Mike Ashley - The Mammoth Book of Perfect Crimes and Impossible Mysteries

“Right. With a microcassette recorder carefully nestled in his neatly folded hands.”

“You mean, placed there,” Hurley said. “Looks like we have an attempt at a perfect crime with locked-room overtones. Let’s take it from the top, guy checks in about 9 p.m. Monday night. By which time according to the ME, he could have been dead three or four days. Anyone at the hotel ID the body?”

“Desk clerk who checked him in, but he was a little shaky. However, the driver’s license photo fits the deceased.”

“So if John Doom couldn’t have checked in Monday night, who did? And how did Doom’s corpse get there?”

“There’s another problem,” Murex said. “The body showed no outward indications of decomposition.”

“So he couldn’t have died in the hotel room.”

“Not according to the ME. Wherever he was, Doom was on ice over the weekend. But someone had to flip the body over after those post-mortem pinpoint hemorrhages appeared.”

“Hmmm. What did you get in New Hampshire?”

“I found Grandmaison and his wife. They seem to take this Remote Viewing stuff dead serious. If they’re running a scam, I didn’t detect it in their manner. They claim never to have heard of John Doom. Otherwise, they made absolutely no sense to me. According to them, the coordinates the dead man were working when he died were randomly assigned. Common sense says if they’re random, they can’t possibly do what he claims they can.”

“Go at this from the angle of Doom’s last four or five days. I’m going to put you with Knuckles on this.”

“Why?”

“You’ll see. He’s already been informed.”

Detective First Grade Robert Knuckles had been on the job a dozen years longer than Ray Murex and acted it.

“Another day, another stiff,” he sighed.

“This one is complicated. Let me bring you up to speed.”

Knuckles listened with head tilted back and his pale blue eyes gazing off into space, his expression bored. When Murex got to the part about Remote Viewing, Knuckles took his feet off his desk and began to look interested.

“This is a new one,” he said. “I could get to like it. Let me see Grandmaison’s card.”

Murex gave it up. Knuckles read it over, then flipped it. “Whoa. What is this?”

Knuckles showed him the obverse side. Two sets of four digits were marked in blue ink: 2006/0075.

“Look like remote coordinates to you?” Knuckles asked.

“Pretty much,” Murex admitted. “Unless the first one is the year.”

Knuckles frowned deeply. “You say Grandmaison takes this stuff pretty seriously. I wonder…”

“Wonder what?”

“Well, maybe he just happened to give you a card on which he scribbled some stray coordinates. But try this on for size: maybe these coordinates are you.”

“Me?”

“Could be he’s tagged you for remote surveillance.”

Ray Murex exploded into uncontrolled laughter.

“You ever work with psychics?” Knuckles asked.

“Never!”

“You know the unwritten rule.”

“Sure. If you’re stuck, you can consult one, you just can’t use what they tell you in a court of law.”

Bob Knuckles grinned wisely. “I’ve invoked that rule a time or two. Never mind the details. Take it from someone who’s been at this longer than you. Take this stuff seriously, but treat it skeptically.”

“Always.” Murex pocketed the card and asked, “What’s your take on this?”

“Obviously someone sneaked a corpse into the Park Plaza, pretending to be the deceased. I think we had better find out more about dead Mr Doom. I took the liberty of starting that ball rolling. He’s single, 44 and lived waaay out of town. Mission Hill.”

Murex frowned darkly.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Knuckles said. “Why would a single guy rent an expensive hotel room less than three miles from home?”

“Maybe he needed a quiet place to do his thing?”

“Let’s see how quiet the home front really is.”

The house was a triple-decker, dark chocolate brown, at the top of Parker Hill. Murex and Knuckles had to climb nearly 100 cracked concrete steps to get to the front door. The black woman who answered was the landlady.

“A few questions about John Doom, ma’am,” Murex said, showing his shield.

“Come on in then.”

They were let into the top-floor apartment.

“Lived here five years,” the landlady was saying. “Quiet man. Kept to himself.”

“What did he do for a living?” Murex asked.

“Had different jobs. Didn’t talk much about it. Traveled a lot. I wouldn’t see him for a week or two at a time, and he was always saying as how he’d been to Baltimore or San Diego, or somesuch place. Never said why.”

There were two bedrooms. One was a standard setup with a twin bed, and the usual furniture. The other was something else.

“What the hell he done with this room!” the landlady burst out.

The second bedroom room was all gray-ceiling, walls, even the inside of the door. The windows were hung with blackout shades. Gray, too. Even the rug was battleship gray. In the middle of the rug was a thin futon, gray as mold.

Murex said, “It’s a gray room.”

“I can see that!” the landlady sputtered. “But what-”

“Could you excuse us, please?”

“Fine. I need to call a painter anyway…” She bustled out.

Murex huddled with Knuckles.

“Grandmaison had one in his cellar. I didn’t see the inside. They remote view in gray rooms for some reason.”

“Then why did Doom go to a hotel, if he had this setup handy?”

“Good question.”

They looked around. A bookcase was crammed with books and microcassettes in labeled boxes. Murex selected one, loaded it into a recorder from his pocket.

A male voice began saying:”9746 0458 April 3rd 9746 0458 My perceptions of the target are…”

Murex hit stop. He popped in the other cassette. The same voice recited different coordinates and a date.

“Doom was really into this stuff,” Knuckles muttered. “I wonder if it’s any good for police work…”

Murex shot him a dark look. They began looking for address books and cancelled checks with the deceased’s signature on it. It didn’t take long.

“This look like the registration signature?” Knuckles asked.

Murex frowned. “No. Not even close.”

A commotion came from down below. Exiting, they found the landlady complaining to a UPS man who was hand-trucking a big burlap-covered box up the 100 steps.

Knuckles demanded, “What’s this thing?”

The landlady huffed, “A damned steamer trunk. Belonged to John. Fool hotel sent it over. What am I supposed to do with it?”

They examined the trunk. It was empty.

“We’ll take this off your hands, ma’am,” Murex said.

Back at the Park Plaza, the hotel manager was saying, “Yes, we did ship the trunk back.”

Knuckles demanded, “Didn’t you understand that it could be evidence?”

“But it was stored outside the room. I was told not to remove anything from the room proper. We have a basement storage facility for large items.”

“Did John Doom arrive with this trunk?” asked Murex.

“The desk clerk will know.”

The clerk didn’t look happy to see Ray Murex.

“Did John Doom check in with a steamer trunk?”

“No, it was delivered later. I don’t remember the company. He requested that it be sent up to his room, and then a few hours later, asked that it be placed in storage.”

“What do you remember about this trunk?”

“Well, the bellman complained that it was pretty heavy.”

“I want to talk with that bellman.”

The bell captain had a poor memory. He couldn’t describe John Doom, but he recalled one thing clearly: “That trunk was very heavy going up, and a lot lighter coming down.”