Hard Sell - Chapter 13; T
Title: Hard Sell, Chapter 13
Author: Zelda Ophelia (zeldaophelia)
Fandom/Character: CSI:NY; girl!Flack (Dawn Flack), Stella, Mac
General info: Genderbender; Not mine; T
Notes: A huge thank you to eternal_sadist, significantowl, avidbeader, and the wonderful ladies at postonthursday who helped make this fic happen.
Summary: Pre-series. Dawn Flack (not a junior, though everyone wants to add that on) is finally getting her first solo case, without her training partner to tag along. But when one death becomes three with little evidence, she's needs all the help Mac and Stella can give her to find this guy.
Dawn met Maka in the lobby of the apartment building, a secretly relieved that the other detective looked as tired as she did. It hadn't been an early night for either of them and the morning had, unfortunately, come too soon. Though not soon enough for someone else.
"What went wrong?" Maka asked between sips of her coffee.
"I don't know." Dawn sighed as they took the stairs. Their victim had a third floor walk-up apartment, nowhere near where any of the previous victims lived. "But I'm going to have to figure it out before I meet with Gerrard."
"Before we meet with Gerrard. I'm on this one now, too."
A wan smile was Dawn's only response until they reached the third floor. There she paused, putting a hand on Maka's arm. "Just a warning, it's going to be bad."
"I've seen bloody scenes before, Flack," Maka said as they both pulled their gloves on. Then she pushed open the door. "Oh my god."
"That's pretty much what I said at the first scene," Dawn said softly.
"Damn," Maka swore softly as she gingerly stepped around an arc of dried blood to approach the bed. "He stabbed her a lot. Got an artery from the looks of it."
"It's likely on both counts," Hawkes said from the doorway. "I can't confirm it without an autopsy, but he's stabbed his previous victims ten to a dozen times apiece. And he seems to know where to hit to get the aorta."
"Medical experience?" Dawn asked, wondering if they had been approaching it all wrong so far.
"More like high school biology," Maka said. "Don't you remember having to learn where the major veins and arteries were?"
"I remember sleeping through high school biology," Dawn joked lightly, "but that's about it. Oh, and getting a detention for punching Jake Bowman in the nose during lab."
"You punched someone in the nose during biology lab?" Hawkes asked incredulously.
"He snapped my bra while I was using the microscope." She paused, thinking back. "I think I might have broken it. His nose, not the microscope. Pretty sure Dad would have grounded me if I'd broken the microscope. Instead he congratulated me and then said that since I had my left hook down, it was time to start working on my right."
"Your family is strange."
"We're Irish," Dawn said, with a shrug, by way of explanation. "There's a knife by the body again."
"I'll compare it to the knives in her kitchen when we get back to the lab," Stella said as she joined them, a harried look on her face. "Hey, Maka."
"Hey, Stella. Busy morning?"
"More like busy night bleeding into a busy morning."
"Where's Mac?" Dawn asked, glancing at the door behind her.
"He has court later this morning. I sent him home to try to get some rest around two." Stella grimaced. "He only lasted an extra day."
"Yeah, but she wasn't at Remy's last night," Maka said, pointing to the victim's hand. There was a smeared, dark stamp on the back of her hand. Stella frowned as Maka held up both of hers, with no stamps on the back. "Remy's uses an ultraviolet ink for their stamp."
"Remy's?" Stella asked.
"The last three victims were last seen at bars near hotels where either one or both of two subdivisions of the AAS held meetings," Dawn explained.
Stella nodded. "I already got that."
"The North and South Atlantic subdivisions held a joint meet and greet last night at The W, which is next to Remy's," Dawn continued. "Most of the participants went there after it was over."
"But apparently he wasn't in that group. Or if he was, he went elsewhere after that," Maka added. "You know, I've seen this stamp before."
"Where?" Dawn asked, turning back to her.
