An Unwanted Guest

Finally, she and Lachlan leave the group and go to the privacy of the dining room, where Perez and Wilcox soon report that they are certain there is no one else in the hotel other than the people they know about. There are no signs of anyone having left. They tell her about the broken window and the branch, but they feel the branch likely broke the window on its own. Which means, Sorensen realizes, that it is highly likely that one of the people here is a murderer. For now, each one of them is a suspect. ‘I’d better caution all of them,’ she says to Lachlan. ‘To be safe.’

Sorensen’s first interview is with the hotel owner, James Harwood. She calls him into the dining room, where she has set up an interview table. Some of the warmth from the kitchen filters through. It’s taking a while for the heating to come back up. The shutters have been opened so that the room is filled with daylight. In the natural light, James looks terrible. She wonders how he will be able to go on without Bradley. He sits down in front of her. Beside her, Lachlan has his notebook out. She advises James of his rights, and he indicates that he is willing to proceed.

She begins gently. ‘James, I’m so sorry about Bradley.’

He nods, his lips firmly together in a deep frown, fighting back tears. She knows he’s no stranger to misfortune. His wife died of cancer some years back, and he’s raised Bradley these last few years on his own. He’s had his struggles with Bradley.

She leans forward a little and says, ‘This might be difficult to talk about, James, but you know I’ve known you and Bradley for a long time.’ He looks up at her with red-rimmed eyes. ‘You know I liked Bradley.’

He nods. ‘You’ve been good to us,’ he says, his voice a broken whisper.

‘So don’t take this the wrong way.’

He hunches his shoulders warily, as if he knows what’s coming. Of course he knows what’s coming. She’s certain he’s had these same questions himself, especially since Bradley was killed.

‘Is there any way Bradley could have been involved with this – this situation?’ She looks at him intently, with compassion.

He looks back at her tearfully. He takes his time answering. ‘Bradley was a lot of things, but he would never be involved in something like this,’ James says, his lips trembling. ‘He had his problems. You know that. You know what he was like. He was impulsive, he liked excitement – he thought he was invincible. Driving too fast, running with the wrong crowd. The drugs.’ He sighs heavily. ‘He liked money, and what it could buy. He didn’t want to have to work too hard for it. And he didn’t always know when he was crossing the line. But he was a good kid.’ His eyes flood with tears. ‘He wouldn’t do anything really bad,’ James says.

‘James, I don’t mean to suggest that Bradley could have had a hand in these killings,’ she says. ‘But perhaps he stuck his nose in, perhaps he knew something, something that got him killed.’

‘I’ve wondered that,’ James says at last, exhaling heavily. ‘He had this look that I recognized, the look he had that time he got caught dealing drugs. Remember? He was always so cocky, but he knew when he was in over his head. That’s the way he looked after we found Candice’s body.’ He shakes his head. ‘And I thought he looked tired, like he hadn’t slept that night, the night Dana went down the stairs.’ He looks up at her. ‘What if he saw something? What if he saw who did it?’

‘Did you ask him about it?’ Sorensen asks. James nods, tears running freely down his face now. He wipes them away. ‘What did he say?’

‘He said he was just freaked out about the murders, like everybody else.’ He looks down. ‘I didn’t push it.’

She puts her hand on his shoulder. ‘James, I doubt there was anything you could have done to make things turn out differently.’

He sniffs loudly. ‘Maybe if I’d tried harder to talk to him. I should have. And now he’s dead!’

She lets him cry, her hand resting on his shoulder. Finally, he wipes his eyes and blows his nose. He looks up at her and says, ‘Room 202, with the unmade bed.’

‘Yes?’

‘There’s no way that room was missed,’ he says. ‘There’s no way it wasn’t made up properly after the last guest left. That has never happened before. And once you can talk to Susan, the housekeeper, I think you will find that she says the same thing.’

‘So what do you think?’

‘I don’t think there’s anyone in the hotel we don’t know about. I never did. I know this hotel like the back of my hand. If there was someone else here, I think I’d sense it somehow. Or Bradley certainly would have. And he was certain there was no one else here. Maybe he knew who the killer was.’ He chokes back a sob. ‘I think that one of the guests is the killer, and whoever it is got into that room and messed it up to make us think there was someone else in the hotel. Bradley thought so, too. He told me.’ He looks at her harshly. ‘One of them killed my boy.’

She’s already come to that conclusion herself.

‘Thank you, James.’ She looks at him sympathetically as she stands up. ‘We’ll find out who did this.’

She dismisses James and calls in David Paley next.

‘Sergeant,’ David Paley says courteously to her, as he takes the seat across from her and Officer Lachlan.

‘Can I get you anything? Water?’ she asks.

David shakes his head. ‘I’m fine.’

She’s pretty certain he is the same David Paley who was charged and released a few years back for the murder of his wife. She remembers the case; it remains unsolved. She’s not going to ask him – yet.

She has already had his brief account of what happened. Now, after cautioning him, she leads him through all of it again, each painful step, each awful detail.

‘Had you ever met Dana Hart or Candice White before this weekend?’

‘No, never.’

‘Ever heard of them?’

He shakes his head. ‘No.’

‘Ever met anyone else who was here this weekend?’

‘No.’

Finally she tilts her head at him and asks, ‘What do you do for a living?’

‘I’m an attorney.’

So, it is him. ‘Who do you think committed the murders in this hotel?’

He hesitates, and then says, ‘I don’t know.’

She remains silent, waiting for him to continue.

‘The others – Beverly and Henry and Matthew, especially Henry – seemed convinced last night that it was Ian. They were looking at him as if they thought he was going to murder us all.’ He rubs his eyes tiredly before going on. ‘Perhaps it was relief at finally having someone to blame. They desperately needed to know who it was and they thought they did.’ He looks up at her. ‘In my experience, the human mind doesn’t like to deal with uncertainty.’

He tells her, then, what he hadn’t told her before, the way they turned on Ian.

‘Jesus,’ she says, imagining it.

‘They calmed down. I’ll never forget how relieved Ian looked.’

‘You may have saved his life.’

‘I don’t think it would have actually come to that.’ He shrugs and looks up at her cynically. ‘But that’s me, protector and defender of the accused, no matter how heinous the crime.’

Next, Sergeant Sorensen invites Beverly Sullivan into the dining room. Officer Lachlan, who has an excellent bedside manner, sympathetically offers the bereaved woman a glass of water. She accepts it, takes a sip.

‘Mrs Sullivan,’ she begins, having advised her of her rights. ‘May I call you Beverly?’ Beverly nods. ‘I’m so sorry about your husband.’

‘Thank you,’ she says quietly, tears pooling in her eyes. Lachlan delicately pushes a box of tissues towards her. He’d found them in the kitchen.

‘We don’t know the cause of death yet. It looks like he died of natural causes, but there will have to be a postmortem.’ Beverly nods, wiping fiercely at her eyes with a tissue. ‘I know this must be very difficult,’ Sorensen says, ‘but I’m sure you understand that I must speak to everyone who was here this weekend, to try to determine exactly what happened – and why.’

Beverly nods again, blows her nose. ‘Of course.’

She asks Beverly to give her account of what happened over the course of the weekend. When she gets to the part about bringing Bradley’s body into the lobby, Beverly leans forward slightly and says, ‘Something odd happened then.’

‘What do you mean?’ Sorensen asks. She knows what’s coming – she has already heard about this from David.

Beverly looks at her for a moment, and then explains. ‘It was Ian. He was looking at Bradley …’ She hesitates, as if unsure how to describe it.