by James Carol
Mendoza went over to the closet and searched through the pockets until she found the leather wrap. She walked back over to the bed, flicked it open and extracted a pick. Winter motioned for her to give it to him and she shook her head.
‘What?’ she said. ‘You think you’re the only person around here who can pick a lock? Okay, let’s see those hands.’
Winter didn’t bother arguing. He held up his hands and Mendoza went to work. Fifteen seconds of fiddling and the left cuff released. Another ten seconds and she had the right one open as well. He stood up and rubbed his arms to get the circulation going. Mendoza was looking him up and down like he was some sort of previously undiscovered life form.
‘Are you just going to stand there in your underwear or are you going to put some clothes on?’
Winter grabbed a clean pair of boxers and a T-shirt from his suitcase, then stood looking at Mendoza until she got the message and turned around. He swapped his dirty clothes for clean, dressing quickly. The T-shirt was one of his favourites. Mozart was wearing a large pair of headphones and there was a large spliff burning between his fingers. It was irreverent and tasteless, and he reckoned that the composer would have loved it. He pulled on his jeans and rubbed a hand through his hair to get rid of the worst of the tangles.
‘It’s safe to look now.’
Mendoza turned to face him. ‘So are you going to tell me what the hell is going on here?’
‘Amelia Price is our mystery woman. She cuffed me to the bed.’
For a moment Mendoza just stood there staring. ‘You’re sure it was Amelia Price?’
‘I’m sure. She even admitted it.’
‘And this is the point where I’m going to remind you that this woman is a psychopath, and that psychopaths have been known to lie from time to time.’
‘Granted, but she wasn’t lying about this.’
Mendoza considered this, then shook her head. ‘Just because this woman says she’s Amelia Price it doesn’t mean that that’s who she is.’
‘Okay, but why would she lie? What would she have to gain?’
‘Like I said, she’s a psychopath. Who knows what the hell’s going on inside her head.’
‘Would it help if I told you that my inner psychopath agrees with me on this one?’
He cracked a small smile, then locked eyes with her, daring her to argue some more. The small nod she gave indicated that although she wasn’t convinced, she was prepared to go along with him for now.
‘There’s more. She also admitted that she was with her brother at the Reeds’ house on the night they were murdered.’
Mendoza laughed. ‘Yeah, nice try.’
‘I’m serious.’
‘You remember what I said about psychopaths being known to lie? So, how did she outsmart you a second time?’
Winter didn’t like the way she was staring, nor did he like the emphasis that she’d placed on those last three words. A second time. Like he needed a reminder. But it was a good question, even if he didn’t have an answer to it just yet.
‘I always knew that she was going to come back. What I didn’t consider was that she’d risk coming to my room in the middle of the night.’
‘Is that another way of saying that you screwed up?’
‘I didn’t screw up, I just slightly misjudged the situation.’
Mendoza stood there thinking for a moment. ‘Okay, we need to contact the Monroe Sheriff’s Department and get them to issue a BOLO alert for Amelia. They’ll also need to send someone out to secure the Price place.’
‘Agreed, but who do we have them looking for? A shy dark-haired little church mouse, or a platinum-blonde green-eyed psychopath?’
‘And who’s to say she’s not using a different disguise?’ Mendoza added with a sigh. ‘Shit. She’s got us running around in circles and looking like fools. You realise that, don’t you? Did she say what she wanted? I mean, why target you?’
‘I asked her that, but she threw the question right back at me.’
‘You must have a theory, though.’
Winter shook his head slowly. ‘Other than the fact that she likes playing control games, I’ve got no idea why she’s doing this. As for why she’s singled me out, your guess is as good as mine.’
Mendoza pulled out her cell phone and called the sheriff’s department. While she did this, Winter went over to the dresser and picked up his. There was one missed call and a message. He connected to the messaging service and put the phone to his ear. The electronic voice was followed by Granville Clarke’s.
