“Jack, this is PJ, Sissy is missing. I ...”
“What the hell do you mean she’s missing?”
“About an hour after I left her here at the hotel I got a call from security. She’s missing. I’m at her room now. You should come over here.”
“Of course I’m coming there. How can she be missing with all of that security?”
“I don’t know. I just got here myself. Sounds like the guys watching the monitors got distracted by activities somewhere else on the property and when they looked back they noticed that her room door was standing open. They sent an officer and found she was gone.”
“Maybe she just went to the casino or somewhere?”
“Jack, it’s obvious that there was a struggle in the room. There’s blood on the bed and the floor near the door.”
I felt my body deflating and found myself sitting on the edge of my bed. “Oh my God. I’ll be right there. What room is it?”
PJ gave me the room number and told me that she would have security notify the officer at the elevator lobby. Seems you can’t go up the elevators in the hotel unless you are a registered guest with a room key or are with a registered guest. If that’s the case, how the hell did someone get upstairs to attack Sissy? Damn it. I should never have left her.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Traffic was light, but erratic, on the way back to the Pinnacle. I just couldn’t catch a green light. My guts were rolling from anger at the thought that Muskof’s animals had gotten to Sissy in the midst of what I had told her was impenetrable security. When I got four blocks from the intersection of Sheridan and US 1 traffic came to a sudden standstill. This was the time of night when people really begin to stream into the casino and the numerous clubs at Escapade. Traffic was backed up in all directions from the intersection. It was going to take me an hour to get into the Winner’s Way Parking Garage. I found an open parking space at a small Middle Eastern cafe on Sheridan, abandoned my car, and hoofed it toward the hotel.
I saw my life flash before my eyes several times as I made my way across the numerous parking lots and drives to reach the front entrance to the casino. Pedestrians are considered a nuisance in South Florida and they are treated with the same deference as fallen palm fronds laying on the street. Avoid them if easily possible, otherwise just drive over them.
I ran into the casino and found my way to the hotel elevator bank. The very large security guard had not gotten the message about letting me pass. I struggled to hold my temper, after all it was their outstanding security that had failed to protect Sissy, and finally persuaded him to call the Monitor Room. An officer in the Monitor Room verified that I was to be allowed access and I took the elevator to Sissy’s floor.
I stepped off the elevator and was immediately confronted by another security guard. Same drill. “No, I don’t have a room key for you to swipe through your little portable card reader. Call the Monitor Room on your radio and they’ll vouch for me. How do you think I got past the guy downstairs to get into the elevator?”
He was very polite, but firm. I wasn’t getting anywhere, and was about to blow my top, when the elevator opened and Jeff Spencer stepped off. His face was taut in the countenance of a doctor delivering the prognosis to a dying man. “Glad you’re here Jack. Let’s get down to the room.” The security guard nodded his approval, but Spencer didn’t seem to notice. Spencer went on, “I’m just getting up here myself. I was clear out at the other end of Escapade when the Monitor Room called. I stopped there, at the Monitor Room, to get them focused on scanning the property looking for Sissy as well as playback of the cameras in this area so we can see in what direction she left.” It was obvious from his demeanor that he felt responsible for whatever had happened to Sissy.
It was clear that although Spencer was feeling pain from the loss of Sissy that he was also totally focused on locating her before she could be taken from the property. The churn in my gut let up just a bit. I hadn’t considered that just because she was not in the room did not mean that we had lost her.
As we approached Sissy’s room we encountered another security guard standing in the hallway. Spencer nodded as we passed and the guard returned the nod but was otherwise stoic. Outside of her room stood yet another guard and a police officer. I asked, “Jeff, with all of this security how in the hell did anyone get Sissy out of here?”
“Unfortunately, all of this was not here at the time. My people are always at the elevator lobby and no one is allowed up unless they have a room key or are with someone who has a room key. We were relying on the cameras to alert us in plenty of time if anything looked suspicious on the floor. The guys in the Monitor Room got distracted with a large fight outside in Escapade. They missed whoever was here and they missed Sissy leaving. We’ll have it soon though.”
“You mean that your guys are responsible for monitoring the camera’s outside in Escapade with all the clubs and restaurants?”
Spencer let out a deep breath, “We monitor the hotel, casino, and the common areas of Escapade. The inside of the clubs are monitored individually and the race track has their own security since they’re only open eight months of the year.”
We entered the room and my heart stopped. There were several large splotches of blood on the carpet in the entry area of the room. It was obvious that there had been a struggle in the room. The desk chair was overturned and the lamp from the bedside stand was laying on the floor. The bed cover was disheveled as if a giant hand had reached down and twisted the top of the bed one quarter turn. An elongated smear of blood in the shape of a huge comma provided a gory accent to one side of the white bed cover.
PJ was stooped over the lamp on the floor, “Blood on the lamp. Probably the weapon that caused the rest of the blood.” She started to say something additional but stood and saw me and cut herself short. The first time I met her she had been wearing her cop face but it was softened by the casual conversation at Cap’s. Tonight there was no softness. Those penetrating green eyes were flashing as if lightning was coursing through the brain behind them.
