Page 73 of The Russian (Michael Bennett 13)

Ott sent the clerk scurrying down the main stairs. He looked in every direction and saw no sign of the woman from earlier.

Ott headed for the rear stairway. The door was locked, but it took only a couple of twists with the screwdriver to pop it open.

He hoped his hasty plan would work.

Chapter 91

I was startled by a shout. I looked up at the wide staircase and saw the hipster clerk rushing down. It took a moment to realize what he was saying.

The scrawny clerk yelled, “He’s on the fire escape! He’s climbing to the roof!”

Sergeant Sadecki said,

“What?”

When the clerk reached the bottom of the stairs, he turned and ran right out the front door of the hotel.

Instantly, I called Terri on her cell phone. “The clerk just ran out of here shouting that Ott is on the fire escape climbing to the roof.”

Terri said, “Stand by one sec.” She came back on the phone and said, “The door to 319 is closed and locked.”

“Can you see the fire escape from anywhere?”

Another few seconds later and Terri said, “I can see most of it from a window at the end of the corridor. I don’t see anyone on it from this vantage point.”

I said, “Stay on the door in case it’s a trick. Listen on the radio.” I wasted no time in turning to the sergeant. “Alert your guys outside. Call in some more help. And while you’re at it, call Grissom. Ott might be anywhere by now.”

I raced up the stairs as the others started to fan out and search for our suspect.

I found Terri Hernandez in front of 319. I pulled my gun, and she did the same. Without a word, I turned and kicked the door to 319. With a loud crack, it snapped open and slammed into the wall.

We entered the two-room suite with our guns pointed in front of us. I swung to my left to make sure the bathroom was empty. Terri kept moving forward into the small living room. She waited for me to catch up as we moved into the bedroom.

Terri cleared the second bathroom.

I did a quick sweep under the bed and in the closet. Nothing. The windows were all closed and locked from the inside.

I tried to think where Ott might have gone.

I got on the radio. “The room’s empty. It doesn’t look like he got on the fire escape. There are at least two levels underground. Mostly for maintenance and storage. Has anyone seen anything there?”

The uniformed sergeant came on and said they had covered the entire outside and he had someone searching the roof.

Detective Raina Rayesh came on the radio and said, “The other clerk tells me Ott checked in six weeks and three days ago. She gave me a set of passkeys so we don’t have to kick in any doors.”

Terri Hernandez mumbled, “Too late.”

Terri and I met the cops from the roof and we searched each floor, stairwell, and elevator carefully. We found nothing.

More cops arrived, including my lieutenant, but we still had no idea where Daniel Ott had disappeared to. Harry Grissom put his arm around my shoulders, knowing how I must feel.

He said, “This is a win. We know who this guy is now. What he looks like. For once we can use the media to our advantage.”

Chapter 92

I sat with Harry Grissom in the hotel lobby as for the second time in days we crafted a news release revealing the identifying details of a serial killer.

By the time we’d announced Jeffrey Cedar’s crimes, he was already dead.

---