by John McMahon
This particular press was made of aluminum and sat twenty-four inches high. The base of the apparatus was affixed to a square piece of steel three inches thick and the shape of letter-sized paper.
At the top of the machine was a feed port or funnel to pour whatever powder formulation into, and along the side was a hand crank.
“So it requires no electricity?” Remy said as Udall had me sign for the item.
“Exactly,” I said.
That was the main advantage of these presses. The lowlifes who used them could set up in some abandoned house or a rural structure out in the woods with no power.
I pointed at the spout. “You fill up here,” I said. “Your die lives right in this column. That’s what stamps the letter or word onto the pill so it looks legit. Like Bayer Aspirin has an ‘81’ on it. And then you crank it like this.” I turned the hand crank one revolution, and the column jammed down. “The pill comes out there.” I pointed at the smooth base of the machine. “You hit this to eject it and wipe the area clean for the next pill. And on you go.”
Remy lifted the machine and turned it on its side. Staring at the column that stuck up twenty-four inches into the air. It had two rails, and she was mentally lining them up with the two marks on the back seat of the Caprice.
“It’s close.” I nodded. “But let’s get it down there and check. Take some pictures and make sure.”
Remy and I took the elevator down to Basement 2, and we were off like a herd of turtles through the bowels of the building. We pushed the cart down yellowing hallways with rooms where case files were stored. When we finally got to the end, we took an elevator all the way up into the vehicle mod yard.
As we got there, Carlos had just arrived for his shift, and he saw us rolling the pill press toward him.
“Oh shit, CSI’s in the house,” he said. “Is this Vegas or Miami? The women were hotter in Miami.”
“You can’t say stuff like that anymore,” I said.
Remy and I rolled the cart over to the Chevy Caprice and gloved up. Then we grabbed the pill press and carried it carefully toward the car.
The back seats of American cars from the ’90s are huge, and Remy got in from one side, while I pushed from the other.
Carlos handed me the press, and I placed it on the seat, positioning the two rails right into the dimples left on the seat.
“Perfect match,” Carlos said.
I got out and went around to Remy’s side. Inspected the indents. Carlos was right. It was a match. But I scrunched up my face, mentally playing through the action.
“What’s wrong?” Remy asked.
“Can I see that picture?” I said. “The one you showed me with the blood smears.”
My partner handed me the shot done with the Luminol spray, and I glared at the square void on the seat.
“Well, I don’t doubt that a press like this was in the car,” I said. “Enough times to make those impressions.”
“But not this time?” Remy asked, anticipating from my tone.
“Well . . .” I compared the picture to the size of the actual pill press in front of me. “Even though this is a small pill press, it’s still two feet high on its side, Rem. It would’ve blocked more of the blood spray.”
“Aww shit,” Carlos said, seeing it himself.
“Plus, if this press was in the car at the time of our double,” I said, “I don’t think the old man could’ve gotten off that shot at Carilla.”
I sat down in the back seat, mimicking the shooter’s action.
“Bam.” I pointed at the driver in the front seat with my finger. “Bam.” I pointed at the front passenger. Then I reached out to where Carilla would’ve been seated and my hand smacked against the pill press.
“He coulda side-armed it,” Remy said.
I held the gun like in a gangster movie, cockeyed, my hand extending in front of the machine.
“The other problem’s the spray,” I said. “It wouldn’t have gotten all over the back of the seat with this big-ass machine in here.”
“Truth,” Carlos said.
My phone pulsed in my jacket pocket. Heard Remy’s ring at the same time. But I ignored the noise, focusing on the task at hand.
“Let’s get it out,” I said, and Carlos grabbed the pill press from one side, while I held the other.
Once the press was back on the cart, I leaned into the back seat again, from the left side.
“Something was back here all right.” I motioned at the back seat of the car while grabbing Remy’s phone and holding the picture out. “It’s yea high. Maybe six or eight inches.”
“And goes out to here.” Remy tapped near the front edge of the seat.
“Hold on,” Carlos said, and walked over to the recycle bin.
He came back with two empty Amazon boxes. He placed the first one on the seat, and I shook my head. But the second was pretty close. I got out of the car, leaving the cardboard box in place. Remy and I stared in then, comparing the box to the picture with the void in the blue smears on her phone.
“A case of some sort,” she said, taking back her cell and snapping a picture of the cardboard box on the seat.
“The sort not found when patrol came upon the car with the two bodies,” I added. “So if Carilla ran—”
“The old man took the case with him,” Remy said. “After he cleaned up the car.”
My partner glanced down at her phone and nudged me to look. The text we’d both gotten was from Dispatch. A patrolman had found the hotel where the old guy had been staying.
“We gotta go,” I said to Carlos.
I pointed at the press. “You mind returning that to Ed in Evidence?”
“Mean-ass Ed?” Carlos asked.
“The same.” Remy smiled.
“Oh yeah, he loves Mexican guys with long hair. My pleasure, P.T.”
28
Remy and I hustled to the parking lot across from the precinct, and I told her I’d drive.
“What’s the place?”
“Homewood Suites. Out on 909.”
