Desiree Furness walks through the motel room, stepping over the body of a little girl, whose eyes are open in surprise. Strands of her blond hair are clotted with blood and a raggedy doll with woolen hair is lying an inch from her open palm. Desiree has to fight the urge to pick up the doll and tuck it under the girl’s arm.
The mother is lying between the bed and the wall. Naked. A slight beer paunch bulges low on her belly and a swirling tattoo is inked into the small of her back. Blond. Freckles. Pretty. Arc lights have bleached everything in brightness, but can’t remove the smell of bowels evacuated in the moment of death or the bloodstain on the wall above her head.
The forensic technicians still have work to do. Three men and a woman, dressed in crisp white coveralls, hairnets, and plastic bootees, are setting up UV lamps to test the mattress for semen stains. Desiree gazes down at the two beds. Both have been used. The woman was shot as she tried to rise, but why was the little girl near the bathroom?
In a corner between the desk and TV she notices a wastepaper basket crammed full of fast-food wrappings and magazines. There are brochures, Q-tips, and wads of Kleenex; a box of breakfast cereal and an empty can of roach spray. A child’s drawing is stuck beneath the edge of the mirror. Different colored crayons were used to spell out the girl’s name, Scarlett.
Outside, flashing lights are illuminating the motel in beats of color. Onlookers have gathered in the parking lot, craning to get a better view of the police cruisers and ambulances. Some are taking photographs with iPhones. Others hunker down over the screens in texting position. A few of the local cops are peering into the room, wanting a glimpse of the dead and then wishing they’d kept away.
Desiree had been woken just after 5 a.m. and had driven halfway across the city to this cheap motel full of itinerants, pimps, prostitutes, and the mentally defective—anyone who could produce a photo ID and pay forty-nine bucks a night. There are some field agents who dream about a case like this, an opportunity to investigate a multiple homicide, to catch the perpetrator and lock him in a cage. Desiree wants to go back to bed.
Other agents have partners, children, and lives that approach normality. Desiree hasn’t had a boyfriend since she dumped Skeeter, real name Justin, a year ago because he used funny voices and gave her pet names and talked to her like she was seven years old, even when she begged him to be serious. Eventually she wanted to scream at him, shake him, show him scenes like this one, but instead she told him to pack his things.
Crouching beside the girl’s body, she notices several bloody boot prints on the carpet and examines the busted lock on the adjoining door, trying to re-create what happened in the room, but none of it makes sense.
She pushes a lock of hair from the child’s eyes, wishing she could ask Scarlett questions, wishing the little girl could answer.
She peels off her gloves and goes in search of fresher air. More technicians are outside at the dead woman’s car and dusting for prints along the breezeway, swapping small talk like this is just another day at the office. The man in charge is in his midthirties with a fleshy face and dark rings beneath his eyes. Desiree introduces herself but doesn’t shake his gloved hand.
“What have you got?”
“Three, maybe four shots—two in the mother, one in the girl.”
“The weapon?”
“Possibly a .22 handgun, semiautomatic.”
“Where was the shooter standing?”
“Too early to say.”
“Speculate?”
“The mother was on the bed. The daughter came out of the bathroom. The shooter was probably standing in the middle of the room, closer to the window than the bathroom.”
Desiree turns away and runs her fingers through her hair. “I want to see the ballistics report as soon as you’re done.”
The spotlight from a TV camera blinds her momentarily. Reporters are yelling questions from the parking lot. There are news crews from local TV and radio stations. A chopper circles above, filming for the morning bulletins. One camera team is attached to the local homicide squad filming a reality TV show for a cable channel, turning cops into celebrities and spooking the public into buying more guns and burglar alarms.
Desiree finds Sheriff Ryan Valdez waiting in a spare motel room that has been commandeered by the homicide squad. He’s lying on a bed with the brim of his Stetson pulled down like he’s catching some shut-eye. He’s surrendered his service revolver and his hands are wrapped in plastic bags, but somebody has brought him a coffee.
Although she has never met the sheriff, Desiree has already formed an opinion, which is heavily influenced by what she’s just seen in the motel room. Valdez sits up and tilts his hat back.
“Why didn’t you call for backup?” she asks.
“Nice to make your acquaintance,” he says. “I don’t believe we’ve been introduced.”
“Answer my question.”
“I didn’t know if Audie Palmer was here.”
