The perfect look

CHAPTER THREE

Jessie gripped the car’s grab handle for dear life.

Ryan had turned on the siren and was tearing through the downtown streets, making sharp, sudden turns. Apparently the media had already been tipped off about a dead body in the fancy hotel and was forming a crowd outside. He wanted to get there before the scene got too chaotic.

Jessie was silently grateful that she’d stuck to toast for breakfast as she was tossed around in the car. Despite being discombobulated, one thing stuck with her. Garland Moses had said yes.

That meant that, if she could force herself to make the most of his involvement, she didn’t have to spend every spare moment freaking out over Hannah’s disappearance. There was now someone looking into it whom she trusted to make some headway, someone who would actually update her on the status of the case. To remain sane, she had to allow that to play out and not fixate on it every second.

Just as important, if she was going to be of any use in this Bonaventure case, or any future one, she had to have a clear head. She owed it to whoever the murder victim was in that hotel room to provide her most cogent, uncluttered analysis. As if he were reading her mind, Ryan spoke up.

“This wasn’t my idea.”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“I thought we should ease back into work with at least a day or two of boring paperwork catch-up. But Captain Decker insisted on sending you out.”

“That doesn’t sound like him,” she pointed out.

“Normally, no,” he agreed. “But he was pretty explicit about wanting to assign you a case immediately to keep you occupied. He doesn’t want you anywhere near the Dorsey case and he figured the best way to prevent that is to keep you busy.”

“He said that?” Jessie asked.

“Pretty much. In fact, I think he wanted me to convey that to you, kind of like a warning.”

“Okay, noted,” Jessie said, debating briefly whether to tell Ryan about her meeting with Garland Moses.

Ryan knew that Hannah was her half-sister but not much more. Furthermore, she hadn’t informed him of whom she had met with or why. He seemed to assume she was meeting with Kat Gentry and she hadn’t corrected his impression. She was concerned that the more he knew about her efforts to learn about Hannah’s case, the more vulnerable position he would be in professionally. She didn’t want him to have to lie on her behalf to the boss if the issue came up.

Then again, not telling him felt like a personal betrayal of sorts. She glanced over at Ryan Hernandez, two years her senior, and quietly asked herself what she owed him. After all, while he was a detective and she was a profiler, they worked most cases together and were informal partners, even if it wasn’t official.

Beyond that, over the last few years, their relationship had evolved from purely professional to professionally friendly, to genuine friendship, and now to something else. Ryan’s wife had filed for divorce a few months ago after six years of marriage and, after some awkward verbal dancing, Ryan had recently confessed to Jessie that he was interested in her as more than just a partner.

She had felt the same way for some time but never acted on it. She’d found him attractive ever since she’d first encountered him, giving a guest lecture at a class she attended. That was even before she learned of his impressive pedigree as a detective with an elite unit of LAPD’s robbery-homicide division called Homicide Special Section, or HSS. HSS dealt with homicide cases that had high profiles or intense media scrutiny, often involving multiple victims or serial killers.

All that only enhanced the already dashing figure he cut. Ryan was six feet tall and two hundred pounds of street-hardened muscle. And yet, underneath his short black hair, his brown eyes exuded unexpected warmth.

Now, with only their own mountains of personal baggage to prevent them from taking the next step, they were feeling each other out. There had been one kiss but nothing more. To be honest, Jessie wasn’t sure if either of them was ready for more.

“Tell me about the case,” she said, deciding to hold off on telling him about the Garland Moses meeting, at least for now.

“I don’t know much yet,” Ryan said. “The body was discovered by housekeeping in the last hour—a male, forty-something, naked. Wallet was empty—no identification, credit cards, or cash. Initial cause of death seems to be strangulation.”

“Can’t they ID him by checking who booked the room?”

“That’s a little weird too. Apparently the card that was used to hold the room is registered to a shell company. And the name on the register is John Smith. I’m sure it will get unraveled but right now we’re dealing with a John Doe.”

They arrived at the massive Bonaventure Hotel, with its multiple towers and famous exterior elevators, the ones made memorable in the movie In the Line of Fire. Ryan flashed his badge to get past the police barricade and pulled up near the loading dock entrance.

