The Sixth Idea

by P. J. Tracy

  He finally pushed up out of his stool with a weary sigh, thanked the bartender again for his kindness, and discreetly tucked a twenty-dollar bill beneath his empty glass. It seemed like a ridiculously small price to pay for a sympathetic ear and a little companionship when he’d needed it most.

  The hallways on the fourth floor were deserted and silent, until Chuck approached the last turn before the hall that led to his room and heard the whispers. They were urgent, hissing like angry snakes ready to strike, and they stopped him dead in the adjoining hallway.

  “What if he’s not back from the fire?”

  Chuck felt his body freeze as his heart leaped forward. Who was that? How did they know about the fire?

  “Then we wait,” another voice hissed. “Get me in his room, dammit, then go down to the lobby and cover that.”

  Chuck heard the metallic clunk of a room door opening, muted whispers, and then brisk footfalls coming toward him. He looked around instinctively, frantically, for cover, because this was wrong, wrong, wrong, just like Wally’s attack and his house explosion had been wrong. He saw a vending machine alcove just a few feet away, scrambled toward it, and crouched beside the ice maker, making himself as small as possible. On any other day, he wouldn’t have had such an outlandishly paranoid reaction, but today wasn’t like any other day. There were times when you knew you had to listen to that crazy inner voice that screamed duck and cover, and this was one of them, even if he would be embarrassed about it later, because surely there was some rational explanation.

  He got down on his hands and knees and peeked around the corner as the footsteps drew closer. He saw a male figure flash by, but not fast enough to keep him from seeing the gun in his hand. Jesus God, who were these men? Burglars?

  They were waiting for you. With guns. Get the hell out of here.

  But where was he going to go? One man was in his room, the other was waiting for him in the lobby.

  And then he saw the fire stairwell.

  He was breathing hard after running down the first flight of stairs. Good Lord. Ten steps? Twenty? One stinking floor from the fourth floor down to the third, and already his breath was gone and his heart was pounding. Jesus, he’d never make it.

  He stopped and bent over, clutching the stitch in his side which had no business being there after such a short distance. Breathe. Deep breaths, all the way to the bottom of your lungs, then exhale slowly. Yeah, right. Men with guns are after you, so gee, Chuck, just take a minute and imagine yourself in a hammock on a beach somewhere.

  But oddly, taking that brief, ridiculous pause did one thing. He remembered that day he’d sat in front of the TV, weeping unashamedly as he watched the World Trade Center towers pancake into the ground with an odd grace, like gallant warships going down like ladies. Old people, burned people, wounded people trudging down as many as eighty flights of stairs, and he couldn’t make one?

  Remembering them made him feel small and ashamed, and quieted his fearful heart and panicked breathing. And then, clarity, and thought, the hallmarks of a charmed and relatively uneventful life.

  You have choices.

  There was one man in his room, one man guarding the lobby. Where should he go? A couple of floors down? All the way to ground level? Where was it safe?

  The very acknowledgment of a choice panicked him all over again. What if he chose wrong?

  It took less than five seconds to make a choice. The people in those crowded, crumbling stairwells never asked those questions. They went down, down to ground level without hesitation, because they didn’t belong halfway up in the sky, they belonged on solid ground, where humanity was milling around, waiting to help them.

  Strange, how calmly he descended the last three floors, and only for a moment did he hesitate at the ground floor. Now the choices were only two. Right, through the hotel, or outside.

  He looked at the glowing red exit sign over the outside door and thought of it as a message just for him.

  Those men were inside the hotel. He would go outside.

  EIGHT

  Magozzi watched the bright lights of Hennepin Avenue strobe a rainbow of colors on the dashboard while Gino weaved through traffic on the way to the Chatham. It was a newer boutique hotel in the heart of the small downtown Minneapolis theater district, and from what he’d heard, it had posh rooms, a great restaurant, and a modern art collection a small museum would envy. People weren’t supposed to get murdered in the Chatham universe.

