Chapter 15
Sean said nothing else as he followed Jennie back to their room, and the moment he glanced around to ensure they were alone, he was immediately flooded with guilt.
Sean’s first instinct was to protect Jennie, but he was also leading a missing person investigation, and whatever she had found in their room would complicate the case.
Sean hoped it was nothing, but when Jennie shut the door behind them and led him into the bathroom, his hope vanished.
Jennie didn’t even need to point it out to him. The black handle sticking out of the small trashcan was as out of place as an igloo in the desert.
“I think it’s a knife,” Jennie said, standing against the vanity while Sean stood in the bathroom doorway. “The blade is wrapped in a napkin. I think there’s blood on it.”
Sean immediately thought of the blood-soaked snow on the roof, but he had no idea how the knife had ended up in their room.
“I didn’t touch it,” Jennie said. “I didn’t want to… I don’t know, get my fingerprints on it.”
Sean nodded. “Right.” The shock of the moment slowly dissipated, and Sean’s mind shifted back into investigator mode. “Tell me where you’ve been since the meeting in the dining room this morning.”
Jennie calmly recalled the last hour. She had come back to the room after the meeting while Sean spoke to the other guests.
“Did you notice the trashcan when you came back?” Sean asked.
“No,” Jennie answered. “But I didn’t go to the bathroom when I first came back.”
“Were you here the whole time after the meeting this morning?” Sean asked.
“Um, no, I went to the kitchen to grab a Coke,” Jennie said. “Our mini fridge was empty, and the staff told us we could take whatever we wanted from the kitchen.”
“How long were you gone?” Sean asked.
Jennie shrugged. “Maybe ten minutes?”
It wasn’t long, but that would have been plenty of time for someone to sneak in and dump the knife in their bathroom trash.
“And after that?” Sean asked.
“I stayed in here, had a Coke and a bag of chips, and then when I went to the bathroom to pee I noticed the knife,” Jennie answered. “Then I came to find you.”
The story was simple, straightforward, but Sean knew better than to dismiss the obvious problem.
The likely murder weapon of the missing person case he was working on was sitting in the trash of his hotel room.
Any DA would question the likelihood that Sean, or Jennie for that matter, would have been dumb enough to leave the murder weapon in their hotel room, but perceptions were difficult to control.
“What do we do?” Jennie asked.
“I’ll keep the knife as evidence, and inform the local authorities,” Sean said. “We’re not hiding anything.”
Jennie nodded. “Good.”
“But don’t tell anyone about this until I have a chance to address everyone in the hotel,” Sean replied. “I just want to make sure people hear it from me.”
Jennie nodded, hugging herself, staring at the blade in the trash. “Should I be worried?”
“No,” Sean answered confidently. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I know,” Jennie said. “But is everyone else going to believe that?”
Sean wasn’t sure. But he wasn’t going to let anything happen to Jennie. That was a promise he refused to break.