18th Abduction - James Patterson Page 0,28

on the board over the words Day Three, Thursday.

I said, “This was the day that the motel manager, Jake Tuohy, called us to report the dead body hanging in the shower of room 212. He told us—and this is unconfirmed—that Carly Myers was turning tricks. Also reported by Tuohy, she may have had a pimp called Danny or Denny. He can’t or won’t describe him.”

I asked the room, “Anyone know of such a person?”

No one answered, but I saw some taking notes.

I said, “There’s another missing person. Nancy Koebel is the housekeeper who found the body.”

I laid it out.

According to Tuohy, after Koebel told him about the body, she was hysterical, grabbed her purse, and ran out to the street, never to be seen or heard from since. We had no picture of her. Her phone was a prepaid burner, and she wasn’t answering our calls.

Conklin added, “She may have been spooked by the murder, or maybe the doer saw her and she has good reason to be freaked. She’s a critical witness.”

Inspector Joy Robinson piped up from the back. “Or the killer knows her and offed her to stop her from talking.”

Conklin nodded, put down his pointer. “Alive or dead, we need to find her. Alive is preferable.”

We all looked toward the squad room entrance when someone entered, standing off to the side of Brenda’s desk.

“Sorry to interrupt,” he said into the silence.

John Clark was a senior video tech from our forensics lab. I knew him, and when I read his expression, I felt a small surge of hope.

“You’ve got something?” I asked.

“Maybe,” Clark said. “I think maybe I do.”

CHAPTER 37

As soon as Clark made his report, I called an impromptu working lunch with my best friends and members of the Women’s Murder Club.

We were all working that weekend—that’s how alarmed we were that the women were still freaking missing.

The Women’s Murder Club met at MacBain’s, the bar and grill located across and down the street from the Hall of Justice. We had all arrived by quarter to twelve, before the lunchtime crush, to snag our favorite spot: the small table with high stools by the window at the front of the room. With luck, we’d get our order in to the kitchen before it was overwhelmed.

We’d done this for years, since Cindy helped me solve a gruesome double murder back in the day. She had jokingly named us the Women’s Murder Club and it had stuck. Now, whenever any of us had a knotty problem, love or work or what not to wear, the four of us would get together and kick it around.

I signaled to Sydney MacBain, our favorite waitress, and she hustled over to take our order, the usual—burgers, fries, and beer times four. She gave a rare smile, told Claire she looked pretty in pink, and headed off toward the kitchen. Meanwhile, the room was filling up. The jukebox was rocking. And laughter ricocheted from wall to wall.

This was a conference, but apart from being geographically desirable, MacBain’s was nothing like a conference room. We put our heads together, literally, so that we could hear and be heard. Cindy was sworn to keep everything we said off the record, and she snorted her annoyance. “When are you going to trust me, hmmm? How many more years?”

“We trust you,” we said in unison.

I added, “If I don’t say it, I’m negligent in my duties. Don’t take it personally, Cin. Please. Okay?”

She tossed her head, said, “Okay, okay,” then asked me, “What news on Carly Myers?”

I said, “An hour ago I would’ve said we’d hit a wall.”

“And now?” Cindy asked.

I filled my friends in on the hot news delivered to us direct from our forensics lab.

“The ATM at the deli across Polk Street and facing the back of the now infamous Big Four Motel captured three images of a man who might be a suspect in Carly Myers’s murder.”

Yuki said, “Can you show us?”

“Here you go.”

There, on my phone, was the lab’s photographic reconstruction of ATM snapshots taken from a hundred yards away of a man moving along the motel’s second-floor walkway. A floodlight in the parking lot illuminated this individual, but he was captured by the camera at an oblique angle. The reconstruction had sharpened the man’s features.

I said, “From what our lab techs can determine, he’s in his mid-thirties, sandy-colored hair, five ten, and fit. They’ve refined his facial features as much as possible, but they don’t match with anything in ViCAP or DMV.”

Yuki asked,