"Your sister, when we ran into her last night. She had the same stamp on the back of her hand. But she didn't get it at Remy's; she got it before she arrived."
Dawn paled slightly, her eyes widening before she pinched the bridge of her nose, silently counting to ten. "I'll talk to her and find out where else she was last night."
"You sure? I could-"
"I am perfectly capable of asking my sister," Dawn interrupted hotly, knowing that she was failing to hide her irritation. She then tried to turn it into a joke. "Besides, what kind of big sister would I be if I didn't take advantage of having a good reason to pull my drunk and hungover little sister out of bed at-" She glanced at her watch. "-seven in the morning?"
"A much nicer one?" Maka offered.
"Eh. She avoided my calls for almost a week. She deserves it. And if it helps solve this case, I don't really care how mad at me she'll end up." She didn't point out that it was pure luck that they weren't looking at Sam's body instead of this victim.
"What do we know about her?" Stella asked, gesturing to their vic and bringing the conversation back on topic.
"Her name is Amanda Parrish." Dawn checked the notes the responding officers had given her. "She works at the make-up counter at Bloomingdales and was discovered this morning by her roommate, who spent last night at her boyfriend's place. The roommate says that she didn't think Amanda had any plans, but she - the roommate - is also in a 'fairly new relationship' - her words - and has been spending more time with her new boyfriend than here lately."
"In other words, she probably hasn't seen Amanda since the last time she came home for a change of clothes," Maka said as she poked her head into the adjoining bathroom. There was a door on the opposite side leading to what she assumed was the roommate's bedroom. "The wastebasket liner is gone again, and the can is empty."
"Consistent with the previous scenes," Stella said as she joined Maka in the bathroom. She brought the bottle of luminol with her, lightly spraying down the side of the bathtub. "And we have traces of bleach as well. He cleaned up after himself again."
"We need to find out where he found her. If it wasn't at Remy's and we aren't following the right angle, we need to figure out what's really going on. And fast."
::
There had been something a little cathartic about pulling Sam out of bed hours before she usually rose. But Dawn's sister had, after being informed there was another victim who had likely been at one of the same bars Sam had been at, told them where she had gone. Despite still being angry Dawn's over having Moran hunt her down to check on her.
Royale was several blocks away from Remy's and The W, but right next door to the Sheraton, where some of the AAS meetings were taking place. It had taken a few phone calls, but a manager was supposed to meet them there.
"At least we're on the right track," Dawn said as she looked over at the Sheraton. "It's still likely connected to the conference. We're just back to 15,000 suspects instead of a couple thousand."
"Could be worse," Maka said lightly. "We could still be looking at the whole city."
Dawn snorted softly. That was something she kept trying to remind herself of, but it wasn't working as well as it had at first. "Tell me again when we find the guy."
The manager, who introduced himself as Lee, immediately recognized the picture of Amanda Parrish. "Left with a business guy--one at the conference next door." He grinned at their impressed looks. "He had one of the coupons we put in the stuff they hand out. Bring them in with the promise of a free drink, and they'll buy three more before the night is over. I don't know how they're doing any sort of business with the hangovers most of them have to be sporting."
"Did the business guy have a name?"
"Told her to call him 'Walt' - just a sec." He stepped over to the cash register. "I'm pretty sure he paid with a credit card. Here it is." He came back with a copy of a receipt. "Walter Key."
"And you're sure that he's staying next door?" Dawn asked, disbelief tingeing her voice. She knew they were waiting for him to make a mistake, but this was a pretty big mistake.
"Yeah, he was saying something about getting her a Midtown." He caught her confused look. "A Midtown Manhattan. It's the Russell's signature drink," he explained, referring to the Sheraton's hotel bar. "It sounded like he was suggesting a nightcap before they headed back to his room."
"His room? Not her place?"
"Nah, I didn't hear them say anything about going to her place. They may have kept to my area of the bar, so I heard more than I usually do, but I didn't get the chance to hear a lot. We were pretty busy last night. These conferences are good for business."
