Sudden Vacancies (11 page)

Chapter 31

“Mr. Andrews is off today and it’s unclear as to when he’ll even be playing here again,” Sandra told Charles. “We have lost so much business at this point that we have no idea what’s going to happen.”

“So where can I find him today?”

“Well, he does go to the Friendly Cup coffee house on Thursday nights. He’s been doing that almost every Thursday for the past two years.”

Charles thanked her for giving him this information and was already halfway to the door when Sandra’s voice stopped him

“By the way,” Sandra asked, “What you are going to do? Are you going to ask him if he saw something? I bet whatever you want to talk with him about must be very important.”

“It absolutely is,” Charles responded.

“Well, whatever is going on, you had better find an answer for what’s happening. We’re getting very close to losing more money than we can afford to and the last thing we want is to go out of business, especially with us being in as much pain as we have been lately.”

Charles nodded, “I’m aware of that. Hopefully, Mr. Andrews will be able to help move this investigation along a little faster.

*****

As Charles arrived at the Friendly Cup, he found Bruce just getting ready to get into his car and leave. Charles came up to Bruce’s small hybrid vehicle and talked with him about the case.

“Mr. Andrews, my name is Charles Henderson of the Columbus Police Department.”

Charles had already met with Bruce a few days earlier. However, he feigned ignorance of that fact simply because he was so adamant about trying to change things in this case. He was all business as he felt that something was going on.

“Uh, hi…nice to see you again, but I really got to go,” Bruce responded.

“Wait,” Charles replied. He knew that the hesitant response that Bruce made was clearly a sign of something. Perhaps it was a sign of his fear.

He always noticed that feeling whenever people who are guilty try to get away—they’re always hesitant over what’s happening. They don’t want to talk about things but they’re being forced into them anyway.

“Please, sir, I really need to go.”

“With a voice like that, it makes you sound like you’re in a hurry.”

“That’s because I am.”

Charles then got serious. “Maybe those guitar strings will break—maybe you’ll try to find a way to keep it clean.”

“What are you …talking about?” Bruce got extremely nervous.

Charles then knew what was going on with him. He soon decided to take a huge gamble.

“Bruce Andrews, I am placing you under arrest for a series of deaths that took place at the Paradise Hotel over the past month.”

“What do you mean? I didn’t …,” Bruce stammered.

Charles then cuffed him, read him his rights, and forced him into a police car that was hidden only a block away from the café.

*****

As he entered the room, Charles started to take a careful look at Bruce’s face. He was behind a two-way mirror and noticed that Bruce was starting to look dejected. He felt as though it was a silent confession.

“Sir,” Bruce said. “What are you doing?”

A fellow police officer came over to talk with him. “Well, we have evidence that suggests that you might know something about the deaths of the people who were at the hotel you work.”

Bruce then thought about what he was getting into. The cold, lifeless interrogation room with nothing but a mirror and a speaker, was lonely. He knew that if there were plenty of information on him then maybe it would be a simple case.

Maybe it was the soulless and plain feeling of the place he was in that gave him that despair. It made him feel as though something was going to happen and that no matter what he was going to do, nothing could be done to fix it.

*****

As Bruce sat in the interrogation room, he began to think about the situation on his own terms.

What was going on with this whole thing? Why is it happening when so many things have gone down and no one is thinking about who could be totally responsible for it all?

“How am I going to fix this,” he thought to himself.

“Sir, I’d like to have a word with you on how all this went down.”

Charles took a quick note of what was happening. He then asked to walk into the interrogation room so he could talk with him. Another officer followed him into the room to make sure nothing wrong would happen.

However, part of this was to try to ensure that Charles wouldn’t beat him to death in anger. Charles had thought for a moment that Bruce was a very good person to deal with. So why do I now think different? What signals was he giving off? Charles wasn’t sure.

As Charles Henderson entered the room, Bruce was ready to talk with him.

“Sir, you just fucked this place over big time,” Charles said. “Hell, I don’t think that I should even call you ‘Sir’ in the first place, as you’re clearly not dignified enough to actually be referred to by such a title.”