‘Thanks for last night. I had a great time. I couldn’t sleep so I’ve come over to the office to dig out my old notebook from the time of the murders. Maybe there’s something in there that can help you out. Maybe not. Anyway you can catch me at the diner for breakfast.’
The line went dead and Winter put his cell away. He took out one of the Snickers bars he’d bought yesterday and started eating it. He’d taken two bites before he realised that Mendoza was watching him.
‘What? I’m hungry, and it doesn’t look like we’re going to be getting away from here any time soon.’ He took another bite. ‘By the way, Clarke left a message. He wants us to take a look at one of his old notebooks.’
‘Could be useful, I guess. Okay, I spoke to the sheriff’s department and they’re going to issue that BOLO immediately. They’ve got some sort of a crisis going on so they can’t send anyone to the Price’s house just yet. Some guy held up a minimart and now he’s holed up in his apartment in Rochester with a gun, a bag of money, and his four-year-old daughter. The police have got the place surrounded. Because of the kid, they’re reluctant to go in with all guns blazing. They promised to send someone as soon as they could.’
‘It doesn’t matter. Amelia won’t go back there.’
‘Of course she won’t. But there could be evidence there. If that’s the case it needs to be preserved. It also means that we need to get over there as soon as possible.’ She leant against a wall and waited for Winter to meet her eye. ‘But first I need you to tell me exactly what happened here last night.’
So Winter went through the whole thing. Recounting it like this, the whole incident had the surreal feel of a dream. Put aside the handcuffs lying on the bed and the ache in his arms, and it was like none of it had ever happened.
‘You could have shouted for me,’ Mendoza said when he’d finished. ‘If you’d done that maybe she’d be in custody by now. But no, you had to go it alone.’
‘What was the point? You would never have heard me.’
‘But one of the other guests might have.’
‘What other guests? Have you seen anyone else?’
‘Now you mention it, no I haven’t.’
‘And even if there were other guests, what do you think would have happened? Amelia wants to play games with me, not hurt me. If Omar’s murder is anything to go by, that’s a courtesy she’s not extending to everyone.’
‘The fact that she took your passport is encouraging. She obviously doesn’t want you to leave the country.’
‘Which means that she’s planning to make good on her promise to see me again.’
‘My thoughts exactly.’
Mendoza took out her cell phone again and started hitting buttons.
‘Who are you calling?’
‘Hitchin. If Amelia Price is a viable suspect then he needs to know.’
‘Mendoza, Amelia isn’t a viable suspect, she did it.’
‘And you’re still working on the assumption that the woman who was in your room last night was Amelia Price, an assumption based on the fact that she told you that’s who she is.’
‘Which brings us back to the question of why she’d lie.’
Mendoza shrugged dismissively. ‘Who the hell knows why she does anything? Maybe she’s just screwing with you.’
‘And why would she do that? She’s highly organised, and she’s a control freak. There’s a reason behind everything she does.’
&
nbsp; Mendoza waggled her cell phone at him. ‘Well, we’ll find out if she’s lying soon enough. She’s got a vehicle, which presumably means that she’s got a licence, which means that there will be a picture of her in New York State’s Department of Motor Vehicles database.’
‘Before you do that, you said earlier that she wasn’t a nurse?’
‘Yeah, that’s right. There’s no record of her ever working in any of Rochester’s hospitals.’
‘What about hospitals outside of Rochester?’
‘Nothing in a thirty-mile radius.’
‘Nursing homes? Hospices? Veterinary surgeries?’
‘I’m sure that whoever looked into it was thorough. Amelia Price is not a nurse.’
While Mendoza made her call, Winter walked over to the door, opened it, and examined the lock on both sides. It was a deadbolt, sturdy and secure. The lock hadn’t been forced. Either Amelia had picked it or she’d had a key. He became aware of Mendoza at his shoulder.
‘There’s no way to tell if it’s been picked,’ she said.
‘No there’s not.’ Winter straightened up. ‘Okay, question one: how did she get in my room? And question two: how did she get into the guesthouse?’
