“Sounds good.” He snorted. “Well, this is a prominent local businessman and parish councilman, so we jump through all of the damn hoops to figure out exactly how this guy ended ass end up in the fucking shower.”
I gave him the amused smile he expected, but I didn’t feel amused. I felt shaken. Shit, I needed to figure out if this essence loss was happening all over or just to a few people. And, once again, just like in the Symbol Man case, I couldn’t tell my supervisors what was really going on. Yeah, Sarge, I’m looking for a link between these two utterly unrelated cases because someone has eaten their souls. Yeesh.
Crawford sighed gustily. “All right, Kara. I know you already have Brian’s case to work, but that should be only paperwork. And with luck you’ll be able to wash your hands of this one pretty soon.” Then he snickered. “No pun intended.” He looked at me with a crooked grin. “Get it? Shower … wash …”
I lowered my head and gave him a look. “Go. Away.”
He grinned. “Okay. This one is hopefully a dumb accident with a rich fuck who slipped on some soap.” His eyes slid to Sharp’s naked ass. “And I’ll be behind you the entire way.”
I groaned. “Somebody shoot me, please.”
IT WAS WELL past mid-morning by the time the scene was completely processed and the body carted away by the coroner’s office. The heat had risen to the point where I was damp with sweat from the short walk from the house to my car. I climbed in, deeply grateful that, by pure happenstance, I’d parked under a tree. Still, I cranked the AC to arctic levels and allowed the vents to blast me with air that was nowhere near arctic but was a damn sight cooler than the air outside.
I was just about to put the car into drive when I saw Crawford jogging up, a grim look on his face. I rolled the window down as he approached.
He stooped to look in at me. “Brian’s wife has been found.”
I could tell by his expression that she hadn’t been found alive. “Where?”
“City Hotel.” An expression of distaste crossed his face.
“What the fuck was she doing there?”
He exhaled. “That’s what you’re going to find out. I have to finish up a couple of things here, and then I’ll meet you over there.”
“You got it, Sarge.”
SOMEHOW THE TEMPERATURE MANAGED TO RISE AT least twenty degrees during the ten-minute drive to the Beaulac City Hotel. At least it felt like it. It didn’t help that the cheap asphalt of the parking lot soaked up the heat and radiated it back in concentrated waves, designed to wring as much sweat as possible from anyone silly enough to be outside.
The Beaulac City Hotel—where rooms could be rented by the hour or the week—hadn’t seen a fresh coat of paint in decades. Several windows had been replaced by plywood, piles of old trash lurked in corners, and an ashtray by the door to the office had reached its capacity a few hundred cigarette butts ago. A sour smell of sweat and piss mixed unpleasantly with the heat rising from the asphalt, enveloping me as I approached. Crime-scene tape had been strung around the rusted metal poles that supported the second-story balcony, and I could see the officer manning the sign-in log standing in the meager shade offered by the second floor. After a hard look at the battered poles, I wasn’t so sure it was a better option to be in the shade.
I signed the log, then ducked under the tape. Another uniformed officer leaned against the outside wall by an open hotel-room door, his usually bald head covered with about a millimeter’s length of hair. I’d known Scott Glassman for years and had worked on the same team with him when I was on the road. He was a solid cop with no desire to ever go into Investigations—a “good ole boy” who was perfectly happy being perpetually assigned to patrol. He had a troubled expression on his face that shifted to a sad smile when he saw me, and I abruptly remembered that Scott and Brian Roth had been good friends and hunting buddies outside work. This whole situation had to be pretty hard on him.
“Hey, Scott,” I said. “Are we sure that it’s Brian’s wife? Who made the ID?”
His expression was grim. “I did. I thought I recognized her, but I verified it with the driver’s license in her purse. And the blue Prius in the parking lot is hers.”
“Damn,” I said. “I was really hoping that Brian had just been using a figure of speech.” I swept my gaze around the nasty hotel. “Any clue yet on why she was here?”
“Well, I spoke to the manager. He says she checked in night before last, alone—under the name ‘Jane Smythe’—but apparently she was something of a regular.”
“At a dump like this?” I had a hard time wrapping my mind around that.