I nodded to Cisco. Being able to finesse the story from a key prosecution witness so early in the game was good work on his part.
“How old is Mrs. Stephens?”
“She’s midsixties. I think she was stationed at that peephole a lot of the time. Every building has a busybody like that.”
Jennifer chimed in.
“If she says he left before midnight, how do the police account for the smoke detector in the hallway not sounding for fifty more minutes?”
Cisco shrugged again.
“Could be a couple of explanations. One, that it took the smoke some time to work its way under the door. The fire could’ve been burning in there the whole time. Or, two, he set the fire with some sort of delay or other rig to allow him time to get out and get clear. And then there’s three, a combination of one and two.”
Cisco reached into his pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes and matches. He shook a cigarette out of the pack and then put it inside the folded matchbook.
“Oldest trick in the book,” he said. “You light the cigarette and it slow burns down to the matches. The matches go up and ignite the accelerant. Gives a three-to ten-minute head start, depending on the cigarette you use.”
I nodded more to myself than to Cisco. I was getting a sense of the state’s case against my client and was already working out strategies and moves. Cisco continued.
“Did you know that by law in most states, any brand of cigarette sold in that state has to have a three-minute burn-down rate for unattended smoking? That’s why most arsonists use foreign cigarettes.”
“That’s great,” I said. “Can we get back to this case? What else did you get from the apartment building?”
“That’s about it at this time,” Cisco said. “I’ll be going back there, though. A lot of people weren’t at home when I knocked.”
“That’s because they looked through the peephole and got scared when they saw you.”
I meant it in jest but it wasn’t without a point. Cisco rode a Harley and he dressed the part. His usual outfit consisted of black jeans, boots, and a skin-tight black T-shirt with a leather vest over it. With his imposing size, dress, and the penetrating stare of his dark eyes through a peephole, it was no wonder to me that some people didn’t answer their doors. In fact, I was more surprised when he reported the cooperation of a witness. So much so that I took pains to make sure cooperation was fully voluntary. The last thing I ever wanted was a witness backfiring on me while on the stand. I personally vetted them all.
“I mean, maybe you should think about wearing a tie every now and then,” I added. “I have a whole collection of clip-ons, you know.”
“No, thanks,” Cisco responded flatly. “Can we move on to the hotel now or do you want to keep taking shots at me?”
“Easy, big guy, I’m just poking you a little bit. Tell us about the hotel. You had a busy night.”
“I worked it late. Anyway, the hotel is where this thing gets good.”
He opened his laptop and punched in a command as he spoke, his big fingers punishing the keyboard.
“I managed to obtain the cooperation of the security staff of the Beverly Wilshire without even wearing a tie. They—”
“All right, all right,” I said. “No more discussion of neckties.”
“Good.”
“Go on. What did they tell you over there?”
6
Cisco said it wasn’t what they told him at the hotel that was important. It was what they showed him.
“Most public spaces in the hotel are under camera surveillance twenty-four seven,” he said. “So they have almost all of our victim’s visit to the hotel Sunday night on digital. They provided me with copies for a nominal fee that I will be expensing.”
“No problem,” I said.
Cisco turned the computer around on the table so the rest of us could see the screen.
“I used the computer’s basic editing program and put the various angles together in one continuous take in real time. We can track her the whole time she was there.”
“Then play it, Scorsese.”
He hit the play button and we started watching. The playback was in black and white and had no sound. It was grainy but not to the point that faces were obscured or unidentifiable. It began with an overhead view of the hotel’s lobby. A time stamp at the top said it was 9:44 p.m. Though the lobby was busy with late check-ins and other people coming and going, Gloria/Giselle was easy enough to spot as she strolled through the lobby toward the elevator alcove. She was dressed in a knee-length black dress, nothing too risqué, and looked totally at ease and at home. She carried a shopping bag from Saks that helped her sell the image of someone who belonged.
“Is that her?” Jennifer asked, pointing to a woman sitting on a circular divan and showing a lot of leg.
“Too obvious,” I said. “Her.”
I pointed to the right of the screen and tracked Gloria. She smiled at a security man who stood at the entrance to the elevator alcove and passed him without hesitation.
Soon the angle changed and we looked down from the ceiling of the elevator alcove. Gloria checked her phone for e-mail while she waited. Soon enough an elevator arrived and she got on.
The next camera angle was from inside the elevator. Gloria got on and pushed the 8 button. As she rode up, she raised the bag and looked inside it. The view we had did not allow us to see the contents.
When she arrived at the eighth floor, she stepped off the elevator and the screen went black.
“Okay, this is where we go dark,” Cisco said. “No cameras on the guest floors.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“They told me it was a privacy issue. Recording who goes into what room can be more trouble than it’s worth when it comes to divorce cases and subpoenas and all of that stuff.”
I nodded. The explanation seemed valid.
The screen came back to life again, showing Gloria riding the elevator down. I noted on the time stamp that five minutes had gone by, meaning that Gloria had apparently knocked on the door and waited in the hallway outside room 837 for a significant period of time.
“Is there a house phone up there on the eighth floor?” I asked. “Did she spend all that time knocking on the door or did she call down to the desk to ask about the room?”
“No phone,” Cisco said. “Just watch.”
Once back on the ground floor, Gloria stepped out of the elevator and went to a house phone that was on a table against the wall. She made a call and soon was speaking to someone.
“This is her asking to be connected to the room,” Cisco said. “She is told by the operator that there is no Daniel Price registered in the hotel and no one in eight thirty-seven.”
Gloria hung up the phone, and I could tell by her body language that she was annoyed, frustrated. Her trip had been wasted. She headed back through the lobby, moving at a faster clip than when she had arrived.
“Now watch this,” Cisco said.
Gloria was halfway across the lobby when a man entered the screen thirty feet behind her. He was wearing a fedora and had his head down, looking at the screen of his phone. He appeared to be heading toward the main doors as well, and there was nothing suspicious about him other than that his features were obscured by the hat and the downward pose of his face.
Gloria suddenly changed directions and headed toward the front desk. This caused the man behind her to awkwardly change his direction as well. He turned and went to the circular divan and sat down.
“He’s following her?” Lorna asked.
“Wait for it,” Cisco said.
On the screen, Gloria went to the desk, waited while a guest ahead of her was taken care of, then asked the deskman a question. He typed something on a keyboard, looked at a screen, and shook his head. He was obviously telling her that there was no Daniel Price registered as a guest in the hotel. All the while, the man in the hat sat with his head tilted down and the brim of his hat hiding his face. He was looking at his phone but not doing anything with it.
“That guy’s not even typing,” Jennifer said. “He’s just staring at his phone.”
“He’s looking at Gloria,” I said. “Not the phone.”
It was impossible to tell for sure because of the hat, but it seemed clear that Gloria had a follower. Finished at the front desk, she turned and once more headed toward the front doors of the lobby. She pulled a cell phone out of her handbag and hit a speed dial. Before she got to the doors, she said something quickly into the phone and then dropped it into her bag. She then exited the hotel.
Before she was gone, the man in the hat was up and crossing the lobby behind her. He picked up his step once she was through the doors, and this seemed to confirm that Gloria’s impromptu turn to the front desk had exposed a tail.
After the man in the hat left the lobby, the camera angle jumped to the outside curb, where a black Town Car like my own had pulled up in front of Gloria at the valet stand. She opened the back door, threw the Saks bag in, and then got in after it. The car pulled away and out of the frame. The man in the hat crossed the valet lanes and left the picture as well, never once raising his head enough for even his nose to be seen.