‘Let’s go find out, shall we?’
32
Mendoza dinged the bell on the reception desk and stepped back. The man who appeared from the back room was the same sixty-something man who’d checked them in last night. Once again, he was wearing chinos and a white button-down shirt. The clothes were freshly pressed and clean on. Winter could smell the laundry detergent.
‘Good morning. I trust you slept well. How can I help?’
‘What’s your name?’ asked Winter.
‘Jerry. Jerry Barnes.’
‘Are you the owner?’
‘I am. Well, the co-owner. I run this place with my wife.’ He looked suspiciously at Winter.
Mendoza showed her badge and Barnes’s face turned white. ‘It’s okay,’ she added quickly. ‘You haven’t done anything wrong.’
His eyes followed the badge all the way back to Mendoza’s pocket. ‘Obviously I’ll help in any way I can.’
‘Someone broke into my room last night. We’re trying to work out how they got in. Do you have any cameras?’
‘No we don’t, sorry. There’s no need. There’s very little crime in Hartwood.’ Concern suddenly filled his face. ‘Someone broke into your room? Did they take anything?’
‘No they didn’t.’
‘Are you okay?’
‘I’m fine.’
‘Did you see them?’
Mendoza and Winter shared a look. This was a tangent they didn’t need. ‘Mr Barnes,’ she said, ‘we’re trying to ascertain how this person got into my colleague’s room. I take it you’ve got spare keys for all the rooms.’
He nodded. ‘We do.’
‘Can you show us where you keep them?’
‘Certainly.’
He waved them around the counter and led them through to the small back room that he used as an office. It was no bigger than a broom closet. It might well have been a broom closet once upon a time. The desk was the same length as the wall it was pushed up against. There was an outdated monitor on top and a tower hidden away beneath.
On the wall to the right there was a varnished wooden board containing the room keys. Most of the hooks held two keys. The only exceptions were the hooks assigned to the Presidential Suite and Mendoza’s room. Winter crouched down to examine the door lock. It was another deadbolt, as sturdy and substantial as the one on his room. In most situations it would be an effective deterrent. There was one definite exception, though.
‘Do you ever lock this door?’ he asked.
Barnes shook his head. ‘No. We’ve never felt the need to.’
‘Well that explains how she got into my room. She sneaked in here and stole the key.’
‘I am so sorry,’ Barnes said to him. ‘If I’d thought something like this might happen, of course I would have kept it locked.’
Mendoza pushed her way past them and took a closer look at the hook containing the spare key for the Presidential Suite.
‘Have you got any envelopes?’ she asked Barnes. ‘Some latex gloves would be good too.’
‘Let me go and see what I can find.’
Winter watched him go, then turned back to Mendoza. ‘I don’t hold out much hope of you getting a decent print off that key. How many people do you think have handled it?’
‘Even so, we still need to check it out. Who knows, maybe we’ll get lucky.’
‘There’s no such thing as luck.’
Barnes returned with a bright yellow pair of kitchen gloves and a white self-sealing envelope, and handed them to Mendoza. ‘I’m sorry, this was all I could find.’
‘This’ll do fine. Thanks.’
Mendoza pulled on the rubber gloves and removed a bag from the box. She lifted the key carefully from the board and dropped it into the envelope. Then she sealed the flap and put the envelope into her pocket. She peeled the gloves off and gave them back to Barnes.
‘What time do you lock the guesthouse at?’ Winter asked.
‘Usually around midnight.’
‘And if anyone comes back later than that, then they ring the bell and you let them in? Like you did for me last night?’
Barnes nodded. ‘That’s right. The system works pretty well. There’s not much to do in Hartwood in the evenings so most of our guests are back well before midnight.’
‘Did you notice anyone acting strangely around the guesthouse yesterday?’ Mendoza asked.
He shook his head. ‘No. Sorry.’
‘What about your wife? Maybe she saw something.’
Another slow shake of his head. ‘She’s in Seattle for a couple of days. Her sister hasn’t been well.’
