The doors opened, and his escort stepped out into a tiled corridor. A minicam faced the open door.
He followed the guard to the left until they reached a door labeled security. As before, the door opened as they approached.
The guard led him past the interior door into an office only marginally less Spartan than the outer hallway. A receptionist, with a shoulder holster hanging from his left armpit, sat behind a black and tan desk. He looked up from a monitor when they entered. John couldn’t see the screen from his side of the desk, but he guessed it was slaved to one or all of the cameras they’d passed on the way in.
Three other doors led off this small room, one on each wall. Of the other three, only the door on his right lay open. It revealed an inner office.
“Identification,” the receptionist said and held out his left hand. John’s escort stepped back against the door they’d entered and assumed a watch position as John fished out his Mr. Brown card again. He placed the card in the outstretched hand and casually moved toward the receptionist’s right.
The right side would give him a slight advantage if the receptionist reached for his gun since the man by the door no longer stood behind him. But John didn’t anticipate a fight. He was nervous at being in a situation where he wasn’t in control. He felt he could take these two and probably whoever occupied the office behind the open door, but the other two doors held unknowns, and getting back out of this sub-basement would be harder than getting in.
No, the best he could hope for in a fight would be to take some of them with him.
He shook it from his mind. He was becoming more paranoid with each case he took. A few more and he’d have to take a sabbatical, or else start seeing a witch doctor with a couch.
The receptionist ran his ID/business card through a reader and studied the screen. John knew what would show up. He regularly scanned his business cards through a similar reader to verify their authenticity.
While his new position still didn’t give him a view of the monitor, it did let him see the LED that lit up next to it.
The receptionist passed the card back to John and motioned toward the open door. “Captain Ferguson will see you.”
He took the card, slipped it casually into a jacket pocket, and murmured thanks, then crossed the room and went into the inner office.
A muscular woman sat behind an L-shaped desk centered on the far side of the office. Brightly tinted fish swam in a saltwater aquarium behind the desk. A monitor wall was to his right, each unit broadcasting different views of the hotel.
When he entered, she looked up from a small monitor set in the top of her desk. She stood and held out a hand. “Good morning, Mr. Brown, I’m Patricia Ferguson. How can I help the Blalock Agency?”
John took three steps, smiled and shook her strong, dry hand. “We represent Ms. Caitlin Maxwell, a registered guest of your hotel. As I’m sure the outside guard told you, I’m investigating the assaults on her.”
Her face darkened. “Alleged assault. We have no evidence that an assault actually took place.”
“Come now Captain Ferguson, you can’t expect me to believe our client made up this story.”
“I don’t mean to imply she’s lying. Look, Mr. Brown, it’s not that I don’t sympathize with her problem, but we have the most sophisticated hotel security system in the state of California. If this assault took place, we would have some evidence. Unfortunately, we have none.”
“That’s sounds a lot like you’re saying our client is lying,” John said.
“Now, Mr. Brown. We aren’t interested in pointing fingers or getting into name-calling. We are both professionals, and as such I’m sure you can see our side of this.”
John stroked his mustache to give an air of consideration and slowly turned toward the monitor wall. Two of the monitors showed the hotel’s lobby, one showed the central security room and the rest oscillated between the seemingly hundreds of cameras placed about the hotel.
While he watched the monitor in the upper left corner switched to the interior view of a hotel room. A small number in one corner showed Caitlin’s room number, the other corner displayed a date-time group that would match the time Caitlin told him she ran into her attacker the first time.
The room was empty and neat.
He turned to Captain Ferguson.
“If you will keep watching,” she said and touched a spot on her desk.
John faced the screen. The time readout sped up until minutes swept past in seconds.
On the replay, the door opened, and two security guards with drawn guns entered the room.
“As you can see, the room was empty for a full half hour before Ms. Maxwell reported an assault. There’s no way anyone could have been in her room during the time she claims to have been attacked.”
That was more than passing strange, but it explained why hotel security and the police would have discounted her claim.
John thought for a moment, and then asked, “Where was she when she hit the alarm?”
Captain Ferguson touched another point on her desk, and a third monitor lit up. This one showed Caitlin running down the stairs. The readout said the 31st
