Hooking Him (How to Catch an Alpha #3)(57)

“You got it, Calvin.” He lifts his chin.

I walk farther into the room and stop in the middle to look around. The first thing I notice is that it’s clean, with a suitcase unzipped but closed on a stand between the dresser and TV stand, with pants and a shirt lying neatly on top. On the side table next to the bed, there’s a phone, the room’s key card, and an open book placed facedown on the wooden surface, like the person reading it had set it there knowing they would be back. The bed is unmade, the top cover falling off the end, the sheets wrinkled and in disarray, with the pillows in the same state of mess. Besides the bed, nothing in the room looks out of order, which isn’t exactly unusual, but having stayed at hotels a few times, I know the longer you stay, the more you relax. Eventually, you stop closing your suitcase and leave a few pieces of clothing around the room, or even a glass or two.

“It doesn’t seem like he was in here long.”

“It doesn’t,” Herb agrees.

I walk to the bedside table and study the items there, the book quickly catching my attention. The title, the couple on the cover intertwined in an embrace, and the blurb all surprise me. “This is a romance?”

“Yeah, I noticed that.”

“Not many men read romance novels.” I pick it up carefully and can see the wear on the corners of the pages, like it’s been read a few times. “Get me an evidence bag for this,” I say, and he calls out for one, and an officer appears a moment later holding a few. I bag the book and hand it to Herb. “We need to get that dusted for prints. If it belongs to whoever did this and their prints are on file, we might have a suspect.”

“I’ve also got a couple guys going over the video for the hotel. They have four cameras. One in the elevator, two in the lobby, and one on the parking lot. When you see the amount of blood in the bathroom, you’ll agree with me that whoever did this wouldn’t have been able to leave without carrying some evidence out with them when they left.”

“Cal, I’m done,” Jim says as he comes into the room. “I’ll let the rest of the team know to give you a few minutes before going in to finish up.”

“Thanks, Jim,” I tell him, and he lifts his chin before leaving.

I walk back down the hall with Herb and take two steps into the bathroom, where the stench of death has permeated the air. I study the wounds on the man in the shower, then look at the blood-soaked towels on the floor next to him, the splatter on the tiled walls and ceiling.

“Where’s the murder weapon?”

“I have guys searching the trash for the weapon, but so far we’ve got nothing, so either they tossed it or took it with them,” he says, then nods toward the sink. “It looks to me like after they knew he was dead, they attempted to clean up.”

“It was too much for them.” I notice a streak of what looks like dried puke on the toilet seat, along with what appears to be smeared blood on the rim. “They might’ve wanted to clean up, but they couldn’t follow through. Someone should’ve seen something, and there should be evidence on video. There’s no way the person who did this left without being noticed.” I lock eyes with him. “Have you spoken with management?”

“There are three managers at this hotel: one night, one day, and one who picks up shifts for the two of them when they have time off. The guy who picks up is here today. From the records, we know the night manager was on when Paul checked in, and we’re waiting for him to come in.”

“Do we know if there was anyone staying in the rooms on either side of this one?”

“There was a couple next door. I spoke with them earlier, and neither of them heard or saw anything,” he says, and I follow him out to the hall and slip off the covers on my shoes and my gloves, dropping them in the trash bin next to the door.

“Cal, Herb, we got something on video,” Steve, one of the uniformed officers, says as he comes down the hall toward us.

“We’re coming,” Herb calls back, and Steve turns around as we follow him to the elevator and get in to head down to the lobby.

“What do we got?” I ask, studying the grainy image on the TV monitor in the manager’s office.

“The picture is shit, but it’s obviously a woman getting on the elevator a little after midnight, and we see her again, walking through the lobby and out to the parking lot. We lose her then, but a silver Mustang is visible in one clip a few minutes later.”

“Please tell me we got a plate number?”

“No plate, but watch this,” he says, pressing play on the video, and it shows the inside of the empty elevator. The door opens, and a woman steps on and looks directly at the camera in the corner.

“You’ve got to be shitting me,” I hiss, staring at the black-and-white image of Sandy Burton, the same woman who came to speak with me after Chris Davis’s murder.

“Doesn’t Sandy drive a silver Mustang?” Herb asks, and I look over my shoulder at him. “And I’ll have to check with Rachel, but I’m pretty sure she set up a book club, because she’s big into romance novels.”

I look back at the screen and shake my head, finding it hard to believe that she would have it in her to commit murder, especially after seeing the violence involved in Paul’s death. “We need to bring her in for questioning.”