An Accidental Murder: An Avram Cohen Mystery by Robert Rosenberg Page A

“fantastic.”
    “In the bathroom,” Cohen directed Mathis. “And you,” he pointed to Lassman, “not a word. Silence.”
    Mathis went into the bathroom, and came out quickly, swallowing hard to halt vomiting, but at the same time pulling a small communications device out of his inside jacket.
    “Marina something,” the security officer said, unable to precisely identify the dead chambermaid. “I’m new on this job. I really should contact my boss.”
    “First the bomb squad. There’s a timer. But it’s facing up, so we can’t see it. Take a look.”
    Mathis swallowed again, nodded, and then got down on his hands and knees beside Cohen, flashing a penlight on the object under the bed. It was a short elbow-pipe bomb.
    Cohen could see the timer, but it was too murky in the pen lit darkness to see how long they had left before it would explode. If that’s all he had seen, he would have suggested they lift the bed away from the bomb for a better look.
    But there was something far more ominous. Three wires ran from the device into the cut through the fabric. “Now will you call the bomb squad?” Cohen demanded, “and then your boss?”
    Mathis obeyed. Cohen stayed a moment longer on the floor, looking for a sign that the bed had been moved.
    There was none that he could spot—no depressions in the carpet that showed the legs had stood elsewhere. Forensics would sweep the carpet, of course, and do much more. He sighed, knowing it wasn’t his case, and knowing that by touching any of his belongings, he could harm the investigation.
    But all he really wanted to do was go. He sighed as he climbed back to his feet and found himself face-to-face with Lassman.
    “What are you doing here? I told you to get away.” “Are you kidding?” Benny said. “Who do you think did it?”
    Cohen glared at him.
    “C’mon,” Benny begged. “You must have some ideas.”
    “Let me think,” he snapped at Lassman and turned around and went to the window, opening it. The street was six floors below, but there were no cars parked on the three-lane road opposite the hotel. Beyond was a dark portion of the park that divided the thoroughfare. In the glitter of city lights in the rain outside his window, it was impossible to spot a lookout for the explosion. So he worked on his memory. He was certain there was a mole above the chambermaid’s jaw line. She had very dark eyes. Black hair. He wasn’t sure how long. She wore a cap. Her nose. Maybe it had been broken in the past? When he paused to let her pass, he watched her walk—she had a narrow bottom, her shoulders much wider. Her calves were muscular, shapely. The shoes. They were black. Boots, not the uniform footwear he had seen on other hotel staff. It suddenly occurred to him that the chambermaid he saw in the corridor might have been a young man. He returned to the face in his mind, wishing he had noticed the chambermaid’s hands.
    “I figure Nazis—or their kids,” Lassman said confidently.
    “Either that or someone you must have sent here for relocation after a trial.”
    “You came up wanting to tell me something,” Cohen said, not wanting to discuss the bomb with him. Not until he knew more than what he knew.
    “Yeah, thought you might want to know. Carey’s not discounting the offer to repay the advance money. But he’d want damages—additional money to recoup other costs. A full two million.”
    When he opened the window he could hear the sirens.
    Now the green-and-white police cars began arriving down below. He saw the hotel general manager, to whom he had been introduced his second day there, greet the first officers to arrive outside the hotel. In another moment, Cohen realized, the organized chaos of a crime scene over which he had no control would erupt around him. If he were the lead officer on the case, would he regard the visiting author as a suspect, given what was known so far?

7.
    The police wanted to evacuate the entire building and conduct a