"Yeah, but they're bad for the women in the city," Maka muttered under her breath as they stepped back out onto the street.
"Shall we go talk to Mr. Key?" Dawn asked, looking down the street at the Sheraton again.
"I say we do."
Mr. Key certain wasn't expecting them, with a little assistance from management, to come bursting into his hotel room just before ten in the morning. His evening, and now morning, companion most certainly wasn't expecting it, either.
"The hell?" Dawn said as they stared at the man and woman in the bed. This wasn't what they'd been expecting.
"Just what is going on here?" The woman cried out, pulling the covers up over herself as the man next to her yelled at them.
"What is this about?"
"Amanda Parrish," Dawn replied as she motioned for them to get out of bed.
"Who?" Key asked, wrapping a sheet around himself as his companion did the same with the comforter.
"The woman you picked up at the Royale," Maka supplied. "The woman who was murdered last night."
"Wait? Her? Murdered?" He gaped at them, sheet nearly slipping from his grasp. "You don't think I had anything to do with that?"
"Why don't you go get dressed, and we can go back to the precinct and find out," Dawn suggested. "You, too," she said to the woman, "Ms--"
"Sweet. My name is Rita Sweet." She tugged the comforter around herself tightly. "And Walt has been with me all night."
"Of course, Ms. Sweet. But we still need to go downtown and have a talk."
::
Mac, still wearing his suit from court, joined Dawn in the interrogation room with Walt Key while Maka and Stella spoke with Ms. Sweet. Key fidgeted in his seat as they sat down opposite him, immediately starting to talk before Dawn had a chance to ask a question.
"I didn't do it. You've got to trust me on that."
"Mr. Key, we have a witness who saw you leave the Royale with Ms. Parrish."
"Yeah, but I was just taking her back to the hotel bar. I knew that Rita was going to be there, and I wanted to make her jealous."
"You took her back to the bar to make Ms. Sweet jealous."
"Exactly. She's my conference--we hook up at every AAS conference. But this year she was all over some yacht salesman from Miami. So I knew that she'd be in the bar with him, and I thought that if I brought a hot woman back with me, maybe she'd see what it felt like."
"She's your 'conference wife'?" Dawn asked. "Meaning that you gave Ms. Sweet reason to have motive to kill Ms. Parrish."
"No," he protested, shaking his head vigorously. "It wasn't anything like that. We went back to the hotel bar, had a drink, I, um, ran into Rita when I went up for refills, and we ended up going back up to my room, instead. We didn't leave after that--not until you got there."
"You abandoned your date at the hotel bar."
"I wouldn't call her a date, per se. Just someone I was having drinks with."
"Did she speak with anyone else at the Russell?"
"Not that I saw. The place was pretty full; a lot of people from the conference were there. She could have ended up anywhere, with anyone after I left."
Dawn pushed her hair back from her forehead, hoping her frustration wasn't written all over your face. "Thank you, Mr. Key," she said as she rose. "Of course, we're going to have to verify what you say-"
"But I can leave?"
"Actually, no, you can't. Not until we know you're telling the truth."
"But I have to get back to the conference-"
"You didn't seem too worried about sleeping through half of the morning's sessions when we got there this morning. I'm sure the conference can go on without you."
"But-"
"But nothing. You get to stay here until I say otherwise." Turning on her heel, she stormed out into the hallway.
Maka and Stella were waiting for them. "You've got as much as we did?"
"He picked her up to make his girlfriend jealous. He even admitted to being a total cad and abandoning her in the bar to go back to his room with Ms. Sweet."
"Total cad?" Stella asked, a small smile ghosting her lips.
"You have a better word for what he did?"
"He's an ass?" Maka offered bluntly.
Dawn chuckled. "Something like that, but we've got to go back to the hotel and see if there's anything to prove his claims."
