We also found that someone had sprayed some kind of goo on the security camera lenses a few minutes before the door to Jackson’s room was opened, leaving the feed a blur. Was that what was on the attorney’s pants?
In any case, while the crime scene techs worked and the hotel security staff made copies of all closed-circuit feeds for the last five hours, Sampson and I went to find Mandy Bell Lee Francones. The country-western star was in her room two floors below Jackson’s, wearing the same clothes we’d seen her in the night before, sitting up against the headboard with her feet drawn up under her. She was tear-streaked, mascara-streaked, nursing a hangover, in shock and grieving.
“People dying all around me,” she said in a trembling voice.
“We wondered about that,” Sampson said.
“Someone said it was a heart attack?” she asked.
“We don’t know exactly,” I said. “When was the last time you saw Mr. Jackson?”
“I don’t know. Nine? Ten? I’d had a lot to drink.”
“Here the entire night?” Sampson asked.
“Yes, I…” Mandy Bell stared at her lap, looking lost. “I passed out in my clothes, woke up when security came knocking.”
Knowing that the electronic records backed up her timeline, I said, “For the moment, let’s say it wasn’t a heart attack. I’m not saying it wasn’t, but I have to ask in any case. Do you have any stalkers? Someone who’d want Mad Man and Mr. Jackson out of your life?”
The country-western star began to weep softly. “Two or three. I got restraining orders on all of…Timmy had a son, you know? From before the divorce? Garth’s only two and now he’s never gonna know his daddy. And I…”
That last thought seemed to crush the spirit out of her and she started to sob. “’Scuse me,” she said, got up and went to the bathroom, and shut the door.
She returned several moments later, having cleaned the makeup off her face and looking pale and bedraggled.
“Can you give us the names of the stalkers?” Sampson asked.
She nodded numbly, sat on the bed again, said, “I hate them.”
“You got someone you want us to call?” I asked.
“You mean like another lawyer?” She sniffled.
“Like someone who could be with you,” Sampson offered. “This is kind of a lot to deal with, don’t you think?”
“My parents are dead,” she said dully. “Got a sister in Omaha. Cindy Bell.”
“Give me Cindy Bell’s number,” I said.
Ten minutes later, I hung up, said, “She’s catching the next—”
There was a knock at the hotel room door. I went and opened it to see the hotel’s security chief, a small man named Waters.
“One of our waiters just staggered in here bleeding from the head,” Waters said. “He says a guy who looked like Elvis knocked him out.”
We found Carl Raynor being attended to by EMTs in a locker room off the hotel kitchen. Raynor told us it was still dark out when Elvis came up claiming that he was arriving for his first day of work.
“Next thing I know,” Raynor said, “I come to in the bushes, my head feels like World War Three…and my ID’s gone.”
Now we had an even better time frame, and using electronic records and the cameras in and around the security entrance, we were able to get several looks at the man we believed had killed Mandy Bell Lee’s childhood sweetheart.
Elvis was smart, though. Like the suspect we’d seen in street camera footage near the Superior Spa, he walked hunched over, seemingly aware of the lenses trying to capture his image. We saw him wheeling a food cart and heading to Jackson’s floor. We saw him leave through the service entrance fifteen minutes later. But we never got a solid look at his face.
One of the hotel’s bakers came forward, said she’d come face to face with the killer, talked to him even, and gave us a much better sense of his features after looking at still shots of him from the surveillance cameras.
“He seemed like a nice guy,” she said. “Cheerful, you know?”
Sampson nodded sadly. “We’ve been investigating murders a long time, ma’am, and I’m sorry to say that you almost never hear someone say they met someone who turned out to be a killer and they just knew from the get-go that he was an out-and-out psychopath.”