But right now, she had to somehow convince hard-boiled New York City homicide detectives that she was not the perp in the double murders of two longtime patients. She was armed only with a few facts she gleaned from the Post, combined with a little information Kolker unwittingly gave up.
Footsteps in the hall…She tensed, waiting.
But then the hall beyond the door fell quiet; no more footsteps to be heard.
So she sat, not twitching even a muscle, forcing herself to gaze neither at the mirror nor the door.
Commanding her mind to shift gears, she focused on the circumstances surrounding the deaths of Melissa and Hayden.
If she could just think just one step ahead of the homicide detectives… Over and over she spun the story in her head, to think her way out of this beige-painted hellhole and get home.
First, what did Kolker spill? In his attempt to come off like the big guy, he had likely spouted off information known only to police. Same old story…a self-important official leaking like a sieve. Even if he couldn’t actually be a captain, he could at least feel like one for a moment. His bragging may have given her all the information she needed.
She predicted an interminable wait before Kolker showed up to meet her, and she was right.
But those were the rules of the game, and in order to win, she had to play by the rules. A frustrating wait in the interrogation room, after hours in lockup, sitting on a hard wooden bench and pacing a concrete floor, was meant to wear her down and soften her up.
She knew it…and they knew it.
Finally, after a good twenty minutes more had passed, Hailey made the next move. She stood up from the metal chair and strode purposefully up to the two-way mirror.
54
Atlanta, Georgia
C.C. COULD HARDLY FOCUS HIS EYES THIS EARLY IN THE MORNING. He looked down at his wrist.
Eleven thirty?
Eleven thirty!
Where the hell was he, anyway? What was his room number? His head felt fuzzy and even he, C.C., recognized that the taste in his own mouth was from beyond the grave. Of course, he had no idea how bad it actually smelled, and assumed it was nothing a cup of coffee wouldn’t fix.
He staggered off the couch and looked around.
This was definitely not his room… His room didn’t have a leather couch. Wait…maybe it did. Nope, it didn’t, of that he was sure. He flopped back down on the sofa to get his bearings.
Where was his room?
He felt the outline of his plastic magnetic room key in his pocket. Pulling it out, he realized it did not have the room number stamped on its surface. Damn. When did they stop putting your room number on the key? Ridiculous. Another issue for his agenda.
Spotting a phone on a table beside the couch, he reached over, picked it up, and dialed zero.
“Welcome to the Atlanta downtown Marriott Marquis, the home of the world’s elite travelers. This is Ellie, and how may I direct your call?”
That was a mouthful. It was almost too much for C.C. to comprehend first thing in the morning.
“Yes…ah…ahh…what room am I in?”
“Excuse me, sir?”
“I said what room am I in?” C.C. raised his voice on the last three words to help the receptionist better understand his question.
Marquis phone operator Ellie Jostad duly noted the nasty tone on the other end of the phone. Who in hell was this moron? What room is he in? How can you be sitting in the middle of a damn ballroom and not know it? Why was she, Ellie Jostad, destined to answer morons on the phone all day? Her mother was right…she should have finished classes at DeKalb Junior College and maybe she wouldn’t have to listen to idiots like this for a living. Man, she needed a cigarette.
Instead of throwing down her headphone and lighting up a Merit, she answered. “Sir, you are calling from the Robert E. Lee Grand Ballroom study, if I understand you correctly, sir.”
C.C. tried to lower his voice and attempt to reason with someone clearly suffering from a mental disorder.
“No, let me repeat so you can understand me. What room am I in?”
I should hang up on this rashy jackass, it’s just not worth minimum wage. I can hardly put gas in the car and now this…If Ellie’s supervisor wasn’t four feet away at the coffeemaker, she’d blast this guy… “Sir, how can I help you? You don’t know where you are? Do I have that right?”
“I mean what room am I registered to? What is my room number?”
“Sir, I am not allowed to release that information over the phone.”
“Ma’am, you are talking to the next governor of the great state of Georgia.”
“Excuse me?”
Dumb bitch. C.C. had to go to the bathroom badly, and he had an intense aversion to all public bathrooms. He would actually only sit on certain commodes…in his homes, and then, only in his master bathroom, his office, the Supreme Court men’s room…his country club was questionable…
“This is Supreme Court Justice Carter,” he said succinctly. “You’re saying you can’t tell a Supreme Court judge his room number?”