I knew this hotel. It was one of two that was put up in about six months’ time, a few miles west of my father-in-law’s house.
We left the city and drove toward Bergamot, passing County Records. Ten minutes later we pulled off 909 and found the hotel about two blocks from the highway.
The place was made of prefabricated concrete that had been trucked into Mason Falls at night in sheets eight inches thick and twenty feet wide.
A blue-suiter named Ingram met us out front. He was waiting by his cruiser, parked in the turnaround.
“Jesus, Clint,” I said to Officer Ingram as we pulled up, staring at the patrolman’s facial hair. He was midthirties, with a baby face and a brown moustache that looked like a caterpillar.
“Is it Movember already?” Remy asked him.
“No, I just—” Ingram touched the tiny fur ball above his mouth. “I thought it looked good.”
“That’s what matters.” Remy patted him on the shoulder. “What you think.”
“What’ve we got here?” I asked him.
“The manager rented a room five days ago to a Stanley Creiss.” Ingram held up the sketch of the old guy that was composited from five accounts of him at Tandy’s.
“Is he a hundred percent sure it’s our old guy?”
“A hundred and ten percent were his words,” Ingram said. “But there’s no one in the room, P.T. Plus, the I.D. and credit card are stolen. Stanley Creiss is actually eighty-six and lives in the West Cobb area of Atlanta. Retired helicopter pilot.”
Ingram walked us inside then, introducing Remy and me to the manager, who was five foot three, with tiny arms that emerged from a short-sleeved dress shirt. His eyes were closer together than an earthworm’s, and his name was Robert Riggs.
“Lik
e Bobby Riggs, the tennis player?” I asked.
This drove my partner crazy. That I always found a famous name to compare to the person we were interviewing.
“Robert,” he said, adjusting his glasses. “Not Bobby.”
“Did you personally rent the room to Mr. Creiss?” Remy asked the manager.
“I did,” Riggs said. “One week. Flat rate. He asked specifically not to bother him. No maid or towel service either.”
Officer Ingram led us up a flight of stairs, and we entered the second floor. As we approached Room 203, we saw Ingram’s partner, Officer Glenda Yantsy, standing at an open door.
“This is the room Creiss was in,” Ingram said. “Or whatever his real name is.”
Remy and I moved past Yantsy and stood just inside the door.
We took a beat, studying the place. The old guy had killed four people in the last few days, one of them a cop’s son. The scene was not to be treated lightly.
“There’s no luggage inside,” Ingram said. “We saw that much and then cleared out.”
The hotel room was nice for Mason Falls standards. To my right, just inside the door, was a small kitchenette with a white melamine counter that had a sink and a small Frigidaire. The counter curved to face out into a living area, and a chair was tucked underneath, making it a desk for work from the other side.
The common area was quaint, with two chairs and a couch that faced a thirty-inch TV and a door that led into the bedroom and bath area.
“I’ll take in there,” Remy said, moving into the bedroom. I started in the kitchen, gloving up and going through each of the four cupboards. They were bare, except for some essentials. Salt and pepper shakers. An extra coffee cup, wrapped in plastic. A travel-sized bottle of Dawn liquid soap.
In the trash can, I found a handful of sparkly flecks, enough to sit two inches high on your palm. I carefully collected them in a clear evidence bag and held up the bag. They looked like speckled shavings of some sort.
Placing the bag on the counter, I noticed two brownish scuffs on the melamine, each about four inches long. I took a picture of them with my phone and then wet a single gloved digit, wiping at the edge of one of the scuffs. The mark came off fast.
I moved out to the living area and pulled the drapes wide, letting light pour into the area big enough for three adults to sit and watch TV.
The couch was slate-gray and rigid, and the armchair bore a pattern of gray and blue diamonds.
I lifted each couch cushion out, one by one, but found nothing under them. It was as if no one had ever spent time in the area.
After another ten minutes, I glanced in at the bedroom.
The bed was left unmade, and Remy was lifting a brick-red dust ruffle and examining the area under it.
“Anything?”
“Nada,” she said. “You?”
“Something in the trash, but I’m not sure what.”
My partner came out and inspected the evidence bag. “Is it paint?”
“I was thinkin’, yeah,” I said.
She moved back into the bedroom, and I did round two in the kitchen, getting up under the sink.
Outside I heard the loud pop of a transformer blowing, somewhere down by the highway.
“Is there a safe in there?” I hollered to Remy.
“Yes, and left open,” she said. “Empty.”
Under the sink I found a paper coffee cup. I bagged it, but couldn’t tell if it had been there for a day or a month.
I stood near the melamine kitchen counter, staring at the shiny filings in the evidence bag. The room smelled like coffee grinds and stale air.
I turned to Yantsy, who stood by the open door that led out to the carpeted hallway. “Yantsy,” I said. “You didn’t move anything, right?”
“We cleared the place and stood sentinel, Detective. I’ve been right here while Ingram went outside to call y’all. Nobody touched a thing.”
“All right,” I said. “I appreciate you.”
I turned and opened the evidence bag. Picked up a few of the filings between my gloved index finger and thumb and let them fall back into the bag.
