I blinked. It was a painfully simple answer, and it made me feel stupider than I could ever remember feeling.
He didn’t need to learn my secrets.
He already knew them.
He had stayed a step ahead of me because he had already hacked into my hard drive, and every time I powered on to find his address or read my e-mail or make a hotel reservation, he was there with me. There were plenty of programs that could do that. The only question was how he had put it on my hard drive. I tried to remember if I had left my computer alone anyplace but home or work—I hadn’t. I never would. But, of course, you didn’t need to touch a computer to hack into it. With the right worm, wi-fi would work fine. And with that thought I remembered sitting in front of my computer and opening an e-mail pitching the new Web site “Tropical Blood.” There had been a burst of fancy flash graphics and then a slow crawl of blood—perfect for distracting me for just a moment while the program wormed onto my hard drive and started telling Crowley everything about me.
It made sense; I was sure I was right, and with two minutes on the computer I could know for sure—but a rapid pounding came on the door, followed by Astor’s muffled, anxious voice calling my name. I turned away from my computer. It didn’t matter. Even without finding Crowley’s worm, I knew it was there. Nothing else was possible.
The knocking came again, and I opened the door and went out into the hall. The two of them tried to peer around me and see Hood’s body, but I pulled the door closed.
“We just wanted one last look,” Astor said.
“No,” I said. “And that’s another thing. You have to pretend to be grossed out and scared. So people think you’re just ordinary kids.”
“Scared?” Astor demanded. “Scared of what?”
“Scared of a dead body, and thinking that a killer was right here in your hotel room.”
“It’s a suite,” she said.
“So put on your frightened faces for the cops,” I said, and I got us all into the elevator. Luckily, there was a mirror in the elevator, and all the way down to the lobby they practiced looking scared. Neither one of them was completely convincing—it really does take years of practice—but I hoped nobody would notice.
I have been at hundreds of crime scenes in my career, and many of them were in hotels, so I was quite well aware that the management, generally speaking, does not consider dead bodies in the rooms a major selling point. They prefer to keep such things quiet, and in the spirit of polite cooperation, I went to the front desk and asked to see the manager.
The desk clerk was a nice-looking African-American woman. She smiled with genuine sympathy and said, “Of course, sir. Is there a problem?”
“There’s a dead body in our suite,” Astor said.
“Hush,” I told her.
The desk clerk’s smile twitched and then faded as she looked from me to Astor. “Are you sure about that, young lady?” she asked Astor.
I put a restraining hand on Astor. “I’m afraid so,” I told the clerk.
She just gaped for several seconds. “Oh, my God,” sh
e said at last. “I mean …” She cleared her throat and then made a very visible effort to pull her official clerk face back together. “Wait right here,” she said formally, and then she thought again and added, “I mean … please come with me?”
We followed her through the doorway behind the desk and waited while she called the manager. The manager arrived, and we waited some more while he called the police. And then we waited even longer while the police and local forensics team went up to our suite. A woman arrived and stared at us while she talked to the clerk. She seemed to be about forty-five, with graying hair, and loose skin hanging from her neck like crepe paper. She looked like she had been one of the party girls who came to Key West and hung out in the bars, until one day she woke up and realized the party was over and she had to get a real job. It didn’t seem to agree with her; she had a look of permanent disappointment etched onto her face, like there was a bad taste on her tongue and she couldn’t get rid of it.
After a quick and quiet conversation with the desk clerk she came over and spoke to me. “Mr. Morgan?” she said formally, and I recognized the tone right away. Her next words proved that I was right. “I’m Detective Blanton,” she said. “I need to ask you a few questions.”
“Of course,” I said.
“First I’d like to make sure your children are okay?” she said, and without waiting for an answer from me she crouched down beside Cody and Astor. “Hi,” she said to them, in a tone of voice usually reserved for clever puppies or human idiots. “My name is Detective Shari. Can you talk about what you saw upstairs in your room?”
“It’s a suite,” Astor said. “And anyway, we didn’t get to see hardly anything because Dexter made us leave the room before we could really look at it.”
Blanton blinked with her mouth hanging open. This was clearly not quite the reaction she’d been expecting. “I see,” she said, and she looked up at me.
“They’re very frightened,” I said, putting a little emphasis on the word so they would remember that they were scared.
“Of course they are,” Blanton said. She looked at Cody. “You gonna be okay, buddy?”
“Fine,” he said softly, and then he glanced at me and added, “Really scared.”
“That’s totally normal,” Blanton said, and Cody looked very pleased. “How about you, sweetheart?” she continued, turning back to Astor. “You doing all right?”