"They have a good surveillance system," Stella offered. "If he used the elevator, they'll have surveillance footage for that. And they have cameras at all of their entrances, even the bar. We should be able to get her leaving to go home."
"And, if he wasn't avoiding the cameras, who she was leaving with."
"We'll put a rush on the tapes," Mac said. "I don't care what Chad is working on when they get in, they'll be the priority. Just get them here."
"Why don't I go with?" Stella suggested. "I can bring the tapes back to the lab while you two stay and talk to the hotel management."
"You're supposed to be going home to rest," Mac reminded her, "unless you've forgotten that your shift started last night."
"I'll drop them by the lab on my way home," she amended. "It'll be on the way, and it'll save the trip, and wasted time of going back and forth or waiting."
While Stella ferried the security tapes back to the lab, Dawn and Maka started with the bartender at the Russell. He nodded when he saw the picture of Amanda Parrish.
"Oh, yeah. I remember that dust-up. Poor girl got caught in the middle and had no clue what was going on."
"Dust-up?" Maka asked. "Mr. Key forgot to mention that part."
"She-" He pointed at the picture. "-showed up here with one of our conference guests. His girlfriend wasn't too keen on that. They argued, got over it, and went upstairs."
"And she?" Dawn asked, holding up the picture.
"I gave her a drink on the house." He wiped down the bar as he spoke, disgust over what had happened clear on his face. "She didn't deserve getting pulled into a shitty retaliation move like that. After that she hung around a while, spoke with a couple of the other guests."
"Did you see who she left with?"
"A suit, probably. Most likely another guest if she didn't leave alone--that's mostly who we had in here last night. I'm afraid I can't tell you much more. After I gave her the drink, I got pulled away to help further down; I didn't see her much after that."
"The guy she came here with, did he ever come back down?"
He shook his head. "Not that I ever saw. But we have two entrances into the hotel and one to the street. When we get packed, it's impossible to see who is coming and going."
"Then we better hope there's something on the tapes," Maka said as they returned to the hotel lobby.
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Author: Zelda Ophelia (zeldaophelia)
Fandom/Character: CSI:NY; girl!Flack (Dawn Flack), Stella, Mac
General info: Genderbender; Not mine; T
Notes: A huge thank you to eternal_sadist, significantowl, avidbeader, and the wonderful ladies at postonthursday who helped make this fic happen.
Summary: Pre-series. Dawn Flack (not a junior, though everyone wants to add that on) is finally getting her first solo case, without her training partner to tag along. But when one death becomes three with little evidence, she's needs all the help Mac and Stella can give her to find this guy.
Dawn met Maka in the lobby of the apartment building, a secretly relieved that the other detective looked as tired as she did. It hadn't been an early night for either of them and the morning had, unfortunately, come too soon. Though not soon enough for someone else.
"What went wrong?" Maka asked between sips of her coffee.
"I don't know." Dawn sighed as they took the stairs. Their victim had a third floor walk-up apartment, nowhere near where any of the previous victims lived. "But I'm going to have to figure it out before I meet with Gerrard."
"Before we meet with Gerrard. I'm on this one now, too."
A wan smile was Dawn's only response until they reached the third floor. There she paused, putting a hand on Maka's arm. "Just a warning, it's going to be bad."
"I've seen bloody scenes before, Flack," Maka said as they both pulled their gloves on. Then she pushed open the door. "Oh my god."
"That's pretty much what I said at the first scene," Dawn said softly.
"Damn," Maka swore softly as she gingerly stepped around an arc of dried blood to approach the bed. "He stabbed her a lot. Got an artery from the looks of it."
"It's likely on both counts," Hawkes said from the doorway. "I can't confirm it without an autopsy, but he's stabbed his previous victims ten to a dozen times apiece. And he seems to know where to hit to get the aorta."
"Medical experience?" Dawn asked, wondering if they had been approaching it all wrong so far.
