CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
DELIA
It’s almost one o’clock when our caravan settles down a block from the hotel. Besides myself and Vern (and Caitlin, who’ll remain in the car until I need her), I’ve got three uniformed cops under my command: Jerome Meeks, Maya Kinsley, and Cade Barrow.
I ask the obvious question once we’ve exited the vehicles: “All ready?” I don’t wait for an answer. I herd them, weapons drawn, through the Prairie Hotel’s main door and into what passes for a lobby. A stairway to my right leads to the upper floor, a hallway directly ahead provides access to the other rooms on the first floor. The registration desk is to our left and Donald Grogan is standing behind it.
My informants, interviewed separately, were in agreement on several items, the most important for the moment is the handgun stashed behind the counter.
“Come out of there, Donald,” I tell him. “And keep your hands where I can see them.”
Grogan’s hands are already over his head. Having been to prison twice, the man’s well seasoned. By contrast, the eyes of the two women leaning on our side of the counter bug out of their heads. Prostitutes? Addicts? Ravaged is what they are, by harsh, self-destructive lives. When I tell them to get lost, they dash out of the building, feet barely touching the ground.
Vern’s behind the registration desk before the door closes. A few seconds later, he comes up with a .44 caliber revolver. “Got it.”
Baxter still hasn’t surrendered to the free-carry fever. You need a permit to carry a handgun, open or concealed. The opposite prevails for personal protection inside a home or place of business. Almost any resident can walk into a gun store and come out with a weapon that’ll fire as fast as you can pull the trigger. There is one exception, though. Ex-felons are not allowed to own firearms.
“You’re under arrest,” I announce. “Hook him up, Cade.”
Grogan brings his right eyelid down, echoing the involuntary droop of his left. “That’s not mine, Officer.”
“Captain.”
“Okay, Captain. But the gun belongs to my father. The bill of sale’s in his name.”
“How ‘bout these?” Vern’s holding up a clear plastic vial of pink and blue pills. “These belong to your father too?”
“I want a lawyer.”
At the moment, I’m not especially interested in Grogan. My attention is focused on a CCTV camera located at the end of the registration desk closest to the outer wall. I’ve been inside the Prairie twice before, responding to a pair of overdoses, and been struck both times by the camera. Surely, the mutts who frequent the Prairie don’t want their photos taken. But there it is, positioned to record anyone approaching one end of the desk, but leaving the other end uncovered. The arrangement lets Grogan conduct business without being recorded, but still have a record of anyone who enters or exits through the lobby.
With Grogan in custody, my three uniformed officers turn their attention to the entrance and the corridor across the way. They have a simple task. Keep the lobby clear. Don’t let anyone inside and hustle anyone leaving through the door.
“Jerome, get Caitlin.”
Jerome Meeks leaves without a word. He returns a few minutes later with Caitlin Capuano. Caitlin’s cheeks are flushed. I think she’s thrilled to be part of a real police operation, but her expression reverses as she takes in the lobby. I have to assume the wallpaper, a silvery gray speckled with doves in flight, was once vibrant. Now the wallpaper’s thoroughly soiled in those portions of the wall it still covers. Much of it has been torn away, exposing stark white plaster and a sprinkling of cockroaches. Above our heads, a patch of black mold clings to the ceiling near the entrance to the main corridor. Its scent dominates the room.
Caitlin’s a civilian employee. Along with a pair of assistants, she keeps our system up and running. Money in, money out, routine searches of relevant databases. She didn’t sign on for this.
“Hey, Caitlin, you with us?” My voice is sharper than I would have liked, but I’m in a hurry.
“Yeah, Captain. What do you need?”
I point to the camera. “First, is that working?”
“The little red light’s on?” Caitlin puts a question mark at the end of almost every sentence. If she was a cop under my command, I’d correct her. “That means it’s getting juice?”
“Is it digital?”
“Yeah, like an early model. The new ones don’t face straight ahead? They have more like a panoramic view?”
So far, so good. Now for the big question. “Does it record continually when it’s turned on?”
“One way to find out.”
Caitlin waves us out of the camera’s view. A few seconds later, the little red light goes dark. The camera’s motion-activated, a break. We won’t have to review ten thousand hours of data.
Vern appears in the doorway leading to the office before I can take the next step. “Better come in here, Captain.”
Vern leads me to a drawer with a false back. The drawer’s been pulled out to reveal a metal canister with the lid off. There appears to be several hundred capsules inside. Perfect.
“Something else.” He slides a pile of 8x11 photos out of a large manila envelope. The photo on top reveals one of our most prominent attorneys in bed with a heavily tattooed young woman.
