by Thomas King
The heat from the fireplace was disappointing, but Thumps persevered, moving his backside as close to the glass doors as he could. From here he could see the front of the motel and much of the parking lot outside. And from what he could see, Hockney’s SUV was nowhere in sight. Maybe the sheriff hadn’t arrived yet, which meant Thumps could go on standing in front of the fireplace until hell froze over. Which, as he recalled his brisk walk from the car to the motel, it was preparing to do.
“Are you Mr. Dreadful . . . ?” The young woman was smiling and waiting for Thumps to fill in the missing piece.
“Water. DreadfulWater.”
“What a great name.” The woman had a bronze-coloured tag that read “Jill.” Thumps tried to think of all the jobs that required you to wear name tags. Most of them were in service industries where making your name available was supposed to be a gesture of friendship and goodwill. “The sheriff called and said he’d be a little late. He said to send you down when you got here.”
Now that he thought about it, Thumps remembered that police officers wore name tags too.
“Down?”
“Room 110,” said Jill. “He said to say he’d join you shortly.”
“I’ll wait for him here.”
Jill didn’t look happy with this response. “Room 110 is at the end of the corridor. On your left,” she said, recovering her good cheer. “You’re supposed to have a camera.”
Thumps settled back against the fireplace and closed his eyes. He could hear Jill standing in front of him, waiting, but he could also feel the heat spreading up his back and down his thighs. Being warm was like being rich, Thumps decided, easy to get used to, hard to give up. Never enough of either.
BY THE TIME Hockney limped into the lobby, the rivets and the zipper on Thumps’s jeans were beginning to melt.
“This as far as you got?” Hockney tried to smile with little success.
“I was cold.”
“Where’s your camera?”
“In the car.”
Hockney looked down the hallway and then back at Thumps. “When I say, ‘Where’s your camera?’ you’re supposed to rush out and get it.”
“How about you buy me a cup of coffee?”
“You had coffee at the office.”
Just the thought of the ingots smelting in Hockney’s coffee pot made Thumps’s stomach clench. “No, I didn’t.”
Hockney looked down the hallway once more. “Ah, what the hell,” he said. “Andy can use the practice.”
The coffee shop at the Holiday Inn looked nothing like Al’s. It wasn’t hazy or dark or damp. It was bright. Brass fixtures and plastic ferns, green walls, and marbled linoleum. Everything polished and sterile. It reminded Thumps of an upscale furniture store that had leased space in a hospital.
“So,” said the sheriff, snuggling into a booth with maroon tuck-and-roll upholstery, “what about it?”
“What about what?”
“Noah Ridge.”
It was warm in the coffee shop, and Thumps found himself in no great hurry to do anything. Talking with the sheriff wasn’t the worst way to spend the rest of the day.
“Saw Beth’s station wagon outside.”
“I saw it too,” said Hockney.
“Trouble?”
“One of the guests died.”
“You’re letting Andy handle a case with a body?”
“He’s a cop.”
“No, he’s not,” said Thumps. “He’s just renting the uniform.”
Hockney grunted and picked at a spot on the placemat. “No profit in going there.”
“Aren’t you curious?”
“Nice thing about dead people,” said Hockney, dropping his hat on the seat beside him. “They don’t wander off.”
From the back of the coffee shop, Thumps saw a young man hurrying to the table with menus. He was probably nineteen, maybe twenty, and he had a name tag just like Jill. His read, improbably, “Jack.”
“Good morning, gentlemen,” said the young man. “I’m Jack, and I’ll be your server today.” Jack held out the menus, but neither the sheriff nor Thumps made any effort to take one. Jack didn’t miss a beat.
“So, do we know what we want?”
Thumps found himself trying to think of ways to get Jack and Jill together.
“You got cheeseburgers here?” said the sheriff.
“Yes, we do,” said Jack, who either had good genes or a great orthodontist.
“And fries?” said Hockney. “They give you a lot of fries at this place?”
“Cheeseburger and fries,” said Jack, turning to Thumps. “And for you?”
