Her Last Whisper (40 page)

“None of the johns match the criteria.” Lena’s tone was despairing as she shoved back away from her computer. It was almost lunchtime and they’d been working nonstop. Lena had broken the log-in code to every one of the members-only videos on the Dynasty (“Die-nasty, get it?” was Michael’s contribution to that) Films site, and confirmed that they were all snuff films featuring the murder of one of the victims. Buzz had been trying to track down the owners/purveyors of Dynasty Films beyond their Internet identities, which were (of course) fictitious. Charlie had been on Skype reinterviewing the victims’ closest relatives before moving on to what she was currently doing. Tony had been on the phone with his contacts at headquarters, getting autopsies on the victims prioritized so that they could have at least some answers that day. Lena continued, “They
don’t live within the grid, they don’t work in any of the hotels or on the Strip, they have no possible connection with any of the victims that I can find. And none of them is named Joe.”

“Having a female accomplice tells us that he’s a narcissist. A thrill-seeker killer whose secondary motivation is financial gain. Being involved in filmmaking provides him with both an audience and money, which is what he wants,” Charlie said, as she paged through the files of all of Destiny Sherman’s other known associates. She looked at Lena. “It’s likely we’re looking for a failed or relatively unsuccessful performer, so add that to the list. And remember, Joe might not be his legal name. It might be a nickname, or just something she called him.”

“Great.” Lena rolled in her wheeled chair back to her computer.

“This is Las Vegas. They gamble here. There are all kinds of unexplained deposits in half these bank accounts,” Buzz growled in frustration. “I can sort them out, but it’s going to take some time.”

Nobody said what they were thinking: that time was exactly what they didn’t have.

“Did you go through Destiny Sherman’s credit card records to try to pinpoint where she went on the day she was killed?” Tony asked Lena.

“If she spent any money the day she died it was cash,” Lena replied grimly. “Nothing showed up. I’m actually going back for a month to identify places and areas she frequented. I’m having the computer map it. It’ll
ping
me when it’s done.”

Tony nodded. “See if you can find something that places her within the grid. Any of the hotel staff panning out?”

“Too many of them are panning out is the problem.” Lena’s voice was tight. She patted a sheaf of paper beside her computer. “I broke it down to the top fifty suspects by using that checklist of Charlie’s, but the ones I have here all meet four of the criteria—not necessarily the same four, but four—so fifty is how many we’re stuck with. Buzz is checking them out now.”

“And a thankless task it is,” Buzz muttered, before a rap at the door had them all looking up.

“Somebody order pizza?” one of the local agents stood in the doorway beside a deliveryman in his distinctive red shirt carrying
two big boxes. Charlie’s stomach gave a gurgle of anticipation as the smell of the hot pies reached her, and she realized that, except for coffee, none of them had eaten all day. With her concentration broken, she glanced at her phone. She’d called Tam twice more, and her friend still hadn’t called back.

“So the voodoo priestess is sleeping in,” Michael said, correctly interpreting her look. He’d been flickering, not real fast, not real close together, but flickering, all day. She didn’t know what to do about it except wait to talk to Tam, but she was growing increasingly anxious. If he were to disappear—she couldn’t even finish the thought. “She was probably tired after the drive.”

That might be true, but it didn’t make Charlie feel any better.

“I did.” Tony paid, and by silent consensus they ate where they were. The television in the break room stayed on CNN, and as none of them wanted to listen to the regular Breaking News bulletins about the bodies still being recovered or any other aspect of what the station was calling, in big bold banner headlines scrolling across the bottom of the screen, The Search for the Cinderella Killer, they kept out of the break room.

After she finished eating, Charlie couldn’t stand it anymore. She went to the restroom and, giving up on Tam’s cell phone, called her office, which was in a carriage house behind her home and where she saw clients every afternoon. Maria Pelissero, Tam’s longtime assistant, answered.

Tam wasn’t there.

“Would you mind going into the house and telling her to please call me right away?” Charlie asked. She’d met Maria a number of times, and Maria knew that she was one of Tam’s closest friends.

