Hangman (14 page)

T
HE ONE GREAT
thing about playing was that it was all-consuming. When he was into it, Gabe simply didn’t have the psychic energy to deal with anything else. Playing transported him to another place. He was so focused on what he was doing, he was able to shut out the world. Unfortunately he had only one hour of intense solitude before Hannah and the others would come in for choir practice. The way his nerves felt—raw and discharging at whim—he would have done well with an entire week of isolation—just him and Mr. Steinway.

Hannah was the first to arrive. She immediately walked over to him. “Hey.” She sat down at the piano bench next to him. “Where’d you disappear to?”

Gabe felt his skin go hot. “Someone noticed I was gone?”

“Yeah,
I
did. You had me worried.”

“Worried?” He was mystified. “Why?”

Hannah was puzzled. “After what happened to your mom, I’d think you’d want to be a little cautious.”

“I just got a cup of coffee. I’m fine. Do me a favor and forget about me, okay.”

She was silent. “I don’t mean to look over your shoulder, Gabe. It’s just that my dad’s a little concerned about you.”

“Why? What does he thinks gonna happen?”

“He’s probably a little uneasy about what Dad could do.”

Again, Gabe felt his face warm up. “I keep telling
your
dad that
my
dad doesn’t give a shit about me.” His fingers danced up and down the keyboard. “See, your dad is thinking like a dad. My dad doesn’t think that way. Unless I have something he wants, he has no use for me. When I was attached to my mom and we came as a package, he wanted my mom, so he was stuck with me. But now my mom’s gone. Ergo, he doesn’t give a rat’s ass about me.”

“I’m sure that’s not true.”

“Rest assured that my dad is out of the picture.” He turned back to the keyboard, hoped his lies—well, half lies—were convincing.

When he was little—before his parents married—Chris used to come visit them in Chicago, where his mom was going to med school. He and Chris used to spend a day together. They’d go to the park in the morning, have lunch at a restaurant, then they’d go back to the apartment, where Chris would sit him down at the piano for a two-to-three-hour lesson. Even though Chris wasn’t a pianist, he was a musician and knew brilliance in any instrument.

He was one of the best teachers that Gabe had ever had.

After his parents got married and they moved to New York, things rapidly went downhill and escalated into chaos. No one could live with that man full-time.

“I’ll talk to your dad,” Gabe told her. “And stop worrying about me. I can take care of myself. I’ve been doing it all my life.”

A few more kids started to filter in.

Gabe got up. “I’ll help you set up the chairs.”

Hannah put her hand on his shoulder. “Don’t be mad.”

“I’m not mad, I’m just…” His jaw was clenched so hard, his teeth ached. “Sometimes…the enormity of what happened just hits me, drags me under like this giant wave…and it’s just real hard to stay afloat ’cause the water keeps coming and coming and coming. And every time you surface and you catch your breath, there’s still another giant wave to deal with.” He faced her. “I have so much
rage
inside of me.” He realized he was scaring her and he forced out a smile. “But then it passes and I’m fine.”

She let her hand slide from his shoulder. “You don’t have to be happy, Gabe. What you’re going through sucks.”

“I’ll be fine.”

She studied his face. “You know, that’s why you don’t judge people on first impressions. You’re real good-looking and you’re really gifted and all the girls in the school keep pestering me about you. And the boys all ask about you because you come across as this real cool guy with this swagger.”

“I don’t swagger.”

“Yes, you do.”

Gabe laughed. “My father swaggers. I don’t swagger.”

“Yes, you do.”

Mrs. Kent’s voice broke through the debate. “Decker, you have plenty of time to flirt after choir. Now kindly set up the chairs.”

“Right away.” She took a pack of folding chairs and began to set them up. To Gabe, she said, “I’m not a cougar. I don’t flirt with young boys.”

“I know. That’s what I like about you. You’re very…like…sisterly with me.”

“That’s me.” Hannah sighed. “I’m everyone’s perennial big sister.”

