“You think whoever it was might have seen which rooms you went in?” Lucas asked.
“I don’t know,” Blair said. “After the call from the tipster guy, we came over here and checked in, and I wanted to talk to the desk clerk for a minute about possible…amenities…and Charles went down to his room by himself. The last time I saw him was when he walked out of the motel office. Just his back. I didn’t even say good night because I was talking to the clerk. About amenities.” She looked at the motel and said, “I’m such an idiot. We were lucky we got hot water.”
—
When they’d finishedtalking to Blair, they walked back over to Bayes and Lucas asked, “You bag his phone?”
“Yup. It’s on the way to the lab. The St. Paul guys got the incoming, but it was incoming from Caccamano’s pay phone.”
Lucas: “The restaurant? Down on Seventh?”
“Yeah, they actually got a coin-op pay phone, down a hall, around a corner by the back entrance,” Bayes said. “St. Paul is telling me they haven’t found anyone who saw a guy making a phone call there last night. They’re still looking.”
“Have to be a regular, to even know the phone was there,” Virgil said.
“They probably got five hundred regulars and a couple of thousand casuals, and nobody knows anybody else’s name. So…”
Lucas said, “I eat there occasionally. I’ve seen a camera by that back door, coming in from the parking lot.”
“There’s a camera, but it’s on the wall above the phone, and it’s pointing at the door,” Bayes said. “Doesn’t pick up phone users at all.”
“That’s convenient,” Virgil said.
“Yeah. That was our big hope, for a while,” Bayes said. “We still got a chance. It was raining pretty hard at the time of the phone call, lot of people coming in from the parking lot. Trouble is, most of them were wearing hats and rain hoods…might ID a few of them. The phone call only lasted for about a minute and five seconds, so…the guy wasn’t on the phone long.”
“Fingerprint on the coin? There couldn’t be many people using the phone.”
“Coins have been bagged. That’s our other big hope.”
They talked for a few more minutes, and Lucas looked at Light again. He was still dead. “Didn’t bleed much,” he said.
“Looks to me like he was only hit once,” Bayes said. “Maybe the killer didn’t actually mean to kill him.”
“Dahlia told you about the van?”
“Yeah, St. Paul’s got two guys walking the street, looking for cameras. Nothing yet.”
They left Bayes in the doorway, and Lucas said, “We should get out of here. All these cameras and microphones are making me nervous.”
“I want to talk to Blair again. Just take a minute.”
Virgil spotted her on the edge of the crowd, waved her under the tape, and he gave her his business card. “My personal cell phone number is on the back. I want you to post it on your site—ask the tipster to call me.”
“Fat chance,” Lucas said.
“Yeah, but it’s a chance,” Virgil said.
She said she would do it right away. They put her back under the tape and walked over to Virgil’s truck.
“You’re gonna get a million crazies,” Lucas said.
“It’s my backup phone. Basically a burner. I can throw it away when the case is over.”
“Huh. That’s not bad. Maybe I’ll get one myself.”
“What now? BCA?” Virgil asked.
“Let’s get some coffee, so we can think.”
