The 18th Abduction Read online

  “Tell me what you know,” I said.

  “Housekeeper, Nancy Koebel, went to clean 212 at twelve thirty or so and found the DB hanging by the neck from the showerhead. She reported the body to the manager, Jake Tuohy, who took a look in the bathroom, closed the door, and called it in.”

  “Where is Koebel?”

  Nardone said, “By the time I got here, she’d taken off.”

  Conklin asked him, “You checked out the room?”

  “I was very careful not to contaminate anything. It was dark. I flipped on the light switch with my elbow and stepped into the bathroom. Saw the victim and went to check her vitals. She wasn’t breathing. I touched her leg. She was ice cold.”

  Nardone looked sad, maybe ill. I pictured him in that bathroom, hand against the wall as he reached out to touch the victim. His prints were likely on the wall and definitely on the doorknob. Doorknobs had also been handled by the housekeeper and the manager, probably smearing whatever the perp had left behind.

  “Keep going,” I said.

  “I looked into the main room from the hallway. The curtains were closed, but I could see a little bit by the bathroom light. No one was in the room, living or dead. I called the lieutenant.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Good job, Bobby.”

  We talked protocol for another few minutes.

  I directed Nardone to get plate numbers of every car in the lots front and back, clear and seal off the parking lots, and set up a media liaison post on Ellis.

  “No one but law enforcement goes in or out of here until I say okay. I’ll get you some help to collect the guests and sequester them in the reception area.”

  “They’re like crazy people,” he said.

  “They’re going to object. Be nice but firm. This is a police investigation into a possible homicide, okay?”

  “Got it, Sergeant.”

  I called Jacobi.

  “I need uniforms and investigators, boss. We have to question guests who are not going to volunteer.”

  Jacobi said he was on it.

  Then Conklin and I headed to room 212 and the scene that was waiting for us.

  Chapter 19

  I was very glad to see Charles Clapper standing outside room 212, thumbing his phone.

  A former homicide lieutenant with the LAPD, Clapper was a hands-on criminalist, ran a great shop, and was neither a showboater nor a politician. He was rock solid and I called him a friend.

  We exchanged greetings, and then Conklin asked Clapper if there was security footage.

  “Wouldn’t that be a treat,” said Clapper.

  “I take it that’s a no,” said Conklin.

  “It’s a maybe. The customers here don’t like cameras, but I’ve got two guys checking the ATM across the street. I’m curbing my enthusiasm.”

  The door to room 212 was open, and LED lights blazed in the small room beyond the doorway. Clapper talked as we gloved up and fitted booties over our shoes.

  He said, “I could teach a university course in forensics on this scene. But then, don’t take that to mean I’ve got a handle on it.”

  We followed him over the threshold and got our first look at the room. In many ways 212 was typical, about eighteen feet long from the door to the window at the far end, nine feet wide, the width largely taken up by the bed. The bathroom was to our immediate left, right off the entrance.

  The Big Four Motel had been a fixture in the Tenderloin for thirty years and, during that time, had aged disgracefully. The carpet was dirt gray, original color indeterminate. The curtains were threadbare, and the spread was all that plus stained and soiled. The double bed was still made, but the pillows were disturbed.

  Conklin and I stood inside the doorway, watching the CSIs taking photos of everything, sketching the layout, and dusting for prints, the last being a fairly futile activity given the three decades of accumulated splooge. But it had to be done. Maybe one clear print or even a partial would find a match in AFIS.

  The CSIs had put markers down next to folded items of female apparel on the floor: a dark garment, either pants or a skirt; a lacy top with long sleeves; an underwire bra. High-heeled shoes stood next to the bed, a light coat hung over a chair back, and at the foot of the chair was a large handbag of the tote bag variety. It was unzipped and looked plenty big enough to hold electronics, books, and the kitchen sink.

  As crime scenes went, this one was tidy. But we hadn’t seen the body yet; the two techs in the bathroom were blocking our view.