“Well maybe if you saw things my way!”

“Your way? If anything, it’s probably some psychotic way, like you were off your schizo meds. So, if you are ready to say that you are responsible for all this, please talk to me. I want to know everything about what’s going on with you and why you went out and threw your life away.”

Charles continued. “So tell me, if you are really the person who killed all thirteen of those people, then why don’t you talk with me about it?”

Bruce was feeling nervous but at the same time, he came to the sudden realization that there was no way for him to get out of this. “Well …,” he said.

“Yeah?”

“Well, yes, I did do all that.”

“So if you say that then why don’t you talk to me about this? I’m sure that if you hijacked the hotel and caused the livelihoods of so many people to be placed in jeopardy, then surely you have a good reason as to why you did it all. Go ahead, talk to me.”

Bruce then started to talk. “Well, there are several steps for getting into these rooms. I recall the first time I did it …”

Charles quickly looked at the recorder sitting on the table and turned it slightly towards Bruce. He didn’t want to miss a word.

Chapter 32

Bruce started to talk about what was going on each night that he killed people. He started with the first night.

“When I left the room, I figured that there was obviously a need to keep the door locked. Therefore, I came back a few hours later and used a master key on one of the vacant rooms nearby. Fortunately, the room to the immediate right was empty. I figured that out before getting into 915, so I would know there was a way for me to escape.”

“Also, I saw from records that he was the only person who reserved anything at the time, so it’s not like anyone else would come in. That is unless, of course, some woman came over to have sex with him or whatever.”

“I knew there was a way through from the cupboard in through 917 to the next room if you squeeze between the boilers.”

Charles remembered the cupboard through some of his investigations and cursed himself silently.

“The strings that I used tend to be amazingly well-made for all that work. It’s very hard to cut people, although you could always use a shaving razor that someone packs, to take care of it. The fact that it’s so slim is a great thing.”

“I did the same with that other guy that I locked the door on. I got through by the cupboard.”

“Well then,” Charles said. “I want to talk with you about what the hell you were thinking. Do you realize what you’ve done?”

“Yes.”

Charles then asked him about the ways he killed some of the other people. Bruce had a few responses.

“There was one guy who ordered something from the restaurant. I disguised myself as one of the people who worked at the room service counter, to head in on my own. I had no idea that the fish was poisoned. However, I knew that by getting access to his room, it was very easy for me to pull that one off.

“I also found all that information on what people were doing, by taking a look at who people were coming indoors with, and studying the rooms they were staying in. It was amazingly easy to figure out who was staying where, after we started to require identification in order to get into the hotel. The fact that some of these people started to rent one porn movie after another only gave things away a little more. What’s more, it’s very easy to take a look at our servers for movies, to see what people are doing and which rooms are using certain things at any given time.”

Although Charles did get plenty of answers from Bruce, he wanted to know about the whole cyanide thing.

“Well, if this is the case, then how did you manage to find the cyanide to poison all those people at the restaurant? And I assume that you were just willing to take out random people, if it meant just getting to one.”

“Well, I hadn’t planned on taking out all those-”

“Bullshit you didn’t! You knew that you wanted to wipe all those people out no matter what. You practically feel like you wanted to raise the death toll just to make things look sexy, didn’t you?

“Admit it—you wanted to become an idol, didn’t you? You wanted to be one of those people whose names will be remembered for all of history. So why don’t you talk with us about how you managed to pick it up.”

“Well,” Bruce said, “I won’t name names, but I did go online to find a place that sold cyanide. I was able to acquire it and …”

Charles then asked an officer to take a look at Bruce’s credit card records, to figure out where he could have bought it. There were some statements on the card saying that he went to a book website to buy something. It didn’t take long to figure out from the IP address that it was for a website that sold cyanide and various anarchist materials, including items that could be used for building a dirty bomb.

While the police department was wondering how he did it, Bruce explained about how he punctured a hole in the cans of Red Bull in order to insert a small bit of cyanide in each. A small syringe was used to make it look like no one tampered with them. The cans were alarmingly easy to poke holes through, what with them being made of very pliable aluminum.

