"Let's see… The gentleman checked in at eight forty-eight p.m., pretty late. No car, paid cash…"
Lester could see where this was going, and interrupted, "You don't take a credit card imprint for security?"
Nelson chewed his lip once before admitting slowly, "No, sir. We found that sometimes made people nervous."
"I bet," Spinney said. "What name did he use?"
"N. Rockwell."
Lester grimaced. "Okay, that's weird. How did he get here if it wasn't by car?"
There again, the manager paused before admitting carefully, "I'm not sure he didn't have a car. He just said he didn't."
"And, of course, you never want to invade their privacy."
The manager allowed a small smile. "No, sir. Not sure I'd want to go there."
"How many key cards did he ask for?"
Nelson consulted his piece of paper. "Two," he answered.
"We heard the night clerk was Benjamin Grosbeak?"
"Benny-that's right."
"And the maid who cleaned up the next day?"
"Angela Lundy."
"Any chance we could get them here to interview?"
Nelson checked his watch. "It's midmorning. That shouldn't be too hard. They're usually up by now."
Spinney patted him on his bulky, soft shoulder. "That would be great, Mr. Nelson. If you could do that and report back to me, I'd appreciate it."
Nodding again and walking backward, Nelson began fading down the hallway. "Yes, sir, I'll get right on it."
Spinney watched him finally turn on his heel and walk away before he reentered the room to join Willy.
"Yes, sir, thank you, sir, if you please, sir," Willy growled from his position looking under the bed. "You know that little fuck is probably a pimp and a pusher both, right?"
"I'll be sure to ask him when he comes back," Lester agreed affably. "You find anything?"
Willy scowled. "What did he say the maid's name was?"
"Angela."
"Well, she sucks at her job. Looks like a toxic dump under here. If our boy did leave anything behind, it's mixed in with shit from half a dozen other people."
"I thought these beds were supposed to be built on platforms, so nothing got shoved underneath," Spinney said, getting to his knees beside his colleague and taking a glance at the strewn collection of assorted, albeit tiny, trash that gleamed in Willy's flashlight glare.
Willy cut him an incredulous look. "God, you live in a dream world. This is a dump. People're lucky the sheets are changed between customers."
Spinney got back up and crossed to what passed for the room's desk-actually a table with a drawer supporting a lamp and a microwave, both bolted down. He opened the drawer.
"Like you said," he announced, "not as fancy. No folder or postcards, but there's an envelope and a few sheets of paper."
Willy sat back on his heels. "Did I hear Nelson say the guy got two key cards?"
"Yup."
Willy nodded, his thoughts paralleling Spinney's. "Something else to ask Angela." He got up. "Help me move this."
The two of them shifted the bed away from its wall-attached headboard and slid it across the carpeting until it was jammed up against the dresser. The contrast between the open floor and what they'd just exposed was startling-gray with dust and whatever else had filtered down from the mattress, and pocked with the debris that Willy had discovered earlier.
"Gross," Spinney murmured.
There was a gentle knock on the door. Spinney opened it to face Nelson, who looked apologetic. "Sorry to interrupt. You wanted to know about Benny and Angela?"
"Yeah," Lester said. "They coming?"
"Should be here in about ten minutes."
Nelson did his usual disappearing act. Spinney closed the door again.
"I might as well take Benny," Willy told him. "I made sure he was well treated last time."
"Works for me," Lester said vaguely, studying the ground again. "How do you want to process this?"
Willy shrugged. "Probably doesn't make a whole hell of a lot of difference. The room's been used and abused Christ knows how many times since our guy was here. I think we're just looking for anything interesting."
Spinney got to his knees and pulled on a pair of latex gloves, as much for his sake as to preserve any evidence. "Okay," he said simply, and set to work.
They went slowly, using flashlights, and even a magnifying glass that Willy carried despite the Sherlock Holmes cracks he routinely gathered. The edge of their search area, mirroring the footprint of the bed frame, was the richest in findings. People either dropping things or simply kicking them under the bed had resulted in a three-sided swath of items ranging from rubber bands, to candy wrappers, to condom packs. There were, in addition, a straw, a dirty napkin, several pills, a desiccated french fry, and, of course, a single sock.
In the midst of this treasure hunt, where a muttered conversation played background to each discovery, first Willy and then Les was pulled away by the arrival of the two interviewees. Benny Grosbeak, who was happy to see Willy again, told him little new, beyond that N. Rockwell had seemed nervous and evasive, somewhat new to the skid row life, and made no calls using the phone in the room. Benny had found him so bland, in fact, that he'd become memorable, making his reappearance in the newspaper all the more startling.
Angela Lundy, the maid, told Lester that when she'd entered the room the following morning to clean it, she barely found anything to do. The bed was still made and the trash empty. The toilet and shower stall hadn't been touched. She conceded that, in general, she only cleaned or straightened what most obviously needed attention, and she stared at him blankly when he asked whether she ever went into the desk drawer to check on the stationery supplies. She did say that she found only one of the two issued key cards.
Les didn't bother asking about her technique for cleaning under the bed.
But, despite the time the two men spent in Rockwell's former quarters, neither of them had a single eureka moment. In fact, the more they collected, the less they thought they had anything of worth.
Until Willy, with his magnifying glass, suddenly hunched over, his nose two inches off the carpeting.
"What've you got?" Spinney asked.
"Hand me the tweezers," Willy answered him.
Les watched as his partner painstakingly extracted something minute and dropped it carefully into a small glassine envelope, which he then handed over for scrutiny.
"Can you figure it out?" he asked with a knowing smile.
Lester held it under the glare of his flashlight. Inside the envelope was a single brightly colored dot, much like a piece of confetti, looking as if it were made of plastic. Remarkably, however, it had numerals stamped across its miniature surface.
Lester straightened as if pricked by a pin. He knew he was looking at a serial number, and he remembered seeing this kind of tiny item before.
"Holy cow."
Willy's smile broadened. "A Taser tag, right?"
Tasers, the well-known electrifying alternative to a baton or a shot of pepper spray, had a feature few people knew about. Along with the twin wire-trailing barbs that flew from the device upon being fired, each Taser cartridge contained a cluster of about forty tiny confettilike plastic flakes, or "tags," that were stamped with the cartridge's unique serial number. The logic was that every Taser could thus be traced to the person using it-a handy detail when and if it came to conducting a postshoot analysis.
The fact that every police officer knew that his or her Taser shot, like the bullets from a gun, could be traced back to the shooter was supposed to be a deterrent to reckless acts of abandon.
Or, as just possibly in this case, any acts of criminal mischief.
Lester stared at Willy in astonishment. "Damn. Here's hoping that where there's a number, there's a name." He waved the small envelope between his fingers. "This should be interesting."