Dangerous Games

Chapter 10 part 3

"Okay, as you no doubt know, on the 19th February, 2013, the body of Canadian student Elisa Lam was recovered from a full water tank on the roof of the Cecil hotel in down-town Los Angeles, about a mile, in fact, from where I live." They could detect the note of pride in his voice. "She was naked and her clothes and some of her possessions were floating in the water next to her. The twenty-one year old had been reported missing a couple of weeks or so before, but her fate was only discovered when residents complained that the water coming out of the faucets was black and tasted funny. Strangely, the only access to the tank was through a locked door to the roof and a hatch in the secured tank itself which was far too small for her to have crawled through. The fire-fighters who got her body out had to cut through the metal for Pete's sake. Had anyone opened that door, an alarm would have gone off in reception and there was no log of any such alarm."

His expression darkened. "However, the fact that she drowned in a water tank to which she couldn't have had any access isn't the strangest thing about the case. No, the thing that raises this case above the ordinary is the footage you're about to see. On the night of her disappearance, Elisa was seen behaving strangely in one of the hotel's elevators. Watch this!"

At last the moment had come, and one mouse click later the video stuttered into life.

"This was taken by the camera at ceiling level in the elevator. You can clearly see the inside of the elevator, the button panel in the corner and a fair amount of the corridor outside the elevator door, which has just opened. For some reason the time code in the bottom left-hand corner has been pixelated."

It was true. The figures at the bottom of the screen had been distorted to the point where they were unreadable. Even so, the time-stamp was clearly ticking on from one second to the next.

"Now Elisa enters from screen left and walks up to the button panel. Watch as she presses several buttons together. It's anyone's guess which floor she wants to go to. Maybe she just wants to get out of there."

"She doesn't seem at all worried. Rather casual, if anything."

"Yeah. Now she just stands there in the corner, calm as anything. Look, she's moving towards the door and leaning out, looking along the corridor."

"It's okay, Bob. We don't need the running commentary. We can see what she's doing."

Bob shrugged, and indicated Miss Lam on the screen who was now peering out of the door, this time without speaking. She rapidly withdrew her head and backed up to one of the elevator walls, the vacant expression on her face replaced with one of concern. Then she moved tightly up into the corner, clearly hiding from someone.

"There's no doubt about it, Bob. She's frightened of something outside." The young lady was peering out of the door at some invisible foe in the corridor to the right. She stepped out cautiously, peering to the left and right, then took a step sideways to the left.

The watchers shook their heads slowly. "Very strange. Do you think she's sick, maybe?"

"Yeah, sick in the head!"

She took a step backwards into the elevator, then forward out of it again and stepped out of view to the left briefly before her right-hand side came back into view. From the way her arm was moving, it looked as though she was gesturing to someone, although no-one else appeared.

"She's just standing there now. What the Hell's she up to?"

"Wait, in a moment she just comes back into the elevator and goes back to the button panel. There she goes. Looks quite frightened now, don't you think?"

Elisa spent the next few seconds frantically hammering at various buttons on the panel seemingly at random before stepping out into the corridor again and standing to the left of the elevator again. Then she turned to right so that her face was clearly visible just outside the door and started waving her hands in a strange way.