Richard Montanari (55 page)

    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.

    
Is
the lustful couple Christa-Marie Schönburg 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.

    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?

    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.'

    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.'

    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.'

    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.

    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.