PJ looked around the room, “Too many people in here. Everybody out. Our CSI guys are on the way.” She looked at one of the Escapade Police Officers, who I noticed wore the bars of a lieutenant, “You don’t have any problems with our techs doing the scene do you Lieutenant?”
The lieutenant looked up from the notepad he was studying, “No problem. Will make a tighter chain of evidence. Just remember this is our case. We have the lead. We make the media releases. If this gets out of hand, like Anna Nicole did for the Seminoles’, the Chief will have my head on a platter. Understood?”
As we were all filing out into the hallway, Spencer’s cellphone chirped. He answered, listened, gave a couple of quick orders, and hung up. “Monitor Room has the video. A guy enters. Sissy runs out. Guy leaves. Let’s go down to my office.”
My heart began to beat again. Sissy was still alive. She had gotten away. Where is she? She must be terrified. Is it her blood? Maybe his? I blurted, “Which way did she go? Was he chasing her?”
We were nearly jogging as we headed toward the elevators. Spencer responded, “Sissy ran from the room and went down the hall toward the stairway. He came out a few seconds later and went toward the elevators but turned around and came back past the room toward the stairway. She had thirty or forty-five seconds on him.”
“Why are we going to your office? Let’s go down the stairway.”
Spencer looked at his watch, “Jack, this happened over an hour ago. My guys swept the stairs at both ends of the hallway within minutes of the call. It’s standard procedure for guests missing in the hotel. You’d be surprised how many drunks wander into the stairway, can’t figure out which floor is theirs, just curl up and go to sleep on the stairs. Our best bet is to go to the Monitor Room and use the recordings from the four hundred cameras around here to track her. At least we know now that she’s still alive.”
The elevator arrived and the lieutenant, PJ, Spencer, and I
entered. PJ asked Spencer, “Can you get back onto the floors from the stairway or can you only go out at the bottom?”
As he pushed the elevator button for the ground floor Spencer replied, “You can get back in on any floor. Code requirement. That way if there’s smoke or fire below you’re not trapped in the stairwell. I have the guys looking at the camera closest to the stairwell on each floor. Should see her re-enter a hallway.”
PJ asked, “What if she went to the bottom?”
Spencer answered, “That stairway empties onto a short sidewalk that intersects the main sidewalk in the front of the building. Not far from the porte-cochere. There’s an alarm on the door. You can’t enter from the outside and an alarm sounds in the Monitor Room if you open the door from the inside.”
I interjected, “What about cameras in the stairwell?”
Spencer replied, “Tons of cameras around here but not in the stairwells. There is a camera outside the exit door at the bottom of the stairwell though. If she exited the alarm would have sounded and the Monitor Room should have seen it.”
Without thinking I said, “Unless they were distracted.”
PJ fidgeted with her notebook and Spencer’s face darkened, “That’s fair. We fucked up. Unfortunately, there are four hundred cameras but we can only display about one hundred and twenty at one time. Then you have to reduce that number to the number that any one guy can focus on at a time. There is a hell of a lot going on around here. I try to keep three guys in the Monitor Room, but tonight we are short staffed and I only have two. Compound that with the trouble in Escapade and we fucked up. We lost Sissy, but we’ll get her back.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The elevator opened and we all started the walk across the casino floor. I had noticed that the only route between any two points here takes you across the casino floor. Looking around I could not see an empty seat at a slot machine or a card table. I wonder how much money changes hands every day?
As we entered Spencer’s conference room, he stuck his head through the doorway into the Monitor Room, “Where is the recording from ten?”
None of the six security officers working at an assortment of computers looked up, but one cocked his head and called out over his shoulder, “It’s all cued up in the player in there. Just hit play.”
Spencer picked up a remote control from the end of the conference table and pointed it at the flat screen monitor mounted in the center of the long wall of the room. In an instant the screen was filled with a black and white image of the corridor leading to Sissy’s room. The bottom of the picture included several sets of numbers displaying the date and time and a set that I presumed identified the camera. After about thirty-seconds a man entered the picture. He was coming from the direction of the camera so the picture was of his back. He was a large man, probably 6 feet 4 inches, with distinctly wide shoulders. He was dressed in dark slacks and jacket. He looked just like the hundreds of similarly dressed security officers walking around here. He could have been the guy Mrs. Feldman told us about but there was no way to know for certain. He definitely was not the guy talking to Allison at Cap’s last night. I could tell that much from the back. When he reached Sissy’s door, he only partially turned to face the door so the camera did not catch a good view of his profile. He knocked and from the movement of his arms it appeared that he was having a conversation with someone on the other side of the door, Sissy. The door started to open and like a cat striking prey from a perch he lurched forward into the room. The door slammed shut and the corridor stood empty as if saying, “I see no evil. I hear no evil.”