Thumps glanced at the menu and settled for a small chef’s salad. Just to be polite. He hadn’t eaten at the Holiday Inn coffee shop before, but he supposed that it was like most chains, where everything came vacuum-wrapped in Cellophane or packed in plastic tubs.
“Natural?”
“Nope,” said the sheriff.
Thumps couldn’t imagine that Hockney, even in a moment of mad generosity, would let Andy anywhere near a murder.
“Suicide?”
“That’s what Andy thinks.”
Normally, Thumps would have been happy not to know any of the details of a run-of-the-mill suicide. They were usually badly managed things, with sad notes about not being able to go on. In Northern California, he had had to look after one where a woman took all the pictures of herself and her husband out of an album and arranged them on the floor around the bathtub before she climbed into the warm water with a glass of wine and cut her wrists.
“Your suicide have a name?” Thumps lined up the salt and pepper shakers so they formed a perfect triangle with the ceramic sugar bowl.
“Why?” said the sheriff. “You missing a friend?”
Hockney’s cheeseburger came on a platter that had been decorated with lettuce leaves, tomato slices, onions, and a mound of curly french fries. Thumps’s salad came in a giant bowl with a slick of ham and cheese chunks floating on an ocean of iceberg lettuce.
Hockney squeezed thin lines of ketchup on his fries. “How’s your salad?”
Thumps’s salad had a weary taste to it, as though it had been sitting alone in the dark too long. “Great.”
“Should’ve had the cheeseburger.”
“Can I have a fry?”
“Help yourself. You know, in Canada, they put cheese on their fries. And gravy. Call it poo-teen, or something like that.” Hockney paused and looked up. “So, what about the job?”
Thumps pushed a limp tomato around with his fork. “Okay. I’m in.”
“You doing it for the glory?”
“For the money.”
“Welcome to the team,” said Hockney, reaching into his pocket and pulling out his cellphone. The sheriff looked at the display and then put the phone back in his pocket.
“Important?”
“It’ll keep,” said the sheriff.
“I guess it’s just a coincidence.”
“What’s that?”
“That Noah Ridge checks in to the Holiday Inn and someone checks out.”
“Ridge isn’t staying here.” Hockney finished off the fries. “Big star like him goes first class.”
“Buffalo Mountain Resort?”
“You’d expect that, wouldn’t you?” said Hockney. “Indian-run and all.”
“Shadow Ranch?”
“Tourist trap.” Hockney dumped his napkin on the table. “Come on, let’s go get that camera of yours.”
THERE WAS A LOG-JAM of sorts in front of room 110. Deputy Andy Hooper was standing in the doorway talking to Beth Mooney.
“Hey, sheriff.”
“What do we have?”
Behind Andy, through the open door, Thumps could see a man’s body lying on the floor.
“Stupid bastard shot himself,” said Andy.
“Maybe,” said Beth.
The man was dressed in a pair of nondescript slacks and a white shirt. Thumps couldn’t tell the dead man’s age, but o
ne thing was for sure: he wasn’t going to get any older.
“So, was it a suicide or not?” The sheriff wasn’t one to have fun with a conversation. In Hockney’s world, questions were asked in order to get answers.
“Guy checks into the room on the weekend. Alone.” Andy flipped a page in his notebook. “Maid finds him dead this morning. Gun on the floor beside him. One shot fired. One shot in his head. Powder burns on the side of his face.”
“Suicide note?”
“Nope.”
Hockney turned to Beth. “But you don’t agree?”
“Maybe he’s right,” said Beth, looking as disagreeing as she could, “and maybe he’s not.”
“You know,” said the sheriff, “I expect those kinds of answers from old Thumps here. I don’t expect them from you.”
“Suicide,” said Andy. “Pure and simple.”
The sheriff took a deep breath and let it out all at once. “Okay,” he said to Beth. “What don’t you like?”
“Doesn’t look right.”
“Oh,” said Andy with a smirk. “Women’s intuition.”
