by Steven James
I made it to the luggage storage area before Marianne, and I decided not to wait for her.
After clearing all the bellhops out of the room, I entered it alone and closed the door.
In contrast to the splendor and extravagance of the rest of the hotel, this was a vast, boxy concrete chamber that smelled of dust and mold and stale air. Industrial florescent lights. No carpeting. No windows.
Twelve luggage carts stood empty and waiting in a line along the east wall. Filling the rest of the room were piles of suitcases of various shapes and sizes. With nearly a meter of space between each stack, they’d clearly been arranged to keep the items of the different guests separated.
Yesterday, I’d only momentarily seen the suitcases on the luggage cart that the bellhop was pulling down the hallway, and I wasn’t certain what brand they were. So now, as I scanned the piles, I started by looking for the luggage collection with the biggest suitcases. I figured that would be the most likely And I saw it.
At the far end of the room.
A cluster of large suitcases that, as I thought about it, did appear to match the style of the ones I’d seen on the luggage cart.
We’d been looking for Mollie’s body.
Her whole body.
But that might not be what we were going to find.
I crossed the room toward the pile of suitcases.
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The luggage looked brand new.
Using new suitcases would make sense if you were a killer who was trying to avoid leaving physical evidence that might be traced back to you-not just DNA, hair, or trace evidence, but also scratches or scuff marks that could give us clues as to where the luggage had been.
I had a feeling these killers would have thought of that.
Using my cell phone, I snapped half a dozen photos of the arrangement of the four suitcases.
Then I stared at the largest bag.
Knelt beside it.
As I did, I caught the faint whiff of the odor I’ve smelled at far too many crime scenes. And though I tried to reassure myself that the smell would have been more pungent, more sickening by now, I was aware of the methods of taking care of that problem: wrap the item in plastic… use chemicals…
My fingers trembled slightly as I rolled the suitcase away from the others in the stack and tilted it toward the floor.
It was very heavy and settled onto its side with a disquieting, moist thump.
Heart hammering, I reached for the zipper.
A bellhop rolled these suitcases right past everyone…
Right past you.
Carefully, I guided the zipper along its track, making sure it didn’t catch on the fabric, didn’t snag on my glove. Or get caught on anything else.
Why those two rooms on the eighth floor?
What’s the connection between these killers and the assassination attempt six years ago?
The zipper reached the end of its track.
Heart beating.
Beating.
I took another picture with my phone.
Then I braced myself.
And lifted the unzipped flap of the suitcase.
Just as the door behind me swung open.
64
I quickly closed the suitcase.
I’d only needed a glimpse to confirm my worst fears-the killers hadn’t used just this one suitcase. Based on what I saw, I suspected they would have needed most of the ones in this stack.
Trying to hide the torrent of grief and anger I felt, I turned to see if it was Marianne at the door behind me.
And it was.
And Tessa was with her.
“What are you doing here?” I shouted.
She was quiet, staring past me at the luggage I was kneeling beside.
“Tessa, you need to leave this room. Now.” I didn’t intend for my tone to be so harsh, but I did not want her anywhere near this place.
Marianne put a hand on her shoulder. “Let’s go, sweetie.”
Tessa’s face was flushed. She was a smart girl, she could put two and two together. “Is that…?”
“Come on.” Marianne ushered her out of the room.
Before joining them, I quickly phoned Doehring and told him to send another forensics team. I felt sick having to say it: “I found Mollie Fischer’s remains.”
After making sure the bellhops knew not to enter the room, I hurried to the hall and caught up with Tessa and Marianne near the elevator at the south end of the basement. Marianne gave Tessa’s shoulder a soft squeeze, said a few words of assurance to her, then left us alone. We entered the elevator quietly, watched the doors close. Stood beside each other in a shroud of silence.
I didn’t want to ask Tessa the question, but I knew I had to, so just before we reached the ground floor, I said, “What did you see in there?”
“Just…” She hesitated. “A suitcase. A bunch of suitcases.”
The elevator dinged.
“That’s all?”
The doors slid open.
“And the look on your face.”
I felt a deepening sense of failure-first, for not finding Mollie alive, then for letting Tessa see the ragged anger in my eyes. “Come on,” I told her. “Let’s get you out of here.”
As we were leaving the hotel, the first wave of officers, including Officer Tielman, the CSIU member whom I’d met at the primate center on Tuesday, were already rushing through the front doors.
While she was sitting at her desk at the command post, Margaret Wellington got word that Patrick Bowers had found Mollie Fischer’s body at the hotel.
Slowly, she set down the phone.
Earlier in the day Rodale had notified her that Bowers was back on the case. She’d felt a wave of indignation toward both Bowers and Rodale, and it hadn’t gone away all afternoon.
But now that Bowers had found Mollie, something even she’d failed to do, she felt conflicted.