  I asked Clapper, “Did you find a note?”

  “Not yet. I opened her bag to check her ID. Her license says Carly Myers, and her face matches the photo. We’ll take the bag back to the lab and let you know what we find.”

  If the bag contained a phone and a computer, he’d also check her incoming and outgoing calls, get her text messages and emails, too. A phone could crack open everything from before she went missing. Pray to God it would lead to Susan Jones and Adele Saran.

  Noting that, Clapper said, “We’ve only been in here for twenty minutes, so this is still a prelim. What I can tell you is that the victim is a Caucasian female found hanging by her neck by an electric cord noose. The other end of the cord was wrapped a number of times around the stem of the showerhead and the curtain rod for added support. The cord was cut from a standing lamp in the room. Scissors are on the floor.”

  Clapper went on.

  “She’s wearing an extra-large men’s shirt. Looks new.”

  “What do you make of that?” I asked.

  “Nothing yet. We’ll test it. I saw no defensive wounds on the victim’s arms, but I haven’t checked her hands. Her wrists were bound in front with a pair of panties. The ME will take her liver temps, but I can tell you she’s just coming out of rigor. So I’m estimating that she died twenty-four to thirty-six hours ago.”

  Bodies were different. Environments were different. But it was safe to use Clapper’s guesstimate for now.

  Carly was last seen on Monday night. So she’d died probably late Tuesday night or early Wednesday morning.

  Clapper said, “We’re just beginning to process the bathroom, but you can have a look. Are you ready, my friends?”

  He knocked on the doorframe. The techs came out with their kits, and Clapper toed the door wide open.

  Conklin and I went inside.

  Chapter 20

  I entered the small tiled room knowing that I was about to see something that I would never forget.

  Clapper moved the shower curtain aside with the back of his gloved hand, revealing the body of a woman wearing a men’s white shirt large enough that the tails hung to her midthigh.

  As Clapper had said, the ligature was an electric cord wrapped around the stem of pipe between the showerhead and the wall, and knotted under the victim’s jaw. Her wrists were secured in front of her with pink ladies’ underwear. A few twists of stretch lace could not withstand even Carly’s feeblest thrashing to get her hands free. Her feet hung over the drain, just below the spigots.

  There’d been no sign of a struggle in the main room, and I didn’t see signs of disturbance here, either. The curtain hadn’t been pulled down, the bath mat was flat to the floor, lined up with the tub.

  I tried to picture Carly Myers, a woman who was well liked, attractive, successful, and athletic, getting undressed, putting on a men’s white dress shirt, making a noose with an electric cord, and slipping that noose over her head and pulling it tight. She would have had to secure the other end to the showerhead and then loop her panties around her wrists in a couple of figure eights.

  And then what? She’d stood on the lip of the tub and jumped a couple of feet toward the drain?

  No way. She would have reflexively kicked at the tub rim and the wall, pulled at the cord, and the shower apparatus would have pulled out of the wall—no, no, no. She’d been murdered first, and very likely after that, her killer had strung her up. This was a staged suicide. The panties were a flourish. I’d bet my badge on it.


  Conklin edged in for a better look.

  “There’s a bite mark on her neck,” he said.

  “Good catch. And looks like two bath towels are missing,” I said.

  Conklin said, “He used the towels to clean up and took them with him.”

  My partner took snapshots of the body and the rest of the small room. When he was done, Clapper asked us to back out, and he summoned Hallows, his number two, to help him cut the body down.

  Hallows laid a clean white sheet on the floor between the tub and the wall. Clapper supported the body while Hallows leaned in and cut the electric cord at the midpoint to protect possible DNA on either end.

  I was guessing Myers weighed 115 pounds. She fell heavily when the cord was cut, but Clapper took the weight, Hallows grabbed her legs, and the two of them laid her down on the sheeted floor.

  Hallows bagged Myers’s bound hands to preserve evidence that might be under her nails, and Conklin and I stepped outside to the walkway for some air.

