CHAPTER TWELVE
Laura checked the GPS against the apartment block in front of them. It rose into the sky, a concrete tower that blocked out the pale winter sun. It was inhospitable-looking, to say the least. Someone had attempted to grow some flowers in a box outside the ground-floor windows, but they were all shriveled and dead.
“This is it,” Laura confirmed. “What was the number again?”
“One hundred twenty-three,” Agent Moore replied, scanning the printout that the hotel manager had given them.
Laura nodded. “At least it’s on the first floor.” She killed the engine and climbed out of the car, eager to get started. It could be that they would get this all wrapped up within the next half an hour and be on their way home before the end of the day, but she had her doubts. For one thing, the viciousness of the attacks and the use of the blade seemed to point to a man. But then, strange things did happen. Maybe they would arrest this maid, she would confess everything, and the case would be done.
She could hope, anyway.
There was someone just leaving the apartment block, and Laura rushed forward to grab the door before it closed. It was a huge advantage, not having to ask to be buzzed inside. It meant that their suspect would not have time to escape down the staircase to the emergency exit, or climb out of a window onto the fire escape. It meant she wouldn’t have time to hide or destroy any evidence.
Laura led the way to the elevators and punched the button impatiently a few times, the whirring of the mechanism indicating that the metal box was on its slow journey toward them. Better to take the elevator than the stairs. They might need enough energy for a chase if they confronted her and she managed to slip by them.
It finally pinged open and the two agents stepped inside, Laura instinctively turning back to face the way they had come in so that she would be ready to get out. Agent Moore, on the other hand, stayed facing toward her, meaning they were left face to face as the elevator moved them upward.
“This is so exciting,” Agent Moore confessed. She had a little bright spark in her eyes to show the truth in her words. “I can kind of see what you meant earlier. About cases being thrilling even though they’re tragic. I can’t wait to see if it was her that did it. If it was, we can get our first case solved in just a few hours! Won’t that be amazing?”
“Your first case,” Laura corrected her with a wry look. “Very far from mine. Don’t count your chickens just yet.”
“I know, I know,” Agent Moore said, bouncing on her heels. She was grinning. It was quite disconcerting, being this close up to that much enthusiasm.
The elevator doors slid open, and Laura stepped out into the hall. Just as disconcerting as her refusal to turn around in there was Agent Moore’s habit of waiting for Laura to lead, meaning she had to actually step past the rookie to get out. Laura was beginning to get the impression that when she said she had grown up on a commune, she really meant that she’d spent almost her whole life in one. It was like she didn’t even understand the simple etiquette of riding an elevator.
Laura pushed her temporary partner’s strangeness to the back of her mind and carried on walking down the hall, searching the numbers on the doors they passed. One sixteen—one seventeen—one eighteen. They were heading in the right direction, that was for sure.
Looking up at the end of the hallway, Laura spotted it. Apartment one twenty-three was the one right at the end of the hall, the door facing back inward toward them as they approached. Better for approaching visibility, worse for approaching with stealth. Laura picked up her pace. The last thing they needed was for their suspect to sense they were coming before they even got there.
She stopped right in front of the door and knocked hard, saying nothing. There was a moment’s pause in which she almost thought no one was home; then, hushed voices revealed the lie in that impression.
Then there was a kind of shuffling and scraping noise, and Laura put two and two together, a vivid image forming in her mind’s eye.
“The window,” she snapped at Agent Moore. “She’s trying to climb out the window! Get around there, now!”
Agent Moore nodded and shot away, her feet thudding down the hall as she ran, bypassing the elevators and rushing right down the stairs. Laura hammered hard on the door again, stepping closer to hear as much as she could through it. “Stop what you’re doing!” she yelled. “FBI!”
The only thing she heard in response was a sudden crash, as though of a slide-up window that had been allowed to drop closed on its own. Downstairs, she heard the buzz of the building’s main door being unlocked from the inside—no doubt Agent Moore stepping out into the street. Beyond that, she could hear nothing; the noise from the street was insulated enough by the building that she had no idea what was going on.
Until a woman’s voice inside the apartment began shouting. “Stop! Stop! Leave him alone!”
Laura knocked hard on the door again. “Let me in and we can discuss this,” she shouted. “We’re with the FBI.” It was always worth repeating, just in case the message had not sunk in the first time.
There was a rapid collection of footsteps and then the rattle of a chain, and the apartment door opened. Behind it was standing a petite Latina woman, long dark hair up in a bun on the top of her head, dressed in a two-piece running suit in a deep pink velour fabric. “Let him go,” she pleaded. “He hasn’t done anything. I swear!”
Laura stepped past her into the apartment and headed to the window, which was very clearly the one she had heard sliding up and down. Lifting it, she stuck her head outside, looking down at where Agent Moore appeared to have tackled a man to the ground.
“Cuff him and bring him back up here,” she shouted. Then she paused, watching. “Can you do that, or do you need help?”
“I’ve got it!” Agent Moore shouted out gamely. Her tongue stuck out of the side of her mouth as she grabbed the cuffs from her belt and started putting them on the man’s wrists. At least he couldn’t see her face, pinned to the ground as he was. Laura shook her head and leaned back inside, turning to look at the petite woman who had answered the door.
