by Hangman
Marge said. “That’s the car.”
Oliver slowed the tape to normal speed as they both watched Adrianna get out of the driver’s seat, her eyes focused straight ahead until her image disappeared from view. They rewound the tape several times to make sure they didn’t miss anything. When they were satisfied that they had noted all that could be noted, they allowed the tape to move forward, the image of Adrianna’s parked Honda in the middle of the monitor.
As the tape kept rolling, they continued to stare…and stare…and stare.
DEBRA FROM ACCOUNTING was cooperative, handing over the parking tickets once Decker explained that all they wanted to do was match each license plate number on the ticket with a name. He assured her that he wasn’t interested in any of the guests except one—Chris Donatti, Terry McLaughlin’s husband.
She said, “Even so, I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t tell anyone where you got the information from. When will you give them back to me?”
Eliza said, “I’ll go through them as quickly as I can. If you need anything, I work at West L.A. I can come back here on a moment’s notice.”
“Thanks, I appreciate that.”
Decker said, “How would I get to the maintenance and housekeeping offices?”
“I could tell you, but it’s easier if you ask Grace for a map.”
“Thanks for your help.”
“Sure. I’d say anytime, but I’ll be out of job in a few weeks,” Debra said. “But don’t worry about me. My kids are delighted, my husband is delighted, and my aging mother is really delighted.” She smiled. “My former housekeeper and my former personal trainer, who were paid from my salary…them, not so much.”
AS THEY WALKED through wooded pathways, Eliza scanned the batch of parking tickets. “Some of them don’t have license plate numbers.”
“Probably during a busy time and he got a little careless.” Decker shrugged. “Nothing we can do about it.”
“Hey, Lieutenant.” Eliza was enthusiastic. “We’ve got two time stamps per ticket. One coming in and one going out. That’s a break. If we find Donatti’s Lexus, we’ll know when he came in and when he left.”
“If the attendant was smart enough to mark it as a Lexus with paper plates.”
“If Donatti was going to do something bad, would he have parked his car in the parking lot? Much more likely he’d be noticed.”
“Unless it was an unplanned thing, although Donatti isn’t usually rash,” Decker said. “But he did beat up his wife…using only an open palm…he was quick to tell me that. Like that was supposed to impress me.”
“What a scumbag.”
“A scumbag and a psycho,” Decker said.
“How’s the kid?”
“Quiet…unobtrusive. It’s hard to tell what he’s thinking. My daughter seems to have developed a rapport with him.”
“Uh-oh.”
“Yeah, I’ve thought about that,” Decker said. “He’s a good-looking kid. But she’s seventeen and has a boyfriend and will be out of the house in several months. He’s only fourteen.” A pause. “If he were a couple of years older, I know I wouldn’t have let him stay with us.”
“Genetics, huh? Sins of the father.”
“Especially when it comes to my daughter. Hannah is smart but naive. I don’t know much about Gabe, but I suspect he’s way more streetwise than she is.”
They walked a few more moments in silence until they arrived at the maintenance office. The door was open and they crossed the threshold. The space inside was hot and confined. A swarthy man at the desk was sweating profusely. “Yes?”
“We’re looking for Gregory Zatch.”
“That’s me.”
Decker brought out his badge and identified the two of them as homicide detectives.
“Homicide?” Zatch said. “Someone got killed?”
“Someone is missing,” Eliza explained. “Sometimes we’re given those cases. We’re here because a couple of weeks ago, maintenance was called for a plumbing problem in suite 229. A leaky toilet.” She fanned herself with a handful of parking tickets. “We’d like to know who serviced the unit.”
“The missing someone was in 229?” Zatch said.
“Yes.”
“How long has the person been missing?”
“Since Sunday night,” Eliza said.
“Teresa McLaughlin,” Decker said. “Have you ever met her? We hear she was a friendly gal.”
Zatch thought. “I don’t remember.”
“She has a fourteen-year-old son,” Decker said. “We don’t think she would have left him alone voluntarily.”
“Ah, the boy. I remember him. He plays piano like a master.” He shook his head. “It does not sound promising…her being missing. And you think that one of my men had something to do with it?”
Decker said, “This is routine, Mr. Zatch. We’re just checking who went in and out of the suite while she was staying there.”
Zatch’s expression was sour. “You notice how hot it is in here?”
“Hard not to notice,” Eliza said as she continued to fan herself.
“Management has turned off the air-conditioning in the office.”
“That stinks.”
“I’ve complained. They say if we don’t like the working conditions, we should leave. And you know what? Most have left. We’re down to four…no, not four. Three men. One of them just quit yesterday morning. That means the lone survivors are working double shifts. None of us hurt your lady. Too busy answering calls.”
“Did the guy who serviced the toilet in 229 quit?”
“I have to check…when was the date of the call?”
“I don’t know the exact date. The call was a couple of weeks ago.”
Zatch sighed. “What was the unit number? Two twenty-nine?”
“Yes.”
He consulted his books. It took around ten minutes to find the call in the service book. “That was Reffi Zabrib. He left about two weeks ago. Most of the people left then because the new management offered two weeks of free salary if they’d leave one month before the closure. Most of my men took the money and began looking for new jobs. I need the money and need overtime. Otherwise I’d go, too.”
