Max that had done that. Seeing the frailty of old age, the foolishness. How could you stay angry at that?
Which brought her to the other thing she didn’t want to think about. Owen.
Max and Owen entered suite 3114 and placed their sombreros on the table. You couldn’t beat a Club Med sombrero for thwarting security cameras. Still, their entry had been delayed owing to the fact that Bill had not answered their knock and they were forced to seek out a chambermaid and stage an elaborate distraction. This involved Owen’s pitching forward, throwing a series of baroque spasms across the hotel corridor, and foaming at the mouth. In the course of the chambermaid’s panicked efforts to help, Max had relieved her of her pass-key. Then they had retrieved the sombreros from the stairwell where they had stashed them and come back.
“Hotel security,” Max said, looking around. “Perhaps I missed my calling.”
“What if he just stepped out for a few minutes?” Owen said. “If he comes back, he’s going to go crazy, and I really can’t face fighting that guy again.”
Max put on a pair of gloves and opened the door. “Anybody home?” he called.
“Somebody is,” Owen said, pointing.
A pair of feet stuck out from behind an armchair near the balcony. Owen crossed the room to take a closer look. “Jesus. It’s Bill. He’s been shot.”
Max bent down and felt the man’s neck. “Still warm,” he said. “But definitely dead, poor sod.”
“Come on, Max, let’s go. We do not want to be explaining what we’re doing in a hotel room with a dead guy.”
“Eschew panic, lad. Panic is the mother of error. It would seem whoever aerated old Bill did not escape without a scratch.” Max pointed to the smear of blood on the table, and another on the far wall.
“There’s blood all the way over here,” Max said, following the trail into the bathroom. “Lav’s full too. He must’ve come in here for a towel to wrap himself up with. Shirt’s on the floor, shot in the arm. He must’ve appropriated one of Preacher Bill’s shirts after he patched himself up.”
“Max, please. I’m feeling sick.”
“In a minute, lad, in a minute. Cogitation is required. If I’m right that Bill here knew where the thieving Sabrina hides, there should be some indication in this room.”
“Well, he’s in security. He used to be a cop. He may have all kinds of ways of tracking people.”
“True, lad. True.”
Owen looked again at the bloodstained table. “There was a computer plugged in here-an Apple. You can tell by the cord.”
“No doubt our wounded killer made off with it. A junkie looking for a quick sale? Unlikely. Perhaps someone who wanted information off the computer? Are there any other electronic devices about the place? A security man is likely to own many.”
Owen took a quick look in the bedroom and came back. “Nothing but Gideon’s Bible. Max, what are you doing?”
Max pulled his hand out of Bill’s pocket, carefully holding a wallet by its edges. “I have established that the motive was not robbery. Several hundred dollars here.”
“Max, I don’t want to make money off murder.”
“A noble sentiment, my boy. Then again, we didn’t commit the murder. We discovered him pre- murdered.”
“Max, put it back.”
“Why? I can’t see him needing it-the afterlife is almost certainly a cashless society. In any case, this is far too nice a point of ethics to determine just now. I’ll just hang on to this, and weigh the matter at such a time and place as may seem conducive to fine distinctions.”
He put the wallet, slimmer now, back into Bill’s pocket and reached into another. This time he extracted a tiny phone. “Examine this, would you, boy? Electronics confound me.”
Owen took it from him, a cherry red iPhone. “Top of the line,” Owen said. “Wireless Internet, digital video, MP3 player, the works.”
“Could one use it for actual communication?”
“What are you looking for, Max?”
“Well, let’s discover who called him recently, shall we?”
Owen thumbed a few buttons until he found the right combination. “Sabrina! Oh, wait, that’s me. I used her phone because it had Bill’s number on speed-dial. Let’s see what he’s got on here …” Owen played with the buttons and squinted at the tiny screen. “Actually not much. Someone named Maria. That could be anyone-mistress, cleaning lady, hooker, who knows? Then he’s got Office one, Office two, Office three. Then Sabrina-same number we have. And then he’s got something called Star Trak.”
“
“Star Trak. T-R-A-K.”
“What is a Star Trak when it’s at home?”
Owen hit the button. The little screen lit up with the Star Trak logo.
“I’ve got their home page. It’s probably going to want a password … No, wait, he’s got it set to remember his password for twenty-four hours.” He clicked another button. “It’s like MapQuest or something. For finding directions. No, wait, it’s a GPS outfit. Max, you were right! He’s been tracking her on GPS. He must have put a unit in her suitcase.”
“How absolutely diabolical,” Max said with admiration.
“It’s pointing to US 80. See, he probably had this screen open on his computer and now the other guy’s got it.”
“Not a moment to lose, then. Exeunt all, in sombreros.”
TWENTY-TWO
Owen and Max had left the Rocket in the trailer park and were now barrelling along US 80 in the Taurus, the iPhone clutched in Owen’s fist. The GPS readout didn’t tell them Sabrina’s speed, but she wasn’t wasting any time.
She seemed to be choosing her route at random, sometimes sticking to the scenic highway, other times bounding onto the interstate. They tracked her across Louisiana, through two hundred miles of woody hills and Biblical injunctions.
They passed the boarded-up storefronts of Shreveport, and Max howled when they had to forgo the Riverboat Casino, which was not in fact a riverboat but a four-storey structure built to look like one.
“Are we closing in on her, boy? How are we doing?”
Owen checked the iPhone again. The tiny map showed Sabrina maybe sixty miles ahead.
“We’re definitely closing the gap.”
They stopped for gas in Gibsland (population 1,224), which, Owen informed Max, was the town where Bonnie and Clyde had met their grisly end. He even found a stack of postcards of their bullet-riddled bodies next to a news rack displaying the latest issues of
“Thank you for sharing,” Max said when Owen handed him one of the postcards.
“Criminal history’s our theme this year, Max. I don’t see why that should change.”
Bonnie and Clyde were nothing like the movie, Owen added when they were back in the car. “They killed a lot of people and didn’t think twice about it.”
“Is that meant to make me feel better?”
“It’s just a fact, Max.”
“Fact me no facts, boy. You’re dealing with a big-picture man.”