“I didn’t mean it like that.”

“I’m just teasing you, Gabe.”

“I mean I think you’re very pretty.”

Hannah was grinning. “You can stop now.”

“I’m sure all the boys have crushes on you. I mean I have a crush on you.”

“Is that your own grave you’re digging?”

“It’s just that I need a friend
way more
than a girlfriend.”

“I get it.” She placed her hands on his shoulders. “For your information, I’m already spoken for. His name is Rafi. We went to camp together last summer. He’s in Yeshivat HaKotel, but he’s doing Shana Bet so we can be together in Israel next year.”

“I understood everything you said except for the last sentence.”

“No matter. It means as far as my availability goes, Whitman, you’re out of luck.”

“Well…all right, then.”

“And don’t you dare get all mopey. You just said you considered me a big sister.”

“I do consider you that way. And I’m not mopey. And even if I were mopey, it wouldn’t be because of you. I’m just mopey because I’m in a bad situation. So stop trying to claim ownership of my mopeyiness.”

“Well, excuse me!”

They both broke into laughter.

Mrs. Kent was glaring at them. “Perhaps you’d like to share with the rest of us what you find so hilarious, Ms. Decker?”

Hannah stifled another round of the giggles. “Why are you picking on me, Mrs. Kent? He was laughing just as much as I was.”

“You are the president of choir. You have to set an example.”

She began putting up the last row of chairs. “So I get reprimanded and he gets off scot-free?”

“Indeed, Ms. Decker, the world isn’t a fair place.”

“You just like him better because a mediocre alto is way more replaceable than a spectacular accompanist.”

“You’re treading on thin ice, young lady.”

“I know, I know,” Hannah said. “The truth hurts, but that isn’t your fault. Between the two of us, I’d choose him as well.”

Mrs. Kent’s eyes softened. “Hannah, you’re a one-of-a-kind and totally irreplaceable.” She clapped her hands. “Everybody take your seats. Ms. Decker, since you were duly elected president, would you like to lead us in a rousing rendition of the national anthem and ‘Hatikvah’?”

Hannah beamed. “Mrs. Kent, it would be my pleasure.”

ALEX—THE SELF-PARKING LOT
attendant—was in his sixties, a tall man with white hair who looked spiffy in his aqua shirt, white pants, and white slip-on shoes. He sat behind a podium shaded by a beach umbrella. At five in the afternoon, the sun was low and hot. Decker
recognized him as the man who gave him a ticket on Sunday. That meant Alex was on duty when Chris arrived and left.

When Decker showed him Terry’s photograph, he identified her immediately.

“She’s a real nice woman. Always smiling and slipping me a few bucks every time she took her car in and out even though she didn’t have to.”

“When was the last time you saw her?” Eliza Slaughter asked.

“Last time I saw her?” Alex frowned. “Something happen to Ms. McLaughlin?”

“She appears to be missing,” Decker said.

“Missing?” Alex grimaced. “Oh my, that’s not good.”

“She may have left on her own,” Decker said. “That’s why we’re trying to retrace her steps. When was the last time you remember seeing her?”

“Golly, must have been a couple of days ago. Maybe Sunday.” He studied Decker’s face. “I’ve seen you before.”

“I was here on Sunday, too. I left around two-thirty.”

“Aha.”

“When I left, Ms. McLaughlin was still at the hotel. Do you remember if you saw her after three in the afternoon?”

“No, sir, I was pretty busy.”

“But you remember the lieutenant?” Eliza said.

“He’s a hard man to miss.”

Decker showed Alex a picture of Donatti. “What about this man?”

Alex looked at it for a while. “This guy…” The attendant tapped the picture with his fingers. “He was here on Sunday. He was carrying a bunch of flowers. Who is he?”

“Ms. McLaughlin’s husband.”

“She’s married?”

“Yes,” Eliza said. “Does that surprise you?”