  “Well, shit, look at that,” Gino muttered, leaning on his horn and veering around a news satellite van. “The vultures are just waiting to pick the carcass clean. How do they sleep at night?” He made a sharp left and almost skidded onto the sidewalk, which would have killed several more people, because there were throngs of rubberneckers braving the arctic cold and snow to watch the aftermath of some poor soul’s murder.

  “Jesus, Gino, slow down. Our victim isn’t going anywhere.”

  Gino let out a grump, then nudged the car up to the curb. “We’re not going to get any closer than this.”

  Police presence outside the hotel was conspicuous, and the crime-scene tape blocking the alley looked bizarre next to the sleek hotel façade, and would certainly do nothing for public relations. Well-heeled guests stopped and gawked, then rushed inside, probably marching straight up to the front desk to demand refunds.

  The uniforms had their hands full, so Gino did the genteel thing and hollered, “First responder?”

  A young officer looked up from the barricade he was putting up in the street, then waved an arm and jogged over. His face was as pink as a summer cherry, totally clashing with the modest, reddish sideburns that peeked out from under the down-turned earflaps of his department-issue winter hat.

  “Evening, Detectives. I’m the first responder.”

  Magozzi looked at his nameplate. “Officer . . . Szczypanski?”

  “Good try, sir.”

  “Thanks. You want to walk us through?”

  “Absolutely. Let’s get behind the tape first. The media is crawling all over, and who knows what kind of microphones they’re using now.”

  They ducked under the crime-scene tape and stood at the mouth of an alley. Harsh safety lights mounted to the backs of the surrounding buildings played off the fresh dusting of snow, casting shadows in pure black and white. Magozzi felt like he was stepping into an old noir flick.

  Szczypanski pointed to a Dumpster by the hotel’s loading dock. “I found him right there. Well, actually I didn’t find him initially. See, nine-one-one took a call about forty minutes ago. The caller was male, real panicky, saying that somebody was trying to kill him outside the Chatham Hotel, then the connection got cut off. I was closest to the area on this beat, only a couple blocks away, so I hightailed it over here on foot, searched the vicinity, and . . . well, I found him, right there, next to the Dumpster.”

  “So you’re saying the victim called this in?”

  “It seems like it.”

  “We need a trace on the number that called nine-one-one,” Magozzi said to Gino, but apparently Szczypanski was a go-getter.

  “As soon as I found the victim, I called that in.”

  “Good job. Any witnesses?”

  Szczypanski shook his head. “Nothing so far, but the sergeant just started the canvass.”

  There were blood spatters on the fresh snow. Gino and Magozzi approached the Dumpster slowly, taking in the details of the alley before they viewed the victim, who was sadly crumpled on his side next to the Dumpster, as if he were just another parcel of trash that had yet to be tossed inside.

  Gino shone a Maglite on the victim’s bloody, gray hair. “He was shot in the head. Looks like twice.”

  Magozzi made a circuit of the immediate vicinity like a dog circling his bed. He crouched down next to the body and checked the pockets of the man’s overcoat, shirt, and pants
. “No personal effects, no phone. He was cleaned out.”

  “Mugging?” Gino suggested. “This guy is well-dressed, probably a hotel guest, and the Chatham sells rooms for what, five hundred a night? If I were a mugger, this is where I’d hang out. There’s always somebody who’s going to decide to take a shortcut through the alley on the way back to the hotel after a three-martini dinner.”

  Magozzi felt the cold taking root in his extremities. He would have stomped his feet to warm them up, but he figured all his toes would break. He wrote “new winter boots” on the mental shopping list he forgot almost immediately. “I’m buying the hotel-guest angle, but I don’t like the mugging angle. The MO doesn’t fit. Neither does his nine-one-one call. Muggers don’t give you a shot at personal phone calls. They jump out of the shadows and bring you down before they strip you clean. So this guy knew someone was after him and he ran. They caught him here, but he had time to punch in the three magic numbers and call for help.”

