Tie Me Down

She turned, smiled at him though she knew it didn’t reach her eyes. “It’s fine—I’ll probably be here for hours. I’ll just catch a ride back with Shawn.”

Cole’s jaw tightened, but he didn’t protest. Instead, he raised his hand in a wave and said from between clenched teeth, “Be careful.”

She laughed. “Look around. There’s got to be twenty cops here. I’ll be perfectly safe.”

He regarded her soberly. “It’s the enemy you aren’t expecting that often does you in.” He rolled up the window and pulled away, leaving her staring after him, mouth agape.

“Delacroix.” Chastian’s voice cut through the early-morning gloom as he climbed the stairs to stand next to her. “I’m glad you could join us.”

Stiffening at the censure in his tone, she turned to face him. “Shawn called me only fifteen minutes ago, sir. I got here as soon as I could.”

“Well, I know how you ladies like to primp,” he answered, shooting her a patently disbelieving look. “But next time, make sure murder takes priority over makeup, will you?”

Genevieve bit her tongue in an effort to keep from exploding. She was sick of this bullshit, sick of the sexist innuendos and supercilious comments Chastian threw around like candy. She was already pissed enough that Shawn had been called first and had actually made it to the murder site before letting her know what was going on. The last thing she needed was her as**ole lieutenant rubbing in that fact. Especially since there wasn’t a drop of makeup on her face.

Somehow she managed to keep her cool, and headed through the double doors without another word to her boss. Moving through the hotel’s extravagant lobby, she caught the elevator to the fourteenth floor. Exited and followed the signs to the Tennessee Williams suite.

As she walked down the hall, she wondered what had prompted the killer to move so far up the social scale. The Hotel Monteleone was a five-star hotel, and their regular rooms ran hundreds of dollars. The bill for three days in the Tennessee Williams suite would run well into the thousands of dollars.

The door to the room was ajar when she finally found it, but the rookie cop doing door duty didn’t give her any trouble—he was the same one who had discovered Jessica Robbins’s body and he must have remembered her.

Crossing the threshold, she couldn’t help the gasp that escaped her at her first glimpse of the room. It was a scene right out of a horror movie. Bright red blood spattered the pale yellow walls in violent slashes and curlicues, while more had soaked the gold carpet around the body.

“This can’t all be hers,” she murmured as she stopped next to Shawn, who stood next to the poor girl’s body.

“That’s what I said. But Jefferson disagrees.” He nodded at the ME, who was currently crouched beside the body, doing his damnedest not to get blood on his jeans.

“The human body contains nearly six liters of blood. The perp drained her dry, so this might very well be only her blood.”

“But,” Shawn said as he leaned down and rolled the body over, “that’s not the worst part.”

“What is?” she asked, then gasped as her stomach lurched. The room began to spin, and she grabbed on to Shawn in an effort to steady herself.

The killer was getting better at his job, more brutal with each subsequent murder. Genevieve tried to fight down the sickness and horror, but they welled inside of her—combined with lack of sleep—until the room around her began to fade to black.

“I think she’s going over!” Jefferson’s voice was high with alarm, and she felt Shawn’s hands on her elbows as he tried to steady her.

“Don’t do this, Genevieve.” His voice was harsh. “Stay with me.”

But the room was spinning behind her closed eyelids, her knees buckling despite her efforts to lock them in place. Behind her, she heard Chastian’s voice exclaim, “You’ve got to be kidding me!” just before her ass hit the blood-soaked ground, hard.

“Get her head between her knees,” Jefferson said. She heard the sound of gloves snapping off, and then gentle hands rubbed up and down her back.

“Look at me, Genevieve. Come on, girl. Open those baby blues and look at me.”

She did as Jefferson asked, though her eyelids weighed a thousand pounds. She was careful to focus only on him, careful to keep her eyes off the mutilated body in the middle of the room.

“Good girl,” Shawn said. “Now breathe with me.”

“I’m okay.” She shrugged off Shawn’s hand “It just caught me by surprise.”

“Don’t worry about it, kid.” Jefferson offered a hand and she took it, letting him help her to her feet. “It’s pretty bad in here—I nearly lost my dinner, and I’ve been doing this a hell of a lot longer than you have.”

She heard Chastian snort behind her, but he didn’t say anything else, thank God. She didn’t know if she had enough control right now to keep her mouth shut if he started in on her.

“How long have you been here?” she asked Shawn as she approached the body again.

“I got here about a minute before I called you.”

“Have you looked around yet? Tried to find the clues he swears he left for us?”

“I’ve poked around a little, but haven’t found anything yet.”

She nodded and stepped carefully around the body as she pulled on a pair of latex gloves, her feet squishing in the wet carpet. Her gag reflex rose, but she beat it back—no way in hell was she losing it twice in one night. Not with her lieutenant looking for any excuse to bust her out of homicide.