Beth flashed her great smile. Anyone who didn’t know her might have supposed that she had enjoyed Andy’s little witticism. But Thumps knew Beth was just imagining how Andy would look stretched out on one of her tables, and how much fun it would be to cut him open.
“Jesus,” said Hockney, pushing his way past Andy. “Let me see.”
Beth stepped into the hallway and watched the sheriff prowl the room, Andy at his heels.
“My,” said Beth, “aren’t we grumpy today.”
“It’s the coffee he drinks,” said Thumps.
“I can always take my own pictures,” said Beth. “Maybe you boys should go somewhere quiet and hurt each other.”
“We already did that,” said Thumps.
“You didn’t drink any of his coffee.”
“One suicide at a time.” Thumps leaned into the room. “So, what’s wrong with this picture?”
Beth folded her arms across her chest so you could see the muscles in her forearms. Thumps was glad he was wearing a long-sleeved shirt. And a jacket. One of these days he was going to start working out again. Maybe in the summer.
“Why don’t you tell me?” said Beth. “Ten points if you get everything right.”
Crime scenes were like puzzles. There were clues everywhere. All you had to do was find them. Andy couldn’t find his ass with a fly swatter, so if he thought it was a suicide and Beth didn’t, Thumps’s money was on Beth.
Not even the sheriff would bet on Andy.
The room was ordinary enough. Late twentieth-century maudlin with a framed print of a river flowing through a summer landscape, a queen-sized bed, a desk with a mirror so you could watch yourself work or watch yourself make phone calls, as well as two chairs, a television set, and a nightstand.
The dead guy was on the floor by the desk, but from the position of the body and the overturned chair, he had probably been sitting at the desk when he shot himself. Interesting, thought Thumps. If that’s what had happened, it meant that the dead guy could have watched himself kill himself. Postmodern is what his old English professor, Edward Lueders, would have called it, which was, so far as Thumps had been able to figure, the academy’s euphemism for “weird.” Still, suicide wasn’t a particularly sane act. Most times it was an act of despair, and Thumps had seen stranger examples than this of the ways in which people had decided to end their lives.
There were blood spatters on the desk and the wall and the mirror. Shooting yourself in the head was always a messy business. Women were generally more considerate and contained the mess to a bathtub or a bed. More times than not, they tried to get comfortable before they finished the job. Men went for drama and excess, driving their cars off cliffs at high speeds, going on a rampage with a rifle and letting the police do the job for them. Or blowing their brains out in a motel room, alone.
Thumps was standing at the desk when Hockney moved in on his elbow. “How about you take the pictures,” said the sheriff, “and I’ll do the looking.”
“Suits me.”
“But if you do find something, you’ll be sure to tell me. Right?”
“I’m just a tourist.”
“Suicide,” said Andy, “pure and simple.”
“Make sure you get some good shots of the desk,” said the sheriff.
THUMPS TOOK HIS TIME with the photographs. There was a pattern with crime scene photographs. And an art. It wasn’t just a matter of blasting away, making sure you got coverage. What was important was to take your shots in a manner that allowed you to see the particulars in terms of the crime scene as a whole.
For example, bodies weren’t simply items in empty space. They were surrounded by an environment in which something had happened. It was natural to concentrate on the corpse, but many times the furniture could tell you as much about what had happened as a body could.
That was certainly true in this case, and as Thumps moved around the room, he began to see what Beth had seen and what Hockney wouldn’t miss, no matter how much of his own coffee he drank.
“You run out of film yet?”
“Got it all.”
“So, what do you figure?” said the sheriff.
Thumps glanced at Andy, who was standing near the door talking. “You want to put training wheels on this one?”
“You know, he’s not a complete idiot.”
“Whatever you say.”
“Andy!” barked Hockney. “Go out to my car and get my cellphone.”
“You can use mine,” said Andy.
Hockney tossed the keys to his deputy. “And don’t forget to lock it.”
Beth was bent over the body, finishing up her work. Hockney squatted down beside her.
“Make any sense to you?”
“Not yet,” said Beth. “But that’s what makes this a fun job, right?”
