Jad tapped at his keyboard and said, “On your mark, get set.” And then he pressed Play.
I instantly recognized the image on the screen as room 1420 of the Four Seasons Hotel. Michael Chan was sitting at the end of the bed, flipping channels on the television. A doorbell sounded and Chan turned off the TV and walked toward the door, out of camera range. A moment later, I heard Chan saying, “You’re late.” And the door closed hard.
Chan and Muller entered the frame. Muller’s legs were clasped around Chan’s waist and he was holding her tightly as he walked her toward the bed. Her glasses were gone and I could almost see her eyes beneath the curtain of bangs.
They laughed and kissed deeply, and then Chan laid Muller down on the bed facing him. He removed her boots and tossed them aside, all of his movements confident as though he’d been through this ritual before.
I caught bits of their game play. Chan said that he was the Prince of Gorgonzola. She said her name was Renata and that he had paid her for sex once before in Rome.
The teasing continued as Chan unbuttoned and peeled off Muller’s clothes, then stripped off his own. She moved under his hands, and if she didn’t just love the hell out of how he was turning and touching her, she could have won the golden statue for best actress.
The two were nearly naked on the bed, their heavy breathing sucking in all the air in the room, when the computer screen went black. Dead black.
Cindy said, “Hey. What happened?”
Jad said, “Yeah, that’s a bitch, right? I thought it was my equipment that lost the connection. Well, that wasn’t it. The Wi-Fi in and around the hotel was blocked.
“Stay tuned,” said Jad. “There’s more.”
CHAPTER 73
JAD WAS CUEING up another video.
He clicked the arrow and the video rolled.
I recognized 1418, the room next to Chan’s. There were two single beds, a sofa, a desk, and a coffee table, and the two young people, a black male in cords and a sweater, and a white female in jeans and a pastel plaid shirt. They were sitting at their ad hoc computer stations, looking at their screens.
Jad said, “Nothing happens in here for a couple of hours.” He fast-forwarded the video and the time stamp sped from 4:30 to 6:20.
As Jad had said, there wasn’t much happening in 1418.
The boy sat at the desk, the girl hunched over the coffee table, both gravely watching their computer screens, which were turned away from the camera. I couldn’t see what they were watching, but presumably, it was Chan and Muller in the room next door.
They ate sandwiches, chugged from their water bottles, and wheeled the room service cart outside the room, all without incident. At the 6:20 marker, Jad slowed the film and said, “Don’t look away. Don’t even blink.”
The young man in the video poked a key on his laptop and spoke to someone on his screen.
“Hey, Joe. You on the way up?”
A voice came over the computer’s speakers.
“Bud, where’s Chrissy?”
I felt a shocking chill and a sensation of falling. I gripped the armrest and tried not to move or speak or cry out. That was Joe’s voice. I couldn’t be mistaken. My Joe.
“I’m here, Chief,” said the girl at the coffee table. She got up from her chair, leaned over her colleague’s shoulder, and waved her hand at his computer screen.
“OK. Good. I’m still in the lobby,” said the voice of the man I’d loved for years, the man who’d promised to love me through sickness and health, the father of my baby. He said, “What’s going on?”
“They’re both in there. We’ve got action,” said Bud.
“Any talk about that plane from Beijing?” Joe asked.
The girl said, “Nothing yet. They’re all about each other, Chief.”
“OK. I’m coming up.”
“Copy,” said Bud.
And then, at 6:23 on the nose, Jad’s picture dissolved into static.
I was falling again, but my mind stayed in gear.
Sometime between the time the Internet feed went down and when Liam Dugan, the head of hotel security, showed us the dead housekeeper in the closet, a total of four people had been murdered.
Jad was saying to Cindy, “The two dead kids. Bud and Chrissy could be their real nicknames. If you run their pictures again with those names, maybe someone will come forward. You heard ‘Joe’ ask about an airplane from Beijing?
“Three days later, an airplane from China was blown to hell over Route 101. Maybe Bud and Chrissy were killed because they knew about the plane. I wish I didn’t, but I know it, too. And now so do you,” Jad said.
He said to Cindy, “Someone should put it out there that there was foreknowledge of that plane crash, don’t you think? But it can’t be me.
“And now say good-bye to the video.”
“Wait,” Cindy said. “Play the last minute again.”
Jad sighed, then reversed the footage and ran it forward. I heard Joe ask about an airplane from Beijing. Joe knew about that plane. Joe knew.