“Different actors, same principle.”
“Now we know why he had the cameras. Leave the molly in the drawer. We’ll photograph it in place later on.”
“And the photos?”
“Straight to the Chief, Vern.”
“Not into evidence?”
I shake my head. Our warrant is specific. We can search anywhere in the lobby or office where ecstasy can be hidden. That does not include a flat manila envelope stuffed with photographs. Nor, concealed as they are, can we claim we found them in plain view. That bars their being presented in a courtroom, but not their appearance on some obscure website. Just as Joanna Young’s home was ransacked after her overdose, I’m expecting the Prairie Hotel to be turned upside down once I take Grogan into custody. No way am I going to leave Baxter at the mercy of whoever finds the photos.
“Tuck ‘em away, Vern. Let the Chief decide what to do. And we’ll need to take the computer with us when we leave.” I look out through the door and motion Caitlin inside. The office is in no better condition than the lobby, but she seems relieved. She points to a computer resting on a battered wooden desk.
“That for me?”
“Only if it’s unlocked.”
Caitlin reaches forward and taps a key, bringing up a ledger sheet on the monitor. “It was in sleep mode? Suspended animation? He was probably using it before we came in.”
Caitlin and I have switched psychological positions. She appears to be in her element. I’m the one holding my breath. “I’m looking for data recorded by the lobby camera in early August. If it still exists.”
“It should? The motion detector is designed to minimize the data in storage. There’s no audio, by the way.”
“Just find it Caitlin. The first two weeks in August.”
I’m prepared for a long wait. Computers are foreign enemies to me. If you teach me how to accomplish some aim, I can memorize the sequence necessary to get the job done. But unlike Danny, whenever I try to muddle through on my own, I feel like I’m navigating a maze with no exit. In fact, it takes Caitlin only a few minutes before she announces, “Got it.”
The monitor reveals the face of a man whose name eludes me. I recognize him though. A dealer not yet on my radar screen, he’s hovering just over the horizon. The date stamp reads August 1.
“Show me how to fast-forward and pause.” The demonstration is brief, the guide easy to follow. “I’ll need you to wait outside, Caitlin. And thanks. You didn’t have to do this.”
The recognition calls forth a smile I read as genuine. Then she’s gone and I go to work with Vern leaning over my shoulder. I’m looking for that out-of-place woman with the foreign accent. I won’t hear her speak, but as I move forward, the females I encounter are all of a type. Junkie-prostitutes come in many shades of decline and these, some of them male, are hurtling toward the bottom end of the slide.
As I move forward through the month of August, I don’t linger on any particular woman, or on the man who accompanies her. One glance and it’s good-bye. But the work is tedious, as cop work often is. Endless telephone calls, knocking on door after door after door. But if there’s to be a payoff, it’s only through persistence, a belief that what you’re looking for is under the stone you leave unturned.
A half hour later, accompanied by a noticeably younger man, she walks into the Prairie Hotel. The date stamp reads August 14. The time stamp reads 8:45 P.M. Behind me, I hear Vern draw a quick breath.
The contrast between the woman on the screen and the women who preceded her is stark. Her eyes look directly into what I assume to be Grogan’s. They betray no fear, remarkable in itself because the average middle-class housewife wouldn’t enter the Prairie unless someone put a gun to her head. Aside from the bravado, the woman is perfectly nondescript. Medium-length dark hair, the styling without style. Her makeup is also minimal. Pale lipstick, a touch of rouge on her cheeks, maybe a hint of eye shadow. The quality of the video leaves even that much in doubt. She’s wearing a blouse over jeans, the blouse silvery, the jeans white, no jewelry, not even earrings.
“Gotta be,” Vern mutters. Then he turns to me, his smile rueful. “Looks like Paolo was a step ahead. So, what’s next”
I shift my attention to the man with her. Nearly a foot taller and at least ten years younger, he stands a couple steps in back so that his features are above the camera’s field of view. Arms folded across a St. Louis Cardinals sweatshirt, he appears threatening and indifferent at the same time, a combination I’ve seen before.
This time Vern’s tone is insistent. “What’s next, Delia?”
Good question. I’ll check the registry behind the desk, but I’m not expecting the woman’s real name. And just knowing she was here? Normally, I’d show her photo to everyone in the building, and brace Grogan as well. But I can’t be sure that somebody won’t add two plus two and come up with Elizabeth Bradford. I can’t take the chance.
“You with us, Delia?”
“Yeah, Vern. Just thinking.”
“Thinking what?”
“That we need two things. We need to print this frame and we need to find a man named Quentin. In a hurry.”