“Look, man. I’m not going to say that never happens. But I’ve never done it with her. She’s only been in the bar the one time. I don’t even know her name. I’ve never talked to her other than to take her drink order.”

  “Are you sure about that?” Jessie challenged him.

  “Yes. I wish we did have a deal. She’s smokin’ hot. And have you seen those eyes? They’d garner an extra Benjamin all on their own. For a while, I actually thought she was some famous actress I didn’t recognize. That is, until I saw she was on the job. To be honest, if I didn’t worry that she was diseased, I’d take a run at her myself.”

  Jessie tended to believe Brad’s story. It was hard to imagine that a self-involved guy like him would make such distasteful admissions about himself unless he either didn’t realize how scummy they made him look, or he was a masterful manipulator. As far as she could tell, Brad wasn’t the latter.

  “What about this guy?” she asked, showing him the photo of Gordon Maines from his bio on the city website. She was careful to enlarge it so that his name and title weren’t visible.

  “Yeah, I recognize that guy. He’s around a fair bit. I think his name is Gordo. He likes to keep it on the down low but I know he’s spent time with a few girls, just never any who commission me.”

  “Did you see them together last night?”

  “It was pretty busy last night,” he hedged. “But yeah, I think they were sitting together for a while.”

  “Why the uncertainty?” Ryan asked.

  “I was just trying to be sure because they didn’t leave together and I know they paid separate bills. But yeah, they talked for a while.”

  “Do you remember how they paid?” Jessie asked.

  “He used a corporate card. She paid in cash. The girls always pay in cash. Less traceable if they get rounded up, you know?”

  Jessie nodded like that detail was common knowledge.

  “Did you see her talking to other girls, maybe one that’s here now? Did she seem to have any friends?”

  “No. There were two things I noticed about that chick above all else. She was a knockout. It was obvious that none of the other girls wanted her around because they paled in comparison. But the other thing was she didn’t give off a friendly vibe.”

  “What kind of vibe did she have?” Jessie asked.

  “Focused—like she was on a mission and no one better get in her way. She’s a real killer, that one.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Devin Schumacher tried to act cool.

  He’d been with hookers before. And as a Hollywood agent, he’d been around many attractive women. But something about this girl made him nervous, like a teenager about to lose his virginity. He didn’t think he’d ever encountered a woman who was so breathtakingly beautiful but who also just oozed sex. It was a hard combination to pull off but Lexi, as she called herself, somehow managed it.

  He sat on the bed of the hotel room in just his boxers and dress shirt, waiting for her to come out of the bathroom. He was a little self-conscious, partly because of his fast-thinning brown hair, partly because of his bony, currently very exposed frame. He took another sip of his cognac, trying to calm his nerves. If his buddies at the agency could see him now, they’d be laughing at him mercilessly.

  That was their thing. All the guys in his circle at Artists International—A.I. for short—liked to have a little fun with a professional now and then. Sometimes too much fun, he secretly admitted. But the thing was, these girls would do things their wives and girlfriends wouldn’t even consider. As he’d told his boss at a bachelor party just last week, a man had needs, even in this modern era of equality and blah blah blah. That got a good belly laugh.

  Devin wasn’t married but he was engaged. And truth be told, since they’d started planning the wedding, Debbie had turned into a real ball buster. If her dad wasn’t the head of production at a major studio, he’d be reconsidering the whole damn thing.

  As it was, he had to content himself with nailing aspiring actresses desperate for representation he’d never provide. And occasionally, as in this case, he gifted himself the skills of the amazing creature that was prepping in the bathroom, the hottest piece of tail he’d seen in years, on camera or off.

  Lexi opened the door and stepped out. She was so sexy she seemed almost gauzy, like she had her own lighting crew that was creating a haze around her. She was wearing a slinky, creamy, satin negligee that looked like it might fall off her at any second. Devin blinked a few times, trying to get the visual crispness back. But it wasn’t working. The cloudiness in his vision wouldn’t go away. It was a serious bummer.

  He stood up to approach her but, after a solid first step, he stumbled on the second and careened into the wall, knocking over a picture frame, which shattered loudly on the ground.

  He saw Lexi grimace. But she didn’t get pissed. Instead she swooped over and wrapped his arm over her shoulder, easing him back toward the bed. He thought he heard her murmur something under her breath but didn’t quite catch it.

  “Dammit,” he muttered. “Don’t worry. I’ll pay for that.”

  “It’s okay, sweetie,” she whispered as she helped him lie down on his back. “I’m sure they’ve got dozens of those. Don’t even worry about it.”

  “You’re so nice,” he said, looking up at her as she smiled down at him. “Not like my bitch fiancée. She’s a bitch.”

  “You must really have it rough,” she said sympathetically as she pulled his shorts off.

  “I really do,” he said, noticing that he was slurring his words slightly. “She’s always saying, ‘let’s do this’ or ‘can we do that?’ It’s like, shut up, already. Maybe work out for once to get rid of that extra roll instead of spending all your time looking at china patterns, right?”

  “Right,” Lexi agreed, smiling so broadly that he thought she might be selling something. He watched as she slid on a pair of latex gloves.

