“Something wrong?”
Max took his finger out of his mouth. “Hangnail. It’s driving me nuts.”
Philip Adams watched with something near horror while the police lieutenant used his teeth to rid himself of the annoying problem. “Will there be anything else?”
“Has anybody stayed here since the suicide?”
“Actually, business has been a little slow right now, so we’ve kept it vacant.”
“Has the room been cleaned since the incident?”
“Oh, sure.”
“Can you find me the maid who cleaned it?”
“She’s off today.”
“When will she be in?”
“Tomorrow morning.”
“I’d like her to call me when she gets in.”
“Of course, Lieutenant, but why are you investigating this now? The suicide was more than two weeks ago.”
“Just trying to tie up a few loose ends,” Bernstein explained. “Can you also find me the receptionist who was on duty the night of the suicide?”
“Hector checked Dr. Grey in,” Adams said. “The police spoke to him already.”
“When does Hector come in?”
“He’s here now.”
“Then please send him up.”
“No problem.”
“Has any work been done on the room since the incident?”
Adams coughed into his fist. “We replaced the broken window he jumped through, of course.”
“Nothing else?”
The assistant manager thought a moment. “No, I don’t think so.”
“Okay, thanks.”
“Here’s the key, Lieutenant.”
“I’ll return it to you on my way out.”
“Thank you.”
Left alone, Bernstein paced the room in a circular pattern, hoping to get a feel for the surroundings. Then he closed his eyes and tried to step into the good doctor’s shoes. He tried to picture Dr. Bruce Grey checking into this hotel, taking the elevator up to the eleventh floor, unlocking the door, moving into this room. Max imagined Grey trying to force open the window and finding that it was nailed shut. So what did Grey do next? He must have decided to take a running start and leap through the glass. Max pictured him backing up, sprinting forward, hurling his body against the glass, shattering it into small shards, slicing himself in the process. Not exactly a neat suicide. Very messy, in fact. And painful — jumping through glass could not have been a lot of laughs.
He nodded to himself. Why here? Why a leap? Why jump through glass? It did not add up. The man was on the verge of a major medical breakthrough. He had been divorced for seven years already, had a kid he didn’t see enough, loved to read, loved to work, was more or less a homebody. According to Harvey Riker and several of Bruce’s friends, Grey rarely traveled and had only been out of the country three times — his recent trip to Cancun, Mexico (taking a vacation before suicide?), and twice to Bangkok a few years back, where the clinic kept all confidential blood and lab samples and test results. Max had learned that Harvey and Bruce were paranoid about leaks, sabotage, government interference, that kind of thing — hence the decision to have a safe house way out in Bangkok. Might have seemed like unsubstantiated paranoia at the time but now…
Bernstein stopped in mid-thought when he saw it.
His gaze fastened on the left side of the wall by the door, his eyes widening. He slowly crossed the room and examined the chain lock, which hung from the wall and door in two separate pieces. The steel chain was snapped in two. Max was bending forward to get a closer look when a knock on the door made him jump.
“Who is it?” he asked.
“Hector Rodriguez,” a voice with a Hispanic accent called out. “Mr. Adams told me you wanted to see me.”
Bernstein opened the door. “Come in.”
The slight, dark-skinned man moved into the room. He wore a hotel uniform and a goatee that looked like it had been penciled onto his face. “Mr. Adams said you have some questions about the suicide?”
“Hector, did anyone notice this before?”
Hector squinted at the chain lock. “I don’t think so. No one’s used this room since the suicide.”
“Are broken chain locks a common occurrence in this place?”
“No, sir, they’re not. I’ll have it replaced right away.”
Bernstein wondered if the lock had been broken when Grey first came into the room. Somehow he doubted it. “Do you remember Dr. Grey checking in?”
“A little,” Hector replied. “I mean, he jumped out the window a few minutes after he checked in. He couldn’t have been in the room for more than five minutes.”
“What do you remember about him?”
“He had very blond hair—”
“I don’t mean looks-wise. I mean, how did he act? How was he behaving?”
“Behaving?”
“Yes. Did he seem depressed, for example?”
“No, not depressed. I’d say nervous was more like it. He was sweating like a pig.”
“I see…” Bernstein’s hands flew forward. “Hold it a second. Did you just say Dr. Grey had blond hair?”
“Very blond.”
Max’s eyes squinted in bafflement. He opened his file and looked at a recent photograph of Bruce Grey. The man in the photograph had black hair. “Is this the man who checked in that night?”
Hector stared at the picture for a good ten seconds. “I can’t say for sure. He looked much different. He didn’t have a beard, and like I said before, his hair was blond.”
Bernstein opened the file. He had tried to avoid the police photos because he was not fond of looking at splattered remains, but now he knew that he would have to look. He thumbed through the papers until he arrived at the first glossy photograph. There was not enough face left to tell if there had ever been a beard, but even through the thick patches of blood, Max could see that the dead man definitely had blond hair. Like Hector said, very blond.
Max closed both the file and his eyes. Why the sudden appearance change? A new hairdo and quick shave for a leap through a window seemed a tad bizarre, to say the least.
“Tell me what Dr. Grey said to you when he checked in.”
Hector looked up, trying to remember. “Nothing special. He just said he wanted a room. I asked, ‘How many nights, sir?’ and he said, ‘One.’ ”
“That’s it?”
“I said, ‘Will that be cash or charge?’ and he said, ‘Cash.’ Then I gave him the key and he took off.”
“Nothing else?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re sure.”
He thought a moment. “That was it.”
“He didn’t have any special requests for his room?”
“No.”
“He didn’t ask for the room to be on a certain floor?”
Hector shook his head. “I don’t even think he looked at the number on the key until he stepped into the elevator.”
Cold fear slid down Bernstein’s chest. His finger went back into his mouth, but there was nothing left to chew except skin. This whole thing was getting messy and complicated, too messy and too complicated. Bruce Grey had
