Private #1 Suspect (Private 2)

“I missed her, Siobhan.”

I wanted to say more, but nothing I said would make sense, even to me. It had been a mistake to sleep with Colleen. If I hadn’t gone back to her hotel with her, maybe she’d still be alive.

Siobhan struggled to interrogate me through her grief.

“And so, if you didn’t kill Colleen, who did? Aren’t you supposed to be good at this sort of thing—investigating murders?”

Siobhan was sobbing now.

I stood up, reached out my arms to her.

She shook her head no.

“It’s okay,” I said. “It’s okay.”

She came to me and I held her as she cried.

“Find the bastard. You owe that to Colleen.”

“If it can be done, I’ll do it.”

“I miss her,” Siobhan choked out. “I loved her so much. She and I were best friends. Never a cross word. No secrets. I don’t know how I’m going to go on without her.”

“I’m so sorry, Siobhan. Losing Colleen—it’s a terrible thing.”

My voice cracked and then both of us were crying. It had been years since I had let myself cry. Sadness for Colleen swept through me. Holding her sister felt to me like saying good-bye to Colleen again.

Maybe Siobhan felt as if Colleen were saying a last good-bye to me.

Siobhan pulled away from me but gripped my arms tightly as she looked up at my face.

“You really did love her, didn’t you, Jack? So why didn’t you do the right thing by her?”

“I thought I did. I set her free.”

CHAPTER 50

DEL RIO’S OFFICE smelled of pepperoni pizza.

It was after nine, and he and Cruz had been working on the Beverly Hills Sun murder all day and now well into the night, comparing and contrasting the five murders that had been committed in California hotels in the past year and a half.

The first two killings had been six months and a hundred miles apart, so no one thought they were linked.

Victim number one, Saul Cappricio, was found strangled in Jinx Poole’s San Diego hotel. Victim number two, Arthur Valentine, was discovered decomposing at the Seaview, a third-rate hotel in LA.

By the time the third victim, Conrad Morton, had been found garroted in the San Francisco Constellation, also a Poole hotel, the cops were looking for a connection—but even with several police departments involved, or maybe because three departments were involved, no viable suspect had turned up.

To date, five businessmen, including Maurice Bingham, ages thirty-five to fifty-one, had been strangled with various types of ligatures in their hotel rooms. The men had not worked for the same companies; all had different occupations, lived in different cities. Three were married and two were not.

Right now, Del Rio was at one computer cross-checking phone logs. Cruz was at a second computer, examining credit card charges.

Cruz said, “Bingham used the same escort service as Valentine, who also charged up six hundred bucks for two hours of patty-cake.”

Del Rio leaned back in his chair and rubbed his eyes. “All of them used hookers. Not the same service, though. Is that a lead or is that just what road warriors do?”

“I feel a business trip coming on,” said Cruz.

“Crap. Me too.”