“Sir, it is against the Marquis’s security policy to-” C.C. hung up on her, slamming the phone down as hard as he could at a seated angle. He dragged himself out of his chair and stepped into a wide, sunlit hallway outside the Robert E. Lee Ballroom. His eyes were immediately assaulted with light, and his head pounded.
After walking in what seemed to be a circle, he came upon the elevator. Head still pounding, he leaned up against the wall beside the buttons to wait, his eyes closed against the light filtering through the hall.
This was ridiculous.
Once he was in the Mansion, there would be no meetings before noon.
After a lengthy and unpleasant argument at the front desk, C.C. managed to convince a thin young man in his thirties with a pencil nose, that he was in fact Georgia Supreme Court Justice Carter.
It required producing his driver’s license and undergoing a thorough comparison of his person to the photo on the plastic rectangle.
Reluctantly, the clerk handed him a new magnetic strip card and reminded C.C. that the room number was not displayed on the strip for his own safety.
C.C. wouldn’t let it go. “It’s just damn inconvenient.”
“Sir, as I said before, your room number is not displayed on the card for your own safety.”
Sanctimonious little shit.
C.C. fumed as he turned away from the marble-top desk and headed back across the expansive lobby to the elevator bank.
He would refuse to set foot in this shit-box again when he made it to the Mansion. And he’d see to it that no other Democratic Party soirees would ever be held here on principle.
C.C. made his way down the carpeted corridor and unlocked the door to his and Betty’s room, number 1112.
He started talking before he was even fully in the room, calling out to Betty as he opened the door.
“Betty? You’ll never believe what happened to me!”
Maybe if he talked fast enough and filled up the room with chatter he could avoid the fallout. He had long ago realized his best strategy when coming home after misbehaving was to simply pretend it hadn’t happened.
“Hey, Betty. What a night! Did you have a good time? That was some dress you had on, honey.”
Damn! Before the words were totally out of his mouth he realized his mistake. What if she asked about it? What the hell did she have on? Why did he have to open his big mouth? Wait…he could just say how great her figure was. That was easy. He could fake it.
But the question just hung there in the still air of the hotel room. The AC was off and the curtains were pulled open, letting the sunlight pour into the room.
“Betty? Sugar Pie?”
Uh-oh-not a sound. She must be sulking in the restroom.
The TV was on with the volume muted, having reverted back to the hotel channel offering in-room movies and games. It even offered porn, C.C. knew, and a pretty damn good selection, too. Especially the ones with nurses.
Of course, it would be a cold day in hell before Betty would even think the word “porn,” much less order some. C.C. tiptoed past the two neatly made double beds and rapped on the bathroom door.
“Honey, about last night…I just had to meet up with some of the party people until it was so late…I hated to wake you up late after your drive, so I just let you sleep.”
No answer still. He rapped the door again and finally opened it. He knew she would be there, sitting at the vanity, either in tears or staring at him disapprovingly.
He sucked it up and went in.
Other than the faintest smell of hairspray, Betty was gone.
Nothing…not a suit in the closet, no eyeglasses by the bed, no damp towel on the rack, no tissue in the trash. Nothing.
On the vanity was a note, though. “Leaving early to avoid delays southbound between Atlanta and Forsyth. B.”
Man, she had nerve. If that didn’t beat all.
After all he had done for her. Truth is, he’d made her. She was a skinny nobody before him and now she was Mrs. Clarence E. Carter. And her leaving the hotel like this without even a word?
C.C. left the room and headed for the valet. No reason to tarry.
Easing himself behind the wheel of the Caddy, he put the AC on max and the stereo on high. Luther Vandross’s voice melted through the speakers and sunk into the car’s soft leather interior.
Reaching under the driver’s seat, C.C. dislodged the super-secret silver flask he kept wedged beside the seat controls. Looking into the rearview, he waved good-naturedly at the poor schmuck just behind him driving an old burgundy Toyota Camry.
Poor guy was close enough that C.C. could see his face pressed up against the front windshield, squinting because the glass wasn’t even tinted. The sun was brutal at this time of the day. You just didn’t know what driving was until you’d had a Caddy.