  “You get it,” he said, suddenly worn down by the effort of explaining himself.

  “I do,” she said, lifting up his right arm and letting it go. It dropped like a log.

  “Thaz funneee…” he slurred.

  It was like he’d lost complete control of his own body. It felt very heavy and distant, as if it belonged to someone else. He tried to lift his head but found the task impossible. He started to roll over but was surprised to learn that his limbs and torso were totally unresponsive.

  “Whaz happing?” he managed to garble.

  His teeth felt like tree stumps pressing against his lips, blocking the words from coming out clearly. His tongue seemed to have grown. He conjured an image of a dead snake filling his entire mouth. Lexi sat down beside him on the bed.

  “What’s happening?” she repeated in a saccharine voice that set off a bell in his quickly dulling brain. “Here’s what’s happening, sweetie. In a few minutes, you’re not going to ever have to worry about your bitchy fiancée ever again. And while it’ll be rough for her at first, she’ll be better off once she has some distance from the shame of being engaged to a scumbag found dead and naked in a hotel room.”

  “Whaa?” Devin managed to grunt as he struggled to move away from her. With the last remnants of his muscle control, he ordered his right arm up. It moved weakly, rising slightly and landing on Lexi’s hip. He gave her the most perfunctory of shoves.

  Lexi looked down at his hand on her and, without warning, slapped him across the face. He knew it must have been hard though he couldn’t feel it at all. She was still smiling but something in her bright blue eyes had changed. Even through the fog of his fading vision, they gleamed with a fiery intensity.

  “You should have been a nicer person, Devin,” she cooed as she brushed his hand off her. “Now you’ll forever be known for how you died. Is your mother alive, Devin? I hope she’s alive. If she is, the humiliation of this just might kill her. That’s on you, big boy.”

  Only Devin’s eyes and ears were still working, so he couldn’t make himself understood as he tried to yell “bitch” at her. It came out more like “icchh.”

  “Because of your clumsiness with the frame, we’re in a bit of a rush, Devin. So we better get to it,” Lexi said, oblivious to his efforts to speak as she straddled him and wrapped her hands around his throat. “In a few minutes, you’ll be dead from the drugs and that would spoil all the fun. Shall we begin?”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Jessie took a final swig of her drink.

  She didn’t normally go for a Seven & Seven but she needed something fizzy and festive to lighten her bleak mood. Ryan, seated across from her at the tiny Gallery Bar corner table, chugged the last of his beer.

  “So what now?” she asked for what had to be the third time.

  “For tonight, I think this is it,” Ryan said. “We are off duty, after all.”

  “Okay, but what about tomorrow? I think we should set up surveillance at every bar she’s hit. Maybe she’ll return.”

  “You really think so?” he asked skeptically. “After what she did, you’d think she want to keep a low profile, maybe lie low for a while, at least work a different part of town.”

  “Maybe,” Jessie said, though she didn’t buy it.

  “What?” Ryan pressed, sensing her doubt.

  “This woman just doesn’t strike me as the ‘lie low’ type. Yeah, she knows when to keep a low profile. But what she did was big and bold. I feel like she’s got a taste for it now. I wouldn’t be surprised if she tries something similar again.”

  “You sound almost certain,” Ryan noted.

  “I kind of am,” she admitted, not happily. “I’m actually getting tired of guessing right about the motives and machinations of killers.”

  “That’s sort of your job, Jessie,” he said, not meaning to be unkind, but still hitting her where it hurt.

  “Not always,” she said quietly, her mind drifting to the case she had no professional control over.

  “Are you talking about Hannah’s abduction?” he asked gently.

  She nodded.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” he asked. “We’ve been carefully avoiding it all day.”

  “I’m not sure I can. Every time I think of her at the mercy of Bolton Crutchfield, I feel my skin crawl. And you want to know the worst part?”

  “What?”

  “It would be one thing if I thought he was going to kill her. As awful as that would be, I could at least accept that it was out of my hands. After a week, it would be a virtual certainty. But he clearly doesn’t want her dead. He wants her corrupted. He wants to make her in my father’s image and in his own. So every second that I don’t find her is another second he has to infect her mind. And he knows that. I can almost feel him gloating.”

  Ryan looked like he wanted to say something reassuring but seemed to sense there were no words that would salve her wound. Instead, he simply reached out and grabbed her hand, squeezing it tenderly. To her surprise, she didn’t pull away.

  “So what now?” she asked for the fourth time.

  For the briefest of seconds, she remembered the jealous look on Ryan’s face when Brad hit on her. That thought led to the realization that her apartment, the one where he’d been crashing in the living room as her personal bodyguard, was less than a five-minute drive from here.

  He smiled in that half endearing, half-cocky way that made everyone from women to witnesses weak-kneed and opened his mouth to offer a suggestion. But before he could get any words out, both their phones buzzed.

  Jessie looked down to see an emergency text. It was short and straightforward.

  911 call from Sheraton Grand Hotel at 9:47. Body found—male, naked, possibly strangled.

  Jessie looked at the time. It was currently 10:01. That meant the call had only come in fourteen minutes ago. The Sheraton Grand Hotel was just four blocks from here. She looked up at Ryan, who was clearly thinking the same thing.