“Then who would be in charge of maintenance?”
“No one, because there’s nothing to maintain. All I do is answer calls. If something breaks, it stays broken unless it’s a major pipe. Then I call a plumber. It’s stupid—to sit around answering calls, looking at the problem, and then doing nothing.”
Decker said, “So your guys are busy but you’re not doing anything?”
“We’re busy answering calls. If it is a simple problem—like plugging in a TV—we fix it. If not, we hem and haw and then the front desk moves them to another room. Still, we have to answer every call we get. And since nothing has been fixed in over three months, we get lots of calls.”
“Could we have his phone number anyway?”
“Whose phone number? Reffi?”
“Yes.”
“He’s probably back in Europe, but I’ll give you whatever number I have.”
“Thank you very much. Also you said someone just quit yesterday morning?”
“Yes. Eddie Booker. He just made it under the wire for his free lunch. I thought he needed the money, but he said he was out of here. I don’t blame him.”
“Could I have his number, too?”
“Sure.” He searched a list, wrote down the numbers, and gave them to Decker.
“Thank you. Can you tell me who was working here on Sunday?”
“It wasn’t me.” He checked the books. “It was Booker. Ah, this makes sense. He completed his shift, worked through the night, and clocked out Monday morning. Then he quit.” Zatch looked at Decker. “Eddie’s a good man. He’s been married for twenty years and has children. He goes to church.”
That meant nothing. More than one serial killer had been a deacon. What caught Decker’s attention was Booker’s timing. Not only that he worked the night Terry had disap
peared, but that he quit the next morning.
“Thanks for your help,” Decker said.
“No problem, Detective. At least I do something useful other than sweat.”
ADRIANNA’S HONDA REMAINED parked in its spot, undisturbed, until the tape’s time read 2:14 Monday afternoon—the time that Adrianna was found dead. At that point, Marge turned off the machine. “She never made it to her car.”
Oliver stood up and stretched, blinking to bring moisture to his dry eyes. “Could she have left the hospital from a different door?”
“Only one way to find out.” Marge held up the cassette tapes.
“What time is it?”
“About ten of five.”
“Aren’t we supposed to meet up with Aaron Otis and Greg Reyburn?”
“I’ve got to check my messages. They’re supposed to call me when they get into town. My cell is dead in here.”
“So they could have called and you wouldn’t have known about it?”
“Exactly. Let’s take a break. I’ll check my phone.”
Just as Marge stood up, Povich returned. “Any luck?”
“We’ve gone through the most important tape once,” Oliver said. “We did see Adrianna park her car and go into the hospital at around quarter to eleven. We didn’t see her coming back to her car on this tape.”
“That doesn’t mean she didn’t leave,” Marge said. “But now we need to check all the other hospital entrances and exits. That’s going to take a long time. It would be helpful if we could view the tapes at our station house. That way I could put a lot of people on them and move this along at a quicker pace.”
“Eventually the hospital is going to have to give them to us,” Oliver said. “They’re evidence.”
“Evidence to what?” Povich said. “There was no crime here.”
“We don’t know that,” Marge said. “If we check all the other tapes and maybe see her leaving through another exit—not only would it be helpful to our investigation, it might clear the hospital of any wrongdoing. But since we haven’t seen her leave, we need to view all the tapes.”
Povich drummed the table. He said, “You take a break. I’ll call management and see if you can take them. But one thing. If you view them at the police station, I want to be there. Then I think I can talk them into it.”
“No problem.” Marge shook his hand. “You’re welcome to come with us.”
Oliver said, “We’ll miss Peter, but somehow we’ll have to get along without him.”
With his eyes glued to the monitor, Peter gave a wave.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
IT WAS AFTER seven by the time Decker made it back to the station house. The squad room was quiet with a few stragglers, including Wanda Bontemps, a recent transplant to Devonshire homicide. She and Decker had worked together on the Cheryl Diggs case back when Chris Donatti had been not much older than Gabe. Chasing down a killer had led Decker into Wanda’s district. There had been tension between them at first, but by the time the case had been solved, Decker had been won over by her professionalism. He’d gone to bat for her when she had wanted to transfer into the detectives’ division, and she’d been loyal to him ever since.
In her late forties, Wanda was five six with a spread around the middle. She had recently taken to push-ups and it showed in her muscular arms. She had mocha skin, dark eyes, and very close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair with just a touch of blond.
“Have a second, Loo?”
“Sure.” Decker took out his keys and unlocked his office door. “Come on in.” He sat at his desk and Wanda sat opposite with papers in her hands. “What’s up?”
Wanda checked her notes. “I’ve been looking through hanging deaths. Almost all have been suicides or accidental—autoerotic asphyxiation. It’s really rare as a method of suicide for women. I was able to find two homicides by hanging, but both of them old, old cases done in South Central.”
Decker had taken out a notepad. “Open cases?”
“Yes. The wisdom at the time was that it was a serial killer because both of the women had been prostitutes.”
