Chapter 1

Daphne Monroe had had a relatively successful career. She had loved history and crime and gore for as long as she could remember, she just hadn't expected it to be her career someday. First, she was a historian, a professor after that filling students' facts they didn't really want to know, and then somehow without her knowing it, Daphne started writing books. First, she wrote crime fiction earning a moderate fame that she found she enjoyed as long as it meant she could still walk down the street then one day she decided to try her hand at something new. She decided to try writing nonfiction, to fuel her love of history by writing of it; she just never expected to be more successful doing it. Somehow before she realized it, writing about serial killers, about the sick and depraved souls that murdered innocents became her specialty. Daphne found living for the hunt for information, using all her spare time to hunt for her research until she woke up no longer able to deny how much she loved it. She loved looking at the crime scene photos ignoring the blood as she focused on the individual committing the crime. She loved walking in the footsteps of the killer and when she got to interview that killer, she always felt a special thrill inside. She really didn't know how it happened, but overnight, Daphne found she was no longer the carefree fiction writing making up the horror, but the true crime writer looking at pictures of real victims and real killers in search of their motives. It bothered her for only a moment.

"Writing true crime was something I just stumbled upon" Daphne would say as she faced TV cameras wondering about the change her twenty fiction novels piled beside her next to the others, she had written her eyes gleaming with the unspoken decision to never stop. She had looked at the crime scene photos, paid countless dollars for real memorabilia, and all the work she put in had been a success.

Her first book on Ted Bundy had been a success, a raving success, and she never went back to fiction, she followed it with another, this time choosing Ed Gein as the subject. People always asked if she was scared as she walked in the footsteps of something so evil, but she always said no. Because it was the truth, Daphne didn't feel fear as she interviewed people who'd witnessed the carnage or who had known the killer never suspecting. She never thought of it as walking in the shadow of a killer, but of that of a human being. For that was what she tried to accomplish with her writing, to discover why these killers just decided to begin killing one day; she looked at them without bias and in the end came to know what led them to be killers.

"Before they were killers they were just like you or me" Daphne would say when some TV anchor grilled her on why she wrote on serial killers even as her books continued to be best sellers, first the one on Bundy then Gein, Manson, Jack the Ripper, Fish, and finally the one that led her to the hotel Cortez, Jeffrey Dahmer. She was going through items that had belonged to Dahmer, things she'd bought for a pretty penny, when she stumbled across a matchbook with the hotel Cortez scrawled across the front. She had found thousands of used matchbooks among his things, but this one stood out because it hadn't even been opened. It was saved. Tucked away as if it was the most precious thing in the world. It was wrapped with great care in a white silk handkerchief, the initials JPM embroidered on it, and the second she touched it, Daphne felt something inside herself shiver. It was like this small book was supposed to lead her somewhere, she just had no idea where that was.

Daphne kept the matchbook as she continued her research though at the time she didn't know why. It was something she just kept coming back to even as she began to finish her book. And even when it was finished, Daphne came back to it. She didn't leave it this time though, instead, she put her years of work and research to use, and it was then she discovered why. They were a clue leading to her next project, for the hotel Cortez was built by a serial killer.

"James Patrick March" Daphne said his name for the first time, and it slid off her tongue like the very silk of the handkerchief that his initials were engraved on leading her to her next book even as her next book was being set to bookstores everywhere.

"My next book will be on James Patrick March" Daphne told her publisher the very next day already making the arrangements to find out all there was to know on the man and his hotel. She started her research, found pictures of the man, clothes that once belonged to him, and then she discovered that the hotel Cortez still stood.

