Silent Screams - C. E. Lawrence [137]
“Oh, man,” Butts said, struggling to breath through a sudden coughing fit. “Have you gone loco on me? How do you figure to find this guy in goddamn Philadelphia?”
Lee told him what he feared—that Hughes was going after Kathy now—and that that was the reason for his trip to Philadelphia.
“Oh, jeez,” Butts said. “Let me come with you!”
“No, I need you to talk to Chuck first, and explain everything. Then maybe he can get in touch with the cops in Philly and get me some backup. It’s tricky, though. We don’t really have anything concrete on this guy, so they might not want to stick their necks out. And he might not want to risk asking them, either. They may all think I’m crazy.”
“Okay, okay,” said Butts. “Where are you gonna be?”
Lee gave him the addresses of Kathy’s father’s house, and the Vidocq Society.
“If you can, call both those places and leave a message for her or her father to stay put until I arrive. There’s no guarantee he’ll show up either of those places, though,” Lee said, looking at his own cell phone. The battery only had one bar left on it. He turned it off—he wouldn’t be able to charge it again before reaching Philadelphia.
“So what do you think he’s gonna do?”
“I don’t really know.”
And that was what frightened him most of all.
Chapter Sixty-three
The Adam’s Mark was the kind of hotel built for conventions and large groups of people. Easily accessible from I-95, it stood twenty-five stories high, a hulking monolith on the outskirts of downtown Philadelphia. After catching a cab from the train station to the hotel, Lee walked into the lobby and told the young desk clerk he was there to see Samuel Hughes. To his surprise, Samuel was registered under his own name.
The lobby was full of fantasy and science-fiction fans—large, oddly dressed people with pasty skin and pale, intelligent faces. Some wore medieval tunics and tights. Others wandered about dressed in jeans and T-shirts with dragon emblems on them. One nerdy-looking man with greasy black hair wore a vest covered with buttons with sayings like MY MOTHER IS A KLINGON, and MY OTHER CAR IS A MILLENNIUM FALCON.
The desk clerk refused to give Lee the room number until he presented his ID, showing his identity as a civilian consultant to the NYPD. It looked exactly like the ID a cop might carry, except that the background was red instead of blue. Fortunately for him, she was too young to know that this position gave him no legal authority—and, in any case, the NYPD had no real jurisdiction in Pennsylvania. She dispatched a porter with a master key to follow Lee to the room.
When their repeated knocks on the door received no answer, the bellboy unlocked the room to let Lee inside. Lee thanked him and sent him away with a ten-dollar tip. He didn’t know what he would find inside, but he didn’t want anyone else around when he found out. He pushed the door open, stepped inside onto the plush carpeting, and closed the door behind him.
The first thing that hit him when he entered the room was the smell of death—and fear. The air was heavy with the scent of panicked sweat. It was dark inside, and his first impression was that he was alone in the room.
But then he saw, silhouetted in the yellow light of the street lamps coming in through the window, the body hanging from the wooden rafters.
It swung back and forth, moving in the air currents created when Lee entered the room. He switched on the overhead light, and looked at the face. It was indeed the same thin, ascetic young man he had seen at the funeral in Westchester. An overturned footstool lay on its side underneath his feet. By all appearances, he had hanged himself from the strong oak beams that straddled the ceiling of the room.
Technically, Lee knew, he should call the hotel security staff and alert them, but instinct told him that something wasn’t right. He didn’t know what it was yet, but something. He moved around