“How long ago are we talking about?”
“Twenty-five years.”
“Doesn’t sound like a good match to Adrianna’s case.”
“That was my feeling.”
“What about hangings outside of L.A.?”
“That was my next step. To murder someone that way is really weird, so maybe it’s a serial killer who recently moved into the area.”
“Lovely,” Decker said. “But valid.”
“Also, even though no one from the cable company was in the area on Monday, I did find out from the foreman that a private audiovisual company was wiring the house for flat screens and computers. His name is Rowan Livy. I have a call in to him.”
“Good. And who told you about him?”
“The foreman.”
“Chuck Tinsley or Keith Wald?”
“Tinsley.”
“The one who found the body,” Decker said. “We should talk to him again. Maybe he’ll remember something when he’s not as frazzled. And first on the scene is always suspicious.”
“Agreed. I also had a chat with Bea Blanc—the victim’s sister. She and Adrianna haven’t been close for years. Bea’s a stockbroker—married with a couple of kids—and the two of them lead very different lives. She didn’t know much about Adrianna’s personal comings and goings.”
“Did you detect any animosity between them?”
“Not when I spoke to her. She seemed pretty broken up.”
“So as a source of information, she’s a bust, and as a suspect, she’s way down on the list.”
“Exactly.”
“Okay. Good work. Anything else?”
“Not at the moment. I thought I’d join the others in the view room and look at the tapes of St. Timothy’s exits and entrances. So far it appears that Adrianna never made it back to her car. Marge and Oliver want to know if Adrianna left the hospital at all.”
“I thought the hospital wasn’t going to release them to us.”
“Apparently they had a change of heart. You want to come in and take a look?”
“Maybe in a minute. I’ve still got a couple of calls to make. Tell them I’m here in case anyone wants to talk to me.”
“Will do.”
After Wanda left, Decker started calling maintenance personnel from the hotel. His first call went out to Eddie Booker. A kid whose voice sounded like he was in the throes of adolescence answered the phone. “My mom and dad just left for vacation.”
“Do you know when they’ll be back?” Decker asked.
“I dunno. You can talk to my grandmother. She’ll be back in an hour.”
“Can I leave you my number and have her call me at her earliest convenience?”
“Uh, I don’t have a pencil. Should I get one?”
“Please.” Decker gave him the number, thanked the kid, and hung up, knowing that there was a good chance that Grandma wouldn’t get the message. His next call was to Reffi Zabrib. Gregory Zatch, the head security guard, had said that Zabrib had gone to Europe. So Decker wasn’t surprised that the line had been disconnected. Since Zabrib had quit when Terry was still around and about, he wasn’t high on the list.
There were still six more people to call from maintenance as well as fifteen from housekeeping. Decker was about to make another phone call when there was a knock on his door frame. Marge came in, rubbing her eyes.
“We’re taking a break. Want to see the movies?”
Decker checked his watch. “I think I’ll drop by my house and see if my wife still remembers me. What’s the status? Wanda told me that Adrianna never made it back to her car.”
“We saw her pull up, park, walk to the elevator door.”
“And that’s the last you’ve seen of her?”
“So far we haven’t seen her walking through any of the hospital parking lots. She wound up at the construction site. At some point, she had to leave the hos
pital. The problem is that the cassettes aren’t that clear. There are plenty of people going in and out that we can’t identify.”
“Or someone carried her out under the radar. Adrianna seemed to have suffered a bloodless death. That’s strangulation or poison. There are lots of ways to get hold of potent chemicals inside a hospital.”
“Povich said that there are cameras on the narcotic cabinets. I’ll take a look at them. See who’s been checking out the strong stuff. When are the tox reports due in?”
“Not for another couple of weeks,” Decker said. “What’s happening with Aaron Otis and Greg Reyburn? Shouldn’t they be in town by now?”
“Their car broke down about fifty miles north of Santa Barbara. It’ll take until tomorrow to fix it. It’s almost easier for Oliver and me to drive up than to wait for them to come down, but I figured it would be more professional to interview them here.”
“It can wait until the morning. Have you had any luck locating Garth Hammerling?”
Marge shook her head. “What about this, Pete? What if after Adrianna called Aaron, Garth called her back and told her that he had cut short his vacation just to talk to her. Maybe she didn’t want to meet with him at home, so they agreed to meet at the hospital.”
“Go on.”
“They meet and they talk and then they fight. Something bad happens and Adrianna dies. Garth panics, and somehow gets rid of her. I bet he’d know how to get her out without being noticed.”
“But a call from Garth didn’t register on Adrianna’s phone.”
“So maybe he called Adrianna at the hospital because he knew she wouldn’t answer his calls on her cell.”
“It took him at least three, four hours to come down to L.A. If she was waiting that long for him in the hospital, someone would have seen her at that time.”
“Could be that she was dog tired and went to sleep in an on-call room while she waited.”
“Go back to St. Tim’s and try to find out if someone saw Adrianna after her shift ended.”
“We need to do that anyway.” Marge paused. “If that did happen, one of the security cassettes should show Garth entering the hospital. So I probably should be looking for him as well.”
