“But you know people.”
“I do.”
“It’s just a side angle, but he likes this, and so far it’s working for him. He likes the high life and he likes killing. Right now he’s killing people he knows, has some grudge against, but most of them aren’t going to keep him in the high life. Why not make your hobby your profession? He might think that.”
“It’s an interesting side angle. I’ll ask around.”
“He shouldn’t have gotten this far.” She let her head rest back. “He hit it lucky with Nuccio. She picks today to be out of reach, get a new ’link and number. Without that, I connect with her, and I’d have asked about the locks. On top of it, he tried her old number, I know he did. We’d have had that, even on a clone, I’d have known he was trying to find her. Everything just played in his favor.”
“Luck’s a potent thing. Skill’s better.”
He pulled up in front of the Grandline.
The doorman hustled forward. “Lieutenant Dallas? They’re waiting for you inside. Mr. Wurtz at the desk.”
The place struck her as very clean and entirely too bright. Busy even at this hour, the lobby throbbed with movement. Business people, she judged, coming in from late transpo, going out to same. Others sat slack-jawed with fatigue mumbling into hand or ear ’links.
A striking man with a face too young for the silver mane of hair—and maybe that was the point—stepped around the long black counter at her approach.
“Lieutenant, Michael Wurtz. I’m the night manager. I have the security feed you requested. The clerk informed me you’d inquired about Jerald Reinhold. No one registered under that name. We have the alert in place.”
“He got a cab out front at just before sixteen hundred today. So I need to see that feed.”
“I have it set up in my office. Just this way. I admit to being unnerved when Rissa told me. I’ve followed the reports on this man all day.”
He opened a door behind the big counter into a small warren of rooms and cubes, then turned into an office.
“People often take advantage of the cab line here,” he continued. “In any case, security made copies of the times you requested.”
“Take the lobby cams first,” Eve told him.
Wurtz used a remote, started the feed on his wall screen.
Eve spotted Reinhold at 8:23.
“That’s him. Ball cap, sunshades, the two suitcases.”
“Oh dear. One moment.” He turned to a comp, operated it manually, and with a very swift touch. “We checked in a guest named Malachi Golde at eight-twenty-eight. He requested a day room. He showed ID, paid cash up front as it says in these notes his credit card had been compromised at the transpo center. Oh dear,” he repeated.
“What?”
“I see here the ID card is invalid—it’s over a year out of date. The clerk didn’t check that or notice.”
“What time did he check out?”
“Officially, he hasn’t. But we did a room check at six P.M., as he’d only paid for a day room. He wasn’t in residence, nor were his things.”
“Let me see the feed for thirty minutes before he caught the cab.”
Wurtz ordered the time to run.
“Speed it up.” She watched, scanned. “Stop it there. In the suit now, no suitcases, just the duffel. He’d been in and out at least once between check-in and this. I’ll need a copy of the full day. Is the room he used occupied?”
“No. We have it open.”
“I want to see it.”
“Right away. It’s very disturbing.” With nervous fingers, Wurtz tugged at his tie. “I wouldn’t like our guests to be made aware he was on premises.”