Part 11 (1/2)

”See if it's Ellen Snyder and try not to get shot.” Walker waited for something more specific, but his eye caught the rearview mirror and he could already see Stillman heading for the elevator. Walker reached for the door handle, then stopped.

He didn't believe that Ellen Snyder would come down in that elevator. In the first place, she was innocent. In the second, n.o.body could hold a grown woman-a smart grown woman, at that-in a fancy, crowded hotel without her screaming loud enough to pop their eardrums and shatter the wine gla.s.ses in the dining room. That left-what? It left nothing. The reason Stillman had posted him here was not so he'd accomplish anything. It was just to keep Walker out of the lobby, where Ellen might see him and recognize him. Stillman was preserving the remote possibility that he would corner her by surprise, then scare her into confessing. Walker sat back and relaxed, then readjusted the mirrors so he didn't have to crane his neck to keep an eye on the elevator.

It opened ten minutes later. Stillman emerged and returned to the car. ”Come on,” he said. ”I guess we'll just have to lower ourselves and do this the easy way.”

They emerged from the elevator in the lobby and Walker waited until Stillman was at the pay telephone beside the gift shop. Then he moved to the front desk. There was a clerk helping a couple check out at the far end of the counter, and a young woman shuffling some papers at the near end. She would be the one. The telephone just behind the counter rang. She picked it up and said, ”Front desk.” She listened, then said, ”I'll ring for you.”

Walker watched her consult her computer screen, then punch 3621 and hang up. She came toward him with her professional smile. He said, ”I was wondering if there was a good Chinese restaurant within walking distance.”

She whisked a small map from under the counter and held her pen like a magic wand to point to an intersection. ”Right here is Won Dim Sum, which is my favorite.” The pen seemed to rise higher into her hand by itself, and she made a quick circle at the spot, then quickly drew a line from the restaurant that extended into a circle around the hotel and handed him the map. Her mouth tightened into a closed-lipped smile to signal that the conversation was over.

”Thanks,” he said, and walked across the lobby and followed Stillman around a corner to another hallway that led to a second set of elevators.

Stillman stepped inside with him. Walker said, ”Thirty-six twenty-one,” and Stillman pushed the 3 b.u.t.ton.

When the elevator stopped, Stillman walked smartly up the hall. ”This kind of thing is best done quickly,” he said. ”There's not a lot that's likely to happen as time pa.s.ses that will make things better.”

Walker turned to look behind him to see if there was anyone to hear. ”How about silently? Isn't that best?”

”There are only so many precautions I'm willing to take,” said Stillman. ”Stand here.” He pushed Walker into a position by the door with his back to the elevators, so he blocked the view. Then he leaned down to examine the lock. After a moment he produced a pick and a tension wrench from his wallet, fiddled with the lock, and pushed the door open.

Walker took a final look up and down the hallway, then stepped inside after him and closed the door quietly.

Stillman was standing in the middle of the room, turning and turning slowly. He stopped, facing Walker. ”Don't touch anything.”

”Don't worry,” said Walker. ”When I'm with you, I never touch anything. What's wrong?”

”The bed's messed up, the bathroom light is on, there are towels on the floor.”

”I guess she's messy.”

”No suitcase.” He used a handkerchief to open the closet door. ”No clothes. She hasn't checked out or they wouldn't have rung the room, but she's gone.”

”Okay,” said Walker. He stepped toward the door.

”Hold it.”

”What?”

”We've got a lot of work to do. Look carefully at everything in this room.”

Walker stared at the bed, the bathroom, the coffee table, the armoire that held a television set above and a bar below. ”What am I looking for?”

Stillman said, ”Any sign that Madeline Bourgosian is Ellen Snyder. Anything at all.” He opened the upper section of the armoire to reveal the television set, then tested the bar cabinet to see if it had been opened. He moved toward the bathroom.

The bar had been the place that Walker had considered most promising, so he looked for something else. The bed. He stared closely at each of the pillows, trying to spot a blond hair, but found nothing. Maybe women didn't lose the occasional hair while they slept, the way men did. Probably if there were any, Stillman would find them in the bathroom sink in front of the mirror, where she had brushed her hair.

