“She thought I should come in blind?”
“Something about giving you too many opportunities to bluff. She gave me a lecture about how TV psychics glean details about people with microphones and research, that kind of thing.”
Leda nodded. “Cold readings are notorious for that—I know exactly what she’s talking about.”
“Have you ever done a cold reading?” he asked, his head cocked to the right.
“What? God, no. Until very, very recently, almost nobody knew about… you know. This. My parents figured it out when I was a kid, but they didn’t exactly advertise it. Dad even gave me this gentle, firm speech about being careful not to frighten people. He always acted like he thought somebody would burn me at the stake if word got around, so I kept it to myself.”
“But your friend knows.”
“Niki? She knows everything. And now that I’ve started doing my thing at Castaways… I guess everyone else will find out eventually.”
He frowned. “Castaways? Where your friend suggested we meet up?”
“Yeah, it’s a bar on Cap Hill. Her boyfriend is the manager.”
“Wait, you have an act? In a bar? Is it like… a singing thing? Stand-up comedy? Magic show?”
“A little of all three, if I’m really on my game. Anyway!” She clapped her hands together. “This is a whole new ball game for me, and I’m nervous about it, and I hope I don’t screw it up.”
“Then let’s get started.” He reached into a messenger bag down by his feet and pulled out a folder with some newspaper clippings. Everything was carefully labeled and fastened together with paper clips. He pushed the folder across the table.
Leda glanced through the clippings. “Oh, hey… I think I remember seeing something about this on the news. This happened a couple of years ago, right?”
“About eighteen months ago.”
“Right. Some guy got murdered in a hotel room… oooooh….” She looked up, looked around. “Was it this hotel? Is that why you wanted to meet here?”
“Yes, but don’t holler about it. The hotel would prefer that everyone forget about the whole thing, and I promised the manager that if he let me into the room again, neither one of us would say a word about it.”
“Gotcha. So… no blogging about this very cool thing I’m doing today.”
“You don’t have a blog.”
She narrowed her eyes and stared at him. “You googled me.”
“Yes, but it was a very light google. It’s not like I ran a background check. You didn’t google me?”
She hadn’t thought to. She’d taken him at his word. He was a cop! And a client! Why would she google him? Oh, yeah, because he was a strange man she barely knew who’d invited her to check out a crime scene. Maybe that should’ve tripped a few red flags. Too late now.
“I have your name and address, plus all your credit card information on file for billing purposes. I felt like that was enough.”
If Niki had been present, she would’ve given her a high five for such a clean save.
But Niki wasn’t there. Leda couldn’t tell if Grady believed her, but he acted like he did, bobbing his head in a mildly impressed nod. “I suppose that’s fair.”
“Damn right it is.” She looked down at the clippings. “Huh, so this is where Christopher and Kevin Gilman met their end. Like I said, I recall the case but I’d forgotten their names.”
“No reason you should’ve remembered them. Their deaths were on the local news for five seconds, then everybody forgot it when the next thrilling murder occurred, maybe forty-eight hours later. But here’s what we know for sure, all public information: Christopher Gilman was the CEO of an internet start-up called Digital Scaffolding. He established the company with his brother, Adam, back in 2012—so he really beat the spread. Most start-ups like that fold within a year or two.”
“What did the company do?”
“Consulting work for Amazon, mostly. As I understand it,” he qualified. “Look, I’ll be honest: tech is not my strong suit.”
“Mine, either. I’d like to say that the details probably aren’t important, but we don’t really know what’s important right now, do we?”
“Well, I know more than what I’ve got in this folder, but I can’t discuss it.”
“Okay, so just the public facts, then.” She scanned a couple of columns, picked up the next little clump of newsprint, and scanned that, too.
“Chris was found shot to death in his hotel room, and his son was found in a similar state, out in the parking lot. Conventional wisdom says that the dad was probably killed first, then the son walked in on the murder. The killer chased him out to his car and shot him. Forensics couldn’t tell for absolute certain, but our working theory suggests there were no more than a couple of minutes between the two killings. It all went down around three in the afternoon, so nobody was coming and going for lunch, or dinner, or drinks yet. The place was pretty quiet.”
“Do you think Kevin was running for his car?”
“They found his body on the ground beside it. His hand was in his pocket, reaching for his keys—but the murderer had a gun, and he was either lucky or a decent shot. He only missed once, and the bullet struck the car. The second shot is what killed Kevin. It caught him in the back, right below his neck.”
“I, um… I don’t see any mention of that in this paperwork.”
He shrugged. “So I gave you a smidge of extra info. Don’t tell nobody.”
“I most definitely will not. But this was eighteen months ago? Plenty of people must’ve come and gone from the room since then.”
“They left it shut for a while, then hired a trauma cleaner to bring it up to snuff again. It’s empty at the moment, and I have”—he tapped the messenger bag beside him with his foot—“things I’m not supposed to share… that I’ll definitely show you anyway.”
“You’re really going out on a limb here, aren’t you?” she asked.
He shook his head and gazed balefully at the clippings. “This case has never made any sense, and we’ve never had any real leads. Something about it just… stuck in my craw, as they say.”
“Who says that?”
“My late wife’s family, in North Carolina. They have a wide selection of colorful expressions in circulation out there.” He used his index finger to move a few of the paper scraps around. “Consensus is that the murders were part of an interrupted robbery… but that explanation never felt right. This isn’t that kind of hotel, you know what I mean? We’re in the wrong part of town for a cheap shakedown, and this isn’t the kind of place that a tech CEO would choose for legitimate business activities.”
The restaurant manager sauntered by with a plate of pungent chicken wings and a lifted eyebrow.
“No offense,” Grady called over his shoulder.
When he was gone, Leda asked, “You think he was running something else on the side?”
“Oh yeah, definitely. But I can’t prove it. Since the case is cold now, nobody gave a damn when I checked out some old evidence. So here’s some stuff for you to… look at, or hold. Or whatever it is you do.”