Stallings knocked on unit 424’s lime-green door with his undamaged right hand. When there was no response, he stepped back to let Wu
open the door with the key. Wu went in first. Stallings followed, closed the door behind him and sniffed the room’s air.
“Smell it?”
Wu only nodded.
“Exploded cordite,” Stallings said. “That means somebody pulled a gun and shot at somebody. And if somebody got hit and killed, the next thing we’ll smell is loosened bowels. Ever since the war, whenever I smell cordite, the next thing I expect to smell is shit. And somehow I know if I go through that bathroom door over there, I’ll smell ‘em both, cordite and shit, together again.”
“Then stay here while I look,” Wu said.
“Death, cordite and shit don’t bother you, Artie?”
“Not as much as your babbling.”
“My mouth runs when I’m nervous. Not scared. Just nervous. When I’m scared, I clam up.”
“Stay here,” Wu said, crossed the room, opened the bathroom door, looked inside, turned and said, “You’d better come look.”
Stallings saw the woman first. She was huddled in the southwest corner of the shower stall, her knees drawn up to her chest. She wore a white blouse, black jeans and tan sandals on bare feet. There was a small neat hole just above the bridge of her nose. Her eyes were open.
The man was scrunched up against the bathroom wall between the sink and the toilet. His hands lay in his lap. His face was turned up toward the ceiling. There was a neat hole in his left temple and his eyes were also open. So was his mouth.
“They do look alike, don’t they?” Stallings said.
“Very much.”
Stallings, who had been holding his breath, sniffed twice, then began breathing through his mouth. “God, I hate that smell.”
“Don’t leave any prints,” Wu said.
“Hadn’t planned to,” Stallings said, then asked, “Now that we’ve found them, what next?”
“Let’s see what else we can find.”
Two minutes later, Stallings discovered a crumpled-up computer-produced receipt in a wastebasket beneath four empty diet Coke cans.
He lifted the empty cans out with a handkerchief, picked up the receipt with his fingers, smoothed it out, read it and handed it to Wu.
The receipt was from an Oxnard company called The You Store. After deciphering it, Wu said the Goodisons apparently had rented a store-and-lock compartment for a month at a cost of f 106.50. They had paid cash. The number of their storage space was 3472.
“Think that’s where they stashed the tapes?” Stallings asked.
“Probably.”
“Think they’re still there?”
“Probably not.”
“So how do you figure it?”
“The same way you do, Booth. The shooter killed one of them, then promised not to shoot the last one left if he or she would tell where the tapes were hidden. The one still alive told all and was shot dead.”
“Then the last words of the last one left weren’t words, just numbers.”
“Maybe not,” Wu said. “Maybe the last words were ‘Please don’t’ or
‘Please don’t kill me’ or just ‘Please.’” He turned toward the motel room’s door and said, “Let’s go.”
“What about the dead folks?”
“We’ll stop by the office, pay Deason his five hundred and tell him that the Goodisons—what’d they call themselves?”
“Mr. And Mrs. Reginald Carter.”
Wu nodded. “That the Carters must have stepped out. We’ll also tell him to call us at that fake number on our business card when the Carters return.”
“The shooter killed the young limo driver, right?” Stallings said. “He made the kid tell him where he’d driven the Goodisons, then cut his throat.”
“What makes you so sure the shooter’s a he?” Wu said.
As they drove through east Oxnard toward The You Store, using directions Stallings had extracted from a sullen gas station attendant, the same thought occurred to them simultaneously.
“The driver of that black car—” Stallings began.
“Knew us,” Wu said. “One of us anyway.”
“Unless he thought we were cops.”
“We don’t look like cops. You’re too old and I’m too, well, too exotic
