Chat - Archer Mayor [29]
They’d been told in the middle of Miller’s procedure that the funeral home had arrived for transportation. The body was, therefore, eventually sealed in a heavy plastic bag and handed over to the hearse and its police escort, leaving the original team alone in the room.
In the momentary silence following their host’s departure, Joe scratched his cheek through his Tyvek hood, feeling claustrophobic. “How many key cards did he request at the desk?”
Sam and Ron exchanged glances—a throwback to when Sam was also on the local squad. Lester picked up the hint and moved to the phone, made a quick call, hung up after asking the same question of the clerk, and reported, “Two.”
“That’s interesting,” Joe said. “How many cards did you find here?”
“None,” Ron admitted in a monotone, adding, “I should’ve thought of that.”
“Call me a pessimist,” Joe then mused, “but I’m guessing our buddy didn’t die of natural causes.”
Sam paced the short distance to the far wall and came back again, staying on the brown paper but agitated by the same oversight Ron had owned up to. “Okay. Let’s put it together. He checks in, presumably looking for anonymity . . .”
“And for love,” Lester added.
“Right. But no sooner has he entered this room than his date arrives and whacks him somehow, stealing all his stuff, including both key cards.”
“He arrived alone?” Joe asked.
“Yeah,” Lester answered. “We did get that much. I had the manager get hold of the night clerk for a positive ID and a short interview.”
“Then why the two cards?” Joe asked again. “Wouldn’t you just tell your date what room you were in and open the door when he or she knocked? Or maybe leave the second key at the desk? Why ask for two and then take them both into the room?”
There was no answer from any of his colleagues. Joe tapped the wall beside him. “Any neighbors?”
“One,” Ron answered. “The other room’s empty. And that neighbor didn’t hear a thing.”
“How did he get here?”
“That’s another thing,” Lester said. “We don’t know. Every car in the lot’s accounted for. He didn’t list one on his registration card.”
Joe made another survey of the room, standing still and scanning slowly in a circle. At the end, he said, “One of you is meeting someone in a motel. You want it nice and anonymous—no real names, no credit cards, an out-of-the-way place. How do you set it up?”
As usual, Sam spoke first, after only a momentary hesitation. “I either call the other party with my room number after I check in, or I tell them to ask at the desk.”
“Right,” agreed Lester, catching the spirit of Joe’s question. “But we already ruled out that he used the phone, and if you’re trying to be secretive, you don’t then tell that other party to ask at the desk. You tell him to come straight to the door. Plus, this guy took two key cards. He could’ve just left the second one at the desk, if that was the plan.”
“How does the visitor know what door to go to?” Sam challenged.
“A signal out the window?” Ron mused. He stepped around his subordinate, still working on the rug, and opened the curtains. The room had a full view of the parking lot.
“Or a sign outside the door,” Sam suggested. “Even a large piece of blank paper would do, Scotch-taped in place.”
“Maybe the second key card itself,” Lester added, “stuck in an envelope.”
He walked to the door, opened it, and scrutinized its exterior surface, aided by a penlight. The others watched him, his nose almost touching the door, until he finally paused, brushed the area before him gently with his latex-gloved fingertip, and announced, “There was some tape here, recently enough that the residue’s still tacky.”
Joe was nodding all the while. “So our person of interest gets here, opens the door himself to avoid the noise of a knock or the risk of nonadmittance, then what?”
“Kills our guy,” Lester said immediately, adding just as quickly, “but how?”
In the meantime, he left the door, crossed to the desk, opened the drawer, removed