She’d never liked Bowers’s headstrong attitude or his unconventional approach to law enforcement, but she could hardly believe he was the kind of man to go behind her back to Rodale like that. Not only was it a direct challenge to her authority, but it showed contempt for the Bureau’s chain of command and its motto: Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity.
She saw none of those three in his actions.
And none in Rodale’s decision to contravene her orders and reinstate him.
Just another example of Rodale’s inept leadership at the helm of the Bureau.
However, despite all of that, apparently, Bowers had done his job, done it well.
So it was up to her to make the call.
She picked up the phone again.
Congressman Fischer’s wife was still on her way back from Australia, so at least she wouldn’t have to traumatize her, but as the head of the task force, Margaret did need to call the congressman to ask him to identify his daughter’s remains-the second time he’d been asked to do so this week.
She took a deep breath, and then, with a stark mixture of sadness and frustration-both toward herself and at the Bureau for not saving Mollie Fischer-she dialed the number.
On the way home, I tried comforting Tessa, but she told me she didn’t want to talk and if I could just leave her alone that would be good.
Over the past year she’d explained to me more than once that usually the best way to help her get through stuff is to just let her be-advice that sounded counterintuitive to me but actually did seem to work.
So for the moment at least, I let things rest and allowed my thoughts to return to the case.
Right now the team would be interviewing the bellhops for a description of the people who’d had suitcases taken from their rooms. Officers would be checking the suitcase for prints, DNA, trace evidence; tracking the luggage claim tag to see if they could tie it to any of the guests who’d recently checked into or out of the hotel; processing the luggage storage room and the hotel room containing the spot of blood.
The nuts and bolts of police work.
&nbs
p; But based on what I’d seen so far, the killers this week would have known all that, would have anticipated it.
I was reminded of Sevren Adkins, the killer in North Carolina who called himself the Illusionist and had attacked Tessa and then tried to kill us both. He’d taunted the authorities with clues from future crimes and always seemed to find a way to hide in plain sight, even managing to be at crime scenes without raising suspicion. Right before he died he’d challenged me to a rematch “I was looking for you.”
Tessa’s words jarred me out of my thoughts about Adkins, and it took me a moment to mentally shift gears. “In the luggage room?”
A nod. “I had a visitor.”
“A visitor?”
She didn’t answer right away. “Paul Lansing.”
“What!”
“Don’t worry.”
“Lansing was there? Did he do anything to-”
“It’s okay. I got some good footage.”
“Footage?”
I listened as she summarized her meeting with Lansing, but even as she spoke I realized I needed to see this footage for myself, so I exited the highway, parked at a gas station. Then she flipped open her laptop.
And pulled up the video.
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I watched the digitally recorded conversation three times, shocked by what Lansing had told her, incredulous that he’d followed us, angry at myself for not noticing his car.
His claims seemed outrageous.
But also, though I hated to admit it, perhaps not so outrageous after all.
Actually, if what he was saying was true, it would explain a lot, including how Vice President Fischer knew him and had heard about the custody case, why Christie never told me the identity of Tessa’s father or informed him that he had a daughter-and also why I hadn’t been able to find out more about Paul Lansing’s past.
Of course, I would need to confirm everything, but the more I thought about it, the more I found myself anticipating that his story was going to check out.
Momentarily, I had a disturbing thought, and I was ashamed at myself for even thinking it, but as an investigator I couldn’t help it: Tessa’s father was in this hotel six years ago when the shooter tried to assassinate the vice president… Because of his involvement he would likely know about the two rooms on the eighth floor… He was here this week at the time of this crime spree.. . The use of the two rooms pointed to a connection between the crimes
…
Could he possibly No, it couldn’t be.
Unlike the man we’d caught on tape pushing Mollie into the hotel, Lansing was over six feet tall and broad shouldered, didn’t favor either leg, wasn’t left-handed.
Regardless, one thing remained certain: I was going to take a closer look into Paul Lansing’s past as soon as we got home.
Another passage.
Another tunnel.
“If he tries to contact you again,” I told Tessa, “don’t talk with him or respond to his emails. And let me know right away.”
“I will.”
After a stretch of silence I felt the need to veer the conversation away from Lansing. “Good job, by the way, on getting this video. You’d make a great FBI agent.”
She was quiet but seemed pleased by my comment.
“Do you know how to read lips?” I asked her.
She seemed taken aback by my question and shook her head.
“Good.” I pulled out my cell.
“What are you doing?”
I cranked the door open. “Two quick calls. I’ll be right back.”
After telling Missy Schuel about Lansing’s claims and assuring her that I would send her a copy of the video when I got home, I spoke briefly with Lien-hua, and she informed me that the congressman had been contacted and was on his way to make a positive ID.
When I told her about Lansing and the Secret Service angle, she offered to do a little poking around to confirm that he really had been an agent. “Thanks,” I said, “but I’ll take care of it. Listen, it’s possible the killers didn’t just leave Mollie’s body there to confuse us. It’s possible they meant to come back for her.”