"More like high school biology," Maka said. "Don't you remember having to learn where the major veins and arteries were?"
"I remember sleeping through high school biology," Dawn joked lightly, "but that's about it. Oh, and getting a detention for punching Jake Bowman in the nose during lab."
"You punched someone in the nose during biology lab?" Hawkes asked incredulously.
"He snapped my bra while I was using the microscope." She paused, thinking back. "I think I might have broken it. His nose, not the microscope. Pretty sure Dad would have grounded me if I'd broken the microscope. Instead he congratulated me and then said that since I had my left hook down, it was time to start working on my right."
"Your family is strange."
"We're Irish," Dawn said, with a shrug, by way of explanation. "There's a knife by the body again."
"I'll compare it to the knives in her kitchen when we get back to the lab," Stella said as she joined them, a harried look on her face. "Hey, Maka."
"Hey, Stella. Busy morning?"
"More like busy night bleeding into a busy morning."
"Where's Mac?" Dawn asked, glancing at the door behind her.
"He has court later this morning. I sent him home to try to get some rest around two." Stella grimaced. "He only lasted an extra day."
"Yeah, but she wasn't at Remy's last night," Maka said, pointing to the victim's hand. There was a smeared, dark stamp on the back of her hand. Stella frowned as Maka held up both of hers, with no stamps on the back. "Remy's uses an ultraviolet ink for their stamp."
"Remy's?" Stella asked.
"The last three victims were last seen at bars near hotels where either one or both of two subdivisions of the AAS held meetings," Dawn explained.
Stella nodded. "I already got that."
"The North and South Atlantic subdivisions held a joint meet and greet last night at The W, which is next to Remy's," Dawn continued. "Most of the participants went there after it was over."
"But apparently he wasn't in that group. Or if he was, he went elsewhere after that," Maka added. "You know, I've seen this stamp before."
"Where?" Dawn asked, turning back to her.
"Your sister, when we ran into her last night. She had the same stamp on the back of her hand. But she didn't get it at Remy's; she got it before she arrived."
Dawn paled slightly, her eyes widening before she pinched the bridge of her nose, silently counting to ten. "I'll talk to her and find out where else she was last night."
"You sure? I could-"
"I am perfectly capable of asking my sister," Dawn interrupted hotly, knowing that she was failing to hide her irritation. She then tried to turn it into a joke. "Besides, what kind of big sister would I be if I didn't take advantage of having a good reason to pull my drunk and hungover little sister out of bed at-" She glanced at her watch. "-seven in the morning?"
"A much nicer one?" Maka offered.
"Eh. She avoided my calls for almost a week. She deserves it. And if it helps solve this case, I don't really care how mad at me she'll end up." She didn't point out that it was pure luck that they weren't looking at Sam's body instead of this victim.
"What do we know about her?" Stella asked, gesturing to their vic and bringing the conversation back on topic.
"Her name is Amanda Parrish." Dawn checked the notes the responding officers had given her. "She works at the make-up counter at Bloomingdales and was discovered this morning by her roommate, who spent last night at her boyfriend's place. The roommate says that she didn't think Amanda had any plans, but she - the roommate - is also in a 'fairly new relationship' - her words - and has been spending more time with her new boyfriend than here lately."
"In other words, she probably hasn't seen Amanda since the last time she came home for a change of clothes," Maka said as she poked her head into the adjoining bathroom. There was a door on the opposite side leading to what she assumed was the roommate's bedroom. "The wastebasket liner is gone again, and the can is empty."
"Consistent with the previous scenes," Stella said as she joined Maka in the bathroom. She brought the bottle of luminol with her, lightly spraying down the side of the bathtub. "And we have traces of bleach as well. He cleaned up after himself again."
"We need to find out where he found her. If it wasn't at Remy's and we aren't following the right angle, we need to figure out what's really going on. And fast."
