The Whole Truth (A. Shaw 1)

He had never felt more alone.

Katie took an empty notebook from her bag, inserted something in it, and walked into the lobby of the Balmoral. The receptionist on duty was a tall, thin young man. Katie strode up to him and held up the notebook.

“A man dropped this in the lobby. There’s no name in it, but he may be staying at the hotel. He got in a cab before I could stop him.” She described Shaw in detail.

“Yes, he is staying here, miss,” said the young Scotsman. “A Mr. Shaw. I’ll put it in his box here.”

She watched as he placed the notebook in the slot for room 505. When he turned back around she’d skittered away.

God bless the Scots, she thought. If she’d tried that stunt in New York they would’ve thrown the book in her face, wrestled her to the floor, and then called the cops.

She waited for two hours in the lobby, her gaze flitting to the front desk from time to time as she sipped a Coke and chewed her nails till they bled. She stirred when the young Scot turned his position over to a middle-aged woman whom Katie had never seen before. As soon as the man

was out of sight Katie approached the front desk.

“I’m staying in room 505 with my fiancé,” she began. “I gave him my key when he misplaced his, but he was supposed to put it in a notebook he left for me so I could get back in the room.”

The woman glanced at the wall of slots behind her. She reached into 505’s box and pulled out the notebook.

“This notebook?” she said.

Katie nodded and took it from her. She looked through the notebook and was careful to let the object she’d placed in there earlier fall out on the front desk. The woman picked it up for her. It was Katie’s American driver’s license. The woman looked at the photo and then at Katie, who said, “I’ve been looking all over for that. He must have found it in the room and put it in the notebook for me.”

“And where is your fiancé?” the woman asked pleasantly enough, but with the tone of someone who had a job to do and intended to do it.

“Glasgow.” She flipped through the pages. “He’ll be back tomorrow, but he didn’t leave the key. How can I get in the room?”

“Have you tried calling him?”

“Yes, he doesn’t answer. Service can be a bit spotty.”

“Don’t I know it,” the woman agreed heartily.

She glanced at the driver’s license again.

“Well, we can’t have our guests sleeping on the sidewalk, now can we?” She pulled a spare key from the slot and passed it and the license to Katie.

Katie glanced at the woman’s nametag. “Sara, I can’t thank you enough. I still can’t believe he forgot to leave the damn key.”

“I’ve been married to my Dennis for twenty-six years and the poor bloke can’t remember birthdays, anniversaries, or, on occasion, all the names of our five children. So if it’s just keys your man forgets to leave I’d go ahead with the marriage and count your blessings, ma’am.”

Katie headed to the elevator.

A minute later she was opening the door to 505. She had watched Shaw walk away from the Balmoral so she was reasonably sure he wasn’t in the building. But she still told herself she had just ten minutes to search the place.

Nine minutes later she’d gone over every square inch of the room and the few belongings he’d left behind and come up with a total zero. Well, not exactly. In the pocket of a jacket she’d found a sales receipt for a book purchase in Dublin. But that wasn’t terribly helpful.

She walked along the perimeter of the room and stopped by the desk, her gaze running over the items there, all hotel-issued. That’s when she saw it. She sat and pulled the blotter toward her, took a pencil off the holder, and carefully brushed the pencil point across it. A name slowly emerged from the white paper where Shaw had carved it with such pressure that it had been imprinted on the page underneath the one he’d written on, an amateurish mistake. Katie had no way of knowing he’d committed this blunder while distressed about Anna.

“Anna Fischer,” Katie said. The name was not uncommon, but for some reason Katie thought she recognized it.

And then something clicked in her memory. She looked at the sales receipt she’d found in his jacket pocket.

“An Historical Examination of Police States,” she read. Again, something was percolating in her mind.

She left the room and called the phone number of the bookshop on the receipt. She didn’t expect anyone to answer at this hour, but a woman’s voice came on. Katie asked if they carried that book. They did, she was told, but they only had one copy left. “And the author’s name?” she said. “I can’t remember.”

“Anna Fischer,” answered the woman.