page17 (1/2)

No doubt she orking on a story headlined “Dead Wo”

Chapter 18

Rich Conklin was at his desk in the squad rooround check on the deceased, since he now had his name

Saible record Twenty years before, when he was seventeen, he had been busted for selling pot at a beach party in LA He’d pled guilty to the ot six months’ probation, and paid a fine It seeh, because after that he hadn’t gotten soticket

But Sam Alton wasn’t exactly a model citizen, because once a month he came to town, stayed at the Warwick, and apparently spent time with a very wealthy woman who had a home in an exclusive part of town That woman always booked a room for the two of them She also happened to have a husband And he’d had a wife and kids

Had last weekend’s tryst gotten Sam Alton killed?

If so, by whoain access to the room?

And if his death wasn’t caused by a scorned spouse, as the ?

Conklin opened a file of photos Dr H had taken some at the scene, while Claire had taken the others In Claire’s pictures of the victi on a metal table in her lab She’d also included close-ups of the labels Seeing Claire’s careful, ood at her job

There was a second zip file containing photographs of Sa that had been stoay at the hotel

The attached note from Dr H read:

See Joan Murphy’s clothes as they were found in the room No GSR on the was neatly folded on a chair, jacket hung in the closet Also no GSR The lab has it all now and is processing for trace We’ll get who did this

Rich stared at the pictures for a while What the neatly hung and folded clothing told him was that these two people knew each other well He saw no violence, but he didn’t see any uncontrollable passion, either It felt to hih Joan and Saht about the way Joan had stared at Alton’s dead body

What had she said? “I’ve never seen this man before”

And she had seenant