Perfect! The only skill she’d been practicing might prove useful to somebody after all. Then she realized how cautious he’d been with his phrasing. “Wait a minute. Nobody gave a damn that you were leaving the precinct with evidence… or were you just real careful, and lucky that nobody noticed?”
He grinned. “I like you. You’re quick.”
She grinned back. “Like you said about cops, you want a psychic who pays attention to details.”
“Damn right I do. Are you ready to give it a go?” He whipped out a key card.
“As ready as I’ll ever be.”
He stood up, closed the folder, and handed it to her. Then he collected his bag. “Great. Let’s do this.”
7.
Leda followed Grady out of the bar and through the lobby.
As they walked, Grady quietly filled in a few more details that probably weren’t in the official, public, totally-legal-to-share-with-friends version of the files.
“Christopher Gilman specifically requested a room with disability accommodations, but there was nothing physically wrong with him, as far as anyone knew. Either he was hiding some problem, or as I privately suspect, he knew that an ADA-compliant room would be located on the first floor.”
“Why would he want a first-floor room?” Leda asked.
“Proximity to the parking lot via a side door for a hasty getaway is my guess, because his car was parked right over there.” He jabbed his thumb in a direction that didn’t mean anything to Leda, since they were walking down a windowless corridor. “He’d checked into the room four days before he died, under his son’s name—but he paid cash in advance, so nobody looked too closely at the reservation.”
“That’s weird.”
“Even weirder: He left a Do Not Disturb sign on the door the whole time, and except for the employee who checked him in, none of the hotel staff could recall having ever seen him before. If he came or went, he did so quietly. Probably through the exit at the end of the hall.” Now he waved toward the light-up green Exit sign. “All the better to bypass the security cameras at the front desk.”
“Were there cameras in the elevator or stairwells, too?”
Grady turned and aimed his pointing finger right at Leda. “Yes. And that’s one more reason to ask for the ADA room.” He stopped at room number 118 and held up the key card. “I think he scoped the place out. He chose this hotel, this room, this place.”
“To get murdered in?”
Grady sighed through his nose.
“I mean, for what?”
He unlocked the door and held it open for her. “That’s the big question, isn’t it? If we knew that, maybe we’d have some idea who killed him.”
Leda stepped slowly inside.
Room 118 was virtually indistinguishable from a thousand other hotel rooms in King County alone. It smelled faintly damp and vaguely moldy—stinking also of cheap and overly scented soap, plastic wrap, bleach, and an air conditioner that needed its filter addressed. The single king-size bed was covered in a polyester bedspread that probably used to be a brighter shade of blue, and above it hung a framed ocean print that seemed to be missing its inspirational poster text. A large cabinet held a commensurately large television, an old CRT the size of a storage ottoman. A coffee maker covered in dust stood sentry over a tray of white and yellow sweetener packets, red stirring straws, and a single-use package of Folgers.
Grady came inside, letting the door swing shut with a heavy click. “So… what do you think?”
Well. What did she think?
She thought that she was shut inside a hotel room with a cop who she didn’t know very well, after he’d made it very clear that this was an excellent place to get murdered—especially if someone never wanted anybody to find out what had happened. She did not say so out loud.
“Here,” he said, as if he’d suddenly remembered something. He dropped his messenger bag on top of the bed. He removed a plastic bag and retrieved the items inside—a series of smaller items, individually sealed in their own baggies for maximum recycling bulk. “See if this stuff rattles anything loose. But do me a favor and leave it all sealed. Unless that matters? Does it matter? I have no idea how psychic procedures work.”
“That makes two of us, buddy.” Leda quit scanning the small, bland, entirely nondescript hotel room and sat down on the foot of the bed. “Let’s see what you’ve got here. Is it okay if I ask questions?”
“Ask away.”
She started with the nearest baggie. It was sealed with a red piece of tape that read EVIDENCE in big white letters. Inside, she saw a wadded-up bit of yellow fabric. “Okay, what’s this?”
“It’s a tote bag. Came from a big tech convention called E3. It’s held in LA every year. Gilman and his wife went there together, more often than not.”
“To represent their company?”
He shook his head. “Nah. E3 is a big entertainment expo. Mostly video games. It seems like just about the only thing Gilman and his wife had in common—they both liked to play. When we interviewed her, she said the tote bag might’ve been hers, or he might’ve picked it up last time they went. No idea what was inside it; it was empty when we picked it up.”
Leda held it up to see it better. “Got a little blood on it, though.”
“How do you know it’s blood?”
She squinted at it. “If it’s not, what are these brown splatters? Blood is kind of brown when it dries, isn’t it?”
“Yes, but that’s just coffee.” He nodded toward the brewer on its tray. “He made a pot within half an hour of the shooting. Didn’t drink most of it, and one of the bullets went through him—shattering the carafe.”
“Okay, that’s less creepy, good. Let me think.”
She squeezed the plastic bag, feeling the cheap cotton canvas underneath. Massaging it, she turned it over and examined the logo for “Electronic Entertainment Expo.” She closed her eyes and took a deep breath that turned into a cough. One more deep breath then.
She pretended she was at Castaways, sitting on the wood stool with a microphone. She imagined that a customer had handed her this tote and requested a song. What would she sing? What would she tell Niki and Matt to call up on the karaoke machine?
A flash.
Bright white, and the smell of something burning. Loud noise.
Her eyes shot open.
“You got something?”
Her forehead wrinkled. “Give me a second.” Was it the gunshot? She closed her eyes again and saw the flash again—not as bright. More like an echo of the first one. Then motion. Yelling. Another man present, but she didn’t see him. “He was arguing with somebody. A man.”
“What did he look like?”
“I don’t know, but he sounds like… an adult. Not an old guy, not a real young guy. Maybe in his thirties or forties, hard to say. He’s angry, and Gilman… I guess it’s one of the Gilmans at any rate… he’s very calm. He’s the one in charge. Or he thinks he’s the one in charge.”
“Was he meeting an employee? Some underling?”
“That feels right. This guy… he…” Her voice faded.