It was a Filipina maid who found the dead girl’s body sprawled on the floor.
“O Dios ko, kawawa naman iyong babae!” She made the sign of the cross and hurried out of the room, screaming for help.
Three minutes later, Jeremy Robinson and Thom Peters, the hotel’s head of security, were in the Imperial Suite staring down at the naked body of the girl.
“Jesus,” Thom said. “She can’t be more than sixteen or seventeen years old.” He turned to the manager. “We’d better call the police.”
“Wait!” Police. Newspapers. Publicity. For one wild moment, Robinson wondered whether it would be possible to spirit the girl’s body out of the hotel. “I suppose so,” he finally said reluctantly.
Thom Peters took a handkerchief from his pocket and used it to pick up the telephone.
“What are you doing?” Robinson demanded. “This isn’t a crime scene. It was an accident.”
“We don’t know that yet, do we?” Peters said.
He dialed a number and waited. “Homicide.”
Detective Nick Reese looked like the paperback version of a street-smart cop. He was tall and brawny, with a broken nose that was a memento from an early boxing career. He had paid his dues by starting as an officer in Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department and had slowly worked his way through the ranks: Master Patrol Officer, Sergeant, Lieutenant. He had been promoted from Detective D2 to Detective D1, and in the past ten years had solved more cases than anyone else in the department.
Detective Reese stood there quietly studying the scene. In the suite with him were half a dozen men. “Has anyone touched her?”
Robinson shuddered. “No.”
“Who is she?”
“I don’t know.”
Reese turned to look at the hotel manager. “A young girl is found dead in your Imperial Suite, and you don’t have any idea who she is? Doesn’t this hotel have a guest register?”
“Of course, Detective, but in this case—” He hesitated.
“In this case…?”
“The suite is registered to a Eugene Gant.”
“Who’s Eugene Gant?”
“I have no idea.”
Detective Reese was getting impatient. “Look. If someone booked this suite, he had to have paid for it…cash, credit card—sheep—whatever. Whoever checked this Gant in must have gotten a look at him. Who checked him in?”
“Our day clerk, Gorman.”
“I want to talk to him.”
“I—I’m afraid that’s impossible.”
“Oh? Why?”
“He left on his vacation today.”
“Call him.”
Robinson sighed. “He didn’t say where he was going.”
“When will he be back?”
“In two weeks.”
“I’ll let you in on a little secret. I’m not planning to wait two weeks. I want some information now. Somebody must have seen someone entering or leaving this suite.”
“Not necessarily,” Robinson said apologetically. “Besides the regular exit, this suite has a private elevator that goes directly to the basement garage… I don’t know what the fuss is all about. It—it was obviously an accident. She was probably on drugs and took an overdose and tripped and fell.”
Another detective approached Detective Reese. “I checked the closets. Her dress is from the Gap, shoes from the Wild Pair. No help there.”
“There’s nothing to identify her at all?”
“No. If she had a purse, it’s gone.”
Detective Reese studied the body again. He turned to a police officer standing there. “Get me some soap. Wet it.”
The police officer was staring at him. “I’m sorry?”
“Wet soap.”
“Yes, sir.” He hurried off.
Detective Reese knelt down beside the body of the girl and studied the ring on her finger. “It looks like a school ring.”
A minute later, the police officer returned and handed Reese a bar of wet soap.
Reese gently rubbed the soap along the girl’s finger and carefully removed the ring. He turned it from side to side, examining it. “It’s a class ring from Denver High. There are initials on it, P.Y.” He turned to his partner. “Check it out. Call the school and find out who she is. Let’s get an ID on her as fast as we can.”
Detective Ed Nelson, one of the fingerprint men, came up to Detective Reese. “Something damned weird is going on, Nick. We’re picking up prints all over the place, and yet someone took the trouble to wipe the fingerprints off all the doorknobs.”