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“Stating the obvious,” Payne then said, “the instant voice mail suggests that either she turned off the phone or its battery crapped out. Like most decent people at this hour, she most likely is enjoying her sleep.”

Payne then held up his right index finger.

“Eureka!” he said. “And very likely doing so in the hotel here. Be right back.”

Harris and McCrory watched as he walked over to the front desk. A female desk clerk, her attractive face not masking her sadness, appeared from an office door behind the desk. She forced a smile. Payne said something as he held up his identification. She turned her head toward it, nodded, and then she looked down behind the desk and quickly typed on her computer terminal.

A moment later, she was saying something while reaching across the counter to hand Payne a telephone receiver.

Putting it to his ear, he silently waited almost a full thirty seconds before gesturing to the clerk to redial the number. After another fifteen seconds, he finally spoke into the receiver. He then handed it back to the desk clerk, and crossed the lobby to Harris and McCrory.

“Joy Abrams said she will be down shortly,” he announced. “She was out cold. She finally answered the second time I called. I couldn’t tell by her voice if the deep sleep had been induced by alcohol or maybe some other substance. Just sounded sleepy.”

“Then she doesn’t have a clue about her boss,” McCrory said.

Payne shook his head.

“Not yet,” he said. “But I told her she’d find you, Dick, at the front desk. The clerk said their security guy will give you access to the Library Bar. You can break the news to her in private. It’s small and quiet—”

“Good idea—”

“And you then can ask her (a) if she happened to be in the bar or the condo at any time last night, with or without Camilla Rose, and (b) if she knows who was with her, and (c) tell her we need to get our hands on the complete list of attendees for the fund-raiser. Meantime, get the security guy—or, failing that, someone in management—to pull a copy of Camilla Rose’s lease agreement and see who she noted as her emergency contact.”

“You got it, boss,” McCrory said.

Payne turned to Harris.

“Let’s go wake up Austin and ruin his day.”

[ TWO ]

Hahnemann University Hospital

Center City

Philadelphia

Friday, January 6, 5:15 A.M.

A beefy nurse in her forties, wearing faded blue scrubs and carrying a clipboard close to her ample bosom, slowly trundled down the corridor escorting Homicide Sergeant Matthew Payne and Detective Anthony Harris to the hospital room of John Tyler Austin.

As they neared it, they found the door cracked open and the overhead fluorescent lights flickering. The television was on, the volume loud, and a perky female voice could be heard announcing, “Stay tuned. Action News weather is next.”

The nurse looked at Payne and made a face, exasperation bordering on anger.

“That don’t surprise me one bit,” she said. “He’s been more than a little trouble. Demanding this. Demanding that. Wouldn’t break my heart if we could just treat-and-street him. But as bad as we need open beds, he really don’t need to be up and moving just yet.”

Payne and Harris nodded. They knew that hospitals constantly struggled to deal with uninsured patients, many of them homeless, who regularly showed up at the emergency room feigning yet another life-threatening illness. What these so-called frequent fliers really were after was three hots and a cot—food and a place to sleep—but if beds were full, what they instead got was treat-and-street—given whatever meds necessary, even if only an aspirin, and then discharged.

As the nurse began to reach for the handle and shoulder the door open, Payne said, “That’s all right. We can take it from here. Thank you.”

The nurse looked at him, then Harris, and seemed about to say something, then shrugged.

“Okay, Officers. I’ll be down at the end of the hall, if you need anything,” she said, then trundled back toward the nurses’ station.

Payne rapped his knuckle on the door, and when he heard “Yeah?” on the other side, he swung it open.

John Tyler Austin was standing beside the bed, adjusting his clothing. He had his back to the door.