I FOLLOWED KARL PAGE’S DIRECTIONS toward the Ramada in West Hollywood and deliberately left my phone in the car when I got there. I didn’t want to be reached by anybody at the Bureau right now, not even Director Burns’s office.
The stark Art Deco lobby was quiet and depressing. Dreary, dried-up palms loomed over rows of boxy chocolate-brown couches, all of them empty. Two elderly women at the front desk were the only customers in sight.
Whoever was in charge here—Jeanne Galletta, I hoped—had gotten a good cap on the scene. The only indication that a major investigation was under way one story up was the two officers stationed at the elevator. I took the stairs to the murder scene, two at a time.
The second-floor hallway was thick with LAPD personnel. Several of them wore gloves, white booties, and “Crime Scene Unit” polo shirts. The faces were all stressed and drawn.
A uniformed officer gave me the once-over. “Who are you?” he asked. His tag said Sandhausen. I flashed him my creds without comment and kept moving past him. “Hey!” he called out.
“Hey yourself,” I called back, and kept going.
When I got to room 223, the door was wide open.
A row of cartoonish stickers, Mary Smith’s calling card, was affixed to the outside—two glittery-winged fairies and another unicorn, which was stuck right over the peephole.
Two stickers were marked with an A, the other with a B.
A maid’s cart stood
parked off to the side.
“Is Jeanne Galletta around?” I asked another young officer as she pushed past me into the hall. The sheer number of people coming and going here was disconcerting.
The female officer gave me a petulant look. “I think she’s downstairs in the office. I don’t know.”
“Find out,” I said, suddenly losing my patience. “Let her know Alex Cross is looking for her. I’ll be in here.”
I steeled myself before I stepped inside the hotel room. There’s a necessary detachment at any murder scene, and I can feel it like a second skin that I put on. But there’s a necessary balance, too. I never wanted to forget that this was about human beings, not just bodies, not just vics. If I ever got immune to that, I’d know it was time to look for another career. Maybe it was time anyway.
What I found was a scene just as predictably brutal as I had come to expect from Mary Smith.
Plus a couple of nasty surprises that I wasn’t prepared for.
Chapter 63
THE BATHROOM WAS A HORROR.
Mariah Alexander, the nineteen-year-old hotel maid, lay collapsed backward in the tub, her head at a nearly impossible angle to her torso. Her throat was torn open where a bullet had erased any possibility of a scream. Her long, curly black hair was streaked with her blood. It looked as though the girl’s carotid artery had been nicked, which would explain the blood spurts that extended all the way up the wall.
A heavy set of keys lay on the tile floor near the dead girl’s dangling feet. My first guess was that Mary Smith had pulled a gun on the young woman, forced her to unlock the hotel-room door, then backed her up into the bathroom and shot her—all in quick succession.
Susan Cartoulis and Mr. Conver would likely have been in the bedroom at that point, just a short hallway away.
Someone—probably Conver—had come to see what was going on.
If the bloodstains on the carpet were any indication, Mary Smith had intercepted Conver halfway between the bedroom and bathroom.
His body, however, was now arranged on the bed next to Susan Cartoulis. The lovers lay faceup, side by side, on top of the covers.
Both of them were nude—another first for Mary Smith—although it was likely they were undressed when she got there.
Pillowcases were draped across the two victims’ hips and over Ms. Cartoulis’s chest, in an odd suggestion of modesty.
Man, this was a wacky and confusing killer. The inconsistencies boggled the mind, mine anyway.
It got even stranger. The king-size bed was perfectly made. It was possible that Cartoulis and Conver hadn’t used the bed while having sex, but soft drinks and a condom wrapper on the nightstand indicated otherwise.
Did Mary Smith actually make the bed after she murdered three people? If so, she was good at it. Nana had long ago made sure I knew the difference between a real hospital corner and a lazy one. Mary Smith knew the difference as well.