Майкл Смит - The Lonely Dead

'Good morning,' said a voice.

Ryan turned to see a guy standing on the pavement by the car. He was wearing worn green combat pants and a dusty grey vest. The sun was behind his head. He was tan and his hair was cropped short and he wore small round glasses. He looked the kind of guy you might see busking on a street corner, or running a Pilates course down on Venice beach. He didn't look the kind of guy to do what he did next, which was pull out a big handgun from behind his back and shoot Steve Ryan twice in the head.

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By the time Nina got there the road was cordoned and a decent crowd had already gathered. A lot of civilians but a lot of cops too. They were standing in clumps, looking angry and impotent, largely staying away from the bench where a tall red-headed cop was sitting staring down at the pavement. Other officers, one male, one female, stood on either side of this man. The woman had a hand on his shoulder. The male was saying something. It seemed unlikely that either of these well-meant gestures would be making Patrolman Peterson feel any better about the fact his partner had been shot dead while he was across the street feeding his face.

She parked up and walked quickly across the road, seeing Monroe was already present, getting harangued. A couple of cops put their hands up as she approached, but she had her card ready.

'Nina Baynam,' she said. 'Feds.'

Sometimes she said Feds or Feebs rather than FBI, and sometimes it made a difference, heartily using a more casual term or one they might employ themselves. Not this morning, evidently, and those three letters had not been a passport to respect even before Waco and allied screw-ups had given everybody new angles from which to bust their balls. On every body-language wavelength the cops broadcast a single question: what the fuck are you doing here?

Nina was wondering the same thing. She walked over to Monroe, who turned away from two other cops and started talking hard and fast without preamble.

'Two witnesses. One saw it from a third-storey room in there — ' he pointed across the street at a battered-looking building with bleached-out signs offering weekly lets at suspiciously low rates ' — and the other was at the coffee stand. Ryan and Peterson arrived about seven thirty, Peterson goes across the street leaving Ryan in the car. Ryan has his eyes shut some of the time. He doesn't see a short-haired white male in glasses, trim build, dressed in either green and brown or brown and grey, coming down from there and approaching the vehicle with a hand behind his back.'

Her boss pointed again, this time up the shallow rise of parking lot which led to the entrance to The Knights, a two-storey courtyard motel. 'Guy walks straight down here and stands next to the patrol car. He says something and then takes his shots. Bam, bam. Then he's gone.'

'Gone how?' Nina said, turning to look around. 'The guy's partner is like thirty feet away.'

Monroe nodded towards an alley a little further along the street. 'At the speed of sound. Found the gun up there. By the time Peterson's heard the shots, checked Ryan, started running, it's too late. The shooter's vanished.'

He started walking towards the motel. Nina kept pace.

'Nobody knows anything about Ryan except he's a decent cop. Not the brightest, uniform for life, but doing a good job. No one has anything about him being on the pad or dirty in any way. So it looked like they just have a random psycho cop-killing until someone talks to the manager up here.'

The entrance to The Knights was wide enough to drive a car through. There would be no reason to do this, however, because the inside held only a small and scrubby courtyard with the long-dead remains of a small concrete fountain. A few plants were trying to prove life could triumph anywhere. They looked dispirited. On the right was a grey cinder block addition holding ice and coke machines. Cops were milling all around the other side, stepping back reluctantly as Monroe led Nina into the glass-fronted office. They had the air of people who'd been stopped from doing a job they thought was theirs. There were four more cops inside the office, along with a fat guy in baggy jeans and a clean white tee shirt.

'Tell us what you told them,' Monroe said. Tall, hair cropped around a receding line and with the shoulders of a long-ago college boxer, people tended to speak up when he asked a question.

'I don't know anything,' the guy whined, for nothing like the first time. 'Just what the chick in twelve told me when she checked out. Said there'd been noise from next door, this was a couple days ago. I only mentioned it to the officer because they said the guy who shot the cop had short hair and glasses and I thought, you know, that's kind of what the guy in room eleven looked like, in fact.'

Nina nodded. Her eyes were on a magazine half hidden under the counter. The manager saw her looking, and seemed to find it kind of a thrill. 'I just adore that stuff,' she said, looking back up at him. 'Makes me want to fuck every guy on the planet. You want to get on it right here, right now?'

The guy looked away. 'As I thought,' Nina said. 'So meantime give us the keys to rooms ten, eleven, twelve.'

Monroe took the keys and pointed at three of the cops. They followed the agents as they left the office and stepped into the courtyard. Room eleven was four doors down on the right-hand side. The drapes were still drawn. Two of the policemen were given the keys to the doors either side.

They drew their weapons, opened the doors quietly. Pulled them wide and then slipped inside the rooms.

A minute later both came out. One shook his head. The other said, 'I could hear something. Could be someone talking.'

'Three areas,' the other cop observed, quietly. 'Sitting room, bedroom in back, bathroom.'

'Okay,' Monroe said. For just a second Nina thought she saw him thinking about handing the remaining key to one of the cops, then realizing how it would look. That kind of thing — plus just turning away from people like they didn't matter, the way he had when she'd arrived — was precisely why the street cops didn't love them like brothers. She got her own gun out, holding it with both hands and clear of her body. She was careful not to let anyone see a small wince. Three months now, and her right arm still gave her trouble. Two doctors and three physiotherapists had told her there was nothing wrong with it any more. Nina thought maybe it was the small round scar on the upper right side of her chest talking, saying it knew all about guns now and wanted nothing to do with them. Tough, in that case. FBI agents are constrained to have their weapon with them at all times. She slept with hers under the bed.

Monroe squared up to the door, Nina just behind. He told the cops to be ready to follow, but to give them time. They nodded. They looked more up for this than she felt, but that was part of being a guy, she knew. Any one of them looked wobbly in front of a colleague, no one would want them at their back again.

Monroe slipped the key in the lock. Turned it. Waited a second, then pushed it. The door opened to a dark room. The drapes on the other side were drawn too. It was warm.

'This is the FBI,' Monroe said. His voice was steady. 'Put down any weapons and come out with your hands up. This will be your only warning.'

They waited. No one said anything. No one appeared. The old conundrum, polarizing options for the near future: either there was no one in the room and everything was cool and after-the-fact, or there was a very bad man inside and he had in mind shooting him some cop.

Nina was in position. She stepped into the room.

Leathery dark. Heavy air. Really, really warm, like someone turned the aircon off twenty-four hours before. Room a square, holding battered sofa, two chairs, desk, big old prehistoric television. No personal effects evident. Flicker-light from doorway in corner on courtyard side. Door partially ajar.