Claremont Hotel II

arturo M. Vásquez, las cruces, nM

Fragmentos de la novela ‘NO TEMAN A NADIE’

Chapter Vii

Diego remembered hearing about this serial killer, still at large, staying two jumps ahead of san Francisco City Police Department investigators, frustrating everyone, and frightening the general public.

“Was this woman another of his unfortunate victims? But, if so, who is this man? ” Diego asked himself. Perhaps the man lying on the floor was the Five-Star Hotel Killer? Serial killers often leave their signature: knife wounds to the chest, a confession, or a letter. Was the altar his signature? ”

The Captain, too, entertained the remote possibility that the woman had been murdered by the Five-Star Hotel killer, but he did not want to voice that suspicion until the investigation had ruled out the most likely type of suspect—a jealous ex-husband or lover, who would definitely have a motive to kill the man she was with, and possibly her, as well.

Pointing to the dead man on the floor, Captain Williams asked: “Could this man have raped and killed the female victim,“ he asked, raising his pointed finger, and holding his arm straight, pointed towards the bathroom, “and then walked from the bathroom to the bedroom, where he was surprised by an intruder and sustained a blow to the head, right here by the front of the bed? Or did a different perpetrator kill both victims? ”

“Most murders don’t have altars,” Diego said. “We can’t ignore that evidence. I can find out, but I’ve never read anything about an altar at the Five-Star Hotel killer crime scenes.” t he police used two conference rooms in the hotel to interview Claremont Hotel staff. They quickly learned that the female victim was Dr. Cecilia Rollins, a club member who was recently widowed. Mrs. rollins had rented the room for a whole week. She had been observed eating in one of the hotel’s restaurants on several occasions with different white

CAPíTu Lo VII:

Diego recordó haber oído hablar de este asesino serial, todavía prófugo, siempre escapándose de los investigadores del Departamento de Policía de San Francisco, frustrando a todos y aterrorizando a la población.

“

¿Era esta mujer otra de sus desafortunadas víctimas? Y, de ser así ¿quién es este hombre?” se preguntaba Diego. ¿Quizás el hombre tirado ahora en el suelo era el Asesino del Five-Star Hotel? Los asesinos en serie a menudo dejan su marca: heridas de arma males younger than her age. she had also been seen lingering over a cocktail in the Paragon bar with a young handsome Asian male. Police interviewed the cleaning woman, who said she had not seen anyone in the room when she cleaned it at 11 that morning. t he female victim had played tennis at noon and had a massage afterwards. stanley Marconi, the tennis pro and exercise instructor, said he had cautioned Dr. Rollins about using male escort blanca en el pecho, una confesión o una carta. ¿Era el altar su firma?”

El Capitán también consideró la remota posibilidad de que la mujer hubiera sido asesinada por el asesino del Five-Star Hotel, pero no quería expresar esa sospecha hasta que la investigación hubiera descartado al sospechoso más probable: un ex-marido celoso u otro amante que, con mucha razón, tendría un motivo para matar al hombre con el que estaba, y posiblemente a ella también.

Señalando al muerto en el piso, el Capitán Williams preguntó: “¿Podría este hombre haber violado y asesinado a la víctima femenina? ”, preguntó, levantando el dedo índice y manteniendo el brazo recto, señaló hacia el baño, “y luego caminó desde del baño al dormitorio, donde fue sorprendido por un intruso y recibió un golpe en la cabeza, justo aquí al frente de la cama? ¿O un diferente perpetrador mató a ambas víctimas?”

“Casi ningún asesinato tiene altares”, dijo Diego. “No podemos ignorar esa evidencia. Puedo averiguarlo, pero nunca he leído nada sobre un altar en las escenas del crimen del asesino del Five-Star Hotel.”

La víctima femenina había jugado al tenis al mediodía y después recibió un masaje. Stanley Marconi, tenista profesional e instructor físico, dijo que ya había advertido a la Dra. Rollins en el pasado sobre pagar acompañantes masculinos. La masajista, una tal Marilyn Hastings, vió nada fuera de lo normal, aparte de que su cliente parecía tener prisa —dijo que tenía una cita a las 5 p.m. Un camarero informó que a las 6:30 p.m. llevó a la habitación cena para dos, con dos botellas de vino tinto, y que la Dra. Rollins lo recibió con una gran sonrisa y le dio una generosa propina. Aparentemente, esa fue la última vez que alguien la vio con vida.

