N SA RECEPTIONIST Anita Price told us that Pockets had called in Friday afternoon and said he was taking the rest of the day off, which meant nothing. When she told us he had called from the Capitol Hill Hyatt Regency, I knew we had missed something last night. Nevertheless, we still didn’t have enough to get a search warrant. Even if we had a warrant, I had no idea who or what we were looking for.
I looked through the telephone logs the reluctant desk clerk had given us and couldn’t make much sense of them, so I decided to do some old-fashioned police work. That meant going to the Hyatt Regency and questioning all the employees.
Director Pockets had called from a pay phone in the lounge. The bartender told us that Pockets had been there, but left with a blonde. He was reasonably confident that he could identify her. We confiscated the security tapes and took the bartender with us to the Hoover Building. With his help, we obtained a picture of the woman Pockets had left with. On the chance that she may have been a guest at the hotel, we put in several other tapes and spotted her coming out of a room on the ninth floor.
From the angle of the videotape, I could see that the room was the last one on the left, next to the exit stairs. We went back to the hotel and called the room to see if she was in. There was no answer. Kelly stayed in the lobby. She was supposed to call me on my cell if the suspect entered the hotel.
I showed the maid my credentials and had her open the door. Careful not to disturb anything, I searched the room and found an electronically locked suitcase. It had a sophisticated ten-button keypad. There could be no doubt now. The blonde was the assassin.
There was a laptop on the dresser, next to the television. I turned it on and searched through the documents. When I saw a file titled “The List,” I opened it and saw a list of names. There were addresses and bios next to each name. Judge Taylor was at the top of the list. Suddenly, my cell rang.
“Yeah.”
“She’s on the elevator,” Kelly told me. “Get outta there!”
“You were supposed to tell me when she entered the building.”
“A couple of tour buses full of people came in. She must have come in with them. By the time I spotted her, she was on the elevator.”
Scrolling down, I saw two names with addresses in San Francisco. I didn’t have time to look at every name so I hit the end button to see how long the list was. There were 39 pages of the document. I didn’t want to press my luck any further, so I turned off the laptop and ran to the stairs. I heard the elevator bell ping just before I opened the exit door.