“No, you don’t understand. She’s not here, not in the office, and not at home. I’ve already been through the house. She missed both of yesterday’s appointments, and she’s got another one this afternoon. She
never
misses her appointments.” As Maria spoke, Charlie felt an icy hand clutch at her heart. Maria continued, faltering now. “I thought she must still be in Las Vegas with you. There’s something wrong, isn’t there? Should—should I call the police?”

“The voodoo priestess is missing? Holy shit!” Michael said, while Charlie told Maria, “The police won’t accept a missing-person
report on an adult for forty-eight hours. I’m working with an FBI team right now: I’ll have them look into it. In the meantime, if you hear from her, please call me.”

Charlie disconnected, looked at Michael, and tried to keep her voice steady as goose bumps raced over her skin. “This guy’s got her. I know it.”

“I’m sorry about your friend.” Lena’s eyes were so shadowed with fatigue that it looked like she had dark smudges beneath them. They were all running on just an hour or two of sleep and were exhausted, though the extreme stress Lena was under meant she was showing it the most. “But we can’t stop to look for her. You know we can’t. If Giselle is still alive, she’s running out of time.”

“Tam’s disappearance has to be connected with this case.” Charlie’s voice was tight. “It has to be. It’s too big a coincidence otherwise.”

“There’s no such thing as coincidence.” Michael and Tony said it at almost exactly the same time. Charlie was too wired to acknowledge either of them, or how ironic it was that both the men in her life were having parallel thoughts. Michael’s flickering seemed to be slowing down—she was giving cautious credit to Tam’s grounding spell for that—but her fear for Tam was growing by leaps and bounds.

They had confirmed that Tam had completed an online checkout and her car had left the self-pay lot. The hotel had already e-mailed security footage of her car being driven out of the lot. The time stamp said it was 2:06 p.m. the previous day. Checkout was at eleven, so that left a gap of three hours.

The glare of the sun on the window made it impossible to determine who was behind the wheel. If it was Tam, what had she been doing for those missing three hours? And where was she now?

“We’ve got six singers, four improvisers, four magicians, two clowns, two stand-up comics, an acrobat, a sword-swallower, a flamenco dancer, a knife-thrower, and a guy who makes balloon animals in the restaurants, which I guess counts,” Lena reported. “By adding performers to the checklist, that brings our previous fifty down to twenty-three. Which we have identified because they meet certain criteria, not because we have any direct evidence against them.”

“That’s what criteria do—it winnows the pool.” Charlie was reviewing the security footage from Tam’s floor the morning she checked out. As she spoke, she fast-forwarded past the part where she walked Tam to her room, hugged her, and then left—no point in having everyone else watch her engaging in what looked like an animated conversation with air (i.e., Michael)—then kept going until Tam left her room. The time stamp said 10:41 a.m.

She was carrying her purse, but didn’t have a suitcase with her. Charlie wasn’t surprised to see her return to her room at 10:56. Obviously Tam had run a quick errand downstairs. Then at 11:01 a.m. Tam left her room again, this time pulling her small leopard-print (typical Tam, who would never choose something as basic as black) carry-on behind her. Charlie watched her walk to the elevator. Someone inside the elevator must have seen her coming, because they held the door open for her. Tam stepped inside, and the door closed.

“She left her room at check-out time.” Tony was looking at the footage over her shoulder. “What did she do for the next three hours?”

“I don’t know. I’m going to try to follow her through the hotel.” Charlie clicked through the rest of the footage the hotel had sent—basically all their security video for that day—but could find no other image of Tam.

She went back to check the elevator videos, meaning to follow Tam’s movements chronologically. Six elevators serviced that floor. She had footage for five of them. There was no video of Tam in the elevator. There was no video of the elevator Tam had gotten into.

Charlie’s heart started to beat faster as she reported her finding aloud.

“That ain’t good,” Michael said.

Tony got on the phone to the Conquistador’s security office to see what had happened to the missing footage, while Charlie went back to the video of Tam leaving her room at 11:01, suitcase in tow. Everything about Tam from the soft swing of her red hair to the vibrancy of her pink jumpsuit to her confident stride in her delicate gold sandals looked perfectly normal.

Charlie paused the video just as Tam stepped into the elevator. The angle of the camera made it impossible to see more than a slice of the interior. But what she did see made her frown.

