Every one of the rooms was the same as the sitting room. The contents of drawers, medicine cabinets, and closets were all emptied, their contents were strewn about. Whoever had tossed this place had been thorough.
“You’re certain nothing was taken?”
“As certain as we can be. Besides nothing worth insuring being missing, the fact that every room in the apartment was equally dismantled, suggests the person didn’t find what they were looking for.”
“Why do you say that?”
“If you find what you’re looking for, do you keep searching? It’s possible the person found what they wanted in the very last drawer or box in the very last room they searched, but that seems unlikely.”
The reasoning was sound, and probably something Whitaker would have noticed. This kind of investigation was outside of Taylor’s expertise.
“Which means there’s nothing here to tell us where Whitaker went.”
“Hence our coming to you.”
“I have a number for the place she was staying at, in case something came up involving our daughter. I think it was the plaza… something. I believe Mrs. Wissler was paying for it.”
“Yes, we identified that off of Frau Wissler’s phone records. We have instructed the hotel staff to change the lock and notify us if she returns. We went over her room but found nothing of note.”
“I’d like to see it for myself, if that’s ok.”
“I thought you might. I have made sure the hotel does nothing with the room until you have had a chance to see it.”
“Good.”
The drive to the hotel did not take long, which made sense. If Whitaker’s aunt had booked the room, she would have picked one nearby. Had Graf not told him Wissler paid for the hotel, Taylor would have known it the moment he saw the building. Whitaker was not cheap, but she tended to choose mid-range chain hotels when they stayed somewhere. She had joked often about how much money people spent to rent swanky rooms they basically only slept in. The hotel Whitaker’s aunt picked was very upscale, with fancy carpets and fancier chandeliers in the lobby.
Graf retrieved a key-card from the manager and lead Taylor up to Whitaker’s room, which was a stark contrast to the apartment they had just been in. Everything was neat and tidy. Not just the stuff cleaned by the hotel staff, but Whitaker’s luggage was completely squared away. Clothes had been removed from bags and put into the drawers, something Taylor had never understood. If it was just him, he would have lived out of his suitcase, but Whitaker insisted it kept clothes from looking like that’s where they had been.
Her toiletries were all neatly returned to her traveling case, not strewn about the counter as Taylor would have left them. In short, the room felt very much like Whitaker. While his mind was already taking everything in, looking for something to lead him to her, he could not help but feel a pang of sadness as he was reminded about the foibles that just made her more endearing.
Taylor stopped reminiscing as he looked through the drawers of clothes. Everything was neatly folded, but once he started looking, it was not exactly the way she would have done it, after all.
“Did your people toss the room?”
“Yes, looking for something to tell us where she went. I told my men to put everything back like they found it, so we wouldn’t scare her off if she came back. Did we miss something?”
“Not really, you just didn’t put things back the way she would have. She’s crazy anal-retentive. All of her shirts and pants would be facing the same side up and in the same direction. Some of the stuff here is upside down or backward. It just seemed weird that someone would have taken her things and put them back. Makes sense from what you said, though.”
“Didn’t help. We didn’t find anything in our search, and she never came back.”
Taylor made a non-committal noise and continued his circuit of the hotel room while Graf stood off to one side, watching him. As the German officer had said, there did not seem to be anything notable, at least in plain sight.
Taylor, however, knew Whitaker. He stopped back at the dresser, knelt down, and pulled out the bottom left draw as far as it would go. Once it was extended almost all the way, he reached in and around, bending his arm over the back of the drawer in a strange angle until he found what he was looking for. A moment later, he pulled out a thin manila envelope, creased and crumpled but intact. He then turned the envelope upside down, letting a brass key slide into his palm.
“What’s that?” Graf said, standing up straighter and stepping towards Taylor.
“I don’t know. I just know that’s one of the places Whitaker likes to hide things. It won’t defeat a detailed search, but most people tearing open drawers and spilling the contents, aren’t going to reach back in and feel along the back wall of the dresser for something taped there. Since it’s the bottom drawer, you won’t see it unless you’re at just the right angle, and even then, it’s dark enough that it’s kind of hard to see.”
“That's weird, a law enforcement officer with regular hiding spots.”
“Don’t you ever think about this stuff? The whole ‘if I was a criminal I’d do…’ I thought that was a common cop thing.”
“Maybe in America.”
“I guess,” Taylor said and opened the envelope.
Inside was a single sheet of paper that looked to be pulled off a legal pad. On it was written an address.
“Do you recognize that address?” Graf asked.
“No, but I don’t live here.”
Graf pulled out his phone and typed the address in. After tapping a few
