and forth a couple of times like he was shooting. The look in Al’s eyes told him the caretaker was going to be very cooperative.
Quinn moved down the hallway so that he was out of Al’s earshot, then pulled out his phone and called Peter.
“Find anything?” Peter said.
“Your agent was a woman,” Quinn said.
“I never told you otherwise.”
Quinn was silent for a moment. “She was looking in the wrong room.”
“What do you mean?”
