Jessica took the transparency, held it up to the white wall. There was the Rorschach blot of blood on the left, which had come from the mutilated ear, a shape she had originally thought of as a rough figure eight. There was the straight line across the top, as well as the oval of blood underneath. In this format, a photographic transparency, the blood looked black.
Why had Byrne made these into transparencies?
She held up the next sample. The second transparency was from Preston Braswell's head. It was identical. She looked at the third sheet, this time the evidence photograph of Eduardo Robles. Identical. There was no doubt in her mind, or in the mind of anyone else investigating these homicides, that the signature for each of these murders was identical, and all but confirmed a single killer.
Except that they were not identical.
'Josh, bring that lamp closer.'
Bontrager got up and pulled the table lamp across the desk. Jessica sorted through the transparencies, her heart beating faster. She put them all in the order that made the most sense at that moment.
'Turn off the overhead light.'
Bontrager crossed the room, shut off the fluorescents. When he returned, Jessica held the stack of transparencies up to the bright lampshade.
And then they saw it.
There were five lines, but they were in slightly different places, one above the other. The puncture wounds were in different places, too. On the left side, the bloodstains left by the killer's mutilation of the victims' ears formed a stylized clef.
'My God,' Jessica said. The clarity was almost painful. 'It's a musical staff. He's writing music on the dead bodies, one note at a time.'
Bontrager sat back down. He entered the search phrase: 'Danse Macabre sheet music.'
In seconds they had a visual representation of the sheet music. The two detectives compared the samples with the transparencies. They were identical. The killer was carving the final measure of Danse Macabre on his victims.
He was done with The Four Seasons. He wasn't quite done with Carnival of the Animals. There were two notes yet to write in the measure.
Jessica glanced back at the poem. The answer was in there. She read it all again.
Her stare fell on a phrase in the middle.
A lustful couple sits on the moss
So as to taste long-lost delights.
Is the lustful couple Christa-Marie Schцnburg and Kevin Byrne? Is their killer taking them back to the night they met?
Jessica looked at her watch. It was 10:00. They had less than two hours to figure it all out.
And Kevin Byrne was nowhere to be found.
Chapter 77
Lucy hid in a small room off the ladies' locker room in the basement, near the rear of the hotel. There were two other women in the room. They spoke animatedly in Spanish. Lucy did not understand the words, but she didn't have to. There was something going on in the hotel, and Lucy had to figure that they had seen the blood in the hallway.
Meet me here on Sunday night at 9:30. Love, Lucy.
She had to leave. They were going to discover what had happened, if they had not already done so. They were going to check the lock on the door to Room 1208 and think that it was her. Plus, there were all kinds of ways to know that someone was in a room, scientific things. She had wiped down everything she remembered touching, but she couldn't have gotten all of it.
She listened to the other girls in the locker room. They would soon be going on shift. When the locker room was empty, she would slip out the back door.
What had she done?
Chapter 78
Jessica and Bontrager stood in the gift shop off the lobby. Jessica had briefed Dana Westbrook on their findings and Dana in turn briefed the rest of the team.
Jessica thought about the people milling around the lobby and the lounge, drinks in their hands. Something nagged at her. She couldn't put her finger on it.
'I want to see that guest list again,' Jessica said.
'Hang on. I'll get it.'
A minute later Bontrager returned, handed her the small stack of papers. She put it down on the gift-shop counter.
Her stare moved down each of the pages. She didn't know what she was looking for. She scanned the list of cities. Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, Montreal, Sao Paulo, Zurich, Cincinnati.
She leaned against the desk, took out her iPhone.
She remembered the crime-scene photos. There was something about one of the photographs. She scrolled through the photos she had taken. Nothing jumped out. There were photos of the Federal Street scene, shots taken at the Mount Olive Cemetery. There were also photos taken of the alley where Eduardo Robles was found, as well as the paupers' graveyard in the Northeast. The last roll was pictures taken in and around Garrett Corner, Archer Farms, as well as pictures she had taken of the state police file on the murder of Peggy van Tassel.
She had three pictures of the crime-scene photos. The scene was bloody and stomach-churning. One photo was a close-up of the girl's stomach.
Jessica zoomed in on the picture, on an area where the girl's killer had bitten her. As she got closer she saw that it was not one of the bite marks, it was a bruise instead. She increased the size one more time. The image was beginning to blur, but it was still clear enough. The bruise looked to be in the shape of a snake.
A ring?
Had she seen someone tonight wearing a ring in the shape of a snake?
Yes. A man wearing a ring of that description was one of the three men who had come up to the table, one of the Three Stooges. It was not the inebriated one, Barry Swanson. Nor was it the tall Finn.
What was the other one's name?
She remembered. She saw the name tag in her mind's eye. It was Jay Bowman.
Bowman.
Archer.
Jessica walked the perimeter of the Crystal Room, her heart racing. Table after table. She didn't see him. She walked to the other side, her eyes scanning, searching. No. He was not here. She hurried out to the lobby. The man calling himself Jay Bowman was not to be found. She got on her comm. In seconds she had John Shepherd.