A uniformed officer met them and led them to the freight elevator and from there, to the massive central lobby. As they walked through it to get to the main bank of elevators, Jessie couldn’t help but be overwhelmed by the size and number of atriums and crisscrossing hallways and stairwells. It was as if the place had been specifically designed to confuse.

She trailed behind Ryan and the officer, taking her time, allowing the complications of the morning to fall away as she focused in on the task at hand. Her job was to profile this crime, to determine potential perpetrators. And that meant staying aware of the surroundings in which the crime had taken place—not just the room but the hotel as well. It was possible that something that happened out here may have impacted the events in that room. She couldn’t ignore anything.

They passed a group of tourists excitedly heading for an exit in attire that suggested they were going to a famous amusement park. Just beyond them, in a circular, open bar called the Lobby Court, several men in suits were getting an early start on their drinking. A few burly men in identical blue blazers wandered around, wearing earpieces, clearly security. Jessie couldn’t decide whether they were intended to be genuinely discreet or just to give that surface impression.

As they reached the elevators, one of the blazer guys joined them and silently waited for one to arrive.

“How’s your morning going?” Jessie asked him chipperly, unable to treat the guy with the solemnity he was clearly after.

He nodded but said nothing.

“You finishing your shift or starting it?” she pressed as her tone became more severe, annoyed at his lack of responsiveness.

He looked at her, then at Ryan, who stared at him coldly, and reluctantly replied.

“I started at six. We got the call from housekeeping at seven,” addressing the topic she was clearly hinting at.

“Why did housekeeping go in the room so early?” Jessie asked. “Was there a cleaning request on the doorknob?”

“She said there was a smell coming from the room.”

Jessie looked over at Ryan, who had a resigned expression.

“Sounds like a fun way to start the morning,” she said, reading his mind.

The elevator arrived and they stepped inside. The guard accompanied them to the fourteenth floor. As they shot up in the air, Jessie couldn’t help but marvel at the view. The elevator faced the Hollywood Hills, and on this fairly clear morning, the white Hollywood sign gleamed back at them, seemingly close enough to touch. Griffith Park Observatory was nestled nearby at the top of a hill in the park. Various studio soundstages peppered the expanse in between, as did thousands of vehicles on the traffic-choked streets.

A soft ding brought her back into the moment and Jessie stepped out, following the guard and Ryan to the end of the hallway. They were only halfway there when Jessie got a whiff of what must have captured the maid’s attention.

It was the smell of putrid, bacteria-laced gases in the victim’s body building up and leaking out, often with equally foul-smelling fluids. While it was always unpleasant, Jessie had gotten somewhat used to it. She doubted a housekeeper would be as familiar or as comfortable with it.

An officer waiting outside the door recognized Ryan and handed him and Jessie plastic slippers as he lifted the police tape so they could enter. To her admittedly petty satisfaction, the officer refused to allow the hotel security guard entry.

Once inside, she stood by the door and took in the scene. There were several CSU techs taking photos and fingerprinting the room. Multiple small indentations in the carpeting had been noted and marked with evidence numbers.

The body lay on the bed, naked, bloated, and uncovered. The initial description of the victim seemed accurate. He appeared to be in his forties. As Jessie got closer, it was clear that he had indeed been strangled. Blueish-purple finger marks covered his neck, though notably, there were no indentations or cuts that might suggest nails digging in.

The man was in decent shape if you ignored the bloating. He was clearly well off, with recently manicured fingernails, a hair transplant that had been painstakingly done to give him a smattering of gray amidst his black hair, and some craftsman-like Botox injections near the eyes, mouth, and forehead.

His socks, now straining at the excess fluid building up at his ankles, clung mournfully to his feet. His shoes rested by the side of the bed. His clothes—comprised of an expensive-looking suit, boxers, and a T-shirt, were folded neatly over a desk chair.

There were no other obvious personal materials in the room—no luggage bag, no extra clothes, no watch or glasses by the bedside. She glanced in the bathroom and saw the same thing there—no toiletries, no used towels, nothing to suggest that he’d spent much time in the room at all.

“Cell phone?” Ryan asked the officer standing in the corner.

“We found it in the trash can,” the CSU investigator told him. “It was smashed but the tech team thinks it’s salvageable. The SIM card was still inside. It’s being transported to the lab now.”

