Page 32 of The Shadow Friends

Her cell phone dinged with a new email. It was a much-needed diversion from thoughts of sickness and death.

The message was from Declan. FYI. To keep you in the loop. She opened the first attached file and flinched at the appalling image that filled her screen. It was Karen O’Brien’s morgue photo, showing the handle of the stiletto protruding from the woman’s eye socket. Thank you, Declan. Most amusing. Either Jo had agreed to share these photos with their circle, or Lloyd had somehow burrowed into the ME’s files. Maggie clicked on the next attachments. The first was a close-up of the removed weapon, lying beside a ruler to establish its dimensions, followed by a series of close-ups taken at various angles. Maggie clicked on the image of the symbol engraved on the handle. A circle with a dot inside.

She called Declan.

“I got your little love note,” she said. “You send me the most heartwarming images.”

“Trying to keep the romance alive.”

“Do you think the symbol on the grip is significant?”

“We don’t know. Jo sent us those photos yesterday, and we didn’t want you to be left in the dark. Ingrid thinks that we might be able to identify where it was manufactured, based on some imperfections on the blade.”

“You mean the way they use ballistics striations?”

“Exactly. Ingrid’s sent Lloyd down to New York, to consult with a manufacturer she knows. He might be able to enlighten us.”

“So now we’re diving into the secrets of metallurgy. May the thrills never end.”

“How are you feeling?”

“Just dandy. Except for being a human pincushion. I’m like a bug under their microscope. It’s obvious they still don’t know what made Dr. Maslov sick. All his viral and tox screens are negative. And now there are two new doctors here from Atlanta, poking and prodding me.”

“Stay healthy. That’s all I ask.”

“I could use a distraction. Tell me what’s going on with the murder investigation.”

“We’ve hit dead ends everywhere, so there’s not much to report. Lloyd did a background on Karen O’Brien. She was born and raised in Bangor, no criminal record, only a few traffic tickets. Her husband died last year of a heart attack. She has one daughter in Vermont, but they’re estranged. Karen moved through a series of service jobs in hotels and restaurants up and down the coast, and this is her first time working at the Cod Cove Resort. It doesn’t seem like she had a boyfriend or any enemies. In every way, she seemed like an utterly ordinary woman.”

“Who was killed in a rather extraordinary way.”

“But there is one interesting detail we found out from Jo, about Karen’s final shift at the restaurant. The last thing she did at work was to deliver a room service meal to Room 220. A female guest in her seventies. That was about ten fifteen p.m.”

“Room 220. That’s only a few doors down from Maslov’s room.”

“It makes you think, doesn’t it? Who she might have run into on the second floor. Maybe another guest, visiting Maslov’s room.”

“Or someone on the hotel staff. Do we have their shift schedules?”

“Already in hand.”

“The morning I found Maslov, there was a housekeeper on the second floor. Hannah something.”

“The housekeeping staff all clocks out at six p.m., so she would have been gone. But there were other employees on shift at ten thirty. Unfortunately, there’s no CCTV to tell us who visited the second floor.”

“Do we know yet why their security system crashed? Was it sabotage?”

“Ben says yes. We’re at the resort now, and it looks like someone tampered with the electrical circuit feeding the second-floor camera, as well as the camera in the parking lot.”

Maggie paced over to the window and stood thinking about all the footage those cameras might have captured. Hotel guests and their visitors arriving and departing. Room service meals being delivered, empty trays being retrieved. And maybe someone who should not have been in that second-floor hallway. Someone who did not want to be seen.

“Were there any reported thefts that night in the hotel?” she asked. “Any valuables missing from the guest rooms?”

“Jo already considered that possibility, that maybe the cameras were disabled to cover up a robbery. But no one reported anything stolen.”

Maggie focused on the parking lot below her window. A black SUV had just zoomed up to the hospital entrance, and a man she recognized stepped out. It was state police detective Robert Alfond, who was now the lead in the Karen O’Brien investigation. She watched him stride briskly into the building.

“Declan, is Ingrid monitoring the police radio?”