Chapter Twenty-five

THE WOMAN RESPONSIBLE for the killing in room 89 had used my knowledge, my experience, my brain to commit the murder, and that made me – at least by my count – an accessory to the crime.

I wasn’t going to let something like that ride, so once the coroner’s assistants had zipped up the bag containing Eleanor’s body I walked out of the room – angrier than I had been for a long time – and headed down the stairs.

I found what I was looking for – the door to the manager’s office – in a small alcove near the reception desk. Alvarez, or one of the other young cops, had locked it when they left, so I stepped back and smashed the sole of my shoe hard into the wood just below the handle.

The sound of splintering wood brought a uniformed cop. ‘I’m with Bradley, ’ I said, with an air of complete authority. He shrugged, I finished kicking and stepped into the scumbag’s lair – rank with the smell of body odour and cigarettes.

Amid the squalor, a tall metal filing cabinet had been pivoted aside, revealing a hidden space in the floor. Set into the cavity was a heavy-duty safe. The burglar, being an expert, must have known exactly where to look and had already worked the combination and opened the safe door.

Among the cash and documents were computer print-outs of the hotel’s accounts, a couple of cheap handguns and scores of tiny colour-coded sachets. I bent down and held a couple of them up to the light: the green ones contained coke; crack rocks were in black; tina – appropriately, I suppose – was in ice-blue. Other colours meant other product – just like in any good warehouse. The scumbag had missed his calling – he should have been running Wal-Mart.

Staring at the stash, I would be a liar to say I wasn’t tempted, especially by the Percodan in the yellow sachets. I reached out to see how many there were – you know, just out of curiosity. Strangely, I found my hand pausing before it touched them and then slowly moving aside. Who says that twelve-step programmes are a waste of time?

I lifted the computer sheets and other documents out of the safe and sat down at the battered desk. That was where Bradley found me thirty minutes later.

‘What are you doing? ’ he asked, leaning against the door frame, so tired his face looked like an unmade bed.

‘Helping out. ’

Surprise made him perk up. ‘I thought you were retired. ’

‘I am, but call me old-fashioned – somebody uses a book I wrote to murder a young woman and it pisses me off. ’

He walked in and lowered himself gingerly into a chair. He’d told me that he figured his leg would probably trouble him for the rest of his life, more so when he was tired.

‘You should go home and get some rest, ’ I said. ‘Your team finished yet? ’

‘Half an hour; they’re packing up now. Find anything? ’ he asked, indicating the documents littering the desk.

‘Yeah. ’ I pushed a folder towards him. ‘That’s the file for Room 89. Your detectives glanced through and they were right – she moved in over a year ago and paid in advance. But the details are a total mess, not even any specific dates. I figure it’s kept deliberately confusing—’

‘In case the tax people run an audit? ’ Bradley interrupted.

‘Exactly. So I went to the bottom of the drug safe. Down there I found the computer print-outs of the real accounts. They’re perfect, every cent accounted for.

‘They have to be – they’re kept for the wise guys who own the joint, so you can imagine what they’d do if the scumbag tried to rip ’em off. ’

I pointed at one of the items I had marked. ‘You can see it here – the killer moved in on September eleventh. ’

The unmade bed shifted into furrows of surprise. He leaned forward, looking closely at the entry. ‘You sure? ’

‘Yeah, a time stamp indicates she checked in around five o’clock – about six hours after the Twin Towers fell.

‘You were still in surgery, Ben, but I guess – like me – you’ve read the stories about that day. The whole area was a war zone, ash raining down, people running for their lives, everybody thinking even worse was to come.

‘For hours before she checked in there was so much smoke in the air it would have seemed like night, cars stood abandoned in the road, everything was silent except for the sirens.

‘I remember reading that a priest was walking through the streets calling for people to make their last confession. It was end-of-days stuff and, according to the computer print-outs, even the pimps and whores at the Eastside Inn knew it. The night before, ninety rooms were occupied. The night of the eleventh there were six. The whole joint – the whole neighbourhood – had moved out.

‘But our killer makes her way to this place. She must have walked, picking her way through the wreckage. Imagine it, Ben – filthy from falling dust, probably unrecognizable, her shoes almost burnt through from the hot ash and maybe a bandana across her face to try to block the acrid fumes.

‘Finally, she pushes through the front door and takes off the bandana – she doesn’t start with the disguises until the morning, and that means the scumbag’s the only one who knows what she looks like, if he can remember. Not that we’ll find him, anyway.

‘She tells him she wants a room. Like I said, she doesn’t belong here, but already she knows she’s gonna stay – the print-outs show she paid for two months in advance. ’

I pushed the account details aside. ‘Why, Ben? ’ I asked. ‘Why did she do all that? There was nowhere else to stay, this was the only hotel in New York? She virtually walked over hot coals because she liked it so much? ’

He pulled a Camel out of a pack left lying on the desk. Sometimes he just liked to hold one. I made a mental note to talk to him about the value of twelve-step programmes.

‘You got all that from some columns of numbers? ’ he asked, impressed. I didn’t say anything.

‘I don’t know why she did it, ’ he said at last. ‘I’ve got no idea. ’

‘Nor do I, ’ I replied, ‘but something happened. Something happened that day which changed everything for her. ’

He shrugged. ‘Sure – it did for a lot of people. ’

‘Yeah, but none of them checked into the Eastside Inn. She was determined to hide her identity and live off the grid. I think she made her mind up that day – she was going to murder someone. Checking into the Eastside Inn was the start of her preparations. ’

The cop looked at me, and he knew it was a bad development: a person who had spent so much time planning a crime was far less likely to have made a mistake. His shoulders sagged as he thought of the long investigation ahead, and that, combined with the ache in his leg, was enough to make him look like he was about to crawl into the unmade bed.

I glanced up and saw someone pass the door. ‘Petersen! ’ I yelled. ‘You got a cruiser outside? ’

‘I can get one, ’ he countered.

‘Throw your boss over your shoulder, ’ I said. ‘Take him home. ’

Bradley objected, but I cut him off. ‘You said yourself they were packing up – nobody’s gonna solve it tonight. ’

Petersen had never heard Bradley ordered around before, and he couldn’t hide his delight. He bent as if to follow my instruction but his boss pushed him away, telling him there was always a vacancy on the sewer patrol.

Petersen smiled at me. ‘How about you – you need a ride? ’

‘I’m fine, I can make my own way home, ’ I said. It wasn’t true, though – I wasn’t going home, I was going to where I figured the killer had started her own journey on that terrible day. I was going to Ground Zero.