'It's possible.'

'But not his own name, or he would have signed it in script instead of being cute. So what we'd wind up with, a.s.suming we got very lucky and there was a card to be found and we actually came up with it, what we'd have is another alias for the same son of a b.i.t.c.h, and we wouldn't be any closer'n we are now to knowing who he is.'

'There's another thing you could do, while you were at it.'

'What's that?'

'Have other hotels in the area check their registrations for, oh, the past six months or a year.'

'Check 'em for what? Printed registrations? Come on, Matt. You know the man-hours you're talking about?'

'Not printed registrations. Have them check for guests named Jones. I'm talking about hotels like the Galaxy Downtowner, modern hotels in that price range. Most of them'll be like the Galaxy and have their registrations on computer. They can pull their Jones registrations in five or ten minutes, but not unless someone with a tin shield asks 'em to.'

'And then what have you got?'

'You pull the appropriate cards, look for a guest named Jones, probably with the first initial C or the initials CO, and you compare printing and see if you find him anywhere. If you come up with anything you see where it leads. I don't have to tell you what to do with a lead.'

He was silent again. 'I don't know,' he said at length. 'It sounds pretty thin.'

'Maybe it is.'

'I'll tell you what I think it is. I think it's a waste of time.'

'It's not a waste of all that much time. And it's not that thin. Joe, you'd do it if the case wasn't already closed in your mind.'

'I don't know about that.'

'Of course you would. You think it's a hired killer or a lunatic. If it's a hired killer you want to close it out and if it's a lunatic you want to wait until he does it again.'

'I wouldn't go that far.'

'You went that far last night.'

'Last night was last night, for Christ's sake. I already explained about last night.'

'It wasn't a hired killer,' I said. 'And it wasn't a lunatic just picking her out of the blue.'

'You sound like you're sure of it.'

'Reasonably sure.'

'Why?'

'No hired hitman goes crazy that way. What did he hit her, sixty times with a machete?'

'I think it was sixty-six.'

'Sixty-six, then.'

'And it wasn't necessarily a machete. Somethinglike a machete.'

'He had her strip. Then he butchered her like that, he got so much blood on the walls that they had to paint the room. When did you ever hear of a professional hit like that?'

'Who knows what kind of animal a pimp hires? Maybe he tells the guy to make it ugly, do a real job on her, make an example out of her. Who knows what goes through his mind?'

'And then he hires me to look into it.'

'I admit it sounds weird, Matt, but - '

'It can't be a crazy, either. It was somebody whowent crazy, but it's not a psycho getting his kicks.'

'How do you know that?'

'He's too careful. Printing his name when he signed in. Carrying the dirty towels away with him. This is a guy who took the trouble to avoid leaving a shred of physical evidence.'

'I thought he used the towels to wrap the machete.'

'Why would he do that? After he washed the machete he'd put it back in the case the way he brought it. Or, if he wanted to wrap it in towels, he'd use clean towels. He wouldn't carry away the towels he washed up with unless he wanted to keep them from being found. But towels can hold things - a hair, a bloodstain - and he knew he might be a suspect because he knew something linked him to Kim.'

'We don't know for sure the towels were dirty, Matt. We don't know he took a shower.'

'He chopped her up and put blood all over the walls. You think he got out of there without washing up?'

'I guess not.'

'Would you take wet towels home for a souvenir? He had a reason.'

'Okay.' A pause. 'A psycho might not want to leave evidence. You're saying he's someone who knew her, who had a reason to kill her. You can't be sure of that.'

'Why did he have her come to the hotel?'

'Because that's where he was waiting. Him and his little machete.'

'Why didn't he take his little machete to her place on Thirty-seventh Street?'

'Instead of having her make house calls?'

'Right. I spent the day talking to hookers. They aren't nuts about outcalls because of the travel time. They'll do them, but they usually invite the caller to come to their place instead, tell him how much more comfortable it is. She probably would have done that but he wasn't having any.'

'Well, he already paid for the room. Wanted to get his money's worth.'

'Why wouldn't he just as soon go to her place?'

He thought about it. 'She had a doorman,' he said. 'Maybe he didn't want to walk past the doorman.'

'Instead he had to walk through a whole hotel lobby and sign a registration card and speak to a desk clerk. Maybe he didn't want to pa.s.s that doorman because the doorman had seen him before. Otherwise a doorman's a lot less of a challenge than an entire hotel.'

'That's pretty iffy, Matt.'