“I already thought of that. With so many responding officers here and all the news coverage, it’s probably too late, but I did convince Margaret to get us three undercover agents to surveil the entrances and exits in case.”
“As always, you continue to impress me, Agent Jiang.”
“Thank you.” A pause. “In all seriousness, Pat, nice work on this.”
“Thanks. Give me a shout later.”
“I will.”
I hung up.
And took Tessa home.
Four unzipped suitcases lay at Margaret’s feet.
Seeing the contents reminded her of the time a killer had left the torso of one of his victims in the trunk of her car. Just to taunt her.
A tight iciness coursed through her.
Not a good memory.
Congressman Fischer had insisted on making the ID here rather than at the ME’s autopsy room, and finally Margaret had agreed. He’d asked for all four suitcases to be opened, and now he was staring into the smallest one, at his daughter’s face. And when Margaret did as well, she noticed that Mollie’s eyes were still open.
She felt a splinter of anger. As a show of respect, it’s standard procedure for the Evidence Response Team to close the victim’s eyes before any family members arrive. She glared at Agent Natasha Farraday, the ERT member who should have taken care of this, but obviously had not, then knelt and gently closed Mollie’s eyes herself.
The congressman nodded to Margaret in appreciation for the gesture. Then, after a long unsteady moment, he looked into one of the suitcases on the left, pointed to a birthmark on Mollie’s left arm. “It’s her,” he whispered. “There’s no doubt.”
Despite his apparent certainty, Margaret wanted conclusive DNA testing done before she released any information to the public.
It took Agent Farraday a few moments to do the on-site test. As she did, Margaret couldn’t stop thinking about that body in the trunk of her Lexus in North Carolina “It’s her,” Agent Farraday announced. “It’s Mollie.”
The third confirmed victim since Tuesday night. Still no clear suspects, no persons of interest in the case.
Margaret cleared the room so that the congressman could have some time alone with his daughter, then after a few minutes, he exited and his entourage shuffled him out of the hotel.
As she watched Fischer walk away, she thought again of his brother’s connection to this hotel, and to the attempt on his life by the pro-death penalty activist.
Cheyenne had asked her to see if Vice President Fischer’s speech had anything to do with primate metacognition, and she’d found that it had not: it was about the Constitution as a living document and what implications our changing views on the 5th Amendment’s rights to life and liberty might have on social issues today.
The right to life.
To liberty.
Knowing the congressman’s stand on these issues might help the task force identify potential groups that might be politically motivated to harm his family, and perhaps provide a link to the assassination attempt six years ago.
A look at the clock on her cell phone told her it was almost 5:30.
You’ve been working for eleven hours straight, Margaret. Go home.
But she doubted she could step completely away from the case. Tonight after dinner she would take a closer look at Congressman Fischer’s voting record and what might be at stake in this case.
She left to pick up her things from her office and head home to feed Lewis.
66
5:34 p.m.
As soon as Tessa and I arrived home, I forwarded to Missy Schuel the video Tessa had taken of her conversation with Paul Lansing, and only moments later, as I was getting ready to start looking into Lansing’s past, Missy called me.
“I was debating whether or not to contact you,” she said, “but now, in light of everything th
at’s happened…”
“What is it?”
“One of Lansing’s lawyers finally returned my calls. I have a meeting with them tomorrow afternoon.”
“Tomorrow? I thought you said you were hoping-”
“Next week. Yes. I expected that would be the earliest they might agree to meet. So now I’m wondering if this sudden eagerness to get together has something do to with Lansing’s encounter with Tessa this afternoon.” A pause, and then, “Is it possible Paul was aware that their conversation was being taped?”
I considered that. “The way he acted on the video, it didn’t appear so.”
After a moment she said, “I concur, but in either case, these things never move this fast. Something else is going on here.”
Immediately, I thought of Lansing’s connection with the former vice president. “I’m coming to the meeting,” I said.
“I think it’s best if I go alone. At least for this initial-”
“Missy, I’m coming.”
“That’s not the way to play this.”
“You have three children of your own,” I replied. “Did you attend the lawyers’ meetings after your husband left you? Or did you just trust that someone you barely knew was going to help you keep custody of your kids?”
A thin pause. “Point taken. But if we’re going to work together, you’ll have to trust me.”
“I do.”
It’s Lansing I don’t trust, I thought, but I kept that comment to myself.
“All right,” she said. “I advise against it, but it’s your decision. The meeting is at 3:30. My car is in the shop, so if you can pick me up at my office at 2:30, that’ll give us time to discuss specifics before heading over.”
I agreed, and we ended the call.
After my conversation with Missy, I went to the living room to see how Tessa was doing, and I found her lying on the couch reading a collection of Sherlock Holmes stories. “I thought you hated Doyle in favor of-”
“Poe. Yes. I do.” She didn’t bother to look up.
“So you decided to give Doyle another shot?”
“Pandora likes him. She’s always asking me to read these Holmes stories.” Finally she looked at me. “But this is definitely Doyle’s last chance.”
