"I'll call!" I pulled my phone from my pocket and dialed the number on the website. A woman answered the phone, introducing herself at Jessica. "Hi, yes. I have a question for ya, was wondering if you could help me out."
Jessica: Sure, how can I help you?
Me: Actually, I believe your company was being represented at a convention I attended last week in Las Vegas.
Jessica: Yes sir.
Me: Yes, that was you guys?
Jessica: Yes sir, that was us.
Me: Oh great, I got your information from the guy there but I must have misplaced it. Is there any way you can give me his contact information? I honestly can't even remember his name.
Jessica: I'm sure I can get that information for you, or if you'd like I would be able to answer your questions and get you set up with whatever you may need.
Me: I really appreciate that, Jessica, but I would really like to talk to the same guy. He was really nice and I told him I would be in contact with him soon.
Jessica: No problem. We had two gentlemen there; you don't remember which one you talked to?
Me: I don't, I’m sorry. Actually, wait. He was a really, really big guy?
Jessica: I don't know if we have a really, really big guy on our sales team.
Crap. Oh well, it was worth a shot.
Me: Actually, I got confused. That wasn't him.
I shuffled around the photos on the desk and grabbed the one that had the clearest shot of the guy.
Me: He had dark hair, skinny and glasses.
Jessica: Okay, that would be Mark. Yes. I can give you his contact information. Do you have a pen?
Me: I do
I quickly fumbled around on the desk looking for anything to write with. Elise reached into her purse and retrieved an eyeliner. It was good enough. Jessica gave me Mark's cell number and email address. I wrote it on my arm with that greasy, disgusting "pencil" I was handed. I thanked Jessica and hung up. I dialed the number on my arm. Mark answered, introducing himself, even though I couldn't make out the mumble of his last name. No bother.
Me: Mark, hi, my name is Tyler Dur...dinski. I met you last week at the Myra Hotel in Vegas at that convention.
Mark: Oh sure, Tyler, of course. What can I do ya for?
I always thought that was a bit of an odd question. What can I DO YOU for? Yuck.
Me: Actually, I have a question for you. About a guy you were with at the convention. I don't think it was your associate.
Mark: Yeah?
Me: He was a really big guy. In a suit. I actually saw you leave the convention with him.
Mark: Sure, sure. What about him?
Me: Who was he?
Mark: Excuse me?
Me: I mean, like, what did he do?
Mark: Oh, he was a marketing consultant.
Me: Ah, that's what I thought! Would you happen to have his contact information?
Mark: Actually yes. Our company is considering hiring his firm. I have his card.
Me: Oh great, I actually needed to get in touch with a consultant for my business but he didn't come over to me at the convention. I don't even know where to start and since, well...you know.
Mark: Yeah, sure. Let me get his card.
The line went silent for a moment then Mark came back on, giving me our suspect’s contact information. I snapped my fingers twice to get Elise's full attention and let her know we scored. She threw both her fists in the air in celebration when I wrote a name and two phone numbers on the desk with her eyebrow pencil. I thanked Mark then quickly hung up without giving a shit about anything else he had to say.
"We've got this son of a bitch, E!"
"Holy shit!" She leapt out of her chair and threw herself on me, wrapping her arms around my neck, nearing knocking me off my seat.
"So this is him?" Elise asked as we both glanced down at the desk.
"That's him."
Scribbled on the desk were two telephone numbers and a name: Larry Lundagaurd.
"Well, this is amazing," Elise said. "One down, one to go!"
I looked at her, confused. "Huh? What do you mean?"
"Leslie said she was attacked by two men, remember? Hence, one down one to go. Duh. Pay attention."
"Oh yeah"
"Come on, let’s go take this to Mulroney or security!"
"Yeah, great. Let's go."
Elise stood, closed the laptop, gathered our stuff and made her way to the door way faster than me. She was already in the hallway when she looked back and saw me just getting up. "Don't forget to hit the lights. Hopefully we won’t be back here."
(the lights.)
(the lights.)
(watching closely)
(the lights silly)
"Elise!" I called out.
"What?"
"Hold on for a second. I think I've almost got something."
"What do you have, Archie?"
"Hold on." I turned around and headed back to the security monitors, rewinding it to the point where Leslie and Larry first step on to the elevator. I hit play and lean in close to the screen. This whole time I was so focused on the closed doors I never bothered to pay attention to the floor lights above them.
The light was at the far left when the doors closed, disappeared for a few seconds then reappeared in the next spot over, then the next, then the next until it stopped. This would be Leslie's floor, the 37th. I watched the time in the corner of the screen. The light stayed steady. From behind me I heard Elise ask what I was doing but I ignored it. Never moving my eyes from the screen, I randomly felt around the desk hoping to find our notebook. No luck. My eyes stayed focused. A full three minutes passed before the light went out and reappeared, moving two spots to the right, on the 39th floor.
