Free Taking Liberty by Keith Houghton Page B

little here? What if this is the killer’s room, and Westbrook’s the killer? You have to agree, it better explains why this place looks so spick-and-span. Westbrook removed any trace of himself before leaving for Akhiok.”
     
    “Aside from the nutty note on the mirror.”
     
    Rae smiled. “Touché. Come on, let’s check the guest list. See if any names pop up.”
     
    “Such as?”
     
    “Such as someone who hasn’t been back to their room in two days. Otherwise known as a victim.”
     

20
     
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    What were the chances of a killer and his victim renting out rooms in the same hotel? Then again, what were the chances of our having a reservation there, too?
     
    We headed back downstairs. Rae placed a call to the Kodiak Police Department, requesting backup. I got the chirpy clerk on the front desk to print out a list of all guests booked in and out during the preceding two weeks. Told him that the room upstairs was now officially a crime scene and that no one must enter, especially Housekeeping.
     
    I tapped fingers on the counter. “While you’re at it, check who hasn’t accessed their room in the last twenty-four hours.”
     
    The kid tapped keys. “You guys are determined to make me earn this overtime. Let me take a look at the messenger system.”
     
    The guest list was lengthy. A full house. Mainly single males and couples. In town for business or for visiting family over the Holiday period. I only managed to get a third of the way through before hot adrenaline erupted in my chest.
     
    “What’s wrong?” Rae asked as she came off her cell. “You look like a serial killer just climbed in through your bedroom window.”
     
    “One just did,” I breathed, jabbing a finger at a name on the list. “This prize-winning psycho, right here.”
     

21
     
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    The word coincidence is a convenient contrivance to discredit the incongruous. A mouthful, but true.
     
    Rae seized the fluttering printout from my hand and read the indicated name out loud – in the same moment the clerk on the counter came up with the same result:
     
    “Gary Cornsilk.”
     
    It meant nothing to Rae, and even less to the kid in the Santa hat. But to me it meant everything.
     
    “You know this person?”
     
    I knew him, all right. But mostly by another name. A name I had given him on a whim, in accordance with his scaly face and his reptile skin boots:
     
    Snakeskin .
     
    Adrenaline was burning a hole through my sternum.
     
    Since my arrest in the summer, a day hadn’t passed by without Snakeskin invading my thoughts. Early on, I’d made it my mission to hunt him down once I was free from Springfield. Make him pay for the callous murder of Hives, a private investigator I’d hired to do my dirty work. But mostly I’d thought about how I would stop him from finding and killing another serial killer, the killer who had become my prime obsession, the killer I knew as The Undertaker .
     
    I took Rae by the elbow and moved us out of earshot of the desk clerk. “Cornsilk is ex-FBI. He was based at the Memphis Field Office. That was until he had a mental breakdown earlier this year and the Bureau put him out to pasture.”
     
    “It still doesn’t explain how you know him.”
     
    The kid behind the counter was leaning over and trying his best to eavesdrop. I turned our backs to him. “There was this farmhouse, in Jackson. It came to light during our investigation into The Undertaker Case. We suspected it was the killer’s family home. An FBI SWAT team was sent in under cover of night, to investigate. What we didn’t know at the time was The Undertaker had rigged the farmhouse with incendiary explosives. When Cornsilk opened the front door, all hell broke loose. Two agents were killed and four were seriously injured.”
     
    Rae was nodding. “Now that you mention it, I remember the incident. I was in and out of the Memphis field office for a