“So,” Laura said. “You’re Luisa Lopez, I presume. Care to tell me who that is on the ground outside with my partner?”
“My brother,” Luisa said, casting her eyes down at the ground in shame but then a second later lifting them. She was defiant but also afraid, like she didn’t know whether to hope for the best or scream out the window for him to try to run again. “Please. He didn’t have any choice but to come here. There are men back where I came from, they’re trying to hurt him and…”
Laura held up a hand, cutting her off. “Your brother is here illegally,” she said. It was half statement, half question.
“Yes,” Luisa said, her cheeks burning now. There was still that spark of fight in her eyes. “Please. I’m telling you, if you send him back he will die. They won’t listen. The—the immigration people. I just wanted to keep him safe. Please, don’t send him back.”
Laura watched her evenly for a moment. “We’ll talk about that in a moment,” she said. “You’ve missed your shifts at the Great Maple Ohio Hotel for the last couple of days.”
Luisa nodded. “I needed to stay home to help Jorge.” She stopped and frowned. “Why is my missing work a matter for the FBI?”
“It isn’t,” Laura said, narrowing her eyes slightly. The maid had a good reason for not going to work the past couple of days. Was it just a coincidence that she had started helping her brother out at the same time the murders started? “I need to talk to you about a couple of guests that stayed in the hotel last month. You cleaned their rooms. Let me show you their images.” She dug her cell phone out of her pocket and held it up, showing her first Michaels and then Bluton.
Luisa frowned, shaking her head. “Maybe I did, maybe not,” she said. “I couldn’t say for certain. I don’t get to see many of the guests—they’re usually out when I go in to clean up.”
“Do you always work when you’re scheduled, until the last couple of days?” Laura asked.
“Yes, of course!” Luisa said, then lowered her eyes. “I guess I can see why you would ask.”
“Then it’s very likely you were the one who cleaned their rooms,” Laura insisted. There was a clatter in the hallway; she looked up to see a bedraggled and defeated-looking man who shared many of his features with Luisa. He was walking into the apartment with Agent Moore behind him, flushed but seemingly very pleased with herself. She closed the door behind them, leaving just the four of them in on the conversation. “Do you remember anything unusual from around that time? For example, a room that clearly hadn’t been used or slept in even though it was booked for the night?”
Luisa shook her head. “Nothing like that. But I don’t have time always to stop and think about whether something is unusual. I do so many rooms every day. Especially last month. We were so busy with all the visitors for that big gathering.”
Laura frowned. “Big gathering?”
“Yeah, at the convention hall across the street from the hotel,” Luisa said. Her eyes kept glancing fearfully toward Jorge, like she couldn’t focus on the conversation anymore now that he was in the room. For his part, he was sweating, looking back at her like he was trying to send a message of goodbye and thanks and who knew what else all at the same time. “There was a big event going on. Most of our guests were booked in for that. It’s the busiest we’ve ever been. I think a lot of them were making the bookings together on purpose, so they could all stay in the same place.”
Laura tapped her index finger against her mouth thoughtfully. This was all starting to go somewhere.
Luisa had an alibi for the last couple of days, it seemed—though not one that would ever stand up in a court of law. She was so petite that there was no chance she had been the one to wield the knife, or whatever it was. Her brother looked stronger, tougher—but also travel-worn and grimy. If he’d come here illegally, smuggled in by a coyote with no more than the clothes on his back… they would have been covered in blood.
She was making a lot of assumptions, she knew. But she felt something in her gut.
If they let this man go, he probably wouldn’t be here when they came back. It was on her head if she made a mistake.
“Do you recognize these people?” she asked, on a whim, swinging her phone screen up to the level of Jorge’s eyeline. His eyes flicked to the picture automatically, and Laura scrolled, watching him. Behind her, Luisa translated what she had said into rapid-fire Spanish. Laura knew enough to know she hadn’t added anything or warned him to be quiet.
He shook his head no, a confused expression on his face. Laura had been watching him closely. There wasn’t even a flicker of recognition, fear, anger—anything that would have given him away as the killer.
“Take off his cuffs,” she told Agent Moore, putting her phone away. “We’re done here.”
“You’re letting him go?” Luisa asked, her voice full of hope.
Laura nodded curtly. She couldn’t get involved, not really. They had still broken the law. But the good news was that it wasn’t her department. She was there to solve a murder, nothing else.
“We’re not here for that,” Laura said. She tilted her head toward the door when Agent Moore gave her a questioning look. “Come on. We’d better get to that convention center.”
“Right,” Agent Moore said, scrambling to shove her cuffs back away and head to the door.
“Miss Lopez,” Laura added, pausing in the doorway. She found suddenly she couldn’t quite meet their eyes. “That conversation we just had was a little loud at the start. You might want to seek accommodations elsewhere by the end of the day—at least for your brother. Otherwise, people might be here asking questions that aren’t so easy to answer.”
She tapped the doorframe by way of farewell and left, uttering an unspoken prayer in her head that the residents of the building were too apathetic to bother calling ICE before they’d driven away.