(sorry we're late, I couldn't find my keys)
(I couldn't find my keys)
(find my keys)
The light went out and began moving backwards until it arrived at the lobby and the opened again. Four minutes went by according to the timer before the doors closed again and went back up to the 39th floor, where it had just been. The light moved left two more spots and landed back on the 37th floor. The elevator then returned to the lobby. Six minutes later the elevator returned to the 37th floor. At 7:23, the lights started moving to the left again. At 7:25:03, Larry Lundagaurd stepped out of the elevator. He had come from Leslie's floor, pulling his suitcase behind him. How had I missed that? (holyshitholyshitholyshit)
"What, Arch? What do you have?"
My mind raced. I could feel the scattered pieces of this fucked up case begin to come together in my brain. It took me less than a minute to figure it out.
"Elise. There was no second attacker. It was Balthazar."
"Balls did it?!" Elise asked, stunned.
"No. I think Balls tried to stop it." I turned in my chair to face Elise. "Larry attacked Leslie and killed our client’s boy."
27.
Larry sat comfortably in his first class seat of the airplane transporting him from Denver to Reno. His stay in Colorado was quite frustrating for him. His urges were getting the best of him but he decided to cool it for a bit following the severely close call he had encountered in Las Vegas last week. He reclined in his plush seat and recalled the events that proved to be a little too precarious.
He had tracked that blonde whore for hours, all around the hotel and casino. He had first noticed her early the previous morning when she had a friend with her. They were both stepping off the very same elevator he had just used. Normally if his subject wasn't alone he would abort and find someone else, but this was Vegas, nobody was unaccompanied. He hoped he would see her again soon. Normally, he would follow the subject and keep close tabs on her, but he had business which needed attending.
He had stayed in that god-awful convention for far too long. He preferred attending genuine meetings with clients, not whoring out his firm to a agglomeration of assholes
and dot-comers. The whole time in there, his mind never strayed from his current subject.
After he left the convention with a few new business prospects, including a chatterbox named Mark he couldn't seem to shake from his side, he lingered around the casino floor like the thick and bitter aroma of smoke long after the fire has been extinguished. He was hoping to see her and ended up staying down there all night. He checked his watch. It was nearly 6am. He decided to call it a night, unsatisfied. He stood up from the slot machine and turned to leave when he saw her enter the hotel. Alone.
He was agog and aroused. He maneuvered through the thinned-out crowd behind her and took a seat near her when she found a table to play a few hands. He was close, but not nearly adjacent enough to be suspicious. He spied her playing blackjack for a while and sit at the bar for a drink, even though she appeared to already be inebriated. When it seemed as if she were going to retreat to her room, he color-upped his chips, left his table and wearily careened through the casino's obstacles towards the elevator. When he saw the woman solitarily step into the lift, he picked up his pace and called out for her to hold the elevator.
He remembered telling her thank you and her saying it was no problem. He told her that was the most exercise he'd had in months and the girl offered up a friendly giggle as the doors shut them in.
He didn't like elevators but he had scoped this one out pretty well the day before. There didn't appear to be anything more than an emergency camera located above to security button. He also knew the floors were completely camera-less too. It was going to be a risk. He knew that. He also knew this would be his only chance before parting ways with this atrocious town.
The doors yawned opened on the 37th floor and out walked the woman, issuing him a small smile and nod upon her departure. He withdrew his knife from his back pocket and, once the woman was out of sight, used it to wedge the doors agape. He peeked around the corner and saw the woman languorously walking to her room. He looked the other way to make sure the hallways were vacant, checked the time on his watch then swiftly made his move.
It felt to him like he was moving in slow motion. Various scenarios flashed in his head. If worse came to worst, he could always just carry the woman back to his room two floor above. If he was spotted, the simple, yet brilliant excuse of Hey, it’s Vegas would work perfectly. I'm sure she wouldn't be the first person to pass out from massive intoxication here. Hell, people probably wouldn't think twice about it, he thought. Perhaps they would laugh about it.
As he strode silently past room 3716, the door opened directly behind him. He was incognizant to it. He was mad at himself, in hindsight, for not noticing. His sights were on the woman just a few steps ahead. She was just starting to turn around when he reached her, grabbed the back of her head and slammed it into the wall. The woman fell to the ground, dazed. That's when that little fucker attacked him from behind. He felt something hard slap against his head and draw blood. He turned to see his attacker. The boy had removed his belt and struck him with the metal buckle. The boy had attempted to bear upon him again but Larry was simply too brawny for the weak kid. He grabbed the belt and yanked it from the boy's hands. He slung the belt around the kid’s neck and strangled him with it. He turned around to check on his subject. She was still on the ground, struggling to get to her knees. He pulled the boy like a puppy on a leash towards the woman and delivered a powerful kick into the woman's side, sending her fully down to the carpeted floor. The boy’s body went slack. He had passed out. Larry let the boy fall. He looked up and down the hallway, still no one in sight. He saw the door to the boy's room was being held open by the inside hook-lock being engaged, making it unable to close fully.