As she looked at pictures of it online, Daphne could feel the hotel calling to her. She knew that she couldn't write this book, the first of its kind, without seeing the place her subject had built. After all, she knew she could never interview the man himself, but perhaps seeing his hotel would be half as good. That was when another idea came to mind. What if she wrote the entire book while staying at the hotel? Daphne made the reservation to stay at the Cortez before her mind was fully made up and suddenly, she was on a plane to Los Angeles. The idea excited her the longer she let it settle there. It became something she was looking forward to even as she was stepping off the plane then driving to the hotel in a taxi. And then, she saw it, the hotel Cortez. She found herself standing in front of the building not able to go inside yet. She had seen pictures of it, but standing in front of it, Daphne felt that same chill run over her. It was like this was her destiny like this was where she was meant to be. Daphne looked at the sign with its big black letters trying to imagine it in its heyday when her feet moved on their own into the building. When she stepped inside, she wasn't surprised that it too was right out of the 1920s.

It was beautiful and smiling, she made her way to the reception desk pulling her bags and her boxes filled with research behind her. The first thing Iris noticed as she stepped up to the desk was each box was labelled James Patrick March.

"Hi…are you…checking in?" exclaimed Iris feeling nervous as her eyes went back and forth between the girl and the boxes with his name on them.

"Yes, I am. I made a reservation a few weeks ago under Monroe" whispered Daphne her vice kind as she pulled an envelope with cash in it out of her purse. She watched as Iris opened the guestbook before her finding only one reservation for that day.

"Yes, it's right here, Daphne Monroe. Checking in today and staying…indefinitely. So, it says here you'll be paying six months in advance?" exclaimed Iris her voice faltering as she read the reservation info scrawled in Liz's handwriting. Part of her couldn't believe anyone would want to stay at the hotel, willingly, for that long. Daphne saw her surprise, but nothing faltered in her demeanor. She simply nodded her head not speaking until she felt like she had to as Iris continued to stare as if not believing her.

"Yes, I'll be paying six months in advance. I was also hoping to get room 64…I believe I said that when I made my reservation" whispered Daphne watching the surprise as it deepened on the woman's face.

"64, yes I see that written here. We usually don't rent it out, but…I think we could make an exception if you're sure that's the one you want" whispered Iris barely finishing before the girl had grabbed the guestbook beginning to sign it.

"Oh yes" exclaimed Daphne grabbing the pen to sign the guestbook before nearly yanking the key out of Iris' hand.

"Liz Taylor, take this girl to room 64" called Iris then, a bald woman appearing, her eyes seeming to scan over her noticing immediately the boxes with his name scrawled across them.

The woman didn't say anything as they rode the elevator to her room. It wasn't until the doors opened with a ding and they were moving down the hall that a single word passed between them.

"What brings you to the Cortez?" said Liz her eyes watching her closely.

"I'm coming to stay here, so I can work on my next book. I'm a true crime writer and my next subject just happened to build this hotel" said Daphne giving the woman a smile as she waved at the boxes trailing behind her.

"James Patrick March, you're writing a book on him?" exclaimed Liz hardly able to contain her surprise.

"Yes, I stumbled across his name, and couldn't quite forget him you could say. And I would be the first to do so, my publisher liked that in particular especially when I wanted to come here to write it. We both figured it might give me some insight into who he was if I stayed in the hotel he built" whispered Daphne her eyes leaving Liz to look at the halls she walked in. They were elegant, more beautiful then that of any other hotel she'd ever stayed in. With the gold that seemed to embolden every surface along with the red that lingered alongside it. It gave her goosebumps to think that Mr. March had once walked these same halls especially when she came to room 64 where his office had been. She had expected it to look different from all the other rooms, but it didn't. They stood in front of the polished oak door with its gold numbers. Daphne didn't move to open the door, in fact, if Liz hadn't opened it for her, she didn't know how long she would have stood there. She could feel Liz watching her as she stared into the darkness of the room that had housed her latest subject.

"This is 64. I hope you enjoy you're stay at the Cortez…good luck writing your book" whispered Liz waiting for the girl to step inside. Her words drew her out of the trance she seemed to be in. Daphne looked at the woman and they shared a smile as she handed her a twenty-dollar bill. Liz accepted it without a word before turning, she walked away back to the elevator leaving Daphne standing there. As she walked away, hearing as the girl closed the door as she walked inside, Liz wondered how this would play out, but furthermore, she wondered how James March himself would react to the girl seeking to tell his story.