“The camera in elevator six is broken,” Tony reported as he ended his call. “It’s being replaced, but there hasn’t been any footage from it for the last week.”

“There’s no such thing as coincidence,” Michael repeated grimly. “The guy either knew the camera was broken, or he broke it himself.”

Re-examining the image of Tam getting into the elevator, Charlie was afraid he was right.

Someone was already in the elevator when Tam got on: a man. Had he been waiting for her? With the axiom about coincidence revolving through her head, Charlie strongly suspected he had been. She could see a black dress shoe and, above it, the lower part of a leg in well-pressed black trousers. She could also see, at waist height above the man’s leg, the curl of one side of a silver bar-type handle, and beneath that, the fall of a white cloth that stopped some six inches short of the floor.

Looking at the image, Charlie’s mouth went dry.

“What does that look like to you?” Charlie pointed to the handle and cloth.

Everyone except Lena was now gathered around her computer, and they all agreed it looked like a room service cart.

When Lena heard that, her head came up.

“Giselle ordered room service the night she went missing,” Lena said.

Tony moved toward her. “Let’s look at that footage of the night Giselle disappeared again.”

Lena brought the footage up, and they all watched as room service was delivered to Giselle in her room after Lena had left for the airport. It would have been a riveting moment, except the waitress who brought the meal on the cart was obviously not Destiny and, since Charlie insisted that the killers were a mixed-gender couple, obviously not who they were looking for.

A video hour later (fast-forwarded through in a matter of minutes), a waiter showed up with an empty cart and knocked on Giselle’s door, presumably to pick up the remains of the meal. The door opened, and he pushed his cart inside, then reappeared with it piled with dirty dishes some ten minutes later. After that, there was no activity until just before midnight, when Giselle walked out of the room, dressed for a night on the town, and headed toward the elevator.

“Pause that, right there,” Charlie said suddenly. “Can you enlarge it?”

Then, as Lena did both of those things, Charlie pointed to something barely visible below the sleeve of Giselle’s sequined T-shirt, which had ridden up a bit when Giselle swung her arm forward as she walked: “Look. Did Giselle have a tattoo?”

“No,” Lena breathed as they all stared at the image, a curved line of dark blue ink that was only visible in that one frame. “She didn’t.” A second later, Lena said what Charlie, and presumably the rest of them, had just remembered, “But Destiny Sherman did.” She stared hard at the woman on the monitor. “My God, that’s not Giselle. That’s Destiny Sherman. She’s wearing Giselle’s clothes, and a wig.”

Charlie remembered the wigs on the shelves in Destiny Sherman’s room with a little thrill of horror.

“How did I not see that before?” Lena couldn’t tear her eyes away from the monitor. “If she’s wearing Giselle’s clothes, whatever happened to Giselle had already happened.”

“None of us saw it.” Tony’s voice was briskly businesslike. “Let’s go back to the last place where we’re sure it’s Giselle and take it from there.”

Lena rewound to when Giselle opened the door to let the waiter in to pick up the used dishes. The camera recorded the door opening and the waiter pushing his cart inside, but showed no glimpse of whoever was inside the room opening the door.

The shot before that, where the waitress delivered the food, showed Giselle opening the door then stepping out of view to allow the waitress in.

“Are we sure that’s Giselle?” Tony asked. The footage showed Giselle’s face, so determining her identity wasn’t difficult.

“Yes,” Lena and Buzz answered at the same time.

“Okay. Then that”—Tony tapped the screen—“is the last time we’re sure Giselle was present and unharmed.” At his direction, Lena once again fast-forwarded through events until Destiny Sherman left the room dressed as Giselle. Then they fast-forwarded through more footage until Lena returned to the room shortly thereafter.

“It had to be either the waitress who delivered the food or the waiter who picked up the dishes,” Buzz said. “One of them did something to her, and then managed to get her out of the room.”

“It was the waiter,” Charlie said. “The primary will be a male.”

Michael said, “She has to be stuffed in that cart. The way the white cloth hangs down to the floor you could hide almost anything, especially if you knew you were going to be putting unconscious girls in it and modified it so they’d fit.”