‘So you’re running this place on your own at the moment?’
‘Pretty much. Nicole comes in most days to clean the rooms, but aside from that it’s just me.’
‘Does Nicole have a key for the front door?’
‘Yes she does.’
‘Could you call her and see if she’s still got it?’
‘Certainly.’
The call lasted a little over a minute, just long enough for Barnes to explain what he wanted, and for Nicole to go and check her bag, or wherever it was she kept her keys.
‘She’s got her key.’
‘Who else has one?’ Winter asked.
‘I’ve got one, obviously. My wife has one on her key ring. And Nicole. That’s it.’
‘Do you leave any downstairs windows open?’
‘Not at this time of the year.’
‘Can we take a look around?’
‘Of course.’
It took ten minutes to do a circuit of the first floor to check the windows. They were all locked and secured, and, as far as Winter could tell, they hadn’t been tampered with. He checked the front door as well, but, again, there were no obvious signs that it had been tampered with. He tapped out a quick frustrated drum roll on the reception desk.
‘So how the hell did she get in?’
‘Beats me,’ said Mendoza.
‘It’s a pity that we were the only guests staying here last night. Extra eyes wouldn’t do us any harm right now.’
‘But you weren’t the only guests,’ Barnes said. ‘What makes you think that?’
‘The keys on the board. You give one key to the guest and keep the other for emergencies, right? At the moment there are two keys for all the rooms except ours.’
‘That’s correct. But there was someone in room five. She’s already checked out, so her key has gone back on the board. She was catching an early flight from Rochester.’
Winter and Mendoza exchanged a look. ‘Can you describe her for us please?’
‘She was roughly your height with blue eyes. Her hair was short and black. I don’t know what the correct term for the style is, but I think I’ve heard my wife call it a pixie cut.’
<
br /> Winter nodded. This was the confirmation he’d been looking for that Amelia was using disguises. ‘Was there anything about her that struck you as strange?’
Barnes thought this over for a second, his face creased in concentration. ‘Now you mention it, there were a couple of things. She was a lot younger than our usual guests, mid-twenties, maybe a little older. And I guess I thought it was a bit strange that she was travelling on her own.’
‘What was she wearing?’
‘She was dressed casually. Jeans, a denim jacket. It looked like she had a white T-shirt on underneath.’
‘Was she wearing the same clothes both times you saw her?’
‘It was the same jeans, that I’m sure of. They were decorated with blue sequins. Same jacket, too. She had a white T-shirt on but I don’t know if it was the same one.’
‘It’s her,’ Winter told Mendoza.
‘Let’s not get too excited. We could be looking at a whole string of coincidences here.’
‘There’s no such thing.’ He turned to Barnes. ‘Who did she sign in as?’
Barnes reached under the counter for the register and started flicking through the pages. ‘Here we go. Wren J Firestone.’
‘That sounds like a false name,’ said Mendoza. ‘Women don’t normally use a middle initial.’
‘It’s definitely a false name,’ Winter agreed. ‘It’s almost an anagram of my name. She couldn’t work out what to do with the extra F.’ He paused for a second. ‘Rowen J Stiffener, would have worked better. That uses all the letters. Or Owen Stiffener Jr. Obviously the junior gets condensed to a J and an R. Of course the problem with that one is that Owen is a male name.’
Mendoza gave him the look then turned to Barnes. ‘When did Ms Firestone check out?’
‘Early this morning, around seven.’
‘And when did she check in?’
‘Yesterday evening around nine.’
‘Did you notice if she had a suitcase?’ Winter asked.
‘She had a small case with her.’
‘Did you carry it upstairs for her?’
‘No.’
‘But you offered.’
‘Of course.’
‘How did she know we were staying here?’ Mendoza asked. Before Winter could respond, she added, ‘Because she saw the BMW parked outside.’ She turned back to Barnes. ‘Okay, we’re going to need to see her room. And if you have any more gloves and envelopes, that would be really useful.’
