Private #1 Suspect (Private 2)

“Need anything else?”

He shrugged as if to say, “What can I do?”

If the cops found us at this crime scene, Private was out of business.

“Okay. I’m calling it time to go,” I said.

My people snapped their cases closed and headed to the door. The Kid turned the camera on his own intense, heated, twenty-two-year-old face and said he was going to shoot the hallway and the exits.

When the video feed was shut down, I called Jinx Poole.

“Jinx, you can turn the security cameras back on. And I need a backup of last night’s tape of the fifth floor.”

“I already made you a copy.”

“Fine. Leave it for Rick Del Rio at the desk. It’s time to have housekeeping discover the body and call the cops.”

“Oh, no.”

“It’s got to be done.”

I was telling my new client that I’d be at the hotel’s bar tonight, when another of Cody’s instant messages popped up on my screen.

The text read, “Lieutenant Tandy and Detective Ziegler are here to see you.”

My stomach dropped to the basement. What was this about? Did they have a lead in Colleen’s murder?

I told Jinx I’d see her later.

Then I asked Cody to send in the bad lieutenant and his partner.

CHAPTER 18

MITCH TANDY AND Len Ziegler entered my office and looked around as if they’d just bought the place at a blind auction and were seeing it for the first time.

I showed them to the seating area, and Tandy and I sat down. Ziegler wanted to look around—at the view, the bookshelves, the photos on the wall.

Tandy said to me, “Why did you mess with the crime scene, Jack? It’s just a little too neat, you know what I mean?

“Girl dies in the middle of the bed with her shoes on. Doesn’t leave any fingerprints, not even in the bathroom. In my experience, the girl always uses the bathroom.”

The cops hadn’t come to bring me news. They were here so that they could read me, scare me, catch me in lies or deviations from what I’d told them last night.

“She was dead when I got home,” I said. “What you saw is what I saw.”

“Jack, I’m a fair guy.”

Aside to self: No, he wasn’t. He was a poisonous human being. His unexamined lack of self-respect and his envy of others made him that way. Dangerous.

He said, “Tell me what really happened so you can get ahead of this thing.”

“Mitch. I told you everything I know.”

“Okay.”

He leaned over the coffee table, straightened a stack of books, and said, “Now I want to give you my theory of how this girl got killed. Colleen Molloy was in love with her boss. That’s not in dispute. Not unusual. Happens all the time. But this particular girl, Colleen, she tried to kill herself after you and she broke up. That’s a fact. Attempted suicide tells me she was emotional. Unstable.”

“Slashed her wrists about six months ago,” Ziegler said from across the room. He had a pocketknife, about six inches long, pearl handle. He tossed it in the air and caught it. Did this throughout as he went on. “Colleen survived. Quit her job and moved back to Ireland, returned to LA two weeks ago to see friends.”