La policía utilizó dos salas de conferencias del hotel para entrevistar al personal del hotel Claremont. rápidamente supieron que la víctima femenina continúa a la vuelta continued on next page

Claremont Hotel II continued from previous page services in the past. The masseuse, a Marilyn Hastings, said nothing seemed unusual, other than her client seemed in a hurry, as she said she had a date at 5 pm. A room service waiter reported that at 6:30 pm, he delivered dinner for two, with two bottles of red wine, to the room, and Dr. Rollins gave him a big smile and a generous tip. t hat was apparently the last time anyone saw her alive. t his theory was bolstered when Captain Williams picked up the telephone, and after a brief conversation, announced that forensics had just confirmed that the white male victim’s fingerprints matched those found at the scenes of two of the other Five-star Hotel homicides. But… if the white male was the Five Star Hotel Killer, how did he meet his death? Who had killed him? There was no forensic evidence of another person in the room. t he detectives speculated that an unknown killer made the altar after murdering the Five Star Hotel Killer, concluding that the altar was probably not created by Five Star Hotel Killer, but instead by someone who targeted the Five star Killer. The briefing took over an hour before reaching consensus; the Five star Hotel Killer had murdered his seventh victim and died from trauma to the head inflicted by a third person.

Captain Williams ordered the investigators to request telephone records for Dr. Rollins and to search her browsing history and other computer files on the laptop found in the room. Two ambulances came and took the dead bodies to the coroners. t he white male victim did not appear to have been registered at the hotel; neither had anyone seen him in the hotel or at the club. t he police ended their interrogation of the staff, and as soon as they had cleared out from the hotel grounds, the hotel resumed its former elegance as if nothing had occurred.

At the Berkeley Police Department on Martin Luther King Jr. Way, the Homicide Division was humming like a beehive: pictures of the crime scene were enlarged, tacked to bulletin boards and arrows drawn to indicate relevant evidence. After they had explored the different scenarios and possible theories about the Claremont Hotel killings, investigators were left with one unlikely, but intriguing possibility, that the dead man was the Five star Hotel Killer.

Finally everyone went their separate ways to further study the case and to work on other pending cases of the Berkeley Police Department.

Diego walked into his office and logged onto the police files from various Bay area jurisdictions. Checking with an investigator friend with the San Francisco PD, Diego learned that newspaper clippings on previous Five star murders did not mention anything about altars found at the crime scene, concluding that the altar was not created by the Five Star Killer, but instead by someone who targeted the Five star Killer.

What in the world was going on? He keyed in killings that shared common evidence; women murdered with a knife, women found dead in bathtubs, altars, candles, Chinese sculptures, and roses, dating back fifty years. He got hundreds of hits.

Now he just had to look through them. The time flew by and many people left the building before Diego noticed that Captain Williams and he were the only ones left in the homicide division. Diego waved at the Captain as he walked by his office on his way out.

The police release read, “Double homicide at Claremont Hotel in Oakland, California: White female drowns in bathtub and white male dies from severe trauma to the head.” to be continued in the next issue... era la Dra. Cecilia Rollins, era miembro del club, y había recientemente enviudado. La Sra. rollins había reservado la habitación por una semana entera. En varias ocasiones se la había visto comiendo en uno de los restaurantes del hotel con diferentes hombres, blancos, y más jóvenes que ella. también se la había visto por largo rato tomando un cóctel en el bar Paragon con un joven y apuesto oriental. La policía entrevistó a la mucama, quien dijo haber visto a nadie en la habitación cuando hizo el aseo a las 11 de la mañana.

El Capitán Williams ordenó a los investigadores que solicitaran los registros telefónicos de la Dra. Rollins y buscaran en su historial de navegación y otros archivos en la computadora portátil que se encontró en la habitación. Llegaron dos ambulancias y llevaron los cadáveres a los forenses.

La víctima blanca de sexo masculino no parecía haberse registrado en el hotel —tampoco lo había visto nadie en el hotel ni en el club. La policía terminó el interrogatorio del personal y —tan pronto como salieron de las dependencias del hotel— el hotel recuperó su antigua elegancia como si nada hubiera pasado.