  Gino was sweeping the alley and the area around the Dumpster with his light. “There aren’t a lot of prints in the alley, just by that metal fire door. I think this started inside.”

  “Detectives?”

  They both turned and saw Szczypanski trotting toward them. “I got a name to go with the phone number that called nine-one-one. Charles Spencer, Woodland Hills, California. Verizon’s his carrier.”

  NINE

  The Chatham’s lobby décor was modern, serene, and understated—dignified hipster meets Tibetan monk—but the heavy police presence outside the sparkling glass doors was ruining the carefully curated Zen atmosphere. Even the potted orchids looked stressed out.

  A lot of guests were milling around, watchful eyes fixed on the door as they burbled to one another in hushed voices, endlessly speculating on the source of the evening’s excitement. They were the information scavengers waiting patiently for a juicy detail or two to satisfy their salacious souls. It was off-putting, but Magozzi couldn’t blame them, really; when your expensive hotel was overrun with cops and you had no idea why, your curiosity got piqued. It was human nature.

  Gino nodded toward the concierge desk where a thin, fretful-looking man with a hotel nameplate on his finely tailored suit was standing alone, wringing his hands. “Let’s go talk to this guy, see if he can find us a manager.”

  As it turned out the distraught man at the concierge desk was the manager. His name was Jacob Amundson, and he emanated the helpless despair of a good Roman citizen watching his city burn to the ground.

  “Please, tell me how I can help you, Detectives. This seems very . . . serious.”

  “It is,” Gino reassured him. “Can we speak someplace private?”

  “Yes, yes, of course.” He paused and his eyes diverted to the front of the hotel. “Ah . . . before we speak, is there information I should pass along to my staff or clients?”

  “Nope,” Gino said amiably. “Not unless you want to tell them there’s a dead man in your back alley.”

  Jacob’s face turned the color of the snow falling outside. “Follow me, Detectives.” He whisked them into a small office just off the lobby and pulled out chairs. “Please, have a seat.”

  “Thank you,” Magozzi said, flipping to a new page in his notebook.

  “What happened?” the manager asked, no doubt scouring his mind for the crisis management protocol he never thought he’d need.

  “We’d just like to ask you a few questions.”

  He cleared his throat. “Of course.”

  “We need to know if a Charles Spencer was a guest at your hotel.”

  “Let me check for you.” He sank down into a padded chair at his desk that looked far more comfortable than the blond wood torture devices he’d offered to them.

  He tapped on his keyboard for a few minutes, then turned in his chair. “Right here, Detectives. Charles Spencer, from Woodland Hills, California, room four-twenty. I remember him now. In fact, I was at the front desk when he checked in late this afternoon, and he was excited about the snow. He’s staying for three days . . . unless he’s . . .”

  “Deceased,” Magozzi said, watching the color drain out of Jacob’s face for the second time in five minutes. He showed him the driver’s license photo of Spencer they’d pulled off the computer in the car, and the man nodded slowly.

  “Yes. That’s him.”

  “Was there anybody else staying with him?”

  “The reservation was for single occupancy. He only took one key card. God. This is just dreadful.”

  “Yes, it is. Mr. Amundson, we’re going to need everything you’ve got on file for Mr. Spencer—calls in or out, any arrangements he might have made through the concierge, whether or not he had a rental, like that.”

  He tapped at his keyboard and it was less than ten seconds before a well-hidden and muted printer began discreetly producing pages. He tucked them into a black folder with the hotel logo embossed on the front and passed it across his desk. “All of Mr. Spencer’s activities since his check-in are recorded in his room records, including the information on his rental car. If a maid visited his room, if he purchased items from the minibar, if he requested an extra towel or asked for a restaurant recommendation, you’ll find it there.”

  Gino raised his brow. “Wait until Motel 6 hears about this setup.”

