James Patterson: Truth or Die

The lobby — which sadly looked as if it hadn’t been updated since the Koch administration — was completely empty, as it should’ve been, given the hour, save for a wary-eyed woman behind the front desk in a turquoise blazer who was clearly in the midst of deciding whether or not to ask me if I was a guest of the hotel.

That was when I delivered the clincher to my imaginary friend on the other end of the imaginary line.

“Yeah, I’m heading up to my room now,” I announced.

As I walked past the front desk, walking straight toward the elevators, the woman didn’t say a word. I was in.

Then I was up... to the seventeenth floor. With a tug on my baseball cap, I stepped off the elevator and stopped briefly before the sign telling me which rooms were in which direction, left or right.

Room 1701 was to the right.

I walked down the long, narrow hallway, the beige carpet blending in with the beige walls to form a seamless tunnel of blandness, the only splash of color coming from the glowing red exit sign announcing the stairwell at the very end. The odd-numbered rooms were to my left.

1723... 1721... 1719...

I was repeating them silently in my head, like a countdown. To what, though, I wondered?

And what was I going to say after I knocked? Whoever was on the other side of the door was expecting Claire, but that was hours ago. Now it was the middle of the night, and I was a complete stranger with a lot of explaining to do. This, after first breaking the news that Claire was dead.

1709... 1707... 1705...

My vision was so trained on the room numbers that I didn’t even notice it at first. My hand was literally in the air, knuckles tucked and ready to knock, when I saw that the door was open. Not open like see-into-the-room open, but rather the door was just shy of the frame, as if someone had forgotten to close it all the way.

If I wanted to step inside, all I had to do was push.

Instead, I stepped back. There was a bad vibe racing through me, head to toe. Something wasn’t right.

I stood there on the beige carpet, my feet frozen, while my brain sifted quickly through the options. Bad vibe or not, leaving wasn’t one of them. In fact, that door being open — be it ever so slightly — just made me all the more curious. For better or worse.

I knocked. Softly, at first, on the outside chance that whoever was in there was still awake at four in the morning.

Very outside chance. After ten seconds of silence, I knocked again. This time, louder. Then louder still.

Oh, shit. Too loud.

The jarring sound came from directly behind me, a dead bolt sliding on the door to another room. I’d woken somebody up, all right, just the wrong person.

Suddenly, I was in no-man’s-land, and my only thought was that I couldn’t afford to be seen. Call it instinct or sheer panic, but I was done knocking on the door of room 1701.

I was now in room 1701.

And I wasn’t alone.

It was pitch black; I couldn’t see a thing. But there was no mistaking the sound of running water. It was the shower.

Meanwhile, there was the other sound behind me. A door opening and closing out in the hallway. Whoever I’d woken up was going back to bed without laying eyes on me. One bullet dodged.

Now what?

I could practically hear myself playing lawyer with the police, telling them this wasn’t breaking and entering because technically the door was open. The trespassing charge, however, would be a little harder to argue.

No, this was an easy decision. I’d slip back outside the door and wait for whoever was in the shower to get out. I’d knock again, and this time Claire’s source would hear me. It would be as if I’d never set foot in the room.

But as I turned to reach for the handle, I felt the squish beneath my shoe. The carpet was wet. Soaked, actually.

From there, it was all a blur.

Immediately, I slapped my hand blindly against the wall until I found the nearest light switch. The entryway lit up as I rushed into the bathroom, the water splashing up beneath my feet.

Again, I felt around for a light and found the switch. But it wasn’t working. I couldn’t see anything beyond shadows.

Reaching for my phone, I hit the flashlight app and waited for my eyes to adjust. When they did, I literally jumped back, almost tripping over myself.

Half his body was in the bathtub; the other half — his legs — dangled over the side. Also dangling was the cord of the hair dryer that was submerged in the water. It didn’t take a genius to put it together. This was no accident. Claire’s source had been murdered.

I took a step forward, the light from my phone edging up toward his face. It was like a grotesque freeze-frame of the electrocution. Every muscle contracted, his mouth ovaled as if midscream. The stuff of nightmares.

I knew what I was supposed to do next. It was what all the stupid characters in movies somehow decide not to do right before things spiral hopelessly out of control. Go to the police. In the big scheme of things, it didn’t matter how or why I was there in that room.

As a forensic psychologist once told me in a deposition, with a slow nod of his bearded chin, “A dead body changes everything.”

Problem was, all I could really think about in that moment was Claire. Whatever story she was chasing, it was the kind someone else didn’t want told. Really didn’t want told.

And just like that, the random act of violence that had ended her life — a taxi robbery — didn’t seem so random.

The next thing I knew, I was holding off a minute on calling the police.

Yes, it was a crime scene. Yes, I was aware I shouldn’t be touching the victim. But I was in that hotel to find out whom Claire had been coming to see, and I still didn’t know. Right or wrong, the answer was only a few feet away.

Angling my phone near the sink, I spotted and grabbed a face towel to prevent my leaving any fingerprints as I turned off the shower. I knelt down at the edge of the bathtub and began looking for a wallet, or anything else that would ID the guy. One hand was still holding my phone for light, the other searching his pockets. It would’ve been a lot easier if he hadn’t been wearing jeans.

The front two pockets didn’t turn up anything except perhaps a measure of guilt. Most of Claire’s sources were people doing the “right thing” in one way or another. Whistle-blowing on corruption, setting the record straight, things like that. Some of them risked their lives in doing so. Now here was one, it seemed, who’d paid the ultimate price.

Until I searched his back pockets.

At first, I thought it was his wallet I was feeling. It wasn’t, but it was certainly a form of ID. Even drenched and bunched in a ball as it was, I knew right away what I was holding in my hand. A ski mask. Looked like the same one from the taxi surveillance video.

This wasn’t the guy Claire had been going to see.

This was the guy who killed her.

All at once, the rest of the pieces came together before my eyes. Underneath the guy’s gray sweatshirt was the same black turtleneck I’d seen in the video. There was also a black baseball cap on the tile floor next to the tub.

There was no doubt this was him, whoever he was, and all I could think of, all I wanted to do in that very instant, was to bring him back to life just so I could kill him again myself.

I’d never known such a feeling. Vengeance was an abstraction to me, the melodramatic word that always seemed a bit too much. Now it wasn’t nearly enough. Where have you taken me, Claire?

I stood up, looking at the cord of the hair dryer knotted around the towel bar. The tub had been full, the water running. As a plan, it was brilliant in its simplicity. Claire’s source had known he was in danger, and had known enough to turn the tables. Damn good for him. Now if I only knew where he’d gone.