  I said to Conklin, “You okay?”

  “Not really. You?”

  We leaned on the railing and watched squad cars slow and pull up to the curb. Cappy McNeil and Paul Chi, two of the best homicide investigators in the state, got out of a gray Chevy and ID’d themselves to the uniform at the tape. Bystanders and looky-loos crowded the Ellis Street side of the line.

  I wanted to talk with the manager, Jake Tuohy. Now. I had questions.

  Who had checked into room 212? I wanted to see the register and run the names of the guests. I wanted to talk to the housekeeper who had found the body.

  And I wanted Chi and McNeil to interview the motel guests sequestered in the lobby. A guest’s name could light up the criminal database. Someone may have seen something—a questionable person, an altercation, a license plate. It crossed my mind that whoever had strung up Carly Myers in the shower was staying here at the Big Four.

  Despite my feeling of urgency, it was well worth the time spent to kick around theories with Conklin.

  “Let’s play it out,” I said to my partner.

  Chapter 21

  “Rich, do we agree that this was not a suicide?”

  “Agreed. Her tongue wasn’t protruding,” he said. “The panties and the shirt are someone’s idea of a joke. She was dead when she was hanged in the shower.”

  My turn to agree.

  “If she was suicidal, she wouldn’t kill herself in this hole. She’d do it in her apartment. She’d take pills. She doesn’t want her parents to picture what we saw in that bathroom. So let’s back up to the beginning.”

  “Right. Starting with where she was last seen,” he said. “Killer sees her walking back to her car after she and her girls leave the Bridge on Monday night.”

  I said, “He comes up behind her with a gun and forces her into his car.”

  “Or she knew him,” said Conklin. “She gets into his vehicle and he drives her here. There’s a fight and it all goes wrong for Carly. But what about her two friends? Where were they?”

  “Let’s focus on Carly for now,” I said. “Most likely, the guy picks her up, and class act that he is, he checks them into this dump. That was his plan all along. He kills her in the room Tuesday night or Wednesday morning and strings her up. He figures when she’s discovered, the cops will think that her death was self-inflicted.”

  “That works,” said Rich. “The killer washes up and gets into his car. He could be in Vancouver by now.”

  I said, “But there will be evidence of the murder in 212. What about the shirt?”

  Conklin shrugged. “Let’s just say this freak likes a woman in a big man’s shirt. Maybe he left some of himself on that shirt.” He nodded at the road. “Look. We have company.”

  Press trucks and a satellite van had double-parked along Ellis, and reporters hoping for quotes were crowding the line.

  I saw Cindy. She waved. I waved back but made no move to let her through.

  She would hold that against me.

  Conklin said, “We should notify Carly’s parents before the press does.”

  “Right. But first we talk to Tuohy.”

  Chapter 22

  Conklin and I were with Jake Tuohy in his grubby office, sitting across the room from his dump site of a desk.

  He looked to be in his sixties, a heavy bulldog of a man with black tufts of hair sprouting in a horseshoe pattern around his balding scalp. His hands were calloused, his clothes were baggy, and his general appearance was consistent with the entropic ambiance of the Big Four Motel.

  He also had an aggressive, one-note personality.

  While his demeanor and appearance didn’t make him a murderer, I tried him on as a suspect.

  He looked physically strong. He had access to the rooms. His prints and DNA would be all over 212 and could easily be explained away. Would the bite mark on Carly Myers’s neck match an impression of Tuohy’s teeth? Was there saliva?

  Tuohy gave us the registration book—he had to. It was the law. But I had no right to demand a bite impression or a cheek swab, and we had no probable cause to arrest him.

  Time was speeding by and our investigation was stalled. I drummed my fingers on the narrow plastic arm of my chair as we waited for Tuohy’s boss to call and give him a go-ahead to talk to us without a lawyer present.

  The silence was killing me.

