I shrugged. “I’ve no idea,” I said wearily. Already it’d been a long day.
“M.J.!” I heard from near the entrance, and I looked over to see Gilley and Steven standing just on the other side of the crime-scene tape. “Is everything okay?” Gil said.
I nodded. “I’ll be there in a second,” I reassured them before turning back to the detective.
“So, she’s gone for good?” he said to me, and I smirked at the way his eyes were roving around, as if he were looking for her.
“She is,” I said. “I got her across when she started to panic. The only thing she told me about what happened was that some unidentified man came in and took her file.”
“Did she give you a name or tell you if she knew this guy?”
“No,” I said. “Again, I really couldn’t get much out of her.”
“Not very cooperative, huh?”
“Well, how cooperative would you feel if someone had just murdered you?” I asked seriously.
That got MacDonald to smile. “I see your point,” he said, then looked up to the third floor, where Sophie had likely been pushed out of her window. “Say, can you use your magic powers to come up to her room and maybe get an impression about what happened? You know, like those psychics do on TV?”
Great. Now I was a novelty item. I sighed tiredly, not exactly feeling very charitable after that kind of statement. “You know, that’s not really my forte. And besides, I’m pretty tired after traveling cross-country.”
The detective’s face fell. “Okay, fine,” he said. “Sorry I asked.”
I felt the guilt seep into the middle of my chest. “Okay, okay,” I said grudgingly. “Just let me tell my business associates what’s going on so they can at least get me checked in, all right?”
MacDonald guided me again over to the crime-scene tape (I was seriously starting to feel like an errant child with all this leading-around-by-the-arm stuff), and, after he left me with my friends, I explained quickly what had happened and why I needed to leave them again.
“What do you think you can pick up in the room if you’ve already crossed this woman over?” asked Steven.
“Well, probably a lot,” I admitted. “The more violent the act in that room, the better I’ll be able to feel it out.”
“How?” he wondered.
I thought for a moment about how best to explain it. As I was thinking, Gilley—who’s had a lot of experience with paranormal research—explained. “Think of it as if the space all around us is one giant sponge, and it can absorb physical actions like a liquid or a stain. Some stains are faint—your simple everyday routine, for instance—hardly noticeable. But other things, like a car accident or a violent outburst that causes intense pain or an act of murder, are darker, more acute stains that people like M.J. can clearly pick up on. They’re able to describe the event because it leaves a more intense impression on the sponge. Am I right, M.J.?”
I smiled at Gil. “You are,” I said. “That was a great analogy.”
“So, you are going to clean up the stain?” Steven asked, and I could tell he hadn’t quite gotten it.
“No,” I said. “I’m going to go into her room and hopefully tell them how the event unfolded. The atmosphere up there should have acted a bit like a movie camera—if we’re lucky, it should have recorded the event that took place there, and I might be able to visualize the images for the police.”
“Ah, now I am understanding,” said Steven with a nod. “We will get you checked in and take your luggage to the room. I will send a text to your cell phone to let you know what room we’re in.”
“Awesome,” I said as Detective MacDonald came up to me again carrying a duffel bag.
“Ready to go, Ms. Holliday?”
“Let’s do it,” I said, and we left Gilley and Steven to make their way to the check-in counter.
MacDonald led the way over to the main elevator through the various cones set up in the mezzanine to steer patrons away from construction zones. “Hotel’s doing a major renovation. Seems they’ve got a bunch of old wiring and plumbing that’s not up to code,” MacDonald commented as he handed me some rubber gloves.
“What are these for?” I asked.
“In case you need to touch or hold anything in the room,” he said, before reaching into his duffel and pulling out some little blue booties. “These go over your shoes,” he added as the elevator door opened and we got on.
“I feel like I’ve just stepped onto a movie set,” I mumbled as I leaned my back against the elevator wall and popped the booties over my boots.
MacDonald didn’t comment as he did the same, and when we reached the third floor he led the way to room 321. It wasn’t hard to find; there were about three uniformed policemen close by. One was sealing the area around the room with yellow crime-scene tape, while another was knocking on doors, and yet another was interviewing a man in the hallway.
MacDonald stopped in front of the uniformed cop setting up the tape, and the two whispered in low tones just out of my earshot. The uniformed officer looked curiously back at me a few times, and I saw his eyes ogle me a bit. I sent him what I hoped was a winning smile and waited to be allowed into the room.
Not long after that MacDonald waved me forward, and I approached with my hands clasped behind my back. Even though I now wore gloves, I didn’t want to be tempted to touch or disturb anything. MacDonald stepped into the room first, and I followed him warily.
My eyes roved the room, which appeared to have been hit by a tornado. The sheets on the bed had been torn off and lay in a messy, trampled pile to one side. Several pillows were strewn about, and the mattress itself was pulled entirely off the bed and was leaning against the far wall. Long gashes had been sliced into the mattress, and the stuffing lay in large, fluffy tufts all about the floor.
Drawers from the two nightstands had been tossed aside, much like the pillows, and the table that, by the indentations in the carpet, had once resided by the window was now overturned and in the middle of the room.