“Angle’s wrong,” said Hockney.
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Beth. “He could have managed it.”
“If he was right-handed.” The sheriff lifted the man’s left hand. “But he wasn’t.” Hockney pushed himself off the floor, his knees cracking as if they were heavy timbers in an old barn. “What about the desk?”
“I like the desk,” said Beth. “Nice blood-spatter pattern.”
“You show this to Andy?” The sheriff put his hands on his hips and leaned to one side.
“He was busy,” said Beth.
Hockney gestured to the desk. “What do you suppose it was?”
“Who knows,” said Beth. “Maybe a magazine. Maybe a newspaper. Maybe a briefcase.”
“But that’s not the important thing,” said Hockney. “Is it?”
Nope, thought Thumps. What was important was that there had been something on the desk before the man shot himself. The blood showed the faint outline of a corner of something rectangular. And it didn’t much matter what that something had been; what was important was that some time after the shooting, someone had taken it away.
“Any chance Andy picked it up as evidence?” Hockney said hopefully.
Beth shook her head. “Don’t think so. We got here about the same time. Maid found the body and called it in. Andy asked her if she had touched anything.”
“And?”
“She said she opened the door, saw the body, went to the front desk, and called your office.”
“Okay,” said the sheriff, “let’s start at the beginning. Who is he?”
“Now that’s the other interesting thing,” said Beth. “We got a coin purse, a handkerchief, car keys, money in money clip, but no wallet.”
So what we have, thought Thumps, is a left-handed man with no identification who shoots himself in the head with his right hand and then removes something from the desk after he dies.
“Guy must have checked in,” said Hockney.
“He did,” said Beth. “John Smith.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Paid cash.�
� Beth shrugged. “Told the front desk that he had lost his wallet.”
“And?”
“Left a two-hundred-dollar deposit.”
Hockney rolled his shoulders up to his ears. “You got any good news?”
“I got fingerprints,” said Beth.
“Lovely.” Hockney picked up the dead man’s car keys and turned them over in his hand. “Absolutely lovely.”
BY THE TIME Andy came back to tell Hockney he had been unable to find the sheriff’s cellphone, Beth had John Smith on the gurney and ready to be loaded in the back of her station wagon. Thumps had never had the opportunity to ride in Beth’s car, and he made a mental note to continue to avoid such an opportunity.
“I’ll know more later on,” Beth told Hockney.
“Andy,” said the sheriff, tossing the dead man’s car keys to his deputy, “give Beth a hand with the body and then go find this guy’s car.”
“Parking lot’s full.” Andy waited to see if the sheriff was going to help.
The keys were for a Ford. Even Andy should be able to figure that out. And motels generally asked their guests for licence plate numbers.
“Don’t take all day.”
Andy didn’t even try to keep the annoyance out of his voice. “What if I find something? Where you going to be?”
Hockney put a meaty hand on Thumps’s shoulder and squeezed a little harder than he needed to. “Ansel Adams and I are going to make a house call.”
SIX
Until a year ago, the Holiday Inn on the highway was the place to stay in Chinook. And then a subsidiary of a wholly owned corporation with offices in New York, England, Paris, and Toronto came to town and renovated the Tucker House, a limestone mansion that had been the hotel of choice for turn-of-the-century cattle barons, politicians, European tourists, and a sprinkling of famous gunfighters.
Construction started in the summer of 1875, and by the spring of 1876, just as the nation was getting ready to celebrate its one hundredth birthday and just as the Seventh Cavalry, under the dubious leadership of General George Armstrong Custer, was crossing the Little Bighorn River, the hotel was opened for business. George Tucker hired an eight-piece band to play at the opening, the same number of musicians as were in the regimental band that played “Garry Owen” for Custer as the general moved out across the Montana plains to find the Lakota and the Cheyenne. George Tucker, a man not known for making speeches, simply welcomed everyone and bought the first round of drinks, while Custer, seeing the Indian encampment in the distance through field glasses, is supposed to have turned to his aides and said, “Hurrah, boys, we’ve got them!”
