Shoot (30 page)

“Are you working on this case or not? What are you up to?”

“I stopped to say hi to some guys and we worked out. I also had to order a new computer, and buy a new backpack.”

“You’re
shopping
? You’re too much. Well, what do you expect to find at the crime scenes at this late date?”

“No idea. I’m trying to backtrack, find out if I
missed
something. It feels like it.”

“Like what?”

“You know, like a secret treasure map. And there’s good shopping over there.”

“Goodbye, already.”

I reminded myself to tell Amy later—when we weren’t on the phone—what really happened. I started to walk west again. My rear-eye was not sensing any company. I was thinking about when I first saw Chesterfield’s body: the singed face, neck and chest; the smell of gunpowder; the soundproof suite; the unused pistol still sitting on Chesterfield’s hip; his startled expression of surprise; his burned-down cigarette; his whiskey glass. I remembered the smoke detector, disabled by the handyman, the open curtains, the nailed down paintings and lamps, the fancy bathroom, the gold faucets and fixtures, the sealed windows, the locked toilet, the keycard on the floor behind the front door. After the murder, the victim’s room was sealed, like the toilets, and guarded until now. Routine. There were four other identical killings, a total of five victims in five rooms— dispatched by a magician who vanished, along with his musket or muskets. But there were six sealed crime scenes, counting Senator Carroll’s room, also with a disabled smoke detector, where nothing happened. Six crime scenes, not five.

Magic.

But I knew there was no such thing as magic. Only preparation and misdirection. How far in advance did this magician prepare his illusion? Long enough to plan a hack of the hotel video security system. Who—or what— was it the cameras couldn’t see? The Tea Party Animal magicians obviously knew about the smoke detectors being disconnected. Somehow, he—or they—was able to get past security and into five rooms. Who let them in, never reached for their hardware and were wasted before they could say “What the fuck?” A close colleague? Tiffany? Karl? A cop or security guard? Perhaps the dead congressmen didn’t go for their weapons because they were reaching for their rods, opening their doors to an attractive woman.

How did they get a murder weapon or five murder weapons out of the security ring at the convention center? Everything was searched and logged on the way out and in. Either they smuggled it out or they didn’t. So, it’s gone or it’s still there. Where? Only one possible spot. Or six. Maybe. Worth a shot.

“Siri, where’s the closest hardware store?”

She told me there was one on Ninth Avenue.

“Thanks, Siri.”

“My pleasure, Shepherd.”

* * *

The store clerk said there was probably a customized industry item for what I wanted but they didn’t carry it. He hooked me up with a ratchet screwdriver, called an Easy-Driver, and a few attachments that might do the job, along with some gallon-sized plastic sandwich bags. I paid with the newspaper’s credit card, stashed everything in my new backpack and continued on my way.

The security was diminished at the Knickerbocker Convention Center after the departure of the political circus. A car show was setting up. I went upstairs on the escalator, caught an elevator and ran into NYPD officers outside one of the crime scenes. I told them who I was and that they could call Izzy for approval. In five minutes, my buddy Sergeant Reed arrived. She asked what I was doing and I told her. She called Izzy and told me it was okay but she would go with me and I had to wear gloves at all times.

“No problem, Sarge.”

Before we could enter the suite I had chosen, one of the young hotel workers from that night, Bryce, showed up with a clipboard and demanded to know when the six suites would finally be released for rental.

“Tonight’s the last night,” Sergeant Reed told her.

“Great, terrific,” Bryce exulted, shaking the sergeant’s hand and then mine. “My boss will be very happy.”

When I squeezed her hand back, she visibly winced.

“Sorry,” I said. “You okay?”

“I’ll live. I hurt my hand the other day. Slammed it in a drawer.”

“Ouch,” I said, looking closer.

She displayed her open palm. The heel of her right hand was bruised and there was a dark red U-shaped mark.

“You should ice that,” I told her.

“I will, thanks,” she said, flashing a smile.

She thanked us again, wrote something on her clipboard with her left hand and took off.

“You going to flirt with the staff or check out the room?” Reed asked.

“Can’t I do both?”

The sergeant put on blue surgical gloves, I put my gun gloves on, and we entered Senator Carroll’s former suite. I walked back into the hallway and asked Reed to shut the door and yell loudly, then reopen the door.

