CHAPTER 50
I STEP OUTSIDE THE room for some fresh air. FBI forensics techs are swarming over the pickup truck. I hear a roar from overhead. Another Black Hawk? Nope. It’s a news helicopter.
Somebody must have reported the bang or spotted all the black uniforms and called a tip line. I’m sure the news crew above us was expecting to see carnage. If it bleeds, it leads.
I step back into the motel room. Rizzo is talking shop with the bomb squad. I notice that the room’s walls are bare except for a white sheet tacked up behind the bed.
Mahoney nudges my elbow. “What’s that about?” he asks. “Movie screen?”
“Don’t touch it until the techs clear it,” says Rizzo. “It might be booby-trapped.”
“Sir?” an agent says from behind us. I turn around. Standing beside the agent is a stout middle-aged woman in black stretch pants and an Epcot sweatshirt.
“Who’s this?” asks Mahoney.
“Margie Coffey,” the agent says. “She owns the motel.”
Mahoney holds up his ID. “Ned Mahoney, FBI.”
Coffey isn’t impressed. “What the hell just happened here?” she asks. From the sound of her voice, she’s a longtime smoker. “And who the hell is gonna pay for it?”
“Sorry, Ms. Coffey,” says Mahoney. “I apologize for the mess. This was an FBI and state police raid.”
“You couldn’t give me a heads-up, at least?”
“That’s not how we work. We’re searching for a criminal suspect and we couldn’t afford any tip-offs.” Mahoney pulls a folded printout from a side pocket. “Do you recognize this man?”
Coffey pulls a pair of glasses from her pocket and puts them on. She leans in toward the picture. “Sure,” she says. “That’s Aiden. Good guy. What did he do?”
“That’s what we’re trying to find out,” says Mahoney.
I step up and introduce myself. “Ms. Coffey, I’m John Sampson, DC Metro Police. You said Phillips was a good guy? What do you mean by that? Good how?”
“Paid his bill every week,” says Coffey.
“None of the usual bullshit about waiting for a paycheck to come in. He even paid me extra to leave him alone. Didn’t want anybody coming in and cleaning his room.
He’d pick up clean towels and sheets at the office and bring the dirties back in a sack, nice and neat. ”
“Any visitors while he was here?” Mahoney asks. “Deliveries? Dates?”
“Not that I saw,” says Coffey. “Like I said, he kept to himself, paid his bills, gave me extra every week.” She looks around the room and shakes her head. “Now, tell me again, who’s gonna pay for all this?”
“There’s a claims process with the government,” says Mahoney. “We’ll get you the forms.”
“The government? And how long will that take? A year? Ten years? Forever?” Margie Coffey waves her hand in disgust and turns to leave.
I step in front of her. “How did he sleep?” I ask.
Coffey stops. Takes off her glasses. “To tell you the truth, terrible. I live right above the office, and some nights I could hear him yelling from his room—awful screams. A couple of times, he woke up the guests in the next room. When I knocked on his door, he came out wrapped in a sheet, so apologetic. Told me he had nightmares. Other nights, I’d come home late and see him sitting in a lawn chair outside his room, covered in a blanket, smoking a cigarette and drinking a beer, looking out into the distance but like he wasn’t really seeing anything. ”
“You mean like a thousand-yard stare?” I ask.
“That’s exactly right,” says Coffey. “A thousand-yard stare. How did you know?”
“Because I’ve seen it a thousand times.”