“Yes, I did indeed kill all of those people and I probably would do it again, at this point. I have nothing to lose.”

Bruce’s statement alarmed Charles tremendously. He noticed that there was clearly some desire from Bruce to want to take human life. This only irritated Charles further and made him think that he was a madman who should just be killed right now.

“Then why the hell would you even get into this stuff? You must have a real death wish. Believe me; if I wasn’t going to be punished for doing so then I would have shot you right in your skull today.”

Bruce was slowly looking pained. He essentially knew there was no way out of it at this point. With every single clue pointing towards him, he began to see that he couldn’t hide any secrets. His confession to everything was clearly to get it all to stop.

*****

As Sandra watched in the next room, she was glad that Bruce couldn’t see her on the other side of the mirror.

She was happy that she could actually reopen the hotel to everyone again and that things could be back to normal very soon.

She didn’t care much about Bruce’s past or the fact that he was so specific when talking about how he did everything. She just cared about how, for once, the place that she worked hard to operate so well, was finally going to be free of the threat that Bruce had imposed onto it.

She never felt like she wanted to talk with him or even address him in court. The last thing she wanted to do was to hurt her own feelings. She didn’t care about the feelings Bruce had, so much as she cared about what she herself was thinking,—she knew that if she testified in a courtroom against Bruce that her feelings would be hurt significantly. She was afraid of looking vulnerable and feeling as though she had been betrayed by someone who worked so hard for the business over the years. It just felt as though there was no way around the fact that everything good that he had done for her over the last six months, seemed to have been for naught.

Chapter 33

Sandra would make a statement about the hotel not long after.

“I would like to make an announcement about the future of the Paradise Hotel. Although I’m fully aware of what’s going on with events that have occurred around the hotel in the last few weeks, I would like to state that effective tomorrow, the Paradise Hotel will be open for business. We are going to operate with as many of our services and features as possible. We’re not certain as to what we are going to add right now but we do plan to allow for some kind of function for our guests.

“In addition, I am proud to announce that we are lifting our self-imposed moratorium on reservations. We will allow people to come into the hotel and set up new reservations as they please. We will have several rates open for every room in the hotel over the next few months. We are also going to allow people who choose to cancel their bookings to do so without having to paying any cancellation fees, until further notice. The cancellation fees may be re-introduced later on but we do not have any news as to when that’s going to happen.

“We appreciate the efforts of the local police department for helping us to get over this difficult chapter in the long history of this hotel and we hope that the general public will consider taking a look at the Paradise Hotel when coming into the area.

“I am not going to take any questions about the hotel at this moment but I will say that we are glad to be back open for business for all sorts of functions around the area. We appreciate the messages that we have received from the general public and we are proud to be in some way supportive of the people who came out here to help us get through this time.”

*****

The next day, the Paradise Hotel opened for business as usual. The police were gone and the news media was extremely light, with just a few people looking at the aftermath of the situation.

The hotel was busy with some of the reservations that were made beforehand. The hotel did not lose much business; in fact, the hotel’s occupancy rates were close to ten percent less than what they were normally like, as the hotel reopened.

Although it would take about three months before the hotel would get back to having no vacancies, business didn’t suffer too much as a result of the incidents.

However, Sandra started to take a closer look at what the area was doing, simply to try to fix the problems that came out of it all. She knew that there was a need to re-think about what was happening just outside the hotel’s doors, and around the corner. How was the hotel going to operate in the future, when there were so many negative things that happened around it? It was clear that something new had to be done in order to fix the hotel.

As a result, she decided to come up with new plans for trying to fix the hotel. She decided against hiring immigrant workers who did not have proper work permits, and for using more security features. She also decided to get the kitchen completely refurbished. This included fixing everything with new materials and security measures, to make sure that only the right people would come into the kitchen for whatever needed to be done.

Still, there was a need to make sure that everyone in the hotel was safe. It was all to see that nothing like the recent incidents could ever happen again. Keeping any stigma attached to the recent events from affecting business long-term was also a motivating factor.