“Okay.”

She shut the door. I heard nothing. I walked up to the door and put my ear to it. No sound. She opened the door.

“I couldn’t hear a thing,” I told her.

“I yelled,” she said.

“They’re all the same,” I concluded. “Soundproof.”

“I guess they spared no expense. Good thing for a bridal suite,” she said with a chuckle.

“You got that right.”

I went all around the room, looking at the curtains, the windows, touching the lamps and paintings, looking in empty drawers. I peered at the smoke alarm in the ceiling. After a while, I took off my gloves and told her I was done. As she moved to the door, I asked her if I could use the bathroom. I told her I really had to go. She hesitated.

“You want to come in with me?” I asked.

“Hurry up,” she said. “And put your gloves back on.”

I put my gloves back on, shut and locked the bathroom door from the inside and quickly went to work. I pulled out the ratchet screwdriver from my bag and found the closest diameter attachment to fit the octagonal hole in the metal nipple in the top of the toilet tank. The metal moved and I felt something unlock. I carefully lifted top off and looked inside the water tank.

Damn. Nothing, just the usual pipes and copper plumbing.

Wait.

One of the vertical pipes on the left inside wall looked out of place and didn’t seem to be connected to anything.

Yes!

Preparation and misdirection. But what the hell was it? It was an octagonal gray plastic tube about an inch and a half in diameter and maybe nine inches long. It was held in place by two metal brackets protruding from the inside wall of the tank. The top of the pipe was tightly sealed with taut metallic foil. A pipe bomb? I peered at it from every angle but I didn’t see any exposed wires that might blow me up. I carefully touched the cylinder with both gloved hands, got a grip and gently pulled. It came free. The other end of the pipe had an octagonal cap, covered by a thin rubber pad. The tube was textured and featureless, except for one side, closer to the padded end, where there was a thin, raised rectangular box with some kind of hinge, like it could flip open. What the hell was it? Maybe it was a bomb after all. Jesus, I think it might be a…

The door banged three times.

“Yo, Shepherd! You fall in?” Sergeant Reed shouted, pounding on the door some more. “Let’s go!”

Damn.

“No! Sorry, Sarge, be right out.”

No time. I quickly put my mystery find in one of my large sandwich bags and dropped it into my knapsack. I flushed the toilet to cover up the noise of replacing the tank top. When I emerged, Reed was waiting by the door. She locked the suite and nodded to the cop on duty outside. In the hall, as we walked to the elevator, I hesitated over what to do.

“Did you say you guys are closing down these crime scenes tonight?” I asked.

“Yup. Finally, we’ll be out of here,” she said.

It looked like I had no choice. I almost cursed out loud when I remembered that I did not re-lock the top of the toilet tank. There was no way I could ask to go back to that bathroom now.

“Look, sorry, but I just realized I also have to check out Chesterfield’s suite before I go.”

She grumbled but took me there. I did my Sherlock Holmes act again as the sergeant watched, clearly bored. I was stuck. I opened the bathroom door and looked inside. I dialed Izzy on my cell.

“Hey, Izzy. Listen, I’ve got a… Yeah, I’m there now… in Chesterfield’s suite. Right. Yes, she’s here with me now. Wait…”

“Just the guy I want to talk to,” Izzy told me. “Where were you earlier this morning?”

Uh oh.

“I was at the Roehm Building. I also went to the Apple store, did some shopping and then walked to the convention center.”

“So you weren’t in Central Park busting up the same guys you knocked around last week, you know, that mutt Jay-Jay Potsoli and his pals?”

“What? Why? Do they say that?”

“No. They claim they were doing a kickboxing workout that got out of hand but I don’t believe that and neither do the witnesses, who said they got their asses handed to them by a ninja.”

“Oh. Everybody okay?”

“You worried about them? They’ll live, although one of the idiots got such a bad concussion he’s still in the hospital. What was it you wanted?”

“What did I want? Oh yeah. Did you guys take off the tops of the toilet tanks at the crime scenes here?”

There was a long pause.

“Not sure,” he answered. “Not like we were looking for anything that might fit in there. It’s not a drug investigation. Weren’t they locked with some kind of doohickey? So, no, I don’t think we did but the feds took over pretty fast. They probably did it. Why?”

