He stopped, called me over when he found the drawer with her underthings. I took a look. Lace demi-bras, thongs, and transparent panties in Jell-O colors, a vibrator.

Could be tools of the trade.

Could be a girl with a sassy love life.

We searched all four of her rooms, not finding anything really, not even an address book or a diary or a drug more powerful than Tylenol PM.

Looked to me like Sandy Wegner’s night job was a small part of how she lived.

I asked Conklin to go back to the Hall to run Alex Logan’s name through every database. Then Jacobi and I sealed the apartment and went down to the street.

The sky was the color of dull steel at 6:45 p.m. The sun was going down early now, and it left a pall over the city. Or maybe I was just projecting.

“Our guys are pattern killers,” I said to Jacobi as he started the car. “If Sandy’s an escort, Caddy Girl is probably an escort, too. That means the DNA we got from her rape kit —”

“You’re reading my mind,” said Jacobi, pulling out into the traffic on Columbus. “Sperm lives inside the body for about seventy-two hours. It could have come from her killer, or a john, or a boyfriend.”

“Whatever,” I said. “The DA’s going to say it’s not evidence of murder.”

Chapter 60

BUT MAYBE WE WERE getting closer to the evidence.

The Hotel Triton was busy that night, but it always had a brisk turnover. Fronting Union Square, steps away from the trolley line, across the street from Chinatown, it had a frisky Cirque du Soleil decor and a midrange room rate.

Jacobi pushed to the front of the line at the reception desk; he badged the clerk and brusquely told him to find the night manager. “Chop, chop. Move it before you lose it.”

A chunky man of forty stepped out of the back room. The name tag on his jacket read “Jon Anderson, Mgr.” He nodded at us, asked if there was a problem.

“There’s a big problem. We’re investigating a homicide,” I told him. “We need the sign-in records for September fifteenth and whatever you have on a guest named Alex Logan.”

Jacobi added, “And we need the tapes from that camera,” he said, stabbing his forefinger toward the camera behind the desk. “Also need the tape from the hall camera outside the room Logan used on that date, the fifteenth.”

The manager got huffy on us. “I suppose you have a warrant?”

“Do we need one? ’Cause we can get one and close this place down while we do a complete search.”

He appeared to quickly think over the implications of a search, then said, “The videotapes are on a forty-eight-hour loop. There won’t be anything on them from September fifteenth.

“But everyone here,” he said, pointing to the line of five college kids manning the reception desk. “All of them were on duty that night. I’ll pull the records for you. See how cooperative I am?”