years old, she's got nine ferrets that she never leaves, she's got black hair and I'd say she goes about two-ten on the bathroom scales. She says she's never been to
Minneapolis and never rented a car, and she's got a Visa and a Sears card and a gas card but no Mastercard.'
'The shooter's outa here,' Lucas said to Black, after he got off the line with the Nebraska cop. 'She might still be in the Cities, or on her way home, but we're wasting our time out here.'
'Except we got a decent picture of her,' Black said. 'We've got two guys who saw her close up, and not all that long ago. We'll have a composite photo of her in an hour.'
'There's that,' Lucas said. He held up his thumb and forefinger, a half-inch apart. 'But goddamn: we were this close. This close.'
'So now what?'
'So now we paper the town with her picture. If she's still here, maybe we can shake her out.'
Chapter Twenty
Carmel called Rinker at the hotel, and said, without preface or identification,
'Get out of there now. Your picture's on TV.'
'What?' Rinker's heart started thumping, and she looked wildly around the room, looking for clothes, looking for anything with prints, ready to sprint.
'Davenport's got a composite photograph of you, and it's on TV. They're going to show it again on Channel Three in about one minute.'
'Hang on'.
Rinker picked up the TV remote and brought up Channel Three. A talking head, a serious brunette who looked like a former Miss America, was saying, '… an
Avis rental car at the airport. Two Avis personnel, whose identities are being withheld, provided police with a composite photograph, shown here. If you have seen this woman…'
Rinker looked at the picture for a moment, then told Carmel. 'That doesn't look like me.'
'To you it might not look like you, but to me it does – in a general way,'
Carmel replied. 'And they'll be taking it around to hotels and motels and every thing else, asking for anybody who fits the general description.'
Rinker nodded at the phone. 'All right, I'm outa here in fifteen minutes.'
'Go on down to Iowa,' Carmel said. 'Des Moines. They don't get the Cities TV stations there, and you can be back here in three hours, if you need to be. Give me a call on this phone when you get there, give me a number.'
'What're we going to do?'
'We have to go to Plan B. Somehow, he's onto us. I don't know how, but he's working something.'
'Ah, man, can you handle it?'
'I can handle it,' Carmel said grimly. 'Now get out of there.'
'I'm gone.'
Two detectives, Swanson and Franklin, responded to a tip from a bellhop at the
Regency-White, and took the composite photograph to the manager, who shook his head. 'I don't know the lady, but I only see a fraction of the people who come through.'
'Could we find out how many single woman are in the hotel, and go from there?'
Franklin suggested. 'Then maybe we could talk to the room maids.'
'Most've them have gone home already,' the manager said. He had a small mustache but otherwise, Franklin thought, looked a lot like PeeWee in PeeWee's Big
Adventure. 'I can get the room service people, and the bellhops.'
Between the available desk people, they narrowed it to four women: two who more or less fit the composite, and two who nobody could remember seeing. The bellhop, who everybody called Louis, didn't know what room she was in, but swore she fit the picture. 'That's her,' he told Swanson. Swanson called Lucas and told him they had a possible ID.
'Wait for me,' Lucas said.
They waited, working through people on the restaurant staff: two of them had seen the woman, they thought, but then maybe not. The picture wasn't that good, was it?
Lucas arrived on the run, left the Porsche at the curb and said, 'If a cop comes along, tell him it belongs to Chief Davenport,' he told the doorman.
'Right, chief,' the doorman said, and saluted. Just like New York, or something.
Franklin met him in the lobby and said, 'We're ready to go up.'
'Any more IDs on her?' Lucas asked.
'Couple of possibles – but they say they can't quite tell from the photo.'
'Yeah, but it's the best we've got,' Lucas said. He studied the picture for a few seconds with the same strange feeling of deja vu that he'd experienced when he'd first seen it. He felt that he knew the woman, because, he thought, she was a perfect type: a cheerleader. Cute, busty, athletic. He knew a hundred women just like her: hell, there were twenty just like her on the police force.
Sherrill was just like her, take away the black hair…
'Michelle Jones/ the manager muttered, tapping on a door.
'Just a minute,' a woman's voice called.
The three cops took a step back, leaving the manager looking quizzically at them. Then he realized that the woman might come out shooting, and started to take a step back. Then the door opened, just two inches, and Michelle Jones looked out: she was black.
'Sorry, wrong room,' Swanson said. 'We're checking a security problem.'
There was no answer at the next room. Lucas nodded at the manager, who used his key and stepped hastily away. Swanson turned the door knob and they went in.
'Christ, it looks like somebody was beaten to death,' Franklin said. Clothing was strewn around the room and across the bed; two pair of panty hose, apparently damp, hung from a door, and a wool sweater lay on the rug, drying on top of a bath towel. Two suitcases, both open on the floor, looked like they'd been rifled by a fast- moving thief.
'Nah, it just look like my wife's been here,' Swanson said. 'This is just a fuckin' woman.'
The manager crooked his head out from behind the protective bulk of Franklin: 'I think the gentleman is right,' he said. 'Single women… and you should see what they put in the toilets. Women'll put anything in a toilet. We once had a woman whose dog died, and she tried to flush it down the toilet.. .'
'Small dog?' Franklin asked.
'Well, yeah.' The manager's eyes seemed to cross. 'I mean, nobody'd try to flush a German shepherd.'
The third room was also empty: but very empty. No sign of a presence other then the disturbed covers on the bed.
'You're sure there's supposed to be somebody in here?' Lucas asked.
'Oh, yeah,' the manager said, looking around in disgust. 'She skipped. I know what that feels like. She's skipped.'
'Then this is her,' Lucas said. 'Let's get the crime scene guys in here.'
'Four hundred bucks,' the manager said.
'Yeah, well, don't touch anything,' Franklin growled.
Franklin and Swanson went to the last room on the list, while Lucas looked around the empty room, and a moment later, Franklin came back: 'Better have a look at this chick.'
This one fit, too: a cheerleader, with the blonde hair, blue eyes, good shape, a little busty. And again, Lucas had the sense of deja vu: 'Do I know you?' he asked.
'No,' the woman said, a little angry and a little more scared. 'Who are you?'
'I'm a deputy chief of police,' Lucas said. 'Where are you from?'