“Wallet?” Ryan wondered.

“It was on the floor by the bed,” the investigator said. “But it had been picked clean. Almost everything potentially identifiable was gone—no credit cards or driver’s license. There were a few photos of kids. I guess they could eventually be used to establish identity. But I suspect the cell phone will yield results quicker.”

Jessie stepped closer to the body, making sure to avoid all the evidence markers on the carpet.

“No obvious defensive wounds,” she noted. “No scratches on his hands. No bruising on his fingers.”

“Hard to imagine he’d just lie there and take a choking, unless it was part of a sex game. Of course, we’ve seen that before,” Ryan said, referring to a complicated case involving S&M that they’d solved recently.

“Or he could have been drugged,” Jessie countered, pointing at the empty glass lying on the desk near another evidence marker. “If something was slipped in his drink, he might not have been able to put up a fight.”

“So I guess we’re ruling out suicide,” Ryan said as he moved closer to the body.

“If he did this himself, that would be a pretty impressive accomplishment,” Jessie said.

She watched as Ryan’s expression changed from amusement to curiosity.

“What is it?” she asked.

“I think I recognize this guy.”

“Really?” Jessie said. “Who is he?”

“I’m not sure. I think he might be a local politician, maybe on the city council?”

“We should check his photo against local pols and other officials,” Jessie suggested.

“Right,” he agreed. “If that bears out, then we can’t rule out a political motivation.”

“True. It could be that someone was unhappy with a vote he’d recently cast or was about to. Of course, one would think that just showing him photos of himself drugged and naked in a hotel room would have been equally effective.”

“Good point,” Ryan acceded. “Maybe it was intended as a message to someone else.”

“Also a possibility,” Jessie said as she looked around the room for something she might be missing. “But I would have thought that as far as messages go, two bullets to the back of the head would have been more impactful. I think we need to find out who this guy is before we can draw any real conclusions.”

Ryan nodded his agreement.

“Why don’t we go down to the front desk,” he said. “Let’s see what they can tell us about John Smith.”

The desk agent who had checked in “John Smith” of City Logistics had ended his shift at six a.m. and had to be called back in. While they waited for him to arrive, Ryan instructed the security office to pull up all video footage from the time of check-in and any key card swipes of the dead man’s hotel room door.

Jessie sat in the lobby with Ryan and waited, watching the ebb and flow of the hotel routine. Some folks were checking out. But most were either tourists milling about or people in business attire headed out for what looked to be “titans of industry”–type stuff.

She knew the desk agent had arrived the second he walked in. Dressed in blue jeans and a casual shirt, the twenty-something, acne-faced kid looked like he’d been woken from a deep slumber and barely had time to throw on clothes, much less brush his hair. He also had another characteristic that seemed to envelop him like an invisible coat: fear.

Jessie tapped Ryan and pointed at the guy. They got up and reached him just as he approached the desk. He waved down a manager, who motioned for him to go to the end of the counter away from the guests.

“Thanks for coming in, Liam,” the manager said.

“No problem, Chester,” the kid said, though he looked put out. “You said it was urgent. What’s this all about?”

“Some folks have a few questions for you,” Chester said, following Jessie’s instructions not to be specific about the reason Liam was being called in.

“Who has questions?” Liam asked.

“We do,” Ryan said from behind him, startling the young guy and making him jump a little.

“Who are you?” Liam asked, trying to sound tough and failing.

“My name is Ryan Hernandez. I’m an LAPD detective. This is Jessie Hunt. She’s a criminal profiler for the department. Why don’t we go somewhere private where we can talk freely?”

For half a second, Liam looked like he might run for it. Then he seemed to get his bearings.

“Yeah, okay, I guess.”

“There’s a small conference room at the end of that hall,” Chester the manager said. “It should afford you some privacy.”

When they got into the conference room with the door closed and everyone had taken their seats, Liam seemed to tense up again. It might have been having two law enforcement officials staring at him, or not knowing why he was being questioned, or the strange white noise being pumped into the otherwise silent room. Jessie suspected it was a combination of all of it. Whatever the reason, Liam couldn’t contain himself.

“Is this about the beer cases?’ he blurted out. “Because I was told it was extra stock and would be thrown out so it was no big deal if I took them.”