Dresser drawers were pulled open, and clothing had been thrown about like confetti. The television had even been gutted, and even though it was still perched on top of the dresser, it was now facing backward with its wires pulled out like it had undergone an electronic autopsy. “Jesus,” I whispered as I stared around the room.
MacDonald too was taking it all in, and I saw him out of the corner of my eye making a quick sketch on his notepad, marking with little arrows where things were. He didn’t say anything, so I figured he must be waiting for me to do my thing. I braced myself and focused all my energy on picking out whatever might be lying about in the ether of the room.
My eye went immediately to the table, and almost subconsciously I walked to it, barely resisting the urge to pick it up. I left it where it lay and went over to where it had once rested, by the window. Here I had a clear impression of Sophie working on a laptop, and I looked around the room, but no computer was evident. “Did they find a laptop?” I asked MacDonald.
“Hmm?” he murmured, looking up from his sketch.
“Did your uniformed cop find a laptop in here and take it out of the room?”
MacDonald turned to the cop he’d first sent up here to investigate room 321. “Art, did you guys find a computer?”
“No, sir,” he said, “we didn’t.”
I looked back at the empty space and turned in a circle. A broken chair lay in three pieces behind me, and I shuddered. My eye then darted over to the bed, and I approached the crumpled remains of the comforter on the floor. I bent down and carefully held my gloved hand just above the comforter, wincing, while my other hand went up to my throat, and I found it difficult to swallow. I stood up then, and my head snapped over to the sliding glass door to the balcony, which was closed, but a section of the curtain had been caught in the door when someone shut it.
“I know how it went down,” I said gravely.
“Spill it,” said MacDonald, flipping the page in his noteb
ook.
“She was working on her computer,” I began as the impressions sorted themselves out in my mind. “She has a connection to Europe,” I added, “England specifically, but London most specifically.”
MacDonald shot his eyes over to the uniformed cop in the doorway, whose jaw, I noticed, had dropped a fraction.
“Her passport lists her current address in London,” he confirmed.
“There was a knock on the door,” I continued, pointing over to where the cop was. “Sophie answered it and right away things got bad. I feel like she was shoved violently onto the bed, and her attacker began to strangle her. There was a struggle, but she was really outmatched. Somehow she got out from under him and she tried to flee. He grabbed that chair,” I added, pointing now to the remains of the chair on the floor, “and whacked her over the head with it. He then ransacked the place and was about to leave when I think she either woke up or showed signs of coming to. That’s when he took her out to the balcony and tossed her over the railing.”
No one spoke for several seconds, and truthfully, I was grateful. The events that played in my mind and the carnage of the room made me want to find a shower and scrub myself from head to toe. I hated being in that room, and really wanted to leave.
Finally MacDonald said, “Can you describe the guy?”
I shook my head. “No.” When he looked at me as if to ask why not, I explained, “I don’t see these things quite the way you think I would. They don’t happen like a moving picture in my head—it’s more like the sense of something, as if I were watching something through a haze where the finite details get obscured. I know he was tall. I know he was much stronger than she was, but other than that, I can’t give you a mug shot.”
“Do you think she knew him?”
I frowned. I had an urge to say yes, but I realized I wanted to say that because I was afraid of what it might mean if he were some creepy stranger prowling the hotel for innocent victims—after all, I was staying here tonight. “I don’t know,” I said after considering it. “There is something familiar about his energy with her. Almost like she knew him, but might not have recognized him at first.”
“What do you think he was after?” MacDonald asked me next, and he pointed his pen around in an arc at the chaos in the room.
“Her file,” I said simply. “Only now I really think it was a computer file, and I don’t think he found it on the computer. I think she might have put whatever it was on a flash drive and hidden it. Whether he found it I can’t say, but I do know she was really worried he’d stolen it, so that tells me it must have been here in this room.”
The detective scribbled some more in his notebook, then looked up at me and smiled kindly for the first time since I’d met him. “Thank you, Ms. Holliday. I won’t take up any more of your time for now, but can I call on you in the next day or so if we need you again?”
My first impulse was to say no, but then my conscience got the best of me. “That’s fine,” I agreed, feeling the pocket where my cell phone was buzzing. Pulling it out, I looked at the screen and said, “My associates have just let me know I’ll be in room four-twenty-one. You can leave messages there until we’re finished with the shoot and head back home day after tomorrow.”
“Great,” said MacDonald. “We probably won’t need you, but I appreciate it.”
As I left Sophie’s room and took off my booties and gloves, I had the distinct impression that I hadn’t seen the last of MacDonald or this investigation, and this thought unsettled me for some time.
Chapter 3
I met my partners in the hallway just outside my room. “How’d it go?” Steven asked.
“It went okay.” I sighed. “Hopefully they won’t need me again, but for right now all I want to do is get into my room, take a shower, and have a really good power nap.”
Gilley, who was standing in front of me holding out my key card, blanched. “Yeah,” he mumbled, “about that.”
I groaned and hung my head. “Please don’t tell me that we have to do something for the show right now.”
“Okay,” he said.
“Okay, what?” I growled, picking my head up to look at him.
“I won’t tell you, even though we’re due downstairs in the lobby in five minutes to meet the producers and the other mediums.”
