Майкл Смит - The Lonely Dead

Also a low sound. Very likely television.

Who's watching it?

Nina side-stepped across into the body of the room, making space for Monroe. He came in silently, hand held back to signal the cops to stay where they were. Once he was positioned on the door to the other room she turned, moved silently to the cupboard. Held her gun short arm while she eased it open.

Empty but for the smell of dust. Left it open. Turned on her right foot to face back to the room, nodded to Monroe. The cops at the doorway stood quiet and ready. Monroe moved towards the door to the second room. Nina came up, a yard and a half behind. Stopped.

Everything flattens out into now.

Monroe pushes the door gently with his left hand. It swings. Reveals more of the side wall of the bedroom, a grey-blue shifting light, and a little more sound. The sound has that rustling, high-pitched note above the low rumble. It's television for sure. Sometimes people leave them on. It's company. They forget when they leave. They figure who cares, it's not my electric buck.

Monroe takes another step. This puts him on the threshold. A beat. He takes one more and turns quickly, gun pointed past the door into an area Nina cannot yet see.

But she sees Monroe's upper back do a kind of thud, as if his leading foot found itself two inches lower than he expected.

Another long beat. 'Ma'am?'

Nina's stomach goes cold. She hears Monroe swallow with his mouth open, a dry click. He is staring. He is wired. He is ready to shoot. He takes another half pace forward, seemed to bend down and look upwards. Then he side-steps out of sight. There is silence for a moment, then a quiet swishing sound. Silence again.

'Nina,' he says, finally. 'Come in here.'

She knew that meant just her, so she raised a hand to signal the other guys to hold position. She allowed her other arm to drop a little, but wasn't yet ready to let go of the gun.

The bedroom seemed even hotter than the other room. There was a strong odour. The television was a low burble up high to the left, fixed to the wall with a metal bracket. Monroe stood the other side of a queen-size bed.

A woman sat in the bed. She was in her late twenties. She had long brown hair. She didn't move when Nina entered, because she was dead. She was sitting bolt upright in bed, her head flopping slightly forward. She was dressed in well-worn blue cotton night clothes with a floral motif. Her stomach had begun to distend. Her face looked like painted putty. Her eyes were open. So was her mouth. Something had been put inside it.

'Jesus,' Nina said.

She leaned forward. The object in the woman's mouth was about the size of a waitress's notepad, about a quarter of an inch thick, two inches wide, and probably a little over three inches long, though it was difficult to be sure without removing it. It seemed to be made of shiny metal. A very narrow label along the protruding end had a string of numbers and short lines on it.

'What the hell is that?' Monroe said. He was breathing hard, and a line of sweat glinted on one temple.

Nina shook her head. 'I don't know.'

— «» — «» — «»—

Thirty minutes later Nina stepped outside. The first wave of forensic geeks had arrived. With the drapes still drawn and the heat still trapped, it was like milling around in a crowded, hellish cupboard. Nina made sure to take a thorough look around the suite, which was always easier when it had been established you weren't going to be shot at, and then left. Monroe was still inside. It would take the arrival of cameras to flush him out.

There were no other bodies in the room. The swish Nina had heard was the sound of Monroe checking the bathroom. It was devoid of personal possessions. There was no sign of the clothes the woman must have been wearing when she arrived. You can't wander into a motel dressed in pyjamas. Even at a place like The Knights. You would normally think to bring some toiletries, too, a handbag. There would be identification of some kind, somewhere, however accidental. Cops were already canvassing missing persons reports, but something told Nina news wouldn't arrive soon.

She walked out through a sunny courtyard which was full of yet more cops and the quickly moving bodies of civilians who thought they were going to be able to check out of this death block quickly and get back to their anonymous lives, but who were about to spend a large number of hours being asked a small number of questions. That evening they would see, on television, the place they'd spent the night before, as the media repeated its name again and again to make it one of those venues the mention of which would tug at the memory for years and possibly decades to come. Nobody involved was going to forget today in a hurry, least of all the woman Nina saw when she left the courtyard and walked back out into the lot. Patrolman Peterson was still sitting on the bench. Two of his colleagues were trying to restrain this woman, whose name was Monica, who had arrived to find her husband's remains had already been taken to the morgue and who was screaming at his ex-partner because there was nothing else to do.

Only when Nina was clear of the entrance and standing some distance from anyone else did she get out her cell phone. She walked to where she couldn't be overheard, and hit John Zandt's number on speed-dial. He didn't answer after twelve rings, and she was put through to the phone's answering service.

'Hi, it's me,' she said to the machine. 'I know you don't want to talk about this kind of thing any more. But I could do with your help.' She hesitated, not knowing what else to say, then added: 'Hope you're okay.'

Then cut the connection, and stood irresolute. For just a moment she felt odd, fluttery at the back of the neck, as if someone was watching her.

She turned, but there was no one. No one she could see, anyhow.

— «» — «» — «»—

At just after two she sat stirring a coffee while her boss talked on the phone. They were perched outside a scruffy cafe half a block from The Knights. All but one of the squad cars had now moved on to other things, but from where she sat she could see four unmarked vehicles that were part of the investigation. She sipped her coffee and watched as further pieces of Room 11 were hauled out to be analysed in depth. It had been established that the room had been rented five days before, cash in advance. Nina hoped he was being grilled, yet again, and she hoped it was somewhere airless and hot and that they took their time.

Monroe closed his phone. 'It's done,' he said, with evident satisfaction. 'Olbrich is assembling a task force: RHD of course, us, FD&D, the whole Serious Crime Cluster Fuck. This needs to be kept tight. There's a lot of angry officers around.'

'Clipping a cop in broad daylight. Even by wacko standards, that's extreme.'

'Wacko?'

'Come on, Charles.' Nina had lost patience with official nomenclature round about the time she assisted with the extrication of a young black kid from a trash can. The kid had been there a week, in weather as warm as today's. His mother ID'd the body, then killed herself three weeks later by walking off the Palisades. That had been a few years ago. Monroe still went through the motions of using impersonal and uninflected terminology for people whose deeds shredded whole families and histories in their grubby hands. 'What would you call him? Inadequately socialized?'

'This is going to happen fast,' Monroe said, ignoring her. 'A cop-killing in broad daylight. This is not a man who has control of himself any more. We're going to have to hit the ground fast.'

Nina rolled her eyes. Out of control, begging to be caught. And yet nowhere to be seen. The most high-profile investigation she had yet been involved in — officially at least — had been the Delivery Boy murders back in 1999/2000. Again, here in Los Angeles, and also working under Charles Monroe. He'd made similar assumptions then, about a man who'd taken the lives of three bright and worldly young women without leaving a trace. He had killed again, more than once, and then disappeared, and had never been caught. Monroe had floated on to the next job, onwards and upwards. The girls' parents still took the world one day at a time. 'Question is, will there be others?'