“No, Liam,” Ryan said. “It’s not about cases of beer. It’s about a murder.”

CHAPTER FOUR

Liam’s jaw dropped open so far that Jessie worried it might unhinge from his face.

“What?” he asked when he was finally able to speak again.

“A guest was murdered here last night,” Ryan said. “And it appears that you checked him in, though there’s some confusion about that. We were hoping you could clear it up.”

Liam gulped hard before responding.

“Of course,” he said, apparently happy that he was no longer under suspicion about the beer.

“Yesterday evening at nine thirty-seven, you checked in a man identified only as John Smith. The card associated with the transaction was listed under a company called City Logistics, which appears to be a shell company.”

“What does that mean?” Liam asked.

“It means,” Ryan said, “that the company is owned by another company which is owned by another company, all with multiple people listed as executives, each of whom seem to be lawyers known for setting up shell companies.”

“I don’t get it,” Liam said, looking genuinely confused.

“Liam,” Jessie said, speaking for the first time,” this means that the person who gave you the credit card didn’t want his real name connected with booking the room, so he used this company card with the complicated history. That’s probably why he signed in as ‘John Smith.’ And since the card was never charged, I’m assuming he paid for the room in cash, correct?”

“That sounds like someone who checked in last night,” Liam conceded.

“But here’s what I don’t get,” Jessie pressed. “Even if he paid in cash, the card would have been charged for incidentals like the small bottle of brandy from the mini-bar. How did that get paid for?”

“If we’re thinking of the same guy,” Liam said timidly, “it might be because he slipped me two hundred dollars and said any incidental charges for the room should be taken out of that. He also said that I could keep whatever was left over.”

“How much was left over?” Jessie asked.

“A hundred eighty-four dollars.”

Ryan and Jessie exchanged glances.

“That’s a lot of money, Liam,” Jessie said. “Why would John Smith leave you such a massive tip? And remember, right now you’re just a potential witness. But if your answers end up being less than truthful, we might have to bump you up to suspect.”

Liam didn’t look like he wanted any part of that.

“Listen,” he said, barely able to get the words out fast enough. “The guy never said anything obvious. But he hinted that he might have a friend visit him that evening and the less of a paper trail there was, the better it would be for him. He wanted to keep things off the books, you know?’

“And you were okay with that?” Ryan pushed.

“It was two hundred dollars, man. Times are tight. Even if he had gotten five mini-brandy bottles, I’m still bringing home north of a hundred bucks for doing nothing. Am I supposed to be the moral judge of whether some dude can use this hotel to meet up with his mistress? Worst-case scenario, he rips the room up and I have the corporate card on file in case of emergencies. I figured it was a no-lose situation.”

“Unless he ends up naked and dead on the bed,” Ryan noted. “That ends up being a loss for everybody, including you, Liam. Regardless of the whole beer case thing, I’d say you’re going to need to dust off your resume.”

A knock on the door prevented Liam from responding. It was Chester the manager. Ryan motioned for him to open the door.

“Sorry to interrupt,” he said. “But security has pulled up the footage you were interested in.”

“Perfect timing,” Ryan said. “I think we’re done here for now, right, Liam?”

Liam nodded, looking despondent. As Ryan and Jessie left the room, he tried to follow but the manager held up his hand for him to stay.

“I’d like you to stick around a bit longer, Liam,” he said. “We have a few things to discuss.”

Jessie put Liam’s problems out of her head as she stood in the security office, leaning in behind the young woman operating the system so she could get a better look at the monitor. Ryan and another hotel manager stood next to her.

Just as Liam had described, the man booking the room handed him a card and a wad of cash. He was alone. As he waited for Liam to complete the transaction, he glanced around and seemed to nod at somebody off camera.

“Can you get a look at who he was motioning to?” Jessie asked the technician.

“I already tried,” the woman, whose name was Natasha, said. “I looked at every camera shot in the area he was focused on. No one seemed to respond physically. In fact, no one seemed to even be looking in his direction.”

Jessie found that intriguing but she said nothing for now. The man had clearly been nodding at someone. But that someone was aware enough to avoid being captured on camera.

Who would know those kinds of details?

“You have the hallway footage for the fourteenth floor?” she prompted.