“How long’s she been dead?” she asked the ME as she leaned against the only wall in the room not coated with blood and let her eyes wander over the crime scene. She’d go through the hotel room in a few minutes—take it apart inch by inch. But right now she wanted the whole picture, wanted to see what the room had looked like when the killer had finished his work.

“About three days is my best guess, at this point. Rigor mortis has already come and gone. But he’s had the air-conditioning pumping full blast since he left her here—it preserved her pretty well, but definitely screws with TOD.”

“How did they not find her?” Genevieve demanded.

Shawn shrugged. “The DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door; it worked until tonight. She was supposed to check out today, and the manager came in to see if she had forgotten to turn in her keys.”

“In the middle of the night?”

“Supposedly, some hotshot called up tonight, wants the suite for tomorrow.”

Luc’s voice was less than convinced.

“You think it’s our guy?”

“It sure as shit wouldn’t surprise me.”

Her eyes met Shawn’s, and she knew he was remembering the killer’s note. She’s been out there, waiting, for nearly three days now. Wondering, I’m sure, how long it will take you to find her.

* * *

“Have there been any murders at this hotel?” she asked abruptly, watching as the crime scene tech painstakingly tried to get prints from the dresser across the room. What a joke—this was a hotel, for Christ’s sake. The dresser could have literally hundreds of prints on it.

“I just checked with management,” Luc answered her question as he and Roberto crossed into the room. “They said nothing like this has ever happened here before.”

“Holy Christ!” she heard Roberto mutter as he got his first look at the vic. “It looks like a Friday the 13th movie in here.”

“Has anyone checked the bathroom?” she asked, walking toward the room in question as she continued to ponder the incongruities of this case.

It just didn’t make sense that the killer had done the vic here; all his other victims had been killed in one place and dumped somewhere else. Strange that he would break his MO so completely.

She looked around the suite. He must have had his reasons, but she’d be damned if she had a clue what they were. At least not yet. She had a feeling, though, that whatever they were, they were tied directly to his identity and motive for committing these murders in the first place.

“I took a cursory look around, but that’s it.” Shawn answered the question she’d forgotten to ask as he crouched down next to Jefferson and watched the ME work.

“We’ve already finished with it, so you can do your thing.” The crime scene tech currently dusting the table for prints volunteered the information.

“You didn’t find anything?”

“Not really. A couple hairs, but they look like they belong to the vic.”

“In the bathroom?”

“Yep.”

“Do you think they could have been on him?” she demanded.

“Why do you say that?” Suddenly, she had everyone’s attention.

“He had to have been covered in blood, right?” She looked around, gestured at the walls. “I mean you don’t get this kind of damage without getting some of the blood on yourself. So he had to wash up.”

“We sprayed in there—no blood showed up at all in the shower or the sink,” Jefferson commented as he went back to cataloging the body.

“Well, how the hell does that happen?” she wondered aloud. “Unless he was wearing a shower curtain, for God’s sake, he had to have gotten blood on him somewhere.

“But even barring that, it’s strange. Who on earth pays this much for a suite just to kill a woman? Especially since—if the hotel is to be believed—there’ve been no other murders here. Why change his MO now?”

“Maybe this isn’t our guy after all?” Luc suggested.

She thought back on the sadism of the other crimes. “No, this is our guy. But something’s off. It just doesn’t make sense that he’d choose this suite, this hotel, without a reason.”

“When we find him, I’ll be sure to ask him,” Chastian said sarcastically.

She ignored him. “Her hair was in the bathroom—was this her room?”

“According to the front desk, the vic rented it,” Roberto answered her. “Three nights ago. She was by herself on vacation—or at least that’s what she told the front desk when she asked about tourist attractions. Her reservation was for the weekend.”

“So if she really is a tourist, how’d she hook up with our guy?”

He shrugged. “Bumped into him at the mall? Met him at a bar? At this point, who knows?”

“Run her credit cards and check her purse for receipts. We’ve got to find out where they connected. Where’s she been the last few days?”

“I’m on it,” Shawn said grimly.

“Unless she met him here.” Genevieve paused as the thought occurred to her. “It would make sense, right? Two tourists hooking up in the hotel bar? He’d seem safer if he was staying at the same hotel.”

“That could explain how he got out of here without washing up. Maybe his room’s close by. If he did her at night, it’s not that hard to sneak down the hall a few doors.… ” Luc’s voice trailed off for a minute as they all pondered.

“That could also explain why he left the body here. Kind of hard to get her out of the place without being seen.” Genevieve scanned the room with narrowed eyes. “Where’s her bag?”

“Her purse is on the table—we got her BlackBerry, wallet, credit cards, money. We won’t know until we talk to her family, but it doesn’t look like anything’s missing.”

“But where’s her suitcase?”

“In the closet. We haven’t gotten that far yet.”

Five long strides and she was at the closed closet doors. She pushed one of the sliding doors open and there it was—a Louis Vuitton resting on a luggage stand. It had been unzipped, but no clothes were hanging in the closet.