“Can we follow the girls?” I said.
Leo switched to an already open window, made it bigger. The girls were walking together, holding on to each other, both looking a little tipsy.
“Keep on them,” I said.
Leo made the window on the computer screen bigger still. I watched them enter the ladies’ room.
“No cameras inside the restrooms?” I asked.
Naji smiled. “That’s illegal, sir.”
“I know. But I had to ask.”
Then something in the other computer window caught my eye. The camera in which you could see the Latin man sitting alone.
He was doing something.
In one quick motion, he reached out a hand and slid Alexa’s half-full martini glass across the table toward himself.
“What the hell?” I said. “Enlarge this window, could you?”
Once Leo did so, we could see everything he was doing. The man slipped his right hand into his jacket. He glanced around. Then, nonchalantly, he dropped something into Alexa’s martini glass.
He took the swizzle stick from his own drink and stirred hers, apparently dissolving whatever he’d just put in. Then he pushed her cocktail back in front of Alexa’s place.
The whole process took around ten seconds, maybe fifteen.
“Oh, God,” I said.
21.
“He put something in her drink,” Naji said.
I guess someone had to speak the obvious.
“Betcha it’s Special K,” Leo said. “Or Liquid X.”
In the other window on the monitor, the girls emerged from the restroom, walked down the hall, and returned to their table.
Alexa took a drink.
More laughter, more conversation. A few minutes later, Taylor stood up, said something. Alexa looked upset, but the guy didn’t. Taylor left.
Alexa stayed.
She drank some more, and the two of them laughed and talked.
It was only a few minutes before Alexa began to exhibit signs of serious intoxication. It wasn’t just the alcohol. She slumped back in her chair, her head lolled to one side, smiling gamely. But she looked sick.
The man signaled again for the waitress, then seemed to think better of it. Instead, he pulled out a billfold, put down some cash, then helped Alexa to her feet. She looked as if she could barely stand on her own.
“Cash,” I said, mostly to myself.
But Naji understood. “He always pays in cash.”
“That’s why you don’t know his name?”
He nodded, started to speak, but hesitated.
“You know something.”
“I can’t say for sure, but I think he may be a dealer.”
“Drugs.”
Naji nodded. He quickly added, “But he never deals here. Never. If he ever did, we would ban him.”
“Of course.”
This wasn’t good.
Now the Spanish guy turned back, took Alexa’s handbag from the floor, then walked her toward the elevator. He pushed the button. She hung on his arm. A minute later the elevator arrived and they got in.
She had an elevator phobia, but I doubted she knew where she was.
THE LOBBY camera captured the guy escorting Alexa toward the front door, almost dragging her. In his left hand he held her handbag. She was stumbling. People entering the hotel saw this and smiled. They probably figured the guy’s girlfriend had had too much to drink.
In one of the exterior cameras, Alexa appeared to be almost asleep standing up in front of the hotel’s entrance. The man handed a claim check to the valet.
Five minutes later, an older black Jaguar arrived: an XJ6, it looked like, from the mid-1980s. A classic, but not in very good shape. The rear quarter panel was dented, and there were dings and scrapes all over.
The dealer helped Alexa into the back seat, where she lay flat.
My stomach clenched. The car pulled away and out of the circular drive.
“I need another angle,” I said.
“Certainly, sir,” Naji said. “His face?”
“No,” I said. “His license plate.”
OF COURSE, the plate number would be recorded on the man’s valet ticket, but I wanted to be absolutely certain. A camera directly in front of the valet station had captured his license plate with perfect clarity.
The name on the ticket was Costa. He’d arrived at 9:08, before the girls did.
Naji burned a bunch of still frames of Alexa and Taylor with the guy, including close-ups of his face from several different angles, to a CD. I had him make me a couple of copies. Then I borrowed his computer and e-mailed a few of the stills of Costa to Dorothy.
The Defender was parked in one of the short-term spaces out front. I got in and called Dorothy. When she answered, I gave her a quick recap of what I’d seen. Then I read her the license plate number, a Massachusetts tag, and asked her to pull up the vehicle owner’s name and address and anything else she could get. I gave her the name Costa, warned her it was probably fake, and asked her to check her e-mail. She already had. I told her that the hotel’s security director suspected he was a narcotics dealer.
Then I pulled out of the hotel’s front lot. About three blocks away I suddenly had another thought, and I drove back to the hotel. This time I didn’t bother with the groovy kid with the stubble at the reception desk. I walked straight back and found Naji in the hall.
“Sorry,” I said. “One more thing.”
“Of course.”
“The Jaguar,” I said. “The valet records show an arrival time of nine oh eight.”
“Yes?”
“I’d like to see all video from the valet station around that time.”
It took Leo no more than a minute to call up the video I wanted: the banged-up Jaguar pulling up to the curb earlier in the evening, and Costa getting out.
Then I saw something I didn’t expect.
Someone getting out of the passenger’s side. A woman.
Taylor Armstrong.
22.
“Alexa,” the voice said, “please do not scream. No one can hear. Do you understand this?”
She tried to swallow.
“You see, when you panic or scream, you hyperventilate, and this only uses up your air supply much quicker.” His accent was thick and crude but his voice was bland and matter-of-fact, and all the more terrifying because of it.
“No no no no no no,” she chanted in a little voice, a child’s voice. And she thought: This is not happening to me. I am not here. This is not real.
“Carbon dioxide poisoning is not pleasant, Alexa. You feel like you are drowning. You will die slowly and painfully and you will go into convulsions as your organs fail one by one. This is not a peaceful death, Alexa. I promise, you do not want to die this way.”
The top of the casket was two or three inches from her face. That was the most horrible thing of all, how close it was.
She gasped desperately for air, but she could only take shallow little breaths. She imagined the tiny space at the very top of her lungs. She thought of the air in her lungs as if it were water steadily rising in some sealed room in a horror movie, the air pocket shrinking to just an inch or two.
She felt her entire body wracked by violent shudders.
She was trapped ten feet underground, under tons of dirt, in this little tiny box in which she could barely move, and the air would soon run out.
Frantically she clawed at the silky fabric directly above her face. Her throbbing bloody fingertips touched the bare cold metal and tore off strips. They hung down and tickled her eyes and cheeks.
Her shuddering was uncontrollable.
“You are listening to me, Alexa?”
“Please,” she whispered. “Please don’t do this. Please.”
“Alexa?” the voice said. “I can see you. A video camera is mounted right over your head. It gives infrared light you cannot see. I can also hear you through the microphone. Everything comes to us over the Internet. And when you speak to your father, he will see and hear you too.”