He pulled back the covers of the bed. If he were to leave something accidentally in a hotel room, that was where it would have been. He sometimes sat on the bed while he was dressing, and usually laid things out there when he was packing. The awful, complicated patterns on hotel bedspreads often made small objects hard to see in dim light. He saw nothing, so he ran his hand over it to be sure.

He moved to the telephone on the nightstand and looked from the side at the little notepad the hotel had left, but he could see no imprint from a sheet that had been torn off. He peered into the wastebasket beneath the little desk. He began to walk the room in a spiral pattern, scanning the floor.

”What are you doing?”

He saw that Stillman was staring at him. ”I saw you doing this in Ellen's apartment.”

”There's not enough room in here. You'll screw yourself into the floor. Just look.” He returned to the bathroom.

Walker went to his knees and looked under the bed, opened all the drawers he could find, then returned to the telephone. He read all of the possibilities on the card for numbers to dial, but ”redial” was not one of them. There must be some way of knowing what calls had been made; certainly the hotel knew.

He was turning toward Stillman to ask when his eye caught a glint from the darkness behind the nightstand. He bent closer. ”Max. I found something.”

”Don't touch it.” Stillman appeared at his side, then knelt down and looked. He raised his head and stared along the top of the nightstand. ”Hmmm.” He took a pen from his pocket, carefully reached behind the nightstand, snagged the object, and pulled it out to the open floor. It was a gold woman's watch. ”Is it hers?”

”I don't know,” said Walker. ”She had one sort of like that-an oval center with a round face in it, about that size, I think.”

Stillman prodded the watch to turn it over. ”Take a look on the back of the case.”

Walker could see engraving. ”E.S.S. 10/2/95.” He felt his heart begin to thump, but it was as though it was pumping energy out of him. ”That doesn't mean it's hers, or that she left it here.”

Stillman hooked the band with his pen and dropped the watch behind the nightstand again. ”It sure ain't Madeline Bourgosian's.” Then he went to the coffee table, where there were two magazines the hotel had left. One said, Chicago-That Wonderful Town, Chicago-That Wonderful Town, and the other said, and the other said, Guide to Amenities. Guide to Amenities. He began to leaf through them quickly. He began to leaf through them quickly.

”Why did you put it back? It's our evidence.”

Stillman didn't look up. ”If the cops find it, it's evidence. If we break in and find it, I'd say it's demoted to something less ...a clue, maybe.”

Stillman moved to the chest of drawers Walker had already opened. ”What we want now is another one.”

”What is it this time?”

”Something that tells us where she went from here.”

”What's the likelihood of that?”

Stillman scowled as he stared around the room, then seemed to notice the second telephone on the desk. ”Oh, I'd say the odds are nearing ten to one for.” He opened a desk drawer and took out the telephone directory. He turned to the yellow pages and began leafing through them.

Walker stared over his shoulder in disbelief. ”You're not even through the A's. Are you going to look at every page?”

”Nope.” He stopped. ”There it is. Airlines. Lo and behold. She's circled American Airlines, and written her flight reservation right on the page. No doubt she copied it over afterward. Flight 302, from New York to Zurich. Thursday the twelfth. That's tonight. Easy, isn't it?”

He used his pen to write it down on a business card, then closed the book and put it back. He stood up again and walked to the connecting door to the next room that people opened to turn the rooms into a suite. Then he walked across the floor to the door connecting with the room on the opposite side. ”This one,” he said.

”What?” said Walker.

”Don't you remember? We've been operating on the theory that she's traveling with two men. Maybe she got involved in this because she fell in love. That's what love is-cajoling a woman into actively partic.i.p.ating in something she wouldn't have thought of doing by herself, right?”

”Ever the romantic,” Walker muttered.

”Well?” Stillman said. ”I've heard of women falling in love with two men at once, but I never heard of one who actually ran off with both of them. Even if she did, they would take two rooms. They're not traveling on a budget, you know. Even if their favorite means of expressing this affection were the time-honored Mongolian cl.u.s.ter f.u.c.k-”

”Is this necessary?” Walker interrupted.