My dad had a wood shop when I was a kid, but often he worked with metal too.
“These particles from the trash look like steel,” I said to Remy, who was in the bedroom. “But they don’t feel like it.”
The pieces had fallen back into the evidence bag, and I sealed up the top.
Out in the hall I heard Yantsy shift her weight from one hip to the other, but when I glanced over, she was looking away from me, down toward the elevator.
I turned and stared at the fridge. I’d already checked inside when I first searched the kitchen, and it was empty. I opened the tiny freezer area. Felt a wave of cool come at me. Opened the main door again, but didn’t feel much at all. When I checked the dial, it was at two out of ten.
Remy had come out from the bedroom and was watching me.
“I can see the little hamster running in that big brain of yours,” she said. “Burning off the dust bunnies.”
This was a line a man said to me once, right before he and his friends kicked the shit out of me. I’d told Remy the story, and she thought the line was pretty cool. To be honest, I remember thinking the same thing right before the first punch.
“Well,” I said. “We got metal filings.” I motioned at the evidence bag.
“Check.”
“The counter is scuffed. And the fridge is turned down. Maybe you’re doing some metalwork here. Then you gotta store something, but temperature control it? I dunno.”
“Something like what?”
“Remember Carilla told us there was something the old guy didn’t get.”
I reached for Remy’s iPad and found her notes from the aftermath of the stakeout at Tandy’s. The final moments of Carilla’s life.
I scanned through them, paging down with a gloved finger.
“Three shots were fired from west to east,” I said.
“That was the old guy shooting Carilla,” Remy said.
I nodded. “Then the old guy saw you and took off. When we found Carilla barely alive, he patted his leg and said, ‘The old fucker. He didn’t get it.’”
“Then started mumbling about some café,” Remy added. “Bled out a minute later.”
I held up my own notebook. Old-school. Six-by-nine spiral bound.
“We both have slightly different notes, but those details are the same. Patting the leg. What he said.”
“Guy in patrol heard three shots too,” Remy said. “I interviewed him during your vacation.”
I scrunched up my brow at the word “vacation.” I’d been part of a school shooting, back-to-back with a kid dying in the bar. I took three days off. Cops. The way we talked to each other sometimes.
I stared at the paper cup in the evidence bag. Then turned to Remy. “You wanna take a ride?”
“We’re not finding much here,” she said. “You got someplace in mind?”
“I do,” I said, letting Yantsy know we’d be back in an hour.
Out in my Silverado, I asked Remy to get out my patrol light, and she tossed it onto the dash so we could haul ass. We drove northeast on small rural highways that crossed 906. Off to our left I could see an area of deforestation that led out to the Condesale Gorge, where Remy and I had faced off with assassin Kian Tarticoft this past spring in a blaze of smoke and fire.
As we kept cutting northeast, the area became more rural and the elevation dropped. Some farmland was here and there, with a dozen or so cows dotting the horizon. But most of the area contained deserted properties.
On several parcels of land, I saw signs with demarcations on boards stuck into the dirt. The signs rose six or eight feet high, with dates spray-painted on them, all in the 1970s. Of a time when the area had flooded, over and over aga
in. Eventually the Army Corps of Engineers stepped in and dammed off the water that flowed here from June Lake.
Now the opposite effect had happened. The lack of precipitation had killed the region.
We crossed 914 and moved closer to the area where we’d found the Caprice at the roadside.
About five minutes later, we were standing at the front office of the Garden Palms. Thiago Carilla’s motel.
The place was a notch above an Econo Lodge, but well below the level of the Homewood Suites, where we’d just come from.
The manager had shiny black hair with one lock of bangs that hung over her left eye. She wore bright red lipstick and sported a V-neck that sat low, with a solid inch of lacy pink bra showing, choreographed right along the V of the shirt. Her nametag read Lady.
I hadn’t met her before, since I was on leave when Abe and Remy had gone through Carilla’s motel room.
“I love that,” I said, pointing at the name tag. “Is that your birth name?”
“It was either that or ‘the Tramp,’” she said, flicking a set of huge fake eyelashes at me. “My mom chose Lady.”
I grinned, wondering how many times she’d stared a man down and said that line.
“What can I help you with, Detective?” she asked, her hands clasped together, showing off her matching red nail polish. “I aim to please.”
“Room Eleven.” I pointed out the door.
She held on Remy, before moving her gaze back at me. “Tell me you’re not gonna make the same mess that this one did?”
“No, ma’am,” I said. Guessing that Remy and Abe had torn the place apart after the shooting at the bar.
“All right then.”
Lady grabbed a set of keys off the counter and clipped them to a shiny blue carabiner clip that hung off her wrist. “We’ve had cleaner visits from the fire department than y’all.”
She locked up the office with the keys on her wrist, and took out a plastic master. Led us down the sidewalk.
The motel was made of cinder blocks that looked like they’d been painted by a lazy drunk. All along the windows, the caulking was thick with paint. I could make out the clerk’s perfume as she moved, some mix of a woodsy scent, laced with citrus.
