Guilty Minds

45

At nine o’clock I tried the hotel security director again. I told him I was a hotel guest and had a few questions for him.

“Oh, you’re in the suite, number three twenty-two,” he said. “Yes, I just heard, I’m so sorry.” He told me to come to his office on the first floor behind reception.

He was an elegantly dressed, dark-skinned man named Wanyama. His accent, his British-inflected diction, sounded African, probably Kenyan. He was soft-spoken and polite in manner. He sat at a small desk, crowded with loose-leaf binders and manuals, that probably was shared with others.

“My condolences,” he said. “It’s so painful when a loved one takes her own life.”

I didn’t want to tell him I barely knew her, so I just said, “Thank you.”

He nodded.

“I’d like to know whether she used her keycard at all last night.”

“Her... key?”

“Yes. I know your PMS, your property management system, records all uses of room keys. There’s a log. An audit trail. I’d very much appreciate it if you’d check your database.”

“I understand. I’m awfully sorry, but we can only give out that sort of information to the police.”

“It’s my room. I paid for it. I have the right to know if she left the room at some point and then came back in.”

He looked at me for a few seconds. Then he nodded and turned to his computer. He entered a few keystrokes. “The key was issued at 7:16 P.M. last night, and according to our system it was used just once.”

I thought for a moment. I’d escorted her to her room and used her keycard to open the door to her room. I’d considered withholding the key from her so she didn’t get any ideas about leaving the room and going someplace where I couldn’t protect her. But in the end I left the card on the desk in the room. I’d asked her to stay in the room, and she did.

“What about the door?” I said.

He nodded again. “It was opened, let me see, five times. Once at 7:16, of course.”

“And then around eight or so?” When Dorothy had returned bearing clothes for Kayla. That had been the second time.

“Yes. At 8:07 and then at 8:11.”

I closed my eyes, nodded. Dorothy entered at 8:07. A few minutes later, I’d opened the door again and hung the Do Not Disturb sign on the outside handle. Then I’d stuffed a towel under the inside handle.

“Then at 9:36, and again at 10:25.”

I was gone by nine. I didn’t return until after midnight. At nine thirty-six I was probably in Curtis Schmidt’s garage.

“But no keycard was used?”

“Correct.”

“Which means the door was opened from the inside.”

“That’s right.”

It had to have been Kayla who opened the door. But for whom?

“Can you tell if the room phone was used?”

“Yes, one moment.”

He tapped some more and opened a different database. “Yes, just once. An outgoing call was placed at 8:47.”

“Can you see the number that was called?”

“No, for that you need to go to the phone company. AT&T. We don’t have that capability.”

“I’d like to take a look at your surveillance video.”

He smiled, a pained smile, and shook his head. “Only for law enforcement. I’m very sorry.”

I thanked him, and he expressed his condolences again, and as soon as I left his office I called Detective Balakian.