They continued the search, but didn’t find anything unusual. Thompson seemed to have a taste for luxury that was evident in his toiletries, if not his clothing. But other than the mess, nothing seemed to be actually out of place.
After nearly an hour of looking over everything in the room, Channing finally made an actual discovery behind the bedside table.
“His phone,” he said, breathless with excitement as he bent over beside the bed. “It must have fallen back here. That explains why we didn’t find it on him.”
“Oh, that’s fantastic,” Dru said.
At least they knew the killer hadn’t stolen it. And it might have some leads as to whether or not Brian Thompson had any enemies.
They leaned over the little device together as Channing pressed the button to wake it.
But the screen was locked.
Dru sighed.
“It’s been a long night,” Channing said. “We all need some sleep. Let’s lock the room up and hit it again when we’ve had some rest.”
Dru nodded, still looking at the phone. “Can I hang onto this?” she asked. “I’ll try to figure out how to hack into it.”
Dru could no more hack into a phone than she could the Pentagon, but it sounded like the right thing to say. Maybe Channing’s enthusiasm was rubbing off on her.
“That would be marvelous,” Channing said.
Dru slipped the phone into her pocket and they stepped out of the Opal Room.
“I’ll walk you to your room,” Channing offered.
“Thanks,” Dru said.
The sun was shining through the stained-glass window on the landing, the colors saturating the small island of light in the darkness.
“We don’t appreciate the light until we’ve spent some time in the dark,” Channing said thoughtfully.
They set off down the hallway to the servants’ wing. When they reached Dru’s door, she pulled out her key once again.
“Keep your door locked,” Channing advised.
“Of course,” she said.
“I’ll see you this afternoon then,” he told her. “Thank you for your help.”
“My pleasure,” she told him.
“Really, do keep your door locked,” he reminded her, handing her the candle.
She suppressed a shiver as she closed herself into her darkened room.
Alone.
9
Dru put on her pajamas and tried to get herself ready for bed.
The temperature was already dropping in the hotel. Without electricity to ignite the boiler, the only heat was coming from the fireplace downstairs.
Dru sincerely hoped Chester would make some headway with the generator soon. But she was too tired to worry about it right now.
She slipped on a fuzzy sweater over her pajamas and crawled into bed, exhausted to her core.
But sleep wouldn’t come.
All she could think of was Viktor’s icy blue eyes.
Is he, or isn’t he?
She sat up and grabbed Brian Thompson’s phone from her bedside table to distract herself.
Much as she wanted to believe she could figure out his password, the fact that her only real knowledge of the man began and ended with the info in the hotel check-in log made that seem pretty unlikely. Unless he was using his birthday or driver’s license number, she was out of luck.
She tapped the screen to wake the phone and waited while it tried and failed to use facial recognition to unlock.
Facial recognition…
A horrifying idea occurred to her.
They didn’t have a shot at his password, but they still had access to the man’s face.
She would have to wait for Hugh Channing to wake up later in the day, because she absolutely wasn’t going back into the tunnels alone.
Tyler Park’s words over the body returned to her.
Soon, bloating from putrefaction will have his eyes and tongue protruding out of his face.
If she waited too long, facial recognition might not work anymore. Not to mention the fact that it was going to be a lot more gross to even try.
It’s broad daylight, Dru, she coached herself. Just go downstairs, scan his face, and come back up.
She slid out of bed and pulled the dark curtain aside to look out the window.
The snow had slowed down enough that she could see the pink light of early morning reflected on the frosted meadow below.
She slid her feet into a pair of boots before she could change her mind, then headed into the hallway, locking her door behind her. The hall was silent, but she took the servants’ staircase down the back of the wing anyway.
Stepping outside made her appreciate the remaining warmth in the hotel. The wind seemed to reach inside her and whistle right through her bones.
Dru made her way across the patio behind the solarium to the basement door as quickly as she could. A moment later, she was descending the steps into the catacombs, using the ambient glow from the face of Brian’s lock screen for light.
Her own footsteps echoed off the wet walls and she shuddered, thinking about what might be outside the faint glow of the phone’s light.
There were the real things - like rats and spiders.
And then there was her imagination, working overtime, envisioning a murderer around every corner.
Or worse.
Drucilla Holloway, you will not think about zombies.
But she couldn’t help thinking about zombies. After all, she was going to find a corpse.
And this whole thing was starting to seem like a horror movie.
A nasty business, Channing had said.
Dru had nearly giggled at the cliched turn of phrase.
But Hugh was right. Everything about this business was nasty.
She was nearly at the alcove where the bins were kept, when it occurred to her to worry that Chester might have moved the body.
But as soon as she turned the corner, she knew it was still there.
The stench pierced the frigid air, filling her senses.
Just unlock the phone and get out, she told herself.
She stomped a few times, and then paused, wanting to give any rats that might have followed the scent of the body a warning she was coming, and plenty of time to flee.
Dru inched forward, until at least her feet nudged the carpet.
She pulled her sweater up over her mouth and nose and unrolled the carpet. It was harder than she expected, and her makeshift sweater-mask kept falling down.
Finally, enough of the body was revealed for her to do what she had come to do.
As Tyler had said it would be, the victim’s face was marbleized. But his eyes and tongue were not popping out.
Dru held her breath and held the phone up to the face, suddenly frantic that there might not be enough light from the screen to show the face for recognition purposes. Didn’t these things have special cameras that could see in the dark?
But when she turned the phone back, it was unlocked.
Quickly she went into his settings and turned off all of the lock features, aiming it at the man’s face one more time for verification.
She turned the phone off and back on again.
There was no lock screen. She had full access now.
She slipped the phone into her pocket and began the job of rolling the carpet back up.
It seemed to take forever, but at last the body was hidden again.
She headed back down the corridor, eager to get out of the tunnels.
Somewhere in the darkness ahead, a door banged shut.