I knelt and shone my light across the carpeting and, as I’d expected, saw neat rows of tilted fibers that told me the room had recently been vacuumed.
No visible footprints, so apparently the maid had vacuumed the room as she backed toward the door.
I checked the closet, the desk, the chairs. Nothing.
Then the drawers, under the bed, behind the curtains.
Nothing.
I went though the entire room, carefully, methodically, searching each area from different vantage points and various angles until I was satisfied.
And so.
Only one place left to search.
I walked to the bathroom door.
We were looking for Mollie’s body, for a corpse.
But this room has already been searched…
If Mollie had been killed in this hotel, and the killers didn’t have time to transport the body to another location, it was obvious that her corpse had to still be here somewhere.
What is obvious is not always what is true.
I pressed the bathroom door open, and it angled away from me into the dark.
Because of the bathroom’s orientation to the window, almost no light filtered into it, just shadows of different depth, different intensity.
I dialed my MagLite’s lens, widened the beam, and targeted it inside.
The bathroom appeared empty, but I noted that the shower curtain had been pulled all the way across the curved, silver shower rod, thereby hiding the tub from view.
Unconsciously, I found myself sniffing the air, but I didn’t smell the odor that I feared I might find.
I went to the tub.
Holding the flashlight in one hand, I grasped the edge of the shower curtain with the other.
Images from past crime scenes flickered like an old movie reel through my mind. Images of death and terror and gore Slowly, I slid the curtain along the rod while shining the light toward the tub.
Empty.
I let out a small breath of relief, but it was tainted with frustration. I wanted so badly to find something. There were just too many passages in this cave that I hadn’t been able to connect.
You might have been wrong about this room. About all of this.
I took a breath.
All right.
I’d finish looking around, then get going.
Evaluate the scene systematically, start at the sink.
The flawlessly shiny faucet and clean counter told me that the surfaces had recently been wiped down-the shampoo bottle, soap, lotion, were all new.
Towels folded.
Mirror, spotless.
The maid had done a thorough job.
I turned my attention to the commode. The spotless handle shimmered. No smudges.
No prints.
The bowl held nothing but clear water, but when I knelt and looked behind the base of the commode, I did find one thing.
A small, balled-up facial tissue.
It might have been left behind by the killers, but when I narrowed my flashlight beam and inspected it more closely I saw that it was covered by a thin layer of undisturbed dust, so it had almost certainly been in the room for more than the last twenty-four hours.
The killers might have planted it. They’re into that kind of thing.
We would check it for DNA, but whether or not the tissue had been left by the killers, its presence did indicate one thing: there were areas of the bathroom that were easy to miss even for a meticulous maid.
I turned again to the tub.
A little soap scum near the faucet, a few hairs caught in the drain. Hair itself doesn’t contain DNA, but hair follicles do, so if we had roots of the Mollie was unconscious in the wheelchair…
It takes a few hours for drugs to get into the root of someone’s hair, and if Mollie had been drugged for more than an hour and this was her hair, it was possible we might find traces of the drug.
And if so, the guys at the lab could test it, identify it, match it.
Mollie is either inside the hotel or she is not.
I stepped into the tub and tugged the shower curtain across the rod again.
Using the MagLite, I carefully investigated the shower curtain itself. A small amount of soap scum. A few water spots. Nothing else.
Only when I knelt and peered at the far end of the curtain, in between two of the curtain folds, did I see it.
A tiny speck.
Dark.
I leaned closer.
Dried blood.
The only way to notice it was from inside the tub, an unlikely place from which to clean, even for an experienced maid.
It might be nothing. Might not be related. Maybe. Maybe.
I phoned Doehring, told him what I’d found, and he said he’d send the CSIU guys over here immediately. We hung up.
Sure, it might be nothing, but at the moment it seemed like too many tunnels were converging in this room for me to believe that.
The blood.
The lack of DNA in 809.
The proximity of the two rooms.
I closed my eyes and pictured what I’d seen when I arrived on the eighth floor yesterday: two security guards… two maids… three children in swimming suits…
A thought, out of nowhere: Could they have been the Rainey children?
No, the children in the hotel were older.
But I’d seen one other thing.
A bellhop pulling a luggage cart.