  “Our officers are going to be interviewing staff and guests at our discretion, just so you know,” Magozzi said, feeling sorry for the guy as his perfectly arranged world of premium customer service came crashing down around him. “We’ll also need your security footage. Every single camera, inside and out, the sooner the better.”

  The manager nodded in submission. “I’ll call my security chief right now. Is there anything else?”

  “A key card for Mr. Spencer’s room.”

  • • •

  “Nice place,” Gino said as he and Magozzi entered Charles Spencer’s suite and started exploring. The space was clean—a little too clean in Magozzi’s opinion, with the exception of a partially drunk beer and a bag of cashews sitting on a corner table.

  He opened the lid of a small Tumi carry-on that was sitting on the luggage tripod at the foot of the bed. Neatly folded clothes, a leather shaving kit, a copy of Scientific American, and nothing else. “There’s no stuff here, Gino. When people check into hotel rooms, they usually do a little unpacking, leave a few personal items scattered around. There’s no laptop, no iPod, no papers, no keys to his rental car.”

  Gino shrugged. “So maybe he’s a light traveler. Or maybe his stuff’s in his car, or he had it all on him and it got lifted in the alley along with his cell phone.”

  “Maybe. Still, it bugs me.” Magozzi walked over to the windows that looked out onto Hennepin Avenue, where traffic was snarled in knots around the police barricades, just adjacent to the alley.

  “Detectives?” Jacob Amundson’s accommodating voice whispered from the open door. “I don’t mean to disturb you, but I’ve just spoken with my security chief regarding today’s footage.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Well . . . unfortunately, thanks are not in order. There’s a problem.”

  “What kind of a problem?”

  “Our IT team seems to think that there was some kind of breach in our server. Security currently can’t access any footage from today, but I can assure you that we are doing everything to resolve the matter as quickly as possible. I’m terribly sorry. Nothing like this has ever happened before.”

  TEN

  Lydia Ascher was sitting at her dining room table, enjoying the anticipatory butterflies in her stomach she always got when embarking on a new challenge with the confidence that there would be a successful outcome. This joyful anticipation was predicated on her fairly consistent track record of succeeding, at least modestly so, at all the unfamiliar tasks she tried, and she couldn’t imagine why this particular endeavor wo
uld be any different. Thoughtfulness, careful preparation, and perseverance took you a long way in this life, and outside of rocket science itself, nothing was rocket science.

  With all her equipment in place, she rubbed her hands together with a smile and addressed her current subject. “It’s bath time, Rex, so let’s do this thing. Six easy steps. Says so right here in the book.”

  Rex was unresponsive. So like a king.

  “Okay, I’ll talk us through it. Step one: Unload the pistol. That would be you, and we’ve got that covered.”

  And then she froze suddenly. Did she for sure have that covered? She’d unloaded ten clips at the range tonight, proving herself a horrible shot who showed potential to improve with practice, and upon finishing she’d pulled back the slide half a dozen times just to make sure Rex was empty. But what if he wasn’t? Was it possible for bullets to hide, and if so, would that hidden bullet blow up in her face while she was disassembling for cleaning? Or worse yet, fire right into the two-thousand-dollar plate glass window the barrel was pointing at right now?

  Maybe she wasn’t cut out for gun ownership after all. It hadn’t been her idea, anyhow, it had been a gift from Uncle Ambrose, who was a lifelong city dweller with a pathological fear of the countryside. To him, her lake house an hour outside Minneapolis was Dante’s seven circles of hell all rolled into one, and Ed Gein was behind every tree, waiting to turn her skull into a cereal bowl.

  Lydia pulled the slide back again, miffed by her sudden uncertainty. Yes, empty. Of course the damn thing was empty. No need to be OCD, even if a mistake could blow up her face, her window, or maybe her house. “Okay, step two: Manually retract the slide until the slide disassembly notch is aligned with the slide stop tab.” Once she’d achieved that, she read step three: “Remove the slide stop from the frame.”