He left the boy on the floor and picked up the subject. He uncaringly threw her in the room then went back into the hallway and picked up the boy. He walked back into the room with the boy in his arms, delivering another kick to the woman as he passed by, this time in the face, causing her to black out and fall limp again.
Larry quickly thought of a plan to properly dispose of the boy. He held the belt tight around the boy’s neck until all life escaped him. When he was dead, Larry dragged the body to the closet, hooked the belt to a loop and pulled down the boys pants. It was a good cover. It would have to work. It was the first time he ever killed someone. It felt good. Invigorating.
He looked on the desk for a room key. He found it sitting on top of the kid's wallet, grabbed it and made his way back out into the hallway, making sure the door was locked behind him, and proceeded down to the elevator. He remembered checking his watch and noticing a mere two minutes had passed since he stepped off it, initially. It had felt like much longer. He was impressed. He took the elevator to his floor and went into his room to retrieve his suitcase. He emptied the clothes on the bed. He would be able to come back for his stuff later and could transport it out in his suit bag.
He made his way back down to the 37th floor and entered room 3716 with the keycard, finding the woman still on the floor unconscious. He absent-mindedly put the key back into his rear pocket then picked her up, smashed her head into the side of the table for good measure, then stuffed her in his suitcase. He gave the room a good once-over, making sure there was nothing he left behind. The boy was over in the carpet, lifeless and pathetic. Everything else was untouched. There wasn't even blood on the carpet where the woman had lain. He was good to go. He wheeled the suitcase out into the hall and into the lift. He remained cool and calm. When the elevator doors opened up in the lobby, he strolled out like he owned that bitch. His ego even got the better of him and he decided to stop and play a few slots. Nobody was wise. And nobody noticed.
That was his fifteenth time and only the first time he'd ever had any problems.
28.
I explained to Elise my theory. Apparently my brain had had it all along and was just being uncooperative prick with the rest of my body, choosing instead to leave me heartbreaking messages in the form of unrelenting dreams. Thanks brain!
I told Elise to discard all the information we had and just go simply by the video. To hell with the time, to hell with the keycard logs, we we're going to trust our eyes. The elevator lingered on the 37th floor for way too long. It was obvious once you looked for it. Then it went up, then all the way down, then up again then down. The last time it reaches the lobby the fat, bulbous pile of shit comes wobbling out.
"Look, the thing that finally clinched it was I finally realized what was missing from the room. There was no room key. Balls obviously came up alone, set his wallet and change on the table; it would stand to reason the key would be there too. When I got into his wallet for his ID, it wasn't there either."
"So what do you think?"
"I think Larry followed our girl off the elevator and attacked her. While he was doing that, Balls either heard something or was leaving the room and saw it. I think he tried to intervene. Balls and Larry were probably fighting while our girl was a little woozy. That would account for her thinking two men attacked her. Larry kills Balls, stashes him and our girl in Balls’ room, takes the key then goes back up to his room, gets what he needs and comes back down and finishes the job. It fits, and if we look at the timesheet for the keycards, I’m sure it will fit too. When Balls left to help, he probably wedged the door open, that’s what most people do when they're just stepping out for a second. That would account for his card only registering two openings. Once when he first arrived at the room and once when Larry came back to finish up."
"Holy shit."
"Holy shit is right."
"We've got to go to Detective Howard with this."
"I agree. The only problem is this is far from hard evidence."
"The room would have his fingerprints all over it, so would the door handle."
"You're right. But unless this guy has a record, there is nothing to match it to. And judging by the amount of DNA he left behind on the victim, it stands to reason he's been untouched."
&
nbsp; "So, now what?"
"Now we need to find him and get a DNA sample."
"And how the hell are we going to do that?"
"We find him and set up a sting."
I looked at Elise. She had a blank stare on her face and she was trying to comprehend what I was suggesting. "Oh mannn," she finally said. "Shit."
"Sorry, baby girl!"
"It's okay. There's nothing I hate more than a fucking rapist."
"Nobody hates anything more than a fucking rapist. They're cinema's greatest villains this side of the Nazis."
She lowered her head and mumbled, "Ugh."
"Great! Now will you go call Detective Howard and Mulroney, tell them what we've got. I'm going to call this assholes firm, see if I can trick them into telling me where he is. If that doesn't work, I'll just call him straight out."
"Wow, good luck with that." She picked up her phone and walked to the far corner of the room to make her calls. I picked up my phone and dialed the business number Mark had given me. I hung up before it had started to ring.
Stroke of Genius (Archie Lemons #3) Page 14
