She covered her eyes with her hands, and we tried to console her. When her drink came, she downed half of it in one gulp. Yuki overestimates her ability to hold her liquor, and I was pretty sure she’d be staggering after lunch.
About then, Claire, already in an uproar, vented about the fresh young bodies piling up in her morgue—without mentioning names and details. Cindy pricked up her ears like a dog who’s been asked, “Want to go for a ride in the car?”
“Tell me something,” she said to Claire. “I heard there was a shooting at the Four Seasons. Just give me something I can own and work into a story.”
I was thinking maybe Cindy could help us. If we couldn’t identify the Four Seasons victims, Cindy could run their pictures in the Chron. But I wasn’t there yet.
I looked around the table and thought how my three girlfriends were all seething with a tension that was only intensified by their having to shout over the retirement festivities around us.
So much was going on, I didn’t have to speak.
I was glad. If asked, I would have to say that my life was pretty damned good right now. My little family was healthy, Joe and I were both working, money was coming in, and even staring at a computer screen for the last four hours hadn’t stolen the afterglow from my morning romp with my husband.
It didn’t occur to me to think how fast things can change.
Just like that.
CHAPTER 11
I RETURNED FROM lunch to find Conklin dumping the remains of his Chinese take-out into the wastebasket.
He said, “The security chief sent over lobby footage from before and after the set we’ve already screened. Maybe those dead kids in fourteen-eighteen came in around lunchtime.”
I asked Inspectors Lemke and Samuels to view the eight-thirty-p.m.-to-midnight footage and gave them printouts of the mystery blonde. Then I reset my ponytail, cracked my knuckles, and sat down next to my partner.
“Let’s do it,” I said.
The video flashed onto my screen.
At time stamp 12:30 p.m., the elegant lobby was humming with guests as well as local businesspeople heading for the entrance to MKT, the hotel’s restaurant. Conklin and I sat shoulder-to-shoulder for the next three hours, looking for dead people walking, occasionally shaking out our legs, using the facilities.
By the time the day shift started punching out, my eyes were gritty and my temples were pounding. But I was still watching the video when the time stamp read 3:27 p.m. I hit Pause.
There was a girl hanging around the front desk in jeans and a quilted jacket, a mile of bulky scarf around her neck. Was she one of the private investigator kids who’d been shot in room 1418? I was about to say “Look at her,” when she turned toward the elevator and I saw her face. Damn it. She was not the girl in 1418. Not by a mile.
At that precise moment, Conklin was pointing at a different part of the screen.
“I think I saw this guy on the later footage,” he said.
He circled the cursor around a big man who was facing away from the camera, wearing a bulky coat and a knit cap. His body and features were almost entirely obscured—yet he was somehow familiar.
“He reminds me of Dugan,” I said, referring to the security chief.
Conklin said, “That’s not Dugan. Dugan stoops.”
We watched the big man walk away from the cameras, slipping seamlessly between groups of people so that we never had more than a second’s glimpse of him.
We reversed the footage, paused, zoomed in, but there was not even a partial view of his face.
“He knows where the cameras are,” said Conklin.
“Like he’s some kind of pro,” I said. “Let’s look for him on the later tape.”
I booted up the disc we’d already seen a few dozen times, but now we had a new focus. Only a few minutes in, I saw the shadowy male who maneuvered around the surveillance cameras with the dexterity of a rodeo quarter horse. He disappeared into a crowd, reappearing a frame or two later as a charcoal-gray smudge on the move. Then we lost him again, this time for good.
The time stamp read 4:20 when Mr. “Wang” entered the lobby. An hour and twenty-five minutes later, at 5:45, the glamorous blonde made her dramatic entrance.
I knew this part of the footage by heart.
I made screen shots of Wang, the blonde, and the partial angle on the mystery man’s back and printed them out. I was thanking Samuels and Lemke for their help when my desk phone rang. It was Brady.
“Valet parking came up with the murdered man’s car,” said the boss.
“No kidding.”
“Subaru Outback registered to a Michael M. Chan. The DMV photo matches his height, weight, eye color. He didn’t have a record. He was thirty-two, lived in Palo Alto with his wife, Shirley, and two young kids. Both teach at Stanford. He taught Chinese history. She teaches Mandarin. That’s all I’ve got. I’m texting you the coordinates.”
I thanked Brady and told my partner we had a lead. The solid kind.
“Now we’re getting somewhere,” said Richie.
CHAPTER 12