The Case of the Linen Pressed Guest (The M.O.D. Files Book 2)

by K. W. Callahan

  I walked over to stand beside Frank near the tube-formed stack of linen. We both put our hands against one side of it and pushed. The tube of cloth bent and bulged outward but did not break.

  “She’s about to let loose,” Frank said.

  We gave it one more heave. The middle of the exposed tube bent, gave way, and began to extract itself, slithering snake-like from the exit of the steel cylinder as it unfurled itself. The floor around us was covered as literally tons of linen rushed down from the tower of cloth backed up stories above us. It kind of reminded me of squeezing a tube of toothpaste or mushing Play-doh from a dispenser. The cascade continued for several seconds before slowing. Another quick shove from Frank redirected its flow toward a lesser covered portion of the floor and kept it moving for a few more seconds before it slowed again and then stopped.

  We took a minute to pull the piles of scattered linen out and away from the chute’s base, dispersing it around the floor to make room for more.

  “What floor was this blanket supposed to have come from?” Frank asked.

  “The room was 13-107,” I told him.

  Frank took a deep breath and frowned, “We’ve got a ways to go then.” He wiped a bit of sweat from his forehead. “You said it’s pink?”

  “Yep,” I nodded.

  After another minute of clearing the surrounding area of linen, we gave the cloth cocoon another good push to restart its unfurling. Then we repeated the process again.

  The dirty linen was really beginning to pile up around us. We saw some other items – a few stuff animals, a bag of garbage that had obviously missed the garbage chute, some room service plates and silverware, multiple bars of soap and shampoo bottles, an empty champagne bottle, a kid’s shoe, a pair of swim trunks, and some other assorted articles of clothing, as well as a couple television remotes – all come down, but still no blankie.

  “Amazing what gets tossed down this thing,” I shook my head in astonishment and the number of articles we were accumulating.

  “Just never know,” said Frank.

  “How much farther you think we have to go?” I asked.

  Frank pondered for a moment. “We should be up to around the tenth or eleventh floor by now. Probably one more push ought to do it.”

  Frank was right. After another good shove, we watched the snake of linen wiggle and writhe for a few more seconds before we caught a quick glimpse of pink shoot out from within. I reached into the coiling ranks and snatched the blankie up before it was buried beneath the ever-growing mounds. It was wrapped around a broken piece of wooden broom handle, which I quickly detached and winged toward the far corner of the room where the big barrel trash can sat.

  “I got it!” I shouted, jumping out of the way to avoid being buried in what was far from a sanitary tomb, while at the same time watching my three-point shot with the broom handle rim the edge of the trash barrel and go in. “And he scores!” I added.

  Just as I got out of the way, I noticed more pinkish color appear on the linen that was still extracting itself from above. At first, I thought it was another blankie, and I hoped that we might preempt a forthcoming lost and found call, killing two birds with one stone. But my hopes were quickly dashed as I realized that these were Lanigan Hotel sheets – stained a dark red. Milliseconds later, the realization hit me that these sheets were covered in blood.

  Now I know that many people would probably have thought that such a sight would have me recoiling in horror, but those people have to remember that this was a major hotel, and unfortunately bloodied towels and sheets weren’t all that uncommon. People cut themselves and used our linens as tourniquets or bled for various other reasons in the bed or bathroom, so seeing bloody linen exit the chute wasn’t really that big a deal. But what exited just behind the sheets was a big deal.

  Following the blood-covered sheets were more sheets wrapped around what appeared to be a large form. It came slithering out the chute’s exit, sliding into the billowy bedding the dirty linen had created for it. A pair of feet wearing men’s shoes were all that protruded from one end of the blood-stained sheets. Several seconds later, the avalanche from above stopped.

  Frank and I stood staring, not believing what we were seeing.

  Finally, never tearing his eyes from the sheet-wrapped form, Frank said, “I’ve seen a lot of shit come outta that tube over the years, but I ain’t never seen that.” He took a deep breath, “That ain’t good.”

  “No…” I exhaled heavily as I unwrapped the mummified remains of what turned out to be a young man just enough to take his stiffened wrist in my hand and feel for a pulse that wasn’t there, “…it’s not good at all.”

  “Is he…” Frank started, then stopped.

  “Yes, he is,” I said, releasing my grip on the dead man’s arm and reaching for my M.O.D. phone.

  After this – an apparent second murdered guest at our hotel in just over a year – I was starting to wonder if there might be something to that Michelangelo marble curse after all.

  CHAPTER TWO

  My first act after the discovery of the body was to put in a 911 call to emergency responders even though I knew doing so was largely pointless. Still, I had to follow proper hotel protocol. My next call was to Steve Sukol – our director of security – at home. Then I called Tom Hansen – our hotel general manager – who didn’t answer his phone. I expected nothing less from our fearless leader. He was probably carefully screening any and all calls from hotel personnel so as not to interrupt his holiday feasting. My fourth and final call was to John Marino of the Chicago Police Department, Homicide Division.