“Yeah, a little. She just seemed so carefree to be married.” When both Decker and Eliza erupted into laughter, Alex said, “I didn’t mean it like that. Been married for forty-two years—”

“I’m happily married, too,” Decker said, “but I know what you mean.”

Eliza said, “So you remember this guy carrying flowers. Did you give him a ticket?”

“I give everyone who’s not a long-term guest a ticket. They got to get it validated at the hotel or restaurant. Otherwise they can’t park here.”

Decker said, “Do you remember what time he arrived?”

“Sunday’s brunch is between eleven and four. It gets real busy.” He snapped his fingers. “But I’ll tell you something that might help. Every time someone comes in here, I write down the license number on the ticket. That way, at the end of the day when I turn in the tickets, the folks in accounting can reconcile the validations with the cars.”

“A license plate would be handy since I didn’t bother taking it down myself,” Decker said.

“Do you know how long accounting keeps the tickets?” Eliza asked.

“Nah, you’d have to check with them.”

“What time did you get off work on Sunday?” Decker asked.

“Me? Around five.”

Eliza said, “And you don’t remember Ms. McLaughlin coming into the lot to pick up her car?”

Alex thought very hard. “Can’t say yes or no. I don’t want to say something that might mess you up later on.”

“That’s fine,” Decker said. “We’ll see if we can get her husband’s ticket. Thanks, Alex, you’ve been a big help.”

“Wish I could be a bigger help,” the attendant said. “But you know how it is, you can’t pay attention to everything.”

“Nor are you expected to pay attention to everything,” Decker said.

Him, on the other hand. He was a friggin’ lieutenant. Why hadn’t he taken down Chris’s license plate?

A rather big omission.

He thought about it for a moment, tried to put himself back in time.

He saw the car driving away. Then he remembered. The front and back plate were paper. “Hey, Eliza.”

“What?”

“The Lexus that Chris was driving. It had paper plates. So either he switched them out or the car was new and it was rented.”

WHILE ELIZA JOTTED
down the local car rental services, Decker checked his cell. There was an urgent message from Marge. He called her back, and when she answered, he said, “Tell me you found Garth Hammerling.”

“Not yet,” Marge told him. “But I just heard from Aaron Otis. The two boys will be in town in about an hour.”

“Marge, I can barely hear you. There’s a lot of static on the line.”

“That’s because I’m in a parking lot…hold on, Pete.” She quickly ran up the stairs until she was on ground level. Then she walked outside. “Better?”

“Much. What parking lot?”

“St. Tim’s. We’re in the process of pulling the videocassettes from the security cameras in the parking lot. The head guard told us that the cassettes are erased and replaced once a month.”

“Tell me good news.”

“We just squeaked by, Rabbi. They were due to be changed in a few days. How clear the recording is, or if Adrianna or her car is even on the film, is another thing altogether.”

“How many cameras would pick up the area around Adrianna’s car?”

“One camera definitely works that area. We might get a peripheral view from another one. We’re also pulling the tapes from the entrances and exits to the parking lot to see what time Adrianna left the hospital. We’ll probably view them all in a little bit.”

“At the station house?”

“No, at the security station here at the hospital. The guards are watching over the cassettes like hawks.”

“Good for them. It’s just too bad they weren’t as diligent with Adrianna.”

T
HE WOMAN BEHIND
the reception desk was named Grace. She was in her early forties with a pale face and soft, honeyed curls. She wore a black suit and a button-down aqua shirt with the name of the hotel emblazoned over the pocket. Her brown eyes turned sad when she spoke about the closure.

“I started working here when I was twenty-three, fresh out of hotel management. I was so green that on my first day my voice shook. I sounded like I was gargling.”

Eliza smiled. “I’m sure you did okay.”

“I was awful,” Grace said. “But management had patience back then.” She rolled her eyes. “They knew how to nurture a career.”

“How long have you been here?” Decker asked.

“Twenty-two years.”

“Do you have any future plans?”

