calling the guest’s name-but there was no answer. He put his ear to the door, hoping that he would hear the shower or the TV turned on high-but he heard nothing.
The guest, Maurice Bingham, an executive from New York, had stayed three times before at the Sun and never caused any trouble.
Knowles used his mobile phone to call Bingham’s room. He let it ring five times, hearing the ringing phone echo through the door and in his ear at the same time. He knocked again, louder this time, and still there was no answer.
The young manager prepared himself for best- and worst-case scenarios, then slipped his master key card into the slot and removed it. The light on the door turned green, and Knowles pushed down the handle and stepped into the suite.
It smelled like shit.
Knowles’s heart rate sped up, and he had to force himself to go through the foyer and into the sitting room.
Lying on the floor by the desk was Mr. Bingham, his fingers frozen in claws at his throat.
A wire was embedded in his neck.
Knowles put his hands to the sides of his face and screamed.
The horror was in the present and in the past. He had seen a dead body almost identical to this one when he had worked at the San Francisco Constellation. He had transferred here because he couldn’t stand thinking about it.
That night, five months ago, the police had grilled him and criticized him for touching the body before they let him go. He’d heard that there had been other killings, strangulations with a wire garrote; in fact, there had been several of them.
That meant a serial killer had been in this hotel, standing right where he was standing now.
So Jared Knowles didn’t touch the body. He used his cell phone to call the hotel’s owner, Amelia Poole. Let her fucking tell him what he should do.
CHAPTER 7
Amelia Poole was just getting home when she got the phone call from Jared Knowles, her night manager at the Sun. She asked him to hang on until she got out of the garage, closed the door, and stood in her yard overlooking Laurel Canyon.
“It happened again,” Jared said. He was speaking in a hoarse whisper, and she could hardly make out what he was saying.
“What are you talking about?”
“It happened again. A guest in the Bergman Suite. His name is Maurice Bingham. He’s dead. He’s been killed. Just like-I can’t remember his name, but you know who I mean. At the Constellation. I’m scared because I’m a link, Ms. Poole. The police are going to think I could have done it.”
“Did you?”
“Hell, no, Ms. Poole. Believe me. I would never.”
“How do you know Mr. Bingham is dead?”
“His face is blue. His tongue is out. There’s still a wire around his neck. He’s not breathing. Anything I’ve forgotten? Because I didn’t learn anything in hotel management school that covered things like this.”
He was screeching now.
And Amelia Poole was suitably frightened.
This killing made five-and it was the third in one of her hotels. The cops had come up with nothing. She hadn’t heard from them in weeks. And this murder struck her as personal. Maybe some kind of warning. Any of her guests could be killed. It was too sick.
“Jared. Listen to me,” she said. “I’ll try to keep you out of it. Flip on the ‘Do Not Disturb’ light. Can you do that? Use your elbow, not your fingers.”
“Housekeeping called me to say that Mr. Bingham had ordered an extra blanket and pillows. That he didn’t open the door.”
“Did you bring bedding into the room?”
“No.”
“Did you touch anything?”
“No.” Jared was crying now. This was too much.
“Jared. Flip on the light and go back down to the desk.”
“Isn’t that breaking the law?”
“I’ll take responsibility, Jared. Just go down to the desk. Do not call the cops. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“If you can’t do your job, say you’re getting sick and take the night off. Ask Waleed to take over.”
“Okay, Ms. Poole.”
“I’ll call you tomorrow.”
Amelia Poole disconnected the line and thought again about a private investigation agency she’d heard about. The head guy was Jack Morgan, former CIA and US Marines. His agency promised “maximum force and maximum discretion.” It was called Private.
It was late, but she’d call Private anyway. Leave a message for Jack Morgan to call her as soon as possible.
CHAPTER 8
I called my friend chief of police Mickey Fescoe at home. He got on the line, said, “My dinner is on the table. Make this good, Jack.”
“I can’t make it good, Mick. Colleen Molloy, my ex-girlfriend-she was killed in my house. I didn’t do it.”
I was looking at Colleen’s body as I answered Mickey’s questions in monosyllables. He said he would send someone over, and after hanging up I sat down in a chair at an angle to the bed, keeping Colleen company as I waited for the cops to arrive.
I thought about how close Colleen and I had been, that I had loved her but not enough.
With a jolt, I remembered what Mo-bot had told me to do before she left the house. I went to the living room, booted up my computer, and drummed my fingers as the key entry program loaded.
A long list of times, dates, and names appeared on the screen, and I scrolled to the last entries. Colleen’s key had been used thirty minutes before I had walked in the front door.
I was starting to get a piece of the picture. That this whole ugly deal had gone down as I was on my way home from the airport meant that someone was keeping tabs on me, knew my schedule to the minute. But dozens of people knew my movements-coworkers, clients, friends. Anyone with a computer would have known when my plane was landing.
I got to my feet as a siren screamed up the highway. I hit the button that opened the gates, stood in the doorway, and shielded my eyes against the headlights pulling into my drive.
Two cops got out of a squad car. I focused on the closest one: Lieutenant Mitchell Tandy.
Mickey Fescoe hadn’t done me any favors. Tandy was a smart-enough cop, but he had a crappy take-no- prisoners attitude.
Tandy had arrested my father, who had owned Private before me. Dad was tried and convicted of extortion and murder. He had been doing his lifetime stretch at Corcoran when he was shanked in the showers five years ago.
Tandy didn’t like me because I was Tom Morgan’s son. Guilt by association. He didn’t like me because Private closed a higher percentage of cases than the LAPD. It wasn’t even close.