  I’d met Detective Marino over a year ago when he was assigned to another murder case at the hotel. He’d found my knowledge of the inner-workings of our property and procedures instrumental in solving the case and we’d developed a cordial relationship, if not a friendship, during that time.

  The detective had about an inch or two on my six-foot frame and was a bit trimmer, which didn’t surprise me considering he was often on the move around downtown Chicago while I tended to remain rather sedentary within the confines of the hotel. He had hard, almost piercing brown eyes and cropped brown hair to match. His face with thin and elongated, but not unattractively so, and he tended to dress immaculately.

  Upon his arrival to the hotel shortly after my call, I found him wearing a dark brown, hand-tailored suit. It was from a local high-end manufacturer that made the famed green jackets for the Masters Golf Tournament and that I’d heard had also cut the suits for one of Illinois’ former governors…before he was shipped off to prison that is.

  I wondered how Detective Marino could afford such luxury on a cop’s salary, but I didn’t ask any questions. We all have our indulgences. I guess men’s fine apparel was his.

  The detective and his men arrived just after the emergency personnel. It had been several months since I’d last seen him. He’d stopped by one Saturday night in October while in the neighborhood and I’d treated him to a few drinks down at the Navigator’s Club, the hotel’s hot spot on a Saturday night. We had discussed the last case he’d helped me with – or vice versa – a year prior, as well as several new ones he’d been working. The two of us got along well because we had minds that were similar – very analytical. While the detective loved working to crack real world cases, I tended to limit my investigatory work to things like today’s missing blankie or a cash variance in a front desk agent’s bank.

  The detective was typically all business and liked to get right to the point, and today he didn’t let me down. I saw him notice me as soon as he entered the linen sorting room. He eyed me warily as he approached.

  “Haze, I hope you’re not going to make a habit of things like this,” he motioned toward the body still lying in the pile of sheets that had now been cordoned off with yellow crime scene tape. “I like your hotel, but I don’t really want to become the resident detective here.”

  “Oh come on,” I said as we shook hands, “it’s been over a
year since the last one. It’s not like we’re knocking them off left and right. This kind of thing happens occasionally in a hotel our size.”

  “So what we got?” he asked, taking a notepad from his inner suit jacket pocket, flipping it open, and pulling a pen from the pad’s attached holder.

  I found it interesting that he posed the question to me rather than the several officers who had cordoned off the scene before he arrived.

  “Came down here looking for a lost and found item, a child’s pink blanket,” I explained. “We busted the chute…”

  “What’s ‘busted’ mean?” he interrupted as he scribbled on his pad.

  “Cleared it out,” I clarified. “Around this time of year, when things are slow, we tend to let it back up until the linen staff returns from their holiday break.”

  The detective nodded that he understood and scribbled another note in his pad.

  “Anyway,” I continued, “sometimes things like stuffed animals, clothing, blankets and the likes get wrapped up and tossed down in the dirty towels and bed sheets. To find them, we have to sort through whatever is built up inside the linen chute. To do that, we have to bust it out.”

  “You find the blanket?” the detective asked, an eyebrow raised questioningly.

  “Yeah…came out right before our victim over there. You think I’ll be able to return it to the guests who reported it missing? Your boys over there,” I nodded to several uniformed officers still milling about the linen sorting room, “bagged it and tagged it as soon as they arrived.”

  “Sorry,” the detective shook his head. “Not until this thing is solved.”

  “Damn!” I hissed. “Well, at least the family will know they’ll be getting it back eventually,” I reasoned.

  “Hope so,” the detective added. “Oh, and I’m going to have to keep this area closed off indefinitely until forensics have had time to get in here and get everything they need.”

  “Oh come on, Marino,” I moaned. “You’re going to shut down the sorting room for a hotel this size. You know what a cluster that’s going to be for us?”

  “It’s Christmas,” the detective shrugged. “You should be slow this time of year.”

  “Slow still means at least a couple hundred rooms worth of sheets and towels to process each day,” I argued.

  “Sorry,” the detective said. “Going to be at least a couple days. A lot of our people are on holiday break too, so it might be even longer.”

  “Alright,” I huffed, knowing it was pointless to argue. One thing the detective wasn’t was a push-over, and I knew from our experience working together on the last case, he said what he meant and he stuck to his guns.

  “You know who the dead man is?” he asked me.

  I shook my head, “No, nothing other than what I could observe…white male, looked to be somewhere in his late-20s or early-30s, nicely dressed, and he appeared to have been stabbed multiple times, although I didn’t see a murder weapon anywhere near the body. Guess it doesn’t mean that it’s not wrapped up somewhere among the mess,” I gestured around me at the mounds of linen. “I saw the officers pull some identification off him, but they wouldn’t tell me anything.”

  “Good,” the detective nodded, pleased at the officers’ adherence to protocol. “Stick around,” he said. “I’m going to check in with them, but I’m sure I’ll need more from you.”

  “Oh, I’m sure,” I nodded, already compiling a mental list of reports, people, and places the detective would likely need to see.

  As Detective Marino left to speak to the other officers, Steve Sukol, our director of security, arrived on the scene.

