1

MORNING SUN, diffused by the yellow brown haze that snugged over the Los Angeles basin like a toxic cap slowly strangling the life out of its citizens, eliminated the Slumber Motel's only advantage: neon so old it looked retro. It was one of those typical Hollywood joints that tourists sometimes accidentally picked off the Internet. Usually they realized the error of their choice before checking in, and switched to one of the national chains. If they didn't, then their first night's lullaby was dealers and hookers plying their trades, the shopping cart people collecting bottles from the trash cans around the vending machines, junkies hitting up guests for smokes and spare change. The cops came around once in a while, but they preferred to stay away if at all possible. Even the scrawny palms shed their fronds and stood bare, jaundiced and sickly, as if they'd rather die than live too close to the faded pastel box.

Andy Gray knew that crime was a given at a place like this. Only the presence of yellow crime scene tape wound around the trunks of the spindly palms and tied to the rusty iron banister and the squad car sitting at the curb with two uniforms inside it were unusual. Andy left his Bureau ride, a standard gray Crown Vic, and walked up to the black-and-white, waving his ID at the two young cops.

They emerged from their car, stretched out the kinks. "Help you?" the male cop asked.

Andy scanned the man's brass nameplate. "Special Agent Andrew Gray, FBI," he said, passing over the leather folder with his shield and ID card. "I need a closer look at the crime scene, Officer Ybarra."

Ybarra checked out Andy's identification, then smiled broadly. His teeth were white and straight, accentuated by his dark olive skin. His partner, a woman named Coggins, was almost a foot shorter, but solid. She kept her lips pressed together in a thin line as she handed him a clipboard. Andy added his signature to the list of those who had come before him. "CSIs have been here all night," Ybarra told him. "But they're gone now, so I guess it's all yours."

A rookie, then. LA cops had never routinely referred to the criminalists who examined crime scenes as CSIs until the TV show came along. There were too many specialties—medical examiners, latent print examiners, forensic anthropologists, photographers, trace evidence examiners. A cop with more experience might have said, "The CSIU has been here all night." The crime scene investigation unit covered all bases, and cops—forever going up against criminal defense attorneys who'd grasp at any straw they were offered—needed to learn to speak precisely. Andy guessed that the CSIU had, in fact, spent the night here, with the possible exception of the medical examiner. MEs only came out when there were dead bodies on hand.

Trouble was, Andy was pretty sure there had been a dead body in that hotel room.

The fact that nobody knew the body was dead was the whole problem.

He turned away from the cops and looked over the scene, trying to take it in as it was now without remembering what he'd been told about the events of the night before. What he'd seen when he got to the LA office.

Jacob Paul Norris. Andy's partner. Dead man walking.

The science of modern crime scene examination had pretty much been invented by the FBI. He remembered what he had learned at Quantico, that approaching a crime scene with preconceptions blinded you to the reality of the situation. Andy Gray emptied his mind and opened his senses.

The stink of rush hour traffic fumes along Sunset.

Glass on the parking lot surface, glittering in the morning light. Some of it tinged with red.

Blood—pools of it, almost black on the macadam. More splashed against the pale yellow stucco walls.

Small puddles of something else, on the sidewalk that ran along in front of the rooms. A housekeeper's cart had been caught in the crossfire. The puddles were probably shampoo, cleansers, solvents, something like that. Forensics would confirm that for him.

Chips out of the stucco. Bullet holes. At least a hundred, he guessed.

Motel room windows shattered. Curtains swaying gently in the breeze that also fluttered the crime scene tape, making a noise like a kid with a playing card in his bicycle spokes.

Another smell, metallic, underlying the exhaust fumes. Copper. Blood.

And a third, fainter still. Familiar. Andy searched his memory and came up with it.

Rotting meat.

Copyright © 2006 by teve Niles and Jeff Mariotte.