En el Departamento de Policía de Berkeley en Martin Luther King Jr. Way, la División de Homicidios zumbaba como una colmena: las imágenes de la escena del crimen estaban ampliadas, pegadas al diario mural y había flechas dibujadas para indicar pruebas relevantes. Después de haber explorado diferentes escenarios y posibles teorías sobre el crimen en el Hotel Claremont, los investigadores se quedaron con una posibilidad, poco probable pero tentadora, de que el hombre muerto era el Asesino del Five star Hotel.

Esta teoría se vio reforzada cuando el capitán Williams contestó el teléfono y, después de una breve conversación, anunció que los forenses acababan de confirmar que las huellas digitales de la víctima masculina coincidían con las encontradas en las escenas de dos de los homicidios ocurridos en el Five-star Hotel. Pero... si el individuo blanco era el Asesino del Five star Hotel ¿Cómo terminó muerto? ¿Quién lo mató? No había evidencia forense alguna de otra persona en la habitación. Los detectives especularon que un homicida desconocido hizo el altar después de matar al Asesino del Five star Hotel —y concluyeron que el altar probablemente no fue creado por el Asesino del Five Star Hotel, sino por alguien que buscaba al Asesino del Five star Hotel para ultimarlo. El debate de ideas se extendió por más de una hora hasta que se llegó a un consenso: el Asesino del Five Star Hotel había asesinado a su séptima víctima, y murió a causa de un trauma en la cabeza, infligido por una tercera persona.

Finalmente, todos volvieron a sus puestos para estudiar más a fondo el caso —y reanudar su trabajo en otros casos pendientes del Departamento.

Diego se encerró en su oficina y —en i nternet— anduvo buscando en los archivos policiales de varias jurisdicciones del Área de la bahía. Al consultar con un detective amigo de la Policía de San Francisco, Diego, se enteró de que en los recortes de periódicos sobre asesinatos anteriores del Asesino del Five star Hotel no se mencionaba cosa alguna sobre los altares en la escena del crimen —por lo que concluyó que el altar fue no preparado por este último, sino por el que lo mató.

¿Cómo diablos no se le ocurrió antes? tecleó asesinatos que compartían evidencia común: mujeres asesinadas con arma blanca; halladas muertas en bañeras; donde se mencionaran altares, velas, esculturas chinas, rosas, que datan de hace cincuenta años. obtuvo cientos de opciones.

Ahora sólo tenía que mirarlos. El tiempo pasó volando y muchos ya habían abandonado el edificio antes de que Diego notara que el Capitán Williams y él eran los únicos que quedaban en la División de Homicidios. Diego saludó al Capitán al salir y pasar frente a su oficina.

El comunicado de la policía rezaba: “Doble homicidio en el hotel Claremont en Oakland, California: una mujer blanca ahogada en la bañera y un hombre blanco muere por trauma encefálico”. continúa en el próximo número...

Immigration and the Americas: continued from page 6 shootings in America began because of hatred of southeast Asian migrants right here in Stockton. i n contrast to such overwhelmingly pejorative attitudes toward immigration, the Cato Institute, a leading conservative think tank in the Alan Friedman tradition of free enterprise economics, has developed a program to teach Americans about the many common but incorrect myths they hold about immigration. some of the most important false ideas include:

• The belief that immigrants take jobs from older Americans, lower wages, and hurt the poor. none of these are true.

• That immigrants use the welfare system more than others when they actually use it less.

• That immigrants raise government spending, but they actually pay more taxes than the value of the services they receive.

• That immigrants are more likely to commit crimes when they actually do so much less than those of us born here.

• That immigrants constitute a significant risk of terrorism when the FBI shows that the greatest risk of terrorism comes from white supremacist right wing militias.

• That the U.S. takes in proportionally many more immigrants than other countries when the u.s. is actually now almost at the bottom of the list among rich countries.

• Immigrants do not reduce the incomes of skilled American workers, they actually increase them and contribute to programs for worker development.