The court trial for the case was not all that difficult. A full psychological exam was used to see if Bruce was actually fit for trial and it turned out that he was just fine. He did not have any problems and was declared fit to be tried.

However, there was really no way for a public defender to present his case in the courtroom. The problem was that Bruce had revealed so much about what he had gotten into, that it would have been impossible for new details to pop up right out of the blue.

In addition, no one from the hotel wanted to talk during the trial or even take the stand. Although this could have been used with the intention of creating some emotional kind of support in an attempt to make the case go as quickly as it could, it was still clear that by talking during the trial, hotel employees would only bring more negative media attention to the Paradise. They were also afraid of looking weak and vulnerable during the trial. They were already hurt by what happened and just wanted to try to distance themselves as far away from it all as possible.

It was a simple open and shut case and it wouldn’t take much for a court to think about the things that were being reported on. Therefore, the case only lasted for a few days before the jury unanimously found Bruce guilty of every count of murder, as well as each count of endangerment that was added to the case.

The one debate that came out of this was whether or not he should be executed for his crimes. The jury was deadlocked for about two days, talking about whether or not he should be executed. While there was a need to get a unanimous decision on what should be done, the people decided on the second day of deliberation to give him the death penalty. They figured that it would be appropriate punishment to fit the crime.

When the news of the jury’s decision came in, there was both a sense of relief and sorrow at the Paradise. “I still can’t believe that he did all of those horrible things,” said Carla.

“Well, I guess it just goes to show that you never really know a person,” added Sally. She was still suspicious of everyone and wondered what other things were to become known from this incident.

Andrew looked at Sandra across the table in the conference room, “You doing okay?”

Sandra looked up and then around the room at her employees, nodding, she answered quietly, “Yeah. I think I am. It’s time to bring this hotel back to being the premier place to stay when visiting Columbus.”

“Here, here,” called Andrew. He was joined by the others as well.

*****

The Paradise was hit with a lawsuit by Bruce’s victims, for failing to have enough security on hand to keep these murders from occurring. The court was extremely mixed in terms of how to handle the case.

“I honestly do not see how this could be blamed on us,” Sandra said while in court. “The fact is, we cooperated with every single thing that we were asked to do and then some, while dealing with the police department.

“We have spent millions of dollars over the years on security measures, screening procedures, and many other things dedicated to making this hotel safe. I understand that there are obvious problems coming from how the place is to be protected but I can assure all of you, that if there was a risk coming from the hotel, then we would have corrected it after a while.

“I insist. Do you really feel that we knowingly hired a murderer to work in our hotel? Surely, we wouldn’t have done so. There was absolutely no way that we could have known about Mr. Andrews.”

The city judge found that the Paradise was negligent in complying with certain code requirements, like making sure an electronic system for signing out different cards was used. However, the judge also found that there was no reason for the hotel to install cameras in every single nook and cranny of the hotel, as it would have ended up infringing upon the civil liberties of everyone at the hotel.

Much of this came from Andrew’s own testimony. “I don’t think that you’d want to see every single thing that happens in a hotel,” Andrew argued while in court. “We have done much over time to improve the security of the hotel but I feel that every hotel must respect the privacy needs that each person has. We want to show that we care about the people who come to the hotel and not try to get in the way of the actions they were engaged in while at this hotel.”

As a result, the Paradise was found liable for a quarter of the $40 million that it was sued for. This amount, $10 million, was appropriately covered by its liability insurance.

Although it was feared that the lawsuit would end up opening a new hole in the image of the hotel and make it even harder for the hotel to operate as well as it was prior to the murders, the lawsuit was quickly thrown out of the public’s mind, as new cases were going on all around the city. When the town’s mayor was caught drunk driving and confessed to committing sexual harassment after several accusations, the eyes that everyone had focused on the Paradise were sent elsewhere.

Like with any other news story, sometimes it takes one new story to shift the focus away. No one at the hotel showed thanks, although the story did result in some laughs and plenty of thoughts about the case that only a late night talk show writing crew could come up with.

No one at the hotel ever thought about the case without being happy about it, because they knew that there was no longer a need to fear what would happen.