  Steve was a hulking beast of a man, but his demeanor placed him more at the “gentle giant” end of the personality spectrum. Steve was a good six-foot-five and was the better part of 350 pounds. I was a slightly above average sized individual, especially when it came to weight these days. My hibernation instincts during the long Chicago winter had packed an extra five pounds upon my six-foot frame, but I had nothing on Steve.

  “What’s the story?” he ambled slowly up to me, a long black camelhair coat unbuttoned around his girth. He wiped his nose, breathing heavily from of his mouth.

  “Little under the weather?” I asked.

  “Sinus infection,” he wiped at his nose again and sniffled.

  “Body in the linen chute,” I told him. “Appears to have been stabbed.”

  “Police got it under control?”

  “Detective Marino’s here,” I nodded. I knew Steve hated paperwork, and he was certainly willing to dump off any extra work on the Chicago Police Department if at all possible.

  “He the one from last time?”

  “Yes, the Allen Doddsman case.”

  “You need anything from me?”

  “Not yet,” I told him. “I’m sure we’ll probably have to conduct some employee interviews, investigate some entries on electronic door locks, that kind of stuff. But I can probably handle most of it with the detective…unless you want to be involved.”

  I didn’t want to overstep any boundaries or leave Steve feeling as though he wasn’t being shown the proper respect, but I had a feeling I knew him well enough by now to have a pretty good read on his intentions. Still, I felt it polite to ask.

  “No, that’s fine,” he sniffled. “Have at it. Let me know if I can help. You have my number. Have a Merry Christmas.” And with that, he turned and made his way out of the sorting room.

  Steve knew his role, and dealing with murders wasn’t part of it. Handling hotel theft and loss prevention, security policy implementation, and employee safety training he was fine with, but anything more than that, and it was up to the good old CPD.

  As I stood waiting for the detective to finish talking to his officers, I called our director of housekeeping, Marian Marshall, at home.

  “Hi, Robert?” she answered.

  “Hello Marian, sorry to bother you at home.”

  “Yes?” she said tentatively. The dejection was already evident in her voice, and I could sympathize. Hotels, unlike people, never slept; and it seemed like they always chose the most inopportune moments to spring their emergencies.

  “We’ve had an,” I searched for the right word, “incident in the linen sorting room.”

  “Oh no,” Marian said. “Was anyone hurt?”

  “Well…” I pondered how to answer. Housekeeping was the rumor breeder of the hotel, and the last thing I wanted to do was let this tale-twisting department in on the fact that there had been a murder. But I knew that it’d get out eventually, so I let loose with both barrels. “A guest was found dead in the linen chute.”

  “Oh my god,” I heard Marian breathe. “Do they know what happened?”

  “Not yet,” I explained. “That’s just the problem. The police are going to have to shut down the sorting room for a couple days…maybe longer so that they can investigate.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” Marian moaned. “Do they know what that does to a hotel this size?”

  “Believe me, I already told them, but it doesn’t matter. Looks like we’ll have to do our sorting elsewhere. With the hotel at such low occupancy, we could probably put out one of the larger meeting rooms, move some tables in, have the housepersons bring the dirty stuff down in carts, and the sorters can work out of there.”

  “Guess we’ll have to,” Marian pondered. “Of course sales will charge my department for use of the meeting rooms,” said mumbled. “And I’ll have to add extra sorters to the schedule. It’s going to kill my December and January budgets…they’ve already been cut to the bone.”

  I let Marian vent for another minute about how this could screw up her department budget for the entire year and how our general manager, Tom, never understood how the housekeeping department always had all the hotel’s problems dumped upon it. Finally, I did my best to kindly cut her off so I could get back to the situation at hand. Housekeeping’s budget was the least of my concerns right now. I had to break the b
ad news to Tom and try to keep this whole mess on the down low – at least for the time being. Thankfully, I knew that gossip would be kept to a minimum with the lower staffing levels at this time of year, but the hotel’s annual holiday party was right around the corner, and that meant rumors would likely start erupting like wildfire. Once they got started, they were hard to contain, and could even spread to local news agencies as they burned out of control.

  After last year’s little incident with Mr. Doddsman’s untimely demise upon our premises, the last things the hotel wanted – or needed – was any more bad publicity.

  * * *

  After I got off the phone with Marian, I wrapped things up with Detective Marino who was busy directing his men in collecting evidence and photographing the crime scene. He was busy, and I needed to get upstairs to Tom and explain what was going on. I knew our rotund GM wouldn’t be happy, especially with his favorite holiday looming, but I didn’t have much choice. I had to break the bad news.

  “I’ve got to get going,” I told the detective. “You know how to get a hold of me.”

  “Will do,” he waved me away, his attentions focused elsewhere.

  I knew he’d come calling with a laundry list (no pun intended) of reports he needed, interviews to be conducted, and questions for me to answer when he was ready. It was best just to leave him to his work and let him find me when he was ready.

  I headed back down 2B’s murky main corridor and called a service elevator. Inside, I slid my manager’s key into the “P” slot on the floor indicator panel and rode up to the newly renovated rooftop “owner’s” suite.