I imagine the killer’s hand on her breast, touching a jewelled nipple ring. The guy takes it between his fingers and yanks it, pulling her closer. She cries out, revved – everything is hypersensitive now, especially her nipples. But she doesn’t mind – if somebody wants it rough, it just means they must really like her. Perched on top of him, the headboard banging hard against the wall, she would have been looking at the front door – locked and chained, for sure. In this neighbourhood, that’s the least you could do.
A diagram on the back shows an evacuation route – she is in a hotel, but any resemblance to the Ritz-Carlton pretty much ends there. It is called the Eastside Inn – home to itinerants, backpackers, the mentally lost and anybody else with twenty bucks a night. Stay as long as you like – a day, a month, the rest of your life – all you need is two IDs, one with a photo.
The guy who had moved into Room 89 had been here for a while – a six-pack sits on a bureau, along with four half-empty bottles of hard liquor and a couple of boxes of breakfast cereal. A stereo and a few CDs are on a night stand, and I glance through them. He had good taste in music, at least you could say that. The closet, however, is empty – it seems like his clothes were about the only things he took with him when he walked out, leaving the body to liquefy in the bath. Lying at the back of the closet is a pile of trash: discarded newspapers, an empty can of roach killer, a coffee-stained wall calendar. I pick it up – every page features a black and white photo of an ancient ruin – the Colosseum, a Greek temple, the Library of Celsus at night. Very arty. But the pages are blank, not an appointment on any of them – except as a coffee mat, it seems like it’s never been used, and I throw it back.
I turn away and – without thinking, out of habit really – I run my hand across the night-stand. That’s strange: no dust. I do the same to the bureau, bedhead and stereo and get the identical result – the killer has wiped everything down to eliminate his prints. He gets no prizes for that, but as I catch the scent of something and raise my fingers to my nose, everything changes. The residue I can smell is from an antiseptic spray they use in intensive-care wards to combat infection. Not only does it kill bacteria but as a side effect it also destroys DNA material – sweat, skin, hair. By spraying everything in the room and then dousing the carpet and walls, the killer was making sure that the NYPD needn’t bother with their forensic vacuum cleaners.
With sudden clarity, I realize that this is anything but a by-the-book homicide for money or drugs or sexual gratification. As a murder, this is something remarkable.
Chapter Two
NOT EVERYBODY KNOWS this – or cares probably – but the first law of forensic science is Locard’s Exchange Principle, and it says ‘Every contact between a perpetrator and a crime scene leaves a trace.’ As I stand in this room, surrounded by dozens of voices, I’m wondering if Professor Locard had ever encountered anything quite like Room 89 – everything touched by the killer is now in a bath full of acid, wiped clean or drenched in industrial antiseptic. I’m certain there’s not a cell or follicle of him left behind.
A year ago, I wrote an obscure book on modern investigative technique. In a chapter called ‘New Frontiers’, I said I had come across the use of an antibacterial spray only once in my life – and that was a high-level hit on an intelligence agent in the Czech Republic. That case doesn’t augur well – to this day, it remains unsolved. Whoever had been living in Room 89 clearly knew their business, and I start examining the room with the respect it deserves.
He wasn’t a tidy person and, among the other trash, I see an empty pizza box lying next to the bed. I’m about to pass over it when I realize that’s where he would have had the knife: lying on top of the pizza box within easy reach, so natural Eleanor probably wouldn’t even have registered it.
I imagine her on the bed, reaching under the tangle of sheets for his crotch. She kisses his shoulder, his chest, going down. Maybe the guy knows what he’s in for, maybe not: one of the side effects of GHB is that it suppresses the gag reflex. There’s no reason a person can’t swallow a seven-, eight-, ten-inch gun – that’s why one of the easiest places to buy it is in gay saunas. Or on porn shoots.
I think of his hands grabbing her – he flips her on to her back and puts his knees either side of her chest. She’s thinking he’s positioning himself for her mouth but, casually, his right hand would have dropped to the side of the bed. Unseen, the guy’s fingers find the top of the pizza box then touch what he’s looking for – cold and cheap but, because it’s new, more than sharp enough to do the job.