He tossed the inch of clear liquid into his dry mouth, working it down his throat, and replaced the glass, studying it for fingerprints. He wiped it with one of his socks, which was silly because his prints were all over the room. But this was one little detail he could control.
It was now two minutes after ten. He eased toward the bathroom door. Leaving more fingerprints, he reached inside and probed for the light switch. When he touched it, the phone rang, causing his heart to skip a couple of beats.
Four rings later, the sound abruptly died, and the ensuing silence, marred only by the muted whisper of traffic outside, was almost as jarring.
Roland peeked around the doorjamb as if respecting her privacy. Her left foot was nearest to him, toenails painted dark burgundy. Her legs were shaven, the skin smooth and unmarked. The robe had ridden up to just under the tuck of her buttocks, and her thigh was shapely, though the portion against the floor was heavy and blotched by lividity.
Farther up, near her waist, the robe was soaked with blood. In the greasy yellow light above the bathroom sink, the blood appeared crusty and brown. It was difficult to tell how long she had been dead without a closer examination.
He sniffed. No taint of decay filled the air, although the bathroom smelled faintly of mildew and cheap shampoo. The shower head leaked, creating an arrhythmic tick that measured its own time.
Roland glanced at the sink countertop. No sign of toothbrushes, razors, floss, aftershave, or the other usual detritus of the traveler. No clues.
Her face was turned away from the door, toward the tub. The hand nearest Roland was curled as if gripping an invisible ball. The fingers bore no rings. Her hair trailed in unkempt, luxuriant locks over her shoulders, though the blackness had lost a little of its natural luster and resembled a wig.
Eyeing the toilet, wondering if he’d be able to step over her if he needed to vomit, he edged toward the tub. Careful not to touch her, he knelt and peered under the folds of hair at her face. Her eyelids were sunken and grayish purple, mouth parted, lips gone pale.
Good. Never seen her before.
She appeared to be a few years younger than he was, but the bottle had aged him fast and he hadn’t spent a lot of time looking in mirrors lately. She was made up, the fake eyelashes a little exaggerated.
Her right hand, dangling on the rim of the bathtub, appeared to be pointing. It was most likely an act of rigor, tendons shrinking and tightening in decay. But Roland found himself looking at the back wall of the shower stall, in the direction of the finger.
Faint soap letters were scrawled in the shower residue: “C-R-O.”
Cro. Crow. Cro-Magnon. Crocodile Fucking Dundee.
The letters might have been there for weeks. In a low-budget motel, the shower might only get a good scrubbing twice a year. Some guest could have been playing a joke, goofing around, leaving a message for a spouse.
Sure, and some guest might have left a dead body in the bathroom for Roland to find upon awakening. Roland was grasping for bizarre explanations because he didn’t like the simplest one. Then again, he always looked for someone else to blame, no matter what the problem.
Unwilling to explore the body, both because of revulsion and a fear of leaving trace evidence, he glanced around the bathroom to see if he’d left any sign of his stay. For all he knew, she might be lying on top of one of his razor blades, a brand advertised to bring the girls up close and personal.
In any case, she certainly wasn’t carrying identification, since she appeared to be naked beneath the robe. Another theory that Roland didn’t have the stomach to confirm.
Instead, he left the ceramic-tiled tomb and retreated to the relative sanity of the sleeping area. He checked the closet but saw no purse, underwear, or clothing. No lipstick, no condom wrappers, no high heels.
Ten minutes had passed since the ringing of the telephone, and though his mind still ran frantic loops, his hands no longer trembled.
He was slipping into his shirt when the knock came. The interior of the bathroom was hidden from view of the front door. Roland glanced once behind him to reassure himself of the bathroom’s angle and cracked the door, making sure his foot was planted firmly behind it.
A Hispanic woman, wearing blue jeans and a white uniform shirt with a towel draped over one shoulder, gave him an uneasy smile. She stood before a cart that held the tools of a maid’s trade: stacks of folded linen, spray bottles, mop, toilet brush, and a bucket of gray water that smelled of pine cleanser and bleach. She’d obviously expected to find an empty room and had given a perfunctory knock out of habit.
The woman pointed at her wrist, though she wore no watch, and said, “Time for checkout?” in a thick accent. A question, with the tone of one who had learned the hard way the customer was always right.
Roland managed a return smile, though his lips felt numb and paralyzed with shock. “Slept late,” he said, faking a yawn. “Give me ten minutes. I need a quick shower.”
The woman nodded and looked at a piece of notebook paper taped to her cart, then at the room number. “Okay, Mr. Underwood. But you tell the desk.”
She said “desk” as if the destination was some sort of principal’s office for wayward adults.
“No desk,” Roland said, the smile frozen on his face. He was hiding a corpse, but he could lie with his eyes and his face and his hands and his heart. Some habits never died.
“Por favor,” he said in bad Spanish, and he actually winked. He lifted a hand and realized it was still covered by the sock. He worked it like a puppet, grinned like an idiot, and then removed it. Digging into his wallet-David’s wallet, he chided himself-he pulled out a ten-dollar bill and held it toward the maid.
She shrank back as if it were the badge of a U.S. Immigration Service agent. She glanced from the office below back to the money. “I want no trouble.”
“Neither do I, but I don’t want to meet my wife at the airport smelling like a pig.”
“The desk finds out, I have trouble.”
“My wife can be trouble, too. Mucho bad.”
The maid hesitated, as if calculating the risk and mentally converting the dollars to pesos. “You hurry?”
“Five minutes, I promise.”
Roland was sickened by the look in the woman’s eyes and was ashamed how cheaply she could be led into conspiracy. But he was quite possibly a murderer, and bribery was several notches down the moral scale.
She took the bill and secured it in her pocket. Roland wondered if, when the police interrogated her, she would tell them about the money. He figured its DNA and fingerprint evidence would never enter a courtroom. He only hoped she had a green card, for her sake.
“Five minutes?” she asked, glancing at the office again and the omnipotent front desk that was hidden behind its tinted glass.
“Cross my heart,” he said, declining to complete the last half of the promise. He closed the door, found that sweat had stained the underarms of his shirt, and wondered if five minutes would be enough.
Even if he mustered the will to touch the body, the maid would find it whether it was tucked in the closet or hidden under the bed. He considered turning on the taps in the bathtub and locking the door, letting the maid assume he was showering. That might buy him an extra half an hour.
But minutes meant nothing in the face of eternity. In recovery from alcoholism, Roland had practiced principles of rigorous honesty and self-examination, including a core commitment to purposely harm no one.
Somewhere in the space of maybe three days, he had not only traveled five hundred miles but had lost his identity. Or maybe he hadn’t lost his identity at all, but found it.
If I’m David Underwood, who the fuck was Roland Doyle?
As he gathered his belongings and wiped down the telephone with the sock, he realized the police would be looking for David Underwood, not Roland Doyle. The world believed David had rented this room, and the police would put out an All Points Bulletin not for Roland, but for his spontaneous alter ego.