“Take a long vacation. Then who knows? The hotel business isn’t so hot right now, but like everything, it cycles. Maybe by the time I start looking, opportunities will present themselves.” Grace gave a practiced smile. “You’re not here to listen to my issues. How can I help you?”

“We’re looking for one of your guests.”

“Ms. McLaughlin. Someone called here yesterday to ask about her.”

“That would be me,” Eliza said.

“I’ve thought about it. I haven’t seen her since maybe the middle of last week.”

Eliza said, “That would be around Wednesday?”

The phone rang. Grace held up a finger, answered the call, and transferred it to the dining room. “Wednesday…maybe Thursday.”

“And you didn’t see her over the weekend?”

“I didn’t work the weekend.”

Eliza went through her notes. “That was Harvey Dulapp and Sara Littlejohn. They didn’t see Terry that Sunday, but we know she was here.”

Decker said, “I was told that Ms. McLaughlin was a very friendly person. Did she ever drop in just to say hello?”

“Not just to shoot the breeze,” Grace said. “If she dropped in, it was to collect her mail or pick up her messages. Um…I remember a few weeks ago, there was a maintenance issue with her toilet. She came in personally to tell us about it. And she was very friendly.”

“Do you know who serviced her toilet?”

Grace smiled. “Is that important?”

“Anyone who went in and out of her suite is important to us,” Decker told her.

“I’ll call maintenance and see if they have a record of who answered the service call. I must tell you that they’re down to a skeleton crew. If something breaks, we’ve been given the orders to transfer the guest into another room and just black out that problematic room.”

“Did they move Ms. McLaughlin to an upgraded suite?” Eliza asked.

“No, she was in a premium unit. They had to fix her toilet. All I’m saying—” The phone rang. “Excuse me.”

Grace was several minutes on the phone. When she came back,
she gave the detectives a weary look. “Vis-à-vis our conversation, one of the TVs isn’t working. I have to find another room for this guest. Excuse me, what did you want again?”

“The names of anyone who went in and out Ms. McLaughlin’s suite.”

“You mean the maintenance people.”

Decker said, “Maintenance, housekeeping, room service. It might be easier if you gave me a list of employees. That way Detective Slaughter and I can go through them and check them off one by one.”

“I’m sorry, Lieutenant, I can’t give you that. You’d have to talk to someone in senior management. Besides, so many of our employees have already left.”

Decker appeared to think a moment, but he knew what he was going to ask for. “Well, could you at least call maintenance and housekeeping and find out who was working on Sunday afternoon when she disappeared.”

A big sigh. “I can probably get you that, but it may take a little bit of time.”

“Is there someone we could talk to in maintenance and housekeeping to ease the burden?”

“That’s sweet. I’ll call up housekeeping and maintenance for you.”

“Thanks so much,” Decker said. “One more thing. The lot attendant in self-service parking told me he turns the day’s parking tickets into accounting when he’s finished. Where would we find that department?”

“It’s not a department anymore, it’s a person. Debra’s in the back. Would you like me to send her out?”

“It might be easier if you send us in,” Eliza said.

“I’ll ask her if she’s busy,” Grace said.

“Thanks. It’s important that we find this woman. She has a son.”

“Yes, the boy…Gabe. What a shame.” Grace shook her head. “This is terrible. Nothing like this has happened here before. It really gives the hotel a black eye.” She paused. “Then again, the
whole place is being shut down for at least two years. Lucky for the new owners that people in this town have very short memories.”

THE HOSPITAL’S SECURITY
office was in the basement of St. Tim’s—a futuristic, windowless area filled with black-and-white monitors, alarms, sensors, cassette and DVD players, and a wall-size panel of buttons. The cameras shone on the institution’s entrances and exits, the elevators, the stairwells, the interior hallways, and all the class-three drug cabinets. The space was cavelike: compact and dimmed to see the monitors. Marge hated dark and small, her abhorrence courtesy of a horrendous raid years ago when she was forced to crawl through a tunnel in order to evacuate children from a cult and a homicidal maniac. One of the superb things to come out of that mess was her adopted daughter, Vega. Oliver knew of this foible and gave her a reassuring pat on the shoulder.

