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I STUDIED MATLIND’S CORPSE and scanned the motel room carefully. On the cold, hard tile at the foot of the bed was a shell casing. I knelt down and inspected it without picking it up. I got down on my hands like I was preparing to do a pushup. I went all the way down, eye level with the brass so I could see the headstamp.
The bullet was a 9mm. I bet that if I ejected the magazine out of the Beretta Px4, it would have been loaded with nine-millimeter parabellums. That was the most popular bullet in the US. It was used in over sixty percent of police firearms.
I pushed up and got back on my feet. I looked over the corpse, inspecting Matlind’s entry and exit wounds. He had put the gun barrel in his mouth, and the muzzle of the gun must’ve pushed in all the way till he involuntarily began swallowing it because the exit wound had taken out the top part of his brainstem and the bottom of his brain.
I looked at the fingers on his left hand. I saw gunshot residue on his left hand and clothes. It was all the way to his forearms. I couldn’t recall whether or not Matlind had been left-handed. Maybe.
He hadn’t killed himself. The suicide had been staged. I knew that for sure. It seemed like his fingers weren’t broken—that was a typical sign of a faked suicide. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t forced to pull the trigger or hadn’t been coerced in some other way.
I saw no visible evidence that he hadn’t done it himself, but I knew that was the case because I had met a man who’d tried to get me to commit suicide. I was positive that he had murdered Matlind first. That was how he knew about me.
He had come here after I left and questioned Matlind, probably convincing him that he’d kill Faye, and then had murdered him. The dead Mexican who had tried to kill me was connected to Faye’s disappearance somehow. Had to be — no other logical explanation.
I stepped back to the door and opened it wide with my foot. Lewis saw me and turned on his headlights and then his light bar. I wasn’t sure why probably thought it would irk me. His engine had still been running. He was parked in the lot facing my door. The cones from his light bar lit up the room every time they rotated by.
This time, I was the one using my hand to gesture for him to come. He got out of the car and approached.
Before he reached the door, he said, “What? You need me to tuck you in?”
I stepped out of the doorway to let him see the room and the dead body.
I said, “No. But you might need me to do your damn job for you.”
His jaw dropped open, and he stared at the corpse. He said, “Oh, God!”
I said, “You’d better call the sheriff over here.”