::
There had been something a little cathartic about pulling Sam out of bed hours before she usually rose. But Dawn's sister had, after being informed there was another victim who had likely been at one of the same bars Sam had been at, told them where she had gone. Despite still being angry Dawn's over having Moran hunt her down to check on her.
Royale was several blocks away from Remy's and The W, but right next door to the Sheraton, where some of the AAS meetings were taking place. It had taken a few phone calls, but a manager was supposed to meet them there.
"At least we're on the right track," Dawn said as she looked over at the Sheraton. "It's still likely connected to the conference. We're just back to 15,000 suspects instead of a couple thousand."
"Could be worse," Maka said lightly. "We could still be looking at the whole city."
Dawn snorted softly. That was something she kept trying to remind herself of, but it wasn't working as well as it had at first. "Tell me again when we find the guy."
The manager, who introduced himself as Lee, immediately recognized the picture of Amanda Parrish. "Left with a business guy--one at the conference next door." He grinned at their impressed looks. "He had one of the coupons we put in the stuff they hand out. Bring them in with the promise of a free drink, and they'll buy three more before the night is over. I don't know how they're doing any sort of business with the hangovers most of them have to be sporting."
"Did the business guy have a name?"
"Told her to call him 'Walt' - just a sec." He stepped over to the cash register. "I'm pretty sure he paid with a credit card. Here it is." He came back with a copy of a receipt. "Walter Key."
"And you're sure that he's staying next door?" Dawn asked, disbelief tingeing her voice. She knew they were waiting for him to make a mistake, but this was a pretty big mistake.
"Yeah, he was saying something about getting her a Midtown." He caught her confused look. "A Midtown Manhattan. It's the Russell's signature drink," he explained, referring to the Sheraton's hotel bar. "It sounded like he was suggesting a nightcap before they headed back to his room."
"His room? Not her place?"
"Nah, I didn't hear them say anything about going to her place. They may have kept to my area of the bar, so I heard more than I usually do, but I didn't get the chance to hear a lot. We were pretty busy last night. These conferences are good for business."
"Yeah, but they're bad for the women in the city," Maka muttered under her breath as they stepped back out onto the street.
"Shall we go talk to Mr. Key?" Dawn asked, looking down the street at the Sheraton again.
"I say we do."
Mr. Key certain wasn't expecting them, with a little assistance from management, to come bursting into his hotel room just before ten in the morning. His evening, and now morning, companion most certainly wasn't expecting it, either.
"The hell?" Dawn said as they stared at the man and woman in the bed. This wasn't what they'd been expecting.
"Just what is going on here?" The woman cried out, pulling the covers up over herself as the man next to her yelled at them.
"What is this about?"
"Amanda Parrish," Dawn replied as she motioned for them to get out of bed.
"Who?" Key asked, wrapping a sheet around himself as his companion did the same with the comforter.
"The woman you picked up at the Royale," Maka supplied. "The woman who was murdered last night."
"Wait? Her? Murdered?" He gaped at them, sheet nearly slipping from his grasp. "You don't think I had anything to do with that?"
"Why don't you go get dressed, and we can go back to the precinct and find out," Dawn suggested. "You, too," she said to the woman, "Ms--"
"Sweet. My name is Rita Sweet." She tugged the comforter around herself tightly. "And Walt has been with me all night."
"Of course, Ms. Sweet. But we still need to go downtown and have a talk."
::
Mac, still wearing his suit from court, joined Dawn in the interrogation room with Walt Key while Maka and Stella spoke with Ms. Sweet. Key fidgeted in his seat as they sat down opposite him, immediately starting to talk before Dawn had a chance to ask a question.
"I didn't do it. You've got to trust me on that."
"Mr. Key, we have a witness who saw you leave the Royale with Ms. Parrish."
"Yeah, but I was just taking her back to the hotel bar. I knew that Rita was going to be there, and I wanted to make her jealous."
"You took her back to the bar to make Ms. Sweet jealous."