I suggested he might want to come over and check— before the scenes were released.

“I’m not going over there to stick my head in a toilet for a reporter’s hunch.”

“What if Sergeant Reed took a quick look—just to be sure?”

Izzy cursed and I could hear him talking to Phil.

“What are you up to?” Izzy demanded.

“Nothing,” I lied. “I just thought you should be the one to discover the murder weapons—if there are any to be found. Hey, you never know.”

There was more discussion.

“Phil says he thinks you’re running a number on us, for some reason. Okay, we’ll be there soon. But if we don’t find anything, Shepherd, you are going bowl surfing.”

They made good time. Izzy stormed in, saw I was wearing my gloves, and ordered me to lift off the top. I made a gallant effort but, of course, it was locked. I shrugged helplessly and suggested calling the hotel maintenance staff.

“They’ve probably got the doohickey to open it.”

“No,” Izzy said. “Let’s keep this quiet—either way.”

He asked Sergeant Reed for help. She pulled out a steel multi-tool and had it open in thirty seconds. She and I lifted the porcelain off and onto the toilet seat. I could smell gunpowder as soon as we took it off.

“So?” Izzy demanded, peering inside.

“What the hell is that?” Phil asked, pointing to another gray plastic tube clipped vertically to the inside of the tank, identical to the one I had found. But on this tube, the foil at the top was missing. The ugly gray pipe was empty, charred black around the muzzle, which stank of black powder.

“Yeah,” I said, peering over their shoulders. “What the hell is that?”

They looked at me. Hard. I looked back with sincerity. I think.

“Crap. Preserve this for prints and get Crime Scene over here now; pictures, the whole nine yards,” Izzy ordered Reed.

She got on her radio. I asked again what it might be.

“You know what it is,” Izzy told me. “It’s some kind of tube gun. The Tea Party Animal blasted Percy and then hid this popgun in here. It’s probably some kind of one-shot zip gun—while we’ve been beating the bushes, hunting for a motherfucking musket.”

“I think you’re right, Izzy. This might be a big break in the case for you. Hey, leave me out of it. You think the other toilets might have these, too?”

“Maybe, if they’re single shot. But, if they can be reloaded, this could be the only one.” Izzy grinned. “Shepherd, I don’t fucking know whether to kiss you or kick you in the nuts.”

“Do I get a vote?”

Izzy and Phil found four more octagonal plastic tubes secreted in the other victims’ commodes. I didn’t ask anyone if they had thought of looking inside Senator Carroll’s potty. Izzy thanked me with a manly handshake and a pat on the back, then asked me nicely to leave.

“Again, you’re welcome,” I said.

“A lot more cops are on the way, including, literally, a busload of feds. Best you make yourself scarce.”

“I get it. No problem. But I have to file this.”

They looked at each other.

“I owe you that much,” Izzy said, “but give us a few hours before you do and don’t quote me by name, okay, buddy?”

“You got it. I just need a non-attributed quote about finding the murder weapons.”

“Uh… how about… ‘Pending ballistics testing, we suspect these are the murder weapons. The, uh, nature of the custom assassination devices, and other factors, points to very sophisticated killers with access to large amounts of money and technology.’”

“Excellent. You’re getting good at this.”

I wanted to tell them everything but I was in a bind. If I admitted I had stolen evidence, he might still send me bowl surfing. I left. On the way out, in the hall, Sergeant Reed was giving me the stink-eye, like maybe she regretted not accompanying me into the john. I gave her a friendly wave and took off. It didn’t matter, I told myself. Finders, keepers. I had removed crucial evidence but, if Reed went looking, there was nothing to incriminate me.

Except the metal clips affixed to the inside of the toilet tank wall—identical to the others. Oops. Okay, if they find them, it could mean the bad guys had planned to bump off the senator but, for some reason, they did not. Ergo, no empty plastic blunderbuss. But what if the presence of the gray tube actually meant that the senator was a part of the plot and had one put there to deflect suspicion? Why did I take the unfired weapon? Ego? Maybe, but I needed to get a closer look. And I might have a use for it.

In the lobby, I found Bryce at the concierge desk, on her cellphone. She got off as I approached.