The head of security was a Russian fellow named Ivan Povich. Currently, he was sharing the warren with a uniformed guard named Peter, who continually stared at the monitors and had yet to utter a sound. Povich spoke with a slight accent. “We also have a smaller security room on each floor.”

Marge was studying the images on the screens—people going in and out. It calmed her down. “But here’s where you monitor all of the hospital’s entrances and exits.”

“Yes,” Povich said. “And we always have someone watching them at all times. We take the job seriously. Usually it’s Peter.”

Peter gave a wave.

Oliver said, “What about lunch and bathroom breaks?”

“Whoever is on duty calls for a relief person before he or she leaves. That way, we always have a pair of eyes. If there was a problem, someone would have seen it.”

“Who was on duty yesterday morning?” Marge asked.

Peter waved again.

“How long have you worked here?” Marge asked him.

“Forever,” Povich answered. “He is my best man. I have no trouble with any of my men and women. If I have trouble, they’re out.” He handed Marge a box. “Here are the cassette tapes from yesterday. Usually we just reuse them, but I already put new ones in the cameras, so you can take your time looking at them. If you need something, ask Peter and he’ll call for you. Before you get started, do you want coffee or water?”

“Water would be great,” Marge said.

Povich said. “And you, sir?”

“Coffee—as strong as you can make it.”

“No problem. You know how to work this cassette machine?”

Oliver said, “I’m sure we can figure it out.”

“You need help, you can ask Peter.”

“Does the man talk?” Marge asked.

“Only when he has something to say.”

Ten minutes later, the two detectives were staring at a black-and-white tape. They had rewound the first cassette to around ten-thirty the previous Sunday night, then they fast-forwarded the tape. But not too fast not to notice the people on it. At 10:50, a Honda pulled into a parking spot.

Marge said. “That’s the car.”

Oliver slowed the tape to normal speed as they both watched Adrianna get out of the driver’s seat, her eyes focused straight ahead until her image disappeared from view. They rewound the tape several times to make sure they didn’t miss anything. When they were satisfied that they had noted all that could be noted, they allowed the tape to move forward, the image of Adrianna’s parked Honda in the middle of the monitor.

As the tape kept rolling, they continued to stare…and stare…and stare.

DEBRA FROM ACCOUNTING
was cooperative, handing over the parking tickets once Decker explained that all they wanted to do was match each license plate number on the ticket with a name. He assured her
that he wasn’t interested in any of the guests except one—Chris Donatti, Terry McLaughlin’s husband.

She said, “Even so, I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t tell anyone where you got the information from. When will you give them back to me?”

Eliza said, “I’ll go through them as quickly as I can. If you need anything, I work at West L.A. I can come back here on a moment’s notice.”

“Thanks, I appreciate that.”

Decker said, “How would I get to the maintenance and housekeeping offices?”

“I could tell you, but it’s easier if you ask Grace for a map.”

“Thanks for your help.”

“Sure. I’d say anytime, but I’ll be out of job in a few weeks,” Debra said. “But don’t worry about me. My kids are delighted, my husband is delighted, and my aging mother is really delighted.” She smiled. “My former housekeeper and my former personal trainer, who were paid from my salary…them, not so much.”

AS THEY WALKED
through wooded pathways, Eliza scanned the batch of parking tickets. “Some of them don’t have license plate numbers.”

“Probably during a busy time and he got a little careless.” Decker shrugged. “Nothing we can do about it.”

“Hey, Lieutenant.” Eliza was enthusiastic. “We’ve got two time stamps per ticket. One coming in and one going out. That’s a break. If we find Donatti’s Lexus, we’ll know when he came in and when he left.”

“If the attendant was smart enough to mark it as a Lexus with paper plates.”

