Spicer had been shot once at close range. Small-caliber weapon, maybe a.22. What blood had leaked out of the wound was tacky, drying. In addition to the white shirt, he wore trousers and a knotted tie-his Sunset Lounge outfit except for the jacket. Dressed and ready to leave when whoever shot him showed up. That and the drying blood put the time of death at between five and five-thirty. Three hours.
Who? Why? And why take Kevin? To liberate him from his father, or because he was a witness to the shooting?
Fallon stood up and leaned against the wall. Training and instinct urged him to notify the police immediately. Right thing to do, start them looking for the boy as soon as possible. For his own protection, too, even though Casey could verify his whereabouts when Spicer died.
But not just yet.
His first obligation was to Casey: she had to be told about this, and by him, not the law. In person was better, but there wasn’t time for that. He hit the redial button on his cell phone.
No answer. Her cell was still switched off.
Dammit! He didn’t know the motel number… wait, yes he did. The letterhead receipt for the two rooms he’d paid for by credit card. He found it in his pocket, called the number, asked the clerk for Casey’s room.
Ten empty rings.
That made him even edgier. She should be in the room, waiting for him. And if she’d gone out for some reason, why hadn’t she made sure her cell phone was turned on? Where was she?
The need for movement drove him into the bedroom nearest to where the body lay. It was the one Spicer had been using; his dark blue dinner jacket was on a hanger on the closet door, his wallet in an inside pocket. Fallon eased the wallet out, fanned through it. Two hundred dollars in twenties and tens. No credit cards-Spicer must have paid for everything in cash. No union card. The only ID was a Nevada driver’s license in the name of Steven Courtney. Bought and paid for, probably in Vegas and probably from Bobby J. or one of his cronies.
Fallon wiped the wallet with a hand towel from the adjacent bathroom, returned it to the coat pocket. Then he used the towel to open drawers in a small writing desk. Looking for blackmail evidence, anything that might explain the shooting. All he found was a few receipts for meals and minor purchases. The closet and the dresser contained clothing, most of it on the expensive side, and little else. The nightstand was empty except for a package of condoms and a prostitute’s full-color business card like the ones they handed out on the Vegas Strip.
He was sweating now, despite the air-conditioned coolness. Without touching anything, he made a quick search of the other bedrooms, then went downstairs and prowled the first-floor rooms. The place had a static, unlived-in feel; the only personal items Spicer had brought to it were in the two upstairs bedrooms.
He made another call to Casey’s room at the motel. Still no answer.
Where the hell
He’d been in there with the dead man a long time now-too long. Call the police, get it over with. Worry about Casey later.
He couldn’t make himself do it.
The urgency he felt now was to find her, find out what had gone wrong at the motel; she was still his first priority. Bring her back here with him, let her wait in the Jeep while he discovered the body all over again, and then he’d call in the law. Self-protection for both of them. There was time to do it that way, and not too much risk: the chance that anybody in the lighted neighboring house had seen him come in here was fairly slim.
He thought about shutting off the lights before leaving, but he didn’t do it. If he hadn’t been seen coming in, he’d be careful not to be seen going out. And you don’t alter or compromise a crime scene in any way if you can avoid it. The door lock was a deadbolt, so he was able to close the door without setting it. From the porch, he made sure the street was empty before crossing to the Jeep.
The same thought kept running on a loop inside his head: leaving like this is a mistake-you know damn well it is. But it hadn’t stopped him inside and it didn’t stop him now.
The drive to the motel took twenty long minutes. He had to keep telling himself to take it easy, observe the speed limit, do nothing to call attention to himself.
No lights showed behind the curtained window in Casey’s unit. Fallon put the Jeep into an empty space, went to rap on the door and call her name. Silence. He knocked again, louder, and a third time before he gave it up and trotted down to the motel office.
The night clerk was a college-age kid with a scraggly crescent of chin whiskers. Fallon said, “My friend, the woman I checked in with, should be in her room but she doesn’t answer the door.” He described her, gave her room number. “Do you know if she went out?”
“No, sir. I haven’t seen anyone looks like that.”
“She might still be in the room. Sick or something. Could you open it up so I can check?”
“Well, I don’t know… You say she’s a friend of yours?”
Fallon dragged the receipt out of his pocket, slapped it down. “I paid for both rooms, you can see that. I’m worried about her. Come on, get your passkey. It won’t take long.”
The clerk didn’t argue. They went to Casey’s room and he keyed open the door and put on the lights. Fallon pushed around him, inside. Empty. There was a measure of relief in that, but none in the fact that her suitcase and overnight bag were also missing.
He took a quick look around, thinking that she might have left a note. Nothing. The only signs that she’d ever been there were the rumpled bed and a towel on the bathroom floor.
Outside he asked the clerk, “How long have you been here tonight?”
“Since five o’clock.”
“On the desk the whole time? You didn’t go out for some reason and turn it over to somebody else?”
“No, sir. I’ve been here the whole time. If your friend had checked out, she would have had to do it with me.”
“She wouldn’t have checked out,” Fallon said.
“Well, she’ll probably be back. Maybe she just went out somewhere to eat.”
Fallon didn’t answer that. He said a curt thanks, unlocked the door to his own room, and closed himself inside.
Immediately he tried her cell number again. Out of service.
Spicer murdered, the boy missing again, and now this. There must be some connection, but what? None of it made any sense. Casey had no reason to leave voluntarily… unless she was the one who’d killed Spicer and taken Kevin. Was that even remotely possible? He didn’t see how it could be. She’d have had to find out somehow where they were living and then get out there in a cab right after Fallon left for the Wagonwheel. There might have been time for her to do that, barely-he could be wrong about the time of death-and the weapon could have belonged to Spicer and she’d managed to get it away from him…
No, Christ, he didn’t buy it for a second. She was emotional, unpredictable, with self-destructive tendencies, but he couldn’t picture her as homicidal. And she wasn’t crazy, which she’d have to be to want revenge badly enough to jeopardize her relationship with her son.
The only other possibility he could think of was that whoever killed Spicer had kidnapped both the boy and Casey. But how would the shooter know where she was staying? Well, there was an answer to that: she’d been seen and recognized at some point today, or he had, and they’d been followed here the way he’d followed Bobby J. last night. But then how would the follower know she was here alone? The timing said he’d have had to be in Bullhead City when Fallon left for the Sunset Lounge. An accomplice staked out here? Bobby J. and Yellow Beard working together?
Far-fetched. Unbelievable.
He quit trying to make sense of it, focused instead on what he was going to do. Drive back to the Bullhead City house, refind the body, call the law? Still an option, but not a good one with Casey missing. Without her he couldn’t prove he’d been here until 5:40 tonight, and his reasons for hunting Spicer might seem suspicious without corroboration. Like as not, with no other handy suspects, they’d chuck his ass into jail and hold him as a material witness. And if they wanted to, they could build a pretty good circumstantial case against him. The thought of spending even a short time behind bars put a cold knot in his gut. You couldn’t get any farther from wide open spaces than a jail cell.
Could he get away with not reporting the murder? Maybe, if he was lucky. A lot of people knew he’d been