  I stared over Tuohy’s head at the large sepia photograph hanging behind his desk, a reproduction of the four railroad tycoons who’d built the Central Pacific Railroad, funding their endeavor with what was widely described as questionable means. They were called the Big Four.

  Also hanging on the wall was a photo of a younger Jake Tuohy in some wooded section of Northern California. He was standing beside a deer that had been strung up in a tree by a hind leg. Tuohy was grinning. He had a knife in his hand and was about to gut his kill.

  That photo of the dead animal and the pleasure on young Tuohy’s face gave me a very bad feeling.

  His phone vibrated.

  He read a text, tapped the phone, read another text, then put the phone down.

  “All right,” he said. “The dead woman checked in on Tuesday night with cash.”

  “Tuesday,” I said. “Not Monday night? You’re sure.”

  “It’s in the book. Tuesday. She didn’t say anything to me, just pushed the money across the counter. Two tens and a twenty.”

  Conklin leaned forward and asked the motel manager, “She was alone?”

  “That’s right.”

  “At what time?”

  “Around the same time as usual. After ten, something like that. And like always, she put a ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign on her door. We honor that around here. Up to a point. Due to a laundry strike yesterday, that point was over an hour ago.”

  Conklin pressed on. “How’d she look?”

  “I don’t understand the question.”

  Conklin said, “Did she seem normal? Or was she stressed?”

  “Fuck if I know,” Tuohy said. “I was on the phone. She pushed the cash at me. I gave her the key card to 212.”

  I said, “You said ‘as usual.’ You’ve seen her before.”

  “Sure. Like, every few weeks. Cinnamon was some kind of working girl.”

  “Cinnamon? No, I think you’re talking about someone else. I’m asking about Carly Myers.”

  “Look, I don’t know and I don’t care what her real name was. You showed me her picture, and I’m telling you now. The only way I know that girl is as Cinnamon. And from what I can tell, her customers liked some spice.”

  My mind spun. Carly Myers was a working girl? A prostitute?

  No way. How could that possibly be true?

  Chapter 23

  Tuohy said that Carly Myers had checked into the motel on Tuesday night and that her name was in the register.

  I checked it myself.

  As Tuohy had said, her name was right there, wedged in between other guests who’d checked in on Tuesday night. So whe
re had Carly been for twenty-four hours after leaving the Bridge on Monday?

  This didn’t make sense.

  I pulled up Carly’s picture on my phone, walked it across the room, and showed it to Tuohy.

  “This is the dead woman?”

  “Yeah. That’s her. She went by the name of Cinnamon. Usually, her pimp drops her off in the parking lot, but I didn’t see him when she checked in the other night.”

  Conklin asked, “What’s the pimp’s name?”

  I expected Tuohy to say again, “Fuck if I know.” But he said, “Denny or Danny. I’ve heard her say, like, ‘Later, Denny.’ And don’t ask me do I know anything else about him, because I don’t. Never saw him close up. Couldn’t pick him out of a lineup, don’t know what kind of car he drives, or if he has any ’stinguishing marks.”

  There was a knock on the door.

  Tuohy groaned, leaned heavily on his desk, and got up. He went to the door and opened it.

  Officer Nardone came in and gave me a report; he’d taken guest names and photographed their IDs. A few of the guests were feisty. One had told him he was out on bail and an arrest would sink him. Another had thrown up on Nardone’s shoes.

  “I told you. It’s nothing but wild animals out there.”

  He shook his head, then said, “None of them saw anything or anybody, including the deceased. Also, Inspectors McNeil and Chi have taken over the interviews.”

  This was good. The ball would be moving now.

  I went into our makeshift holding room and talked with McNeil and Chi, and together we set up a phone relay between them and Nardone. Nardone would run the guests’ names on the car’s computer, while Chi and McNeil stayed with the guests. Nardone would let them know who had a rap sheet.

  Einhorn was manning the door. I told him to go out to the street and take pictures of the crowd. The doer might come back to the crime. It happens.