“If Donatti was going to do something bad, would he have parked his car in the parking lot? Much more likely he’d be noticed.”

“Unless it was an unplanned thing, although Donatti isn’t usually rash,” Decker said. “But he did beat up his wife…using only an open palm…he was quick to tell me that. Like that was supposed to impress me.”

“What a scumbag.”

“A scumbag and a psycho,” Decker said.

“How’s the kid?”

“Quiet…unobtrusive. It’s hard to tell what he’s thinking. My daughter seems to have developed a rapport with him.”

“Uh-oh.”

“Yeah, I’ve thought about that,” Decker said. “He’s a good-looking kid. But she’s seventeen and has a boyfriend and will be out of the house in several months. He’s only fourteen.” A pause. “If he were a couple of years older, I know I wouldn’t have let him stay with us.”

“Genetics, huh? Sins of the father.”

“Especially when it comes to my daughter. Hannah is smart but naive. I don’t know much about Gabe, but I suspect he’s way more streetwise than she is.”

They walked a few more moments in silence until they arrived at the maintenance office. The door was open and they crossed the threshold. The space inside was hot and confined. A swarthy man at the desk was sweating profusely. “Yes?”

“We’re looking for Gregory Zatch.”

“That’s me.”

Decker brought out his badge and identified the two of them as homicide detectives.

“Homicide?” Zatch said. “Someone got killed?”

“Someone is missing,” Eliza explained. “Sometimes we’re given those cases. We’re here because a couple of weeks ago, maintenance was called for a plumbing problem in suite 229. A leaky toilet.” She fanned herself with a handful of parking tickets. “We’d like to know who serviced the unit.”

“The missing someone was in 229?” Zatch said.

“Yes.”

“How long has the person been missing?”

“Since Sunday night,” Eliza said.

“Teresa McLaughlin,” Decker said. “Have you ever met her? We hear she was a friendly gal.”

Zatch thought. “I don’t remember.”

“She has a fourteen-year-old son,” Decker said. “We don’t think she would have left him alone voluntarily.”

“Ah, the boy. I remember him. He plays piano like a master.” He shook his head. “It does not sound promising…her being missing. And you think that one of my men had something to do with it?”

Decker said, “This is routine, Mr. Zatch. We’re just checking who went in and out of the suite while she was staying there.”

Zatch’s expression was sour. “You notice how hot it is in here?”

“Hard not to notice,” Eliza said as she continued to fan herself.

“Management has turned off the air-conditioning in the office.”

“That stinks.”

“I’ve complained. They say if we don’t like the working conditions, we should leave. And you know what? Most have left. We’re down to four…no, not four. Three men. One of them just quit yesterday morning. That means the lone survivors are working double shifts. None of us hurt your lady. Too busy answering calls.”

“Did the guy who serviced the toilet in 229 quit?”

“I have to check…when was the date of the call?”

“I don’t know the exact date. The call was a couple of weeks ago.”

Zatch sighed. “What was the unit number? Two twenty-nine?”

“Yes.”

He consulted his books. It took around ten minutes to find the call in the service book. “That was Reffi Zabrib. He left about two weeks ago. Most of the people left then because the new management offered two weeks of free salary if they’d leave one month before the closure. Most of my men took the money and began looking for new jobs. I need the money and need overtime. Otherwise I’d go, too.”

“Then who would be in charge of maintenance?”

“No one, because there’s nothing to maintain. All I do is answer calls. If something breaks, it stays broken unless it’s a major pipe. Then I call a plumber. It’s stupid—to sit around answering calls, looking at the problem, and then doing nothing.”

Decker said, “So your guys are busy but you’re not doing anything?”

“We’re busy answering calls. If it is a simple problem—like plugging in a TV—we fix it. If not, we hem and haw and then the front desk moves them to another room. Still, we have to answer every call we get. And since nothing has been fixed in over three months, we get lots of calls.”

“Could we have his phone number anyway?”