Private: #1 Suspect

CHAPTER 16

With the exception of city dumps, hotel rooms are the worst places on earth for gathering forensic evidence. Even in five-diamond hotels, DNA, fibers, and fingerprints from a few hundred previous guests will all be present.

But it was worth a try.

Carl Mentone, a high-tech geek known at Private as Kid Camera, manned the laptop with the Delta program that mapped out the Bergman Suite from every angle. My laptop came to life with streaming video that bounced off a satellite and delivered crystal images to my office.

As if I were standing inside the doorway, I watched Sci, Del Rio, and Emilio Cruz enter the suite, the Kid giving me the video tour of what $1,500 a night looked like in a Beverly Hills hotel.

Gold silk curtains framed the windows. Cozy furniture was grouped around a mahogany table, and good art hung on the walls. The lamps were standing upright. Throw pillows were in place. There hadn’t been a struggle. So what had happened here?

By the desk, looking like a particularly grotesque sculpture, was the dead man.

Sci stooped beside the body of a white male wearing dark trousers and an unbuttoned white shirt. His hair had been recently cut, businessman-style. He wore a wedding band. His wrist was white where his watch used to be.

Sci peered at the dead man’s neck. “A garrote,” he said. “It’s a thin, coated copper wire, commonly found in hardware stores. The victim tried to claw the wire loose but failed.”

“Has he got ID?”

“Wallet’s gone,” said Sci.

Cruz leaned in toward the lens and said, “Jack, there’s no problem with the lock. The victim either let the killer in or had a key. There’s an open bottle of Chivas on the table, two glasses. Dregs of scotch in the glasses.”

“Let’s go into the bedroom,” I said.

The Kid led the others, set the laptop on a table. The quality of the images I received was so fine that I could see the weave in the jacquard bedspread lying in a tangle on the floor. Pillows had also fallen to the carpet. The sheets were twisted toward the foot of the bed.

“Looks like sex to me,” said the Kid.

Sci set his scene kit on the floor and went to work running an alternate light source with variable wavelength filter over the sheets.

“Right you are. We’ve got sex,” he said.

“No wallet in here either,” said Cruz, pawing through a small pile of personal items on the nightstand. A ballpoint pen, spare change, rental-car keys.

The Kid took his webcam into the bathroom. I saw swim shorts and goggles on a hook behind the door, toiletry kit on the vanity, towels on the floor.

Emilio Cruz took a seat on the closed toilet lid and spoke into the lens.

“Jack. This killer was cool, maybe professional. There’s no sign of a fight. Like I said, the dude let his killer into the room. Had a drink with him, and then maybe he said or did something to piss the guy off. The killer got behind him and strangled him. Bingham never had a chance.”