MARRIOTT HOTEL,
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
"So did you find anything useful?" asked Reyes, getting up from where she had been sitting cross-legged on the end of the bed and stretching as Doggett entered her room.
"Honestly, Monica?" he said, "I have no idea."
Sighing he dumped a pile of files on the coffee table and flopped down into an armchair.
"How has your day been?" he asked.
"Almost terminally dull. I've watched hours of videotape and I haven't turned up a thing."
"Well, I've got a tape you may find a bit more interesting," said Doggett. "The Baltimore cop assigned to the case, Detective John Munch, gave it to me. It's a copy of the reconstruction done by their guys based on the forensics."
He slid the tape into the VCR and they both watched the reconstruction. They saw the detective playing the part of Boudreaux take out his gun, fire at those playing the bodyguards - who collapsed into the taped outlines on the floor marking where the real bodyguards had fallen - then go over to 'Clay' and put two bullets into his brain before exiting the barbershop. They could tell the reconstruction was accurate.
"I went over the scene for myself, " said Doggett, "and that's pretty much how it had to have gone down."
"I agree," said Monica, staring at the screen intently, "which means that whoever that was who killed Vincent Clay, it wasn't Chuck Boudreaux."
"What?" said Doggett, "How can you know that?"
"As the reconstruction proves, the killer had to be left- handed. Chuck Boudreaux is right-handed. That means the real Chuck is still missing, has been for three months, and that someone is trying to frame him."
"Another damn twin," said Doggett, "which confirms our two cases have to be connected after all."
"It's the medallion," said Reyes, "it has to be."
"Whoa, now, Monica," said Doggett, "it's a big leap from a couple of look-alikes to magic medallions. Shouldn't we check out more logical explanations first?"
"And just what would those be John? That Chuck and I each have hitherto unknown twins both of whom just happen to have shown up in Baltimore at the same time?"
"Let's just carry on going through all this stuff," he replied, nodding at the piles of videotapes and files. "There has to be something here."
There was. Less than an hour after they started in on the files, Reyes held up a surveillance photograph.
"I think I've found something," she said, passing it to Doggett and rummaging through the hotel security tapes. The picture showed a man and a woman in their early thirties. It had come from the file on one of the cases Billings had been working with Boudreaux.
"So who are these people?" asked Doggett.
"I've no idea," said Reyes, turning on the VCR, "but they were also in this hotel the same time that Darryl Johnson disappeared."
Sorting through the tapes, she found one showing them entering the hotel, the woman carrying a baby, wrapped in a blanket; walking along the same corridor Johnson had used to take Monica's twin back to his room; and leaving the hotel later.
"It's them alright," agreed Doggett, "but what does it mean?"
"The file that photo came from was the one concerning baby trafficking," said Monica, "the selling of babies to childless couples desperate for children. It was a racket the Clays were running, one Chuck Boudreaux helped shut down."
"Baby trafficking? But they had a baby with them when they entered the hotel and still had it with them when they left. We've just seen that on the tapes."
"Maybe," said Reyes, "and maybe not. I need you come with me down to the basement. I think I know what's going on here."
If Ernesto Suarez was surprised to see the gringa from the FBI again so soon he gave no sign of it as he opened up the cupboard for her and her partner.
"This is it!" said Reyes, triumphantly holding aloft the extremely lifelike doll she had noticed earlier.
Back in her room, she explained what she had found to a puzzled Doggett.
"I didn't spot it at first," she told him, "but this isn't just any old doll. No, it's a special one designed to be as lifelike as possible and used by maternity clinics in pre- natal classes for expectant mothers. I think this is what we saw that couple carry into the hotel, but it was a real baby they carried out. They, or whoever gave them the real baby, then dumped this down the laundry chute."
"I get it," said Doggett. "If someone had seen them coming into the hotel with no baby then leaving with one later it would have raised alarm bells. This way, no one was any the wiser."
"Exactly. And, since these things are a lot more expensive than the dolls little girls play with, no clinic is going to leave them unlabelled," said Reyes. With a flourish, she tore off the doll's diaper. There, stenciled on its left buttock, was:
PROPERTY OF THE REINER CLINIC
"Guess our next stop is the Reiner Clinic," said Doggett.
"Yes, I guess it is."
In a van parked outside the hotel, the man listening to their conversation took off his earphones and turned to the driver.
"Randallstown", he said.