John Jackman followed the direction of Gregor’s finger and saw it. The laundry bag was one of those tall, rough white cotton ones hospitals always seem to use, stretched over a metal frame to facilitate the collection of dirty linen. It came about chest high on Gregor and higher than that on John Jackman. And there was most definitely a leg in it, stuffed down among the sheets.
“Jesus Christ,” Jackman said, when he realized what he was seeing. He strode over to the bag and put his hand around the ankle. “Nothing in the way of a pulse. Not the best way to check. Help me get her out of here.”
“Don’t do that first,” Gregor said. “She’s dead.”
“Maybe she isn’t.” Jackman tipped the laundry bag over and let the linen fall onto the floor. He pulled at the leg and the woman slipped out, small and crumpled. The left side of her face had been smashed to pulp.
Jackman put his fingers on the woman’s wrist, tried again in a different place, and then stood up.
“Dead,” he said.
“Your cop is going to be around here somewhere,” Gregor said.
“Also dead?”
“At least badly hurt.”
“I’ve got to go into that room now, Gregor. I can’t wait another minute. I can’t go looking for my cop first.”
Gregor Demarkian sighed. “I know,” he said. “But don’t go in. Just call out. Just in case he doesn’t realize there are two of us here.”
“He?” Jackman said.
He didn’t have time to go into it. He went out into the corridor in front of Carmencita Boaz’s door, took out his gun and assumed firing position.
“All right,” he called out, “I want whoever is in Room 507 to come out now with your hands in the air. Any and all of you. Right now. Or I’ll rush that door.”
Too late, it occurred to him that the room might be occupied by no one at all but Carmencita Boaz herself.
3
TOO LATE, IT OCCURRED to Gregor Demarkian that it was not going to work. They were not going to catch a murderer in the act. They were going to be left in the worst possible position. The only consolation they might have was that Carmencita Boaz might not be dead.
This was intuition on a scale to rival the Oracle of Delphi, but it was true. To Gregor, John Jackman seemed to be standing for endless hours with his gun cocked and pointed at the door, but it was only forty-five seconds. Then a deep voice called “I’m coming out” and the door began to open.
“Hands in the air,” John Jackman repeated.
Prescott Holloway had his hands in the air. Prescott Holloway was not now and had never been a fool. Prescott Holloway was convinced that he was about to get away with a great deal of murder.
“Itzaak’s in there lying on the floor,” he said in a reasonable voice. “I think someone hit him on the head. Don’t you think we ought to call a doctor?”
“Why didn’t you call a doctor?” John Jackman asked him.
“I just got here. It’s weird. There isn’t a soul around anywhere. So I went in to check on Carmencita and there was Itzaak, on the floor.”
“How is Carmencita?” Gregor asked.
“I don’t know,” Prescott Holloway said. “Sleeping, I guess. I never got a chance to look.”
“You look,” John Jackman said.
Gregor walked around Prescott Holloway to Carmencita’s door, being careful not to blunder into the line of fire. He looked Prescott over as he passed. The verdict wasn’t good. A quick once-over was never conclusive. The techies had a lot of equipment and they might find something in the end. In Gregor’s experience, however, a suspect who looked clean usually turned out to be clean. Prescott Holloway was clean. There was no blood on him anywhere. There was no mud. There were no signs of strain of any kind.
Gregor went into Carmencita Boaz’s room. Carmencita was sleeping peacefully, her body limp, her breathing regular and deep, the gift of Demerol. Itzaak was lying on the floor just inside the door with an enormous welt on the side of his head. Gregor took his pulse. It was too rapid but not impossibly so. Would he remember who had hit him when he woke up? Would he have seen? There was no way to tell. From the way Prescott Holloway was behaving, the probable answer to both of those questions was no. But there was no way to tell about that either.
Gregor stepped back over Itzaak’s body and into the corridor again. “Blechmann needs a doctor,” he told John Jackman, “but Carmencita seems to be perfectly all right.”
“I think I got here just in time,” Prescott Holloway said.
John Jackman ignored him. “Gregor?” he said. “There are a pair of handcuffs in the inside pocket of my suit jacket. Will you please take them out and use them on Mr. Holloway.”