• That immigrants are an economic curse when they are actually a blessing in their willingness to start new enterprises, their scientific contributions, and their inventiveness and spread of new technologies.3 t he biden administration approach to the countries that are producing the recent heavy increase in the flow of refugees and asylum seekers also differs enormously from the Trump administration, especially here in the Western Hemisphere. t he spread of authoritarian and corrupt regimes in Central and south America in the last decade or so contrasts to the partnership of democracies that had developed in the 1990s and along with explicit migration agreements, like those with Mexico and Cuba, that helped stem the flow of undocumented immigrants earlier. Additionally, the Trump cold shoulder to Latin America, refusing even to personally attend the 8th Summit of the Americas in Peru, coincided with a major expansion of Chinese presence and influence in countries across the region, including even such close U.S. allies as Panama and Mexico. By 2020, China had surpassed the u.s. as the leading trade partner of south America and even much of the Caribbean by a large margin. To build back hemispheric trust, President Biden extended COVID-19 assistance in the region, orchestrated the development a new hemispheric national security plan, and personally hosted the 9th Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles in 2022.

Despite the promising initiatives by the Biden administration, the huge mass of migrants who had been seeking to reach the U.S. for nearly three years began to overwhelm the u s. border before the new biden team was even partly in place. Experts estimate that the Biden administration had to take a record of over 2.4 million detention and removal actions of migrants just in FY 2021, but enough still entered the u.s. for republican governors in Florida, Texas and Arizona to round up bus and airplane loads of new arrivals and send them off to cities in the northeast and California in order to raise a ruckus about the border issue.

Meanwhile, in Latin America the attitude toward the u s. continued to sour as the Pandemic hit their region harder than the rest of the world. the u.s. led the world in developing new vaccines and in progressive measures to reduce the economic impact, while Latin America was undergoing the highest death rate and the severest economic downturns.4 t he result was less cooperation than the biden administration hoped for and the need for more concerted efforts all along the way. t hus the initial help in shipping a few million vaccines to a region with over half a billion people had to be increased substantially, especially as word reached our neighbors, who had a severe shortage of vaccines, that reluctance by some Americans to get vaccinations was leading to the expiration of millions of doses before they were being used here. t he Ninth Summit of the Americas which President biden hosted in Los Angeles in June 2022 was even partially boycotted because of U.S. refusal to invite Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela and mistakenly follow the Trump approach of harsh coercive actions against the Communist countries in the region. While 30 countries of Latin America and the Caribbean joined in the new Climate Partnership and the Americas Partnership for Economic Prosperity (APEP), some of the key countries including Mexico did not attend when these neighbors were excluded. Nonetheless, the

APEP inauguration was well received as a high standard international agreement and the first concrete indicator that the U.S. response to Chinese initiatives in the region would be more than just warnings against Chinese perfidy while diverting all the resources for the pivot to Asia.5 t he relaxing of restrictions on nicaragua have already led to a regional agreement to supervise new elections there like those that ended the civil war and the defeat of the sandinista regime in 1990. The modification of Trump restrictions on Cuba, including those which severely limited family remittances to relatives on the island, are moving the Biden government back toward the effort of the obama administration that intended to end the U.S. embargo. And most importantly, changes in punitive measures against Venezuela have prompted the release of American businessmen from prison and most importantly the resumption of Chevron production of oil exports from Venezuela to the U.S., the one country with the refineries that can most profitably use Venezuelan oil. t he restoration of a modest flow of financial resources to Venezuela not controlled by China or russia appears to have even opened doors toward external mitigation of the draconian political and human rights practices of the Maduro regime. t he biden administration is obviously walking a political tightrope, possibly writing off Florida to rightwing Latinos, but seeking positive gains in oil supply for the rest of the country and gaining the agreement of Canada and Mexico for the measures that promise to control the flow of immigrants from Nicaragua, Cuba, Haiti and Venezuela. The sudden decline in asylum cases after the new agreement was reached suggests that the border control program is finally on the right track.6

As has been the case all along, the Biden administration has shown its willingness to adjust its efforts and concentrate on the value of building the alliances which have proven so successful in deepening European and other third country support for the Ukraine. As a result President biden recalled an old senate crony, Christopher Dodd, to work with his Latin America team. t he result has been a startling opening of new doors and productive low key actions.

At the same time the strong pink tide that has brought leftist governments to power all across south America is unexpectedly favoring broader collaboration with the u s. and new areas of initiative, especially with respect to new energy production and climate change, developing rare earth and other mineral supply chains outside Chinese control, disease control, and worker concluye a la vuelta