Taking the Fifth(44)

“That’s right. Via Federal Express. They brought them right to my door.”

“Your door? You mean here in the hotel?”

“Where else?”

“Could I see them?”

The hostility that had gradually drained out of his voice came back all at once. “Why?”

“I just want to see them, that’s all.”

I followed Alan Dale out of the restaurant, through the lobby, and up to his room on the eighth floor. His room was definitely not a suite. On the table sat a bulky, unopened Federal Express envelope. He tossed it to me. “What’s this all about?” he asked.

Instead of answering, I tore open the outer envelope. A crimson shoe box dropped onto the table. Inside the box, under a covering layer of tissue, two cobalt blue shoes lay nestled together. Cole-Haan shoes, size 8½B.

They were duplicates of another shoe I’d seen before, although these didn’t have any bloodstains on them.

I replaced the lid on the box and handed it to Alan Dale. “Thanks,” I said. “You’ve been a big help.”

“Think nothing of it,” he replied.

When I left the head carpenter’s room, I went back down to the lobby and asked the desk for Ed Waverly’s room. I was told he and Miss Day had just left the hotel in a limo on their way to an appearance on a local television talk show. They weren’t expected back until sometime after four. I tried checking on the rest of the cast and crew, but they had gone, as a group, on a ferry ride.

I left my name and my number at the department for Ed Waverly. It was time for me to go on duty, although I felt as if I’d already been at work for a long time. All day and all night.

Before heading for the department though, I went to the bank of pay phones near the desk and called the Executive Inn. I was told Mrs. Morris was out and I should try again later. At least she hadn’t checked out. I was remiss in not being more aggressive about tracking her down, but there are only so many hours in a day, I told myself.

On the way up to the fifth floor of the Public Safety Building, I stopped off at the crime lab. I wanted to turn in the glassine bag containing the hair from my apartment.

I found Janice Morraine standing in the elevator lobby next to a knee-high metal ashtray, smoking a cigarette. Janice is the only smoker in the crime lab, and she’s exiled to the lobby whenever she needs a fix.

“You’re here almost as much as I am,” I said.

“That’s nothing to brag about,” she retorted.

With no further comment, I handed her the bag from my pocket. She opened it and peered inside.

“What is this, another sample from our ubiquitous blonde wig?”

“What do you mean, ubiquitous?”

“Bill Foster, one of the other criminologists, just gave me one from that other crime scene. The one up on Capitol Hill?”

“Jonathan Thomas?” I asked.

“I don’t remember the name. The OD up on Bellevue. The guy with AIDS. All I can say is,” Janice added, “this must be one very busy lady.”

“She’s busy, all right,” I replied grimly.

“Where did it come from?”

“I’d rather not say.”

Janice Morraine gave me a long, appraising look before she bent down to snuff out the butt of her cigarette in the ashtray. We’ve worked around one another for a long time—years, in fact. Janice Morraine probably knows me better than she ought to.

“That’s just as well,” she said. “There are some things I’d rather not know.” She dropped the glassine bag into her lab-coat pocket. “Anything else?”

“Not at the moment.”

“I’d better get back to work,” she said.

Janice Morraine walked away, leaving me standing there alone in the hall wondering if I was as screwed up as she seemed to think.

I didn’t much like the answer I gave myself.





CHAPTER 15




SERGEANT WATSON WAS GUNNING FOR ME when I stepped through the doorway on the fifth floor. “Beau, Captain Powell wants to see you, pronto.”

That kind of summons to Captain Powell’s fishbowl is much the same as being twelve and getting sent to the principal’s office. One look at the captain’s face told me he was kicking ass and taking names.

When I walked into his office, Captain Larry Powell was sitting at his desk, thumbing through a thick stack of papers in front of him.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“Shut the door,” he replied without looking up. I knew right then I was in deep shit. I shut the door and waited.

“What the hell have you been doing with your time that you haven’t bothered to notify Richard Dathan Morris’s next of kin?” he demanded.