  “Maybe she’s still there,” he said.

  Jessie put her glass down and stood up.

  “Let’s go.”

  *

  Eight minutes later, they stood in the hotel room, looking at the body.

  On the way in they’d instructed the uniformed officers to seal all entrances and exits and distributed images of the Blue Eyes screenshot to everyone. They each did a once around of the lobby area and the bar, which yielded nothing. Ryan instructed one officer to go to the security office and review footage from the last hour looking for anyone even vaguely resembling Blue Eyes anywhere on the premises.

  Now they stared at the body of the man the hotel register identified as Devin Schumacher. They had to use the hotel’s registration system because Devin, in addition to being completely naked, was found without any ID on him, though he did have his cash and phone. Though they couldn’t be certain yet, the finger-like bruises already forming on his neck suggested he’d been strangled too.

  They were lucky he’d been found at all tonight. The guest in the room next door had heard a loud crashing sound. But hesitant to check it out herself, she called the front desk to let them know. That set a series of steps in motion.

  The clerk at the front desk called the room but got no answer. He waited two minutes and called again. Following procedure, he alerted security. The security chief on duty assigned an officer who was monitoring the pool and spa area to make a courtesy check after he finished his rounds.

  The officer did, knocking on Devin Schumacher’s door only twelve minutes after the guest next door made her original call. Getting no response, he knocked a second time, and then a third. He called down to his duty chief and asked him to call the room one more time. He heard the unanswered phone ring ten times. Then, with official permission from his supervisor, the officer unlocked the door and walked in. That’s when he found Devin Schumacher lying dead and naked on the bed.

  He radioed his boss, who called 911 and went upstairs himself after ordering two more officers to join him at the room. They secured the entire floor and made sure no one else came in or out until the authorities arrived less than ten minutes later.

  Jessie noted silently that, if not for the crashing sound, clearly a result of the picture frame currently resting on the floor near the wall, they wouldn’t have learned about Schumacher’s death until tomorrow morning at the earliest.

  “So,” she said after listening to the hotel security chief’s rundown. “Less than fifteen minutes from the frame shattering to your officer entering the room. And less than thirty from the crash until our people arrived. Is that right?”

  The security chief nodded. Jessie looked over at Ryan, who was doing his own mental math.

  “Assuming the frame falling was part of some kind of struggle, then that means Schumacher was still alive at that point. If that’s true, then Blue Eyes had about thirteen minutes to kill him, get dressed, take his stuff, wipe everything down, and get out of the room before the officer arrived. That’s pretty quick. She’d have to be a really cool customer to pull that off without leaving any traces.”

  “You’re thinking she might have left more evidence than last time because she was in a rush?” Jessie asked.

  “I think there’s at least a better shot.”

  “Maybe,” she said. “But I’m not holding my breath.”

  “Why not?”

  “She seems very meticulous,” Jessie said. “I’d bet she was cautious from the second she entered the room, making sure to touch as few surfaces as possible. I wouldn’t be surprised if she had gloves on the whole time. The fewer things she had to remember to wipe down after the fact, the less chance of forgetting something.”

  “That makes sense,” Ryan agreed.

  “Plus,” Jessie added, thinking of something else. “If she was careful up front and things went bad, like say the drugging didn’t work, she could get out of the room clean without leaving prints behind. If the trick called it in, there’d be little to work with.”

  “So should we just skip the routine?” someone asked from behind them.

  Jessie turned around to find a Crime Scene Unit tech staring at her with a sour expression. She knew he wanted her to feel chastened but she was having none of it.

  “No,” she said sharply. “You go ahead and do your job anyway. And I’ll continue to do mine, which is to try and get in this woman’s head. You don’t mind, do you?”

  The tech frowned but said nothing more, sliding grumpily past her.

  “Jessie Hunt—always making friends,” Ryan said with a wry smile.

  “I’ve got enough friends already,” she muttered.

  “Really?” he said incredulously. “You’ve got, like, two.”

  “Shut up, Detective,” she said, though it was hard to generate the venom she intended.

  Nothing like flirting over a dead body.

  “So with his wallet gone, what do we know about this guy?” she continued quickly, mildly ashamed of herself.

  Ryan managed to stifle his chuckle and looked at his phone, on which he’d been doing a web search.

  “It looks like Devin Schumacher is a talent agent with A.I. He represents mostly young actors and actresses in features and occasionally, television. He’s thirty-three, originally from Shaker Heights, Ohio. Went to Bowling Green State University. He’s engaged to a Deborah Morse.”

  “Great,” Jessie said. “That should be another fun conversation.”

  “At least they’re not married. At least he doesn’t have kids.”

  “You want to take a sip from that half-full glass?” she asked him.

  “Just looking for a silver lining,” Ryan said before turning back to the scene. “So she’s in a rush, so much so that she leaves the cash and phone. But she makes sure to take the wallet. Why only that?”

  Jessie was starting to get a feel for this girl and answered quickly.

  “Because it’s not about the robbery. That’s just incidental. As we established, there are easier ways to rob a john that don’t require killing him. I think she’s sending a message.”

 

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