I saw the girl who'd served up my shake pressed against the wall, fists crammed against her mouth. Still screaming. Staring at something hidden behind the counter. I banged on the door hard. Glass and metal rattled. She dashed over and did unlocking things, and as soon as the door was open threw herself on me like a shaking, girl- sized limpet. I couldn't make anything out of what she was gasping at me, so I peeled her off and edged over to peer over the counter.
I'd seen dead guys before, but this guy was really, really dead. In pieces.
There was something particularly revolting about a dead guy in pieces on the floor of the DQ, under the brightly-colored posters advertising tasty frozen treats and brazier-cooked meat products.
I swallowed hard, several times, and tried not to breathe through my nose.
'I'm no doctor,' the guy in the black leather jacket said casually, leaning over the counter, 'but that guy may need medical attention.'
Laconic, and not funny. I whirled toward him. He had a shotgun propped casually up against his shoulder, and sunglasses pushed up on top of his head, and he looked bland and utterly disinterested as he stared down at the pieces of what had formerly been known as Bob or Fred or Joe.
'Call the police,' I said. I was facing Mystery Man, but I was talking to the girl, who was hovering by the door. She pushed through and sped off at a run, hopefully for the phone in the motel office. 'You know anything about this?'
'Why would I?' he asked.
'You come fully equipped for killing people.'
'Yeah, not for chopping them into bits, though. And you seem awfully damn calm about it,' he pointed out. I wasn't, in fact. My heart was pounding hard, and my hands were shaking, but I knew how to fake it. 'Look, I was kidding about that werewolf thing last night, but …'
'Can it.' I could do a lot of things, but quipping over a corpse was a little beyond my gag limit. 'Any idea who he is?'
'Not a clue.' He studied me for a few seconds. 'Let's take this outside.
We've already left enough forensic crap on the scene of the crime.'
He spun on his heel and walked out, elbowing the door open rather than using his hand. Fingerprints, right. I'd left mine all over it. Out in the sunlight, he looked even more normal than before — not a remarkable face, dark eyes, intermediate-colored skin, eyes and nose and mouth all in normal proportions.
Nothing you'd fall instantly in love with or photograph or remember five minutes later.
Except for the deadly-looking shotgun he was holding, of course. That made him stand out.
He saw me staring at it and dropped the barrel to point toward the ground.
'Precaution,' he said.
'You always carry that kind of stuff?'
'Pretty much, yeah.' He walked back to the Caddy's open trunk and stowed it away in a rack that seemed specifically built for the purpose. Or maybe it was meant to hold fishing rods. How would I know? 'What's your name?'
I wasn't planning to get chummy with the potentially crazy and definitely well-armed. 'Gail.' Gail, as in gale- force winds. I'd have gone for Wendy if it hadn't been so cute and associated with fast food. 'You?'
'Brian McCall,' he said. 'Pleased to meet you.' He slammed the trunk, pocketed the keys, and leaned against the dusty car. 'We've got about ten minutes, give or take, to get our story straight.'
'Story? I don't have a story. Maybe you have a story.'
'Oh, I've got one,' he said, poker-faced. 'But I'm talking about the story of the dead guy in the DQ. Which, seeing as I don't think the little girl did that, just leaves a few suspects. You, me, the motel manager, or some crazy drifter who happened to break into a Dairy Queen. The motel manager, he's local.
They'll like to have a nice easy answer, and you and me, we're easy. Unless you've got an alibi.'
I didn't. I swallowed hard.
'Didn't think so,' he said, and rolled his shoulders in a gesture that wasn't quite a shrug. 'Me neither. I was thinking … want to be alibi buddies?'
'Not if you did it.'
'Lady, if I did it, I'd damn sure be halfway across the state by now and not hanging around for the discovery of the corpse,' McCall snapped, and I believed him. He looked like the kind who'd know exactly how to get away with murder.
'I thought you checked in with some guy. Where's he?'
'Off on an errand,' I said.
McCall fixed me with a stare. 'The cops are going to be very interested about why he bugged out in the middle of the night. Not to mention how he bugged out, seeing as you came in the same car and we're in the ass of nowhere.'
Lies were going to get too elaborate. I kept silent, staring back, and raised an eyebrow. McCall, unexpectedly, grinned at me.
'I like you,' he said. 'You don't fluster.'
'I'm too damn tired to fluster.'
He started to say something, then stopped, face smoothing back into an expressionless mask. His eyes were fixed somewhere just over my shoulder.
'What?' I started to turn.
'Don't move,' he said. I froze. 'Stay here.'
He hit the remote control on his keys and popped the trunk of his car, yanked the shotgun out of its brace, and headed for the office.
Great. My new alibi buddy was about to rob the place. My day was just getting better.
###
I didn't stay put, but hell, I never do what anybody tells me to do, especially armed strangers I barely know. So I trailed along behind Brian McCall as he entered the office. He didn't seem to be wasting any time alarming people; the DQ girl gave a full-throated shriek and made herself into a tiny little ball in the corner, and Einstein held up his hands in the world-weary posture of a guy who'd been through this before.
McCall thumped the shotgun down on the counter and said, 'I need the keys.'
For a second, nobody moved, and then Einstein cleared his throat loudly and said, 'Which keys would that be?'
'Master keys.' I couldn't see McCall's face, but what I read of his body language seemed no-nonsense. 'Right now. We haven't got much time.'
'Should let the police handle this — '
'I do that, more people get killed. Keys. Now.'
Einstein moved one hand slowly toward a ring of keys and then thumped them on the counter. McCall picked them up in a jingle of metal, shouldered the shotgun again, and turned back to see me standing there.
'You're one of those,' he said, and walked past me back into the cool, bright morning.
'One of those what?'
'Ones who don't stay put. Here. Make yourself useful.' He tossed me the keys.
'Open the rooms, one at a time. Stay off to the side when you do it.'
He marched me over to Room 1. I slid the key marked 1 in the lock, edged as far over as I could, and turned it. McCall hit the door with his booted foot, and all of a sudden that shotgun was down, aimed and meaning business.
Nothing inside. He scanned it, went in to look at the bathroom, then joined me outside again and nodded at the next room.
Room 2 yielded nothing. I was in Room 3. Rooms 4 and 5, also nothing. I wondered when the cops were going to roll up, and wondered what they would make of us doing room-to-room searches of the armed and dangerous variety.
I was wondering about then when I turned the key to Room 6, McCall hit the door, and something loomed out of the dark inside and hit him back.