I narrowed my eyes at my partner, and without saying a word I grabbed the room key out of his hand and moved off into my room, making sure to slam the door a little after I entered.
Steven’s luggage was already in the corner next to mine, and I was actually glad he was going to be hanging with me. I’d need someone to vent at when this thing became a pain in the ass . . . like now.
Sighing, I went into the bathroom and splashed some cool water onto my face, then freshened up and made my way back into the hallway. Steven and Gilley were waiting for me, Gilley looking really guilty, which actually made me feel better. “Come on,” I said to him. “Let’s get this over with.”
Just a few minutes later we were down in the lobby, which was abuzz with people talking about the girl who had fallen out of the third-story window. The overwhelming consensus from the chatter that I overheard was that she had committed suicide, something I knew to be completely false, but it wasn’t my place to correct these things—that job fell to the reporters also hovering around the area.
As we approached a group of folks who looked like they belonged in television, one of the reporters interviewing a woman snapped his head in my direction, much like a lion sensing an injured antelope. “Uh-oh,” I whispered.
Gilley glanced over at me. “What?”
I motioned with my head over to the reporter, who was now ignoring the woman talking in earnest to him as he rudely began to click through the photos he’d taken earlier on his digital camera. “Crap,” I muttered when he seemed to find the one that he was looking for and his head snapped back over to me.
“Do you know him?” Steven asked.
“No, but we’re about to be introduced.” No sooner had I finished that sentence than the reporter excused himself from the woman he’d been interviewing and hurried over to intercept us.
“Excuse me!” he called, waving at us across the lobby. I had a moment when I thought about running, but really, where was I going to go? So I paused and waited for the reporter to trot over to us. “Hi, there,” he said with a winning smile that I didn’t trust for a nanosecond. “I’m Trent Fielding with the San Francisco Chronicle,” he added, extending his hand for me to shake.
I shook it and gave a cool, “Hello.”
“I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions about the tragedy that happened here today,” he said, motioning with his head to the front door, where we could all see the CSI techs still gathering evidence, although I was thankful that Sophie’s body had been taken away.
I listened politely but declined the opportunity to give him any details. “I’m sorry, Mr. Fielding, but no. My associates and I were just about to meet our friends, and I’m afraid I have nothing to contribute to your story.”
I turned to go, but Fielding took a step forward and blocked me. “Really?” he persisted, again flashing that winning smile. “See, that’s funny, because I’ve got a photo here that begs to differ.” With that he showed me the viewfinder on his camera and hit a button. A digital image of me standing next to MacDonald appeared, with Sophie’s covered body in the foreground.
I resisted the urge to shove my way past the reporter and settled for making my voice sound as firm as possible. “As I said, I have nothing to contribute. Have a good afternoon.” And then I did push forward, brushing him with my shoulder just a little to get my point across.
From behind me I overheard the reporter ask, “What’s her name?”
Gilley’s enthusiastic voice replied, “That is M. J. Holliday, spelled with two Ls. She’s a gifted medium. She’s going to be on television, you know.”
I whirled around. “Gilley!” I hissed. But Gil was busy look
ing over Trent’s shoulder to make sure he spelled my name correctly.
“What is this problem you’re having?” asked Steven on the other side of me, and I realized he didn’t understand that I was about to be sucked into the Twilight Zone.
“A medium?” Fielding was saying. “You mean the ‘I see dead people’ kind of medium?”
Gilley nodded his head vigorously. “That’s right. She sees them, she hears them, and she busts them.”
“Gilley Gillespie!” I hissed again, but Gil was on a roll, and his new best friend, Trent, couldn’t write fast enough.
“When you say ‘bust,’ I’m assuming you’re referring to ghostbusting?” Fielding clarified.
“I am, indeedy!” said Gil, working himself up into a good story. “And let me tell you a bit about our most recent buh—Eeeeeow!”
I had Gilley by the ear and I wasn’t letting go until he stopped talking. “Come. With. Me,” I ordered, separating each word so there could be no doubt about how pissed off I was.
“Hey!” Gilley howled. “That hurts!”
“Then promise to walk over there without saying another word and I’ll let you go,” I demanded. I had little sympathy for my partner at the moment.
“Okay, okay!” he whined.
Gil hurried away from Fielding as Steven and I followed close behind over to a set of wing chairs and a small coffee table. Only when we were out of the reporter’s earshot did I let go. “What the hell is wrong with you?” I snapped.
Gil rubbed his ear and gave me a dirty look. “Usually I have your time of the month circled on my calendar, but I must have miscalculated.”
“Why do you insist on making a mockery of me?” I asked, ignoring his cheap shot. “Don’t you realize that the last thing I want is for the press to get hold of who I am and what I do?”
Gilley crossed his arms over his chest and pouted. His look told me he didn’t give a rat’s ass about what I wanted. “It’s good for business,” he insisted.
“How is being shaded as a nut job by some local reporter going to be good for business exactly?” I said loudly. A few people nearby turned to look at us, and I lowered my voice back down to a shrewish whisper. “Seriously, Gil! Have you no scruples? Will you just pimp me out to anyone with a pen and a story to tell?”