'There's a guest here. He's registered under the name Jay Bowman.'
'Hang on,' Shepherd said. Twenty long seconds later: 'We've got him. Room 1208.'
The service elevator was agonizingly slow. For a moment Jessica considered getting off and taking the stairs, but that would probably delay her. Josh Bontrager and John Shepherd were taking the passenger elevator, which was on the other side of the hotel. On the twelfth floor they would be able to form a loose perimeter. There were now uniformed officers stationed at every exit on all the floors.
When she got out on the twelfth floor she passed a handful of guests. Two women about her age, dressed provocatively as French housemaids. A shorter man dressed as a wizard. A pair of boys about ten. None of them were George Archer.
She met up with Bontrager and Shepherd at the end of the hallway leading to the east wing. They moved down the hall, ears attuned to the sounds coming from the rooms. They reached Room 1208. Silence from within. Jessica made eye contact with the two men.
Bontrager knocked. No response. He knocked again.
Shepherd stepped forward, touched the electronic card to the top of the lock. Jessica and Bontrager drew their weapons. Jessica nodded. Shepherd swiped the card, turned the handle, and pushed open the door.
Jessica rolled into the room first, her weapon high. There were no lights on. She reached out, felt along the wall, found the switch. It turned on a single light overhead, along with an under-cabinet light on the minibar across the room.
'Police,' she said. No response. She stopped just short of the bathroom door. She nudged it open with her foot. Bontrager flanked her on the right. He reached around the corner, turned on the light.
The bathroom was empty.
They edged forward, deeper into the hotel room. Jessica saw it first. There was a small pool of blood drying on the carpet in front of the desk. Next to it was the unmistakable stain
of vomit. She touched Bontrager's arm, nodded at the stain. Bontrager saw it too.
They counted a silent three. Jessica rolled into the main part of the room first, her weapon raised.
It was a slaughterhouse. Blood slathered the walls, the floor. A spray of crimson dotted the window overlooking Seventeenth Street.
Josh Bontrager stepped forward, opened the closet. It was empty. He looked under the bed. 'We're clear,' he said.
Jessica holstered her weapon.
The body on the bed was covered with a single sheet. There was a full body print on the sheet, painted in blood. Josh Bontrager got on the far side, Jessica the near. They each grabbed a corner of the sheet, pulled it back.
George Archer had been savaged. His throat was cut from ear to ear. His chest was crushed. There were bite marks across his stomach.
There were also bruises across his thighs, bruises in the shape of a snake ring.
The ring sat on the pillow next to his head. It was caked with skin and hair, bits of drying flesh.
Jessica stepped forward, checked the dead man's fingers. No tattoos.
John Shepherd got on his two-way, raising the head of the hotel's security detail. 'Lock the building down,' he said. 'No one goes in or out.'
The lobby was in chaos when Jessica entered. There were a dozen uniformed officers deployed at exits, elevators, and service hallways. The restaurant's doors were closed. Inside Jessica saw patrons at candlelit tables, elegantly dressed, sipping their wines, perhaps figuring that, if you had to be locked down, being locked down inside a Michelin-starred restaurant with one of the most extensive and lauded wine cellars in the state was not such a bad thing.
Inside the Crystal Room, in an attempt to keep the crowd at ease, a member of the protection detail made his way over to the attorney general's table, tapped his watch. The AG got up calmly, shook a few hands, but quickly walked out a door at the back of the ballroom.
Jessica had changed into her jeans and hoodie. On her way out of the ladies' room she heard from Shepherd in her earpiece.
'Jess. One of the wait staff saw something near the rear service entrance. Just east of the kitchen.'
'What did she see?'
'Blood.'
Jessica and Bontrager met John Shepherd in the kitchen. Shepherd pointed out the handful of red dots leading to the rear entrance.
Shepherd stepped forward, swiped a card. They entered the area near the loading dock. A PPD officer was deployed behind the building. When he heard noise he spun around, his hand on his weapon. He was young, in his mid-twenties, a little spooked. Jessica showed her badge, and the kid looked quite relieved to have a detective on scene.
'How long have you been here?' Jessica asked
'A minute or so,' the officer said. 'I just got the call.'
The blood spots trailed over to a parking space, then disappeared.
'Did you see anyone leave?'
'No, ma'am.'
Jessica stepped back into the service area, looked at the door to her left.
'Where does this lead?' Jessica asked.
'Women's locker room.'
Jessica pushed through the door, her weapon low. The locker room had three benches, a row of sinks, a single shower, a pair of toilet stalls. Jessica checked them all. The room was empty. She looked at the inside of one of the toilet-stall doors. There was a smear of blood there.
Whoever they were looking for was gone.
Chapter 79
In the Loss Prevention office Jessica stood behind John Shepherd. He rewound the video files. The recordings shuttled between different views, so there was a six-second rotation between each of four cameras on the twelfth floor. Even in a hotel as pricey and profitable as Le Jardin, they did not have the resources to devote a hard drive to each of the scores of cameras in and around the property.