What seemed like an eternity passed, it was less than a minute by the time display on the screen, and the door flew open again. Sissy came running out with the white bathrobe flaring out behind her. She turned toward the stairway and ran until she disappeared through the door. Seconds later the black clad figure emerged from the room. He appeared to stumble, but quickly regained his balance and turned toward the elevators. He was holding a white hand towel against the left side of his face. This partially obscured his face but as he passed closer to the camera the right side of his face was clearly visible. Heavy jowls flanked a large bent nose. Eyes deep set under bushy eyebrows. The dark scowl of evil. Just as he was about to pass from the camera view he hesitated, turned, and began to jog toward the stairway. He too disappeared through the stairway door.
PJ spoke first, “I think we have a good idea whose blood is in the room. My guess is that Sissy cold cocked him with the lamp. Must be that when he grabbed the towel he was holding against his face, he dropped some towels on the floor in the doorway. That’s what held the door open and attracted the attention of the Monitor Room.”
The lieutenant, “Jeff, this guy is dressed just like your guys. Any chance he works here or did work here?”
Spencer rubbed his temple as he froze the picture on the best view of the man in black, “That thought sure crossed my mind. I don’t recognize him, but this isn’t the best shot. I have the guys looking for other video of him on the property where we can see a better head shot. We should have him coming off the elevator on ten. Shouldn’t take long to get a decent quality picture. I don’t think he’s worked here but we’ll get the picture to Human Resources and the other departments. He could have worked in another department and it’s just not ringing a bell with me. Lot of people go through this place. Lot of turnover.”
PJ turned toward the other three and raised her hands, “Identifying this guy is great but let’s focus on catching the son-of-a-bitch. Let’s not forget, he may still be on the property. Probably not, but maybe. And let’s find Sissy!”
Just then one of the officers from the Monitor Room stuck his head into the conference room and said, “Sir, we got something.”
Everyone followed Spencer into the Monitor Room and crowded around the computer at the left end of the horseshoe counter that served as the work surface in the center of the room. The picture on the monitor clearly showed Sissy coming back into a hallway from the stairway door and running toward the camera. She passed out of view of the camera and the picture shifted to another camera view that caught her running away and down the hallway. Another picture shift and she could be seen at the end of the hall exiting into a stairway.
The security officer said, “These shots are from six. She enters from stair tower one, runs the length of the corridor and exits into stair tower two. The time coincides with the time she left ten. Exactly, one minute ten-seconds after she left ten she entered six.”
Spencer rubbed his chin with his right hand and said, “My guess is that she was hiding in the stairway and heard him enter on ten so she exited at six and ran to the other stairway to hide again.” He turned to one of the security officers seated at the other end of the work surface, “I want both stair towers searched again. Top to bottom. Got it!”
“Yes sir. Both stair towers top to bottom. On it.” He turned and began speaking into the microphone in front of his face.
PJ asked, “Any more sightings of the guy that assaulted her?”
The security officer looked at PJ and then over to Spencer. He swallowed hard and said, “We haven’t got him on camera yet, but we reviewed the door system alarms for that general time and we do find an alarm for the door at the bottom of stair tower one. It was one minute and forty-seconds after the guy entered the stair tower. Plenty of time for him to get down the ten stories. We were busy on that thing in Escapade and didn’t have anybody to send to check. The camera outside that door isn’t working at this time so we don’t have any video to look back at. With the other shots of the woman on six it can’t be her, so our guess is that it was him.”
Spencer stated, “Probably wouldn’t have mattered if you had someone to send to check the door alarm, he would have no doubt been long gone and blended into the crowds at the front of the hotel by the time they got there. Look at the outside cameras from that exit outward toward the front of the property.”
The officer state
d, “We’re already on it, sir. Using an ever increasing semicircle approach with that door as the center point of the arc.”
Spencer scanned the banks of monitors in front of him, “Check the cameras on every floor in the area of stair tower two. If she is not in the stairs she had to exit on one of the floors or out at the bottom. That camera is working isn’t it? The one at the bottom of stair tower two.”
The security officer stroked a couple of keys on the computer in front of him and an image of the outside of an exterior door appeared on the large monitor, “Yes sir it’s working and we have checked the alarm and the recording. No one has exited stair two at the ground level.”
Spencer stated the obvious, “She is either in the stairway or she exited at a floor.”
Just then one of the other security officers sitting in front of a bank of monitors yelled out, “I got her. At least I think I do.” He was the youngest in the room, looking hardly old enough to shave, with a bushy head of red hair surrounding a heavily freckled face. He was obviously excited.
As we all moved toward the monitor directly in front of the officer Spencer said, “What have you got Red?”
Red was nearly bouncing in his chair while pointing at the monitor, “This is the camera on fifteen looking toward stair tower two. There is a housekeeper pushing a cart out of the linen closet near the end of the corridor. Now watch closely. The door to the linen closet has not closed yet and the woman comes out of the stairway and slips into the closet. The housekeeper has her back to her as she comes down the corridor and she never sees it. She must be hiding in the closet.”
Spencer queried, “Have you checked the recording from that point forward? Do we know that she didn’t leave the closet?”
Red’s excitement deflated, “Not yet, sir. Wanted to give you this first. Thought you would want to get someone up there right away. Will check right now.”
Cap's Place: A Jack Nolan Novel (The Cap's Place Series Book 1) Page 8