"Exactly. She's my conference--we hook up at every AAS conference. But this year she was all over some yacht salesman from Miami. So I knew that she'd be in the bar with him, and I thought that if I brought a hot woman back with me, maybe she'd see what it felt like."
"She's your 'conference wife'?" Dawn asked. "Meaning that you gave Ms. Sweet reason to have motive to kill Ms. Parrish."
"No," he protested, shaking his head vigorously. "It wasn't anything like that. We went back to the hotel bar, had a drink, I, um, ran into Rita when I went up for refills, and we ended up going back up to my room, instead. We didn't leave after that--not until you got there."
"You abandoned your date at the hotel bar."
"I wouldn't call her a date, per se. Just someone I was having drinks with."
"Did she speak with anyone else at the Russell?"
"Not that I saw. The place was pretty full; a lot of people from the conference were there. She could have ended up anywhere, with anyone after I left."
Dawn pushed her hair back from her forehead, hoping her frustration wasn't written all over your face. "Thank you, Mr. Key," she said as she rose. "Of course, we're going to have to verify what you say-"
"But I can leave?"
"Actually, no, you can't. Not until we know you're telling the truth."
"But I have to get back to the conference-"
"You didn't seem too worried about sleeping through half of the morning's sessions when we got there this morning. I'm sure the conference can go on without you."
"But-"
"But nothing. You get to stay here until I say otherwise." Turning on her heel, she stormed out into the hallway.
Maka and Stella were waiting for them. "You've got as much as we did?"
"He picked her up to make his girlfriend jealous. He even admitted to being a total cad and abandoning her in the bar to go back to his room with Ms. Sweet."
"Total cad?" Stella asked, a small smile ghosting her lips.
"You have a better word for what he did?"
"He's an ass?" Maka offered bluntly.
Dawn chuckled. "Something like that, but we've got to go back to the hotel and see if there's anything to prove his claims."
"They have a good surveillance system," Stella offered. "If he used the elevator, they'll have surveillance footage for that. And they have cameras at all of their entrances, even the bar. We should be able to get her leaving to go home."
"And, if he wasn't avoiding the cameras, who she was leaving with."
"We'll put a rush on the tapes," Mac said. "I don't care what Chad is working on when they get in, they'll be the priority. Just get them here."
"Why don't I go with?" Stella suggested. "I can bring the tapes back to the lab while you two stay and talk to the hotel management."
"You're supposed to be going home to rest," Mac reminded her, "unless you've forgotten that your shift started last night."
"I'll drop them by the lab on my way home," she amended. "It'll be on the way, and it'll save the trip, and wasted time of going back and forth or waiting."
While Stella ferried the security tapes back to the lab, Dawn and Maka started with the bartender at the Russell. He nodded when he saw the picture of Amanda Parrish.
"Oh, yeah. I remember that dust-up. Poor girl got caught in the middle and had no clue what was going on."
"Dust-up?" Maka asked. "Mr. Key forgot to mention that part."
"She-" He pointed at the picture. "-showed up here with one of our conference guests. His girlfriend wasn't too keen on that. They argued, got over it, and went upstairs."
"And she?" Dawn asked, holding up the picture.
"I gave her a drink on the house." He wiped down the bar as he spoke, disgust over what had happened clear on his face. "She didn't deserve getting pulled into a shitty retaliation move like that. After that she hung around a while, spoke with a couple of the other guests."
"Did you see who she left with?"
"A suit, probably. Most likely another guest if she didn't leave alone--that's mostly who we had in here last night. I'm afraid I can't tell you much more. After I gave her the drink, I got pulled away to help further down; I didn't see her much after that."
"The guy she came here with, did he ever come back down?"
He shook his head. "Not that I ever saw. But we have two entrances into the hotel and one to the street. When we get packed, it's impossible to see who is coming and going."
"Then we better hope there's something on the tapes," Maka said as they returned to the hotel lobby.
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