Shepherd rewound the recording to when Jessica and the other detectives came to Room 1208, then kept going. A handful of people backed up to their rooms, as well as the stairwell at the end of the hallways. Shepherd carried on until he saw one of the room attendants exit the room backward, then retreat down the hall. He stopped, played it forward.
In normal time the view showed the room attendant walking down the hall, toward Room 1208. The attendant was female, petite and slender, with her light-colored hair in a braid. Here the view began its rotation, shifting to the area near the guest elevators.
'Do you know who this is?' Jessica asked.
'Hard to tell,' Shepherd said. 'I know a lot of the room attendants — most of them, in fact. But from this angle it's difficult.'
When the view returned to the eastern hallway, they saw the attendant stop in front of 1208 for a few seconds. She didn't knock, she didn't try the door. She just stood there, perhaps listening. The camera then cut away to another view, again to the elevators, where it stayed for six seconds. No one came or went. It then cut to a view of the other end of the hallway, the western wing. Two women came out of a room there. The next cut was to the service elevators. Empty. Back to the young woman in front of 1208. The recording caught up with her as she knocked on the door. There was no audio, but Jessica could see her lips move. In the split second before the cut-away she lifted her hand, and appeared to swipe a card in the electronic lock.
The recording moved again to its other locations. No other people were visible.
They watched the rotation for the next minute and saw no activity. When they returned to the eastern hallway they saw a man heading away from the camera. He was in costume, a wizard's costume. He moved slowly, so that by the time he reached 1208 the camera had rotated. When the camera returned he was gone, and the door to the stairwell was just closing.
'Shit,' Shepherd said. He rewound the recording with the joystick, and toggled it back and forth. There were no details visible. It was impossible to tell if the man had entered the room or just passed by. With his hat, long coat and what appeared to be gloves on his hands, there were no identifiable details.
Shepherd pointed to the time code in the lower right-hand corner of the frame.
'Right around here is when we went up,' he said.
A minute later Jessica saw herself and Josh Bontrager walking down the hall. A few seconds later Shepherd joined them. They went inside the room.
'I'm going to interrogate these locks,' Shepherd said. 'I'll be right back.'
While Shepherd was gone Jessica toggled the video back and forth. She saw nothing new. She looked at the menu down the right side of the screen. She saw that one of the selections was the rear loading dock. She clicked over. It was a static shot from above one of the three docks behind the hotel, showing the loading bay, a pair of Dumpsters, and the hotel's shuttle bus parked in a space. There was no movement. In the upper right-hand corner she could see a sliver of Seventeenth Street.
She was just about to click back over — she was certain that John Shepherd didn't want her messing around with the computers — when she saw a view that she had not seen before. It was above the side door to the loading dock, the man door, not the huge corrugated steel door. The view cut away, but before it did she saw something. She ran it back.
There was no mistake. It was Kevin Byrne standing near the mouth of the alley.
Jessica checked the time code.
Was this when Byrne dropped off the package with the concierge? If so, what was he doing at the rear of the hotel?
Jessica heard the door open in the outer office. She clicked back to the paused recording at the beginning of the clip of the twelfth floor. Shepherd reentered the office.
'I interrogated all four locks along the path,' Shepherd said. 'The lock on 1208, the service elevator, the security door leading out to the loading dock, and the door on the dock itself. All four locks register the same card. It is signed out to one of the room attendants. Lucinda Doucette.'
Why is that name familiar? Jessica thought. 'Do you know her?'
'Oh yeah,' Shepherd said. 'Sweet kid. Shy.'
'Do you have a photograph of her?'
'Sure,' Shepherd said. He moved to another computer terminal, tapped a few keys. He input Lucinda's name and a few seconds later her ID page came up. He hit print and the color printer began to cycle. Seconds later, Jessica was looking at Lucinda Doucette's young face. Jessica knew her. She was the young woman at the Hosanna House, the one who'd been sitting at the little table with Carlos.
Jessica had no choice. She called in an all-points bulletin on the girl.
Shepherd hit a few keys, printing off one hundred copies of Lucinda Doucette's photograph. 'We need to get this to all the sector cars in the area.'
When John Shepherd grabbed the printed photos and left the office, Jessica's cellphone rang. It was Nicci Malone.
'Nicci. Why aren't you on channel with this?'
'I'm not in the hotel anymore.'
'What do you mean? Where are you?'
Nicci gave her the location. It was a few blocks away.
'What's going on?' Jessica asked.
Detective Malone hesitated. 'You better get over here right away.'
Chapter 80
Lucy walked up Sansom Street in a fog, stepping from shadow to shadow. Everyone who passed her was a danger. They all knew what she had done. She could see it in their eyes. There was traffic, conversations, street sounds all around her, but she didn't hear the sounds. All she heard was the white noise in her head, raised to an insane volume, the static of her impending madness.
What had she done?
All she remembered was the bell. It had rung twice.
What did it mean?
She kept walking. Block after block passed. Walk. Don't Walk. Red light. Green light. There were people all around her, but they were ghosts. The only person who lived in her world right now was a dead man. A man lying under the sheets, soaked in blood.
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