Hell's Horizon by Darren Shan Page B

But from what I’ve gathered it was a clumsy kill. Slow and messy. So we’ve either got a beginner on our hands or somebody who wants us to think he’s a beginner.”
    “Any clues?” I asked. “Any leads?”
    “Not by the time we arrived, but the better part of a week had passed before we were called onto the scene. Whoever brought her back might as well have dropped her off at the station.”
    I hadn’t told Bill that I’d collected Nic’s body from the Fridge. Didn’t intend to. Those were the kinds of details you learned to withhold from friends. Nor did I plan to tell him about my meeting with The Cardinal.
    “What are your chances of catching him?” I asked.
    “Slim to none. If we’d been informed as soon as she was discovered…” He sighed. “The pathologist will do his best, but I doubt he’ll discover anything useful. We’ve questioned the staff—nothing. There’s a few to go but we won’t get anything out of them. Unless he strikes again or Kett receives another phone call… nada .”
    I nodded slowly. I’d figured as much.
    “What about a private investigation? Any point?”
    “You could hire someone,” Bill said. “Costly. Probably wouldn’t achieve anything. But it couldn’t do any harm.”
    “What if I was to investigate?”
    He frowned. “Don’t be crazy. What do you know about detective work? It’s not as easy as it looks in the movies.”
    “I know. But how would I go about it?”
    He studied me silently for all of a minute.
    “You’re not asking my opinion, are you, Al? You’re committed to this already. Right?”
    “Right.”
    “Jesus.” He pushed the remains of his sandwich away. “How far are you into this?”
    “I’ve got some names. Background information.”
    “Any angles?”
    “I was hoping you’d provide me with a few. Old enemies, a family feud—something like that.”
    He smiled wryly. “I told you, it’s not like in the movies. Motives and deaths of this nature rarely go together. Nic checked in under a transparent pseudonym—Jane Dowe. Why do people normally give false names in hotels?”
    “Because they’re there to fuck?”
    “Crude but precise. Chances are she picked up a guy, took him back to the Skylight, he turned psycho, end of story.”
    “Did anybody see the two of them together?”
    “The receptionist remembers Nic but insists there was no one with her in the lobby. The room to the right of hers was unoccupied. The old couple in the room to the left went to bed early and slept the night through.”
    “If I investigate,” I said slowly, “where should I start?”
    He sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. He looked old and tired in the dim light. Bill had been talking about taking early retirement for a couple of years—looking at him now, I began to think maybe he should pack it in, before the job made a premature end of him.
    “You might glean something from the staff at the Skylight,” he said reluctantly. “They weren’t anxious to talk to us. Given your connections, there’s a chance they’d be more open, assuming they know anything. But leave it for a couple of days. You don’t want to run into Kett. Let us complete our investigation and move on before you poke your nose in.”
    The previous detectives had already interviewed the staff and come up blank, but I’d have a crack myself, as Bill suggested, though I wasn’t sure I could wait until the dust settled.
    “What about friends and family?” I asked. “Anybody suspicious?”
    “None that we know of, though we’ve only been on the case twenty-four hours and those are the kind of details you don’t unearth immediately. Her closest friend was Priscilla Perdue. Know her?” I nodded. The name was in the file and Nic had spoken of her a few times. “And there’s her brother. We couldn’t get anything out of him. He didn’t bat an eyelid when we called him in to tell him about the death and ask him to identify the body.”
    “That’s peculiar, isn’t