“The night manager identified him from the photograph you showed him.”
“He said he hadn’t seen Palmer in two days.”
“So you decided to bust in?”
“I tried to make an arrest.”
Desiree stares at him, gripping her fists so tightly her fingernails cut into her palms. She produces her badge. Valdez doesn’t appear to take any notice. He blinks at her with red-rimmed eyes, but his gaze seems to be summing her up and dismissing her without a second thought.
“Tell me what happened.”
“I announced myself, a woman screamed, and I heard shooting. I came through the door, but they were already dead. He shot them in cold blood. Gunned them down. The man has no conscience.”
Desiree takes a chair and pulls it in front of the sheriff. He’s bleeding a little from the corner of his mouth.
“What happened?” She points at his face.
“Must have been a tree branch.”
She sniffs and tastes something in her saliva, wanting to spit. “What were you doing here, Sheriff?”
“A woman called Crime Stoppers asking if there was a reward out on Audie Palmer.”
“And you know this because?”
“A dispatcher told me.”
“This isn’t your jurisdiction. You’re the sheriff in Dreyfus County.”
“I asked to be kept informed. Palmer was outside my house. He talked to my wife and son. I have a right to protect my family.”
“So you decided to go all Charles Bronson on his ass?”
The corners of Valdez’s mouth curl upward. “Since you seem to know all the answers, Special Agent, why do you think Audie Palmer came looking for me? Maybe he’s brain damaged. Maybe he wants payback. I don’t know what goes on inside the fucked-up head of a killer. I followed up a lead that the FBI failed to follow.”
“The FBI hadn’t been informed. Now two people are dead and their blood is on your hands.”
“Not mine. His.”
Desiree feels a tension band pressing around her forehead. She doesn’t like this man. Maybe he’s telling the truth, but every time he opens his mouth, she sees a hole in a woman’s forehead and a little girl lying in a pool of blood.
“Tell me the story again,” she says, wanting to know the exact sequence of events. Where was he standing when he heard shots fired? When did he open the door? What did he see?
Valdez gives the same account, describing how he announced himself and heard shots. “I came through the door and saw the bodies. He’d gone through the connecting room so I went after him. I yelled for him to stop. Squeezed off a couple of shots, but he went over the top of the fence like he had wings.”
“Did you have your weapon drawn when you came through the door?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“When you were chasing Palmer, how many shots did you fire?”
“Two, maybe three.”
“Did you hit him?”
“Might have. Like I said, that boy can flat out haul ass.”
“Where did you lose sight of him?”
“He crossed the canal. I think I saw him drop something.”
“Where?”
“Near the bridge.”
“How far away was he?”
“Eighty, maybe ninety yards.”
“But you could see him in the dark?”
“I heard the splash.”
“And then you lost him?”
“I came back here and tried to help the woman and her little girl.”
“Did you move the bodies?”
“I think I turned the girl over to check her heartbeat.”
“Did you wash your hands?”
“I had blood on them.”
Valdez squeezes his eyes shut. A tear emerges and hovers in the wrinkles. He wipes it away. “I didn’t know Palmer was going to shoot them.”
A sheriff’s deputy knocks on the door. Young. Fresh faced. Grinning.
“Look what I found,” he says, holding a muddy pistol between his thumb and forefinger.
“Wow! Did you also find your brain?”
The deputy frowns, his smile gone.
Desiree opens a plastic Ziploc bag. “It’s evidence, you moron!” The muddy pistol is dropped inside. “Show me where you found it.”
She follows him outside, walking between squad cars and ambulances, past the grief tourists, bystanders, and rubberneckers. She can’t hear the comments but she knows they’re marveling at her diminutiveness, telling jokes or making cooing sounds about the cute little FBI agent. Every day she has to contend with this, but Desiree knows that no amount of wishing will rearrange her DNA or take inches from her hips and put them on her legs.
The deputy leads her along the storm-water culvert behind a factory and a warehouse until they reach a concrete bridge. He shines a flashlight into the drain, revealing an oily puddle. Snapping on polyethylene gloves, Desiree slides down the sloped side and searches through the weeds, gravel, broken glass, discarded rubbers, beer cans, wine bottles, and hamburger wrappers.
Her first station boss told her that most agents make the mistake of looking at events from the top down, when they should be doing the opposite. “You got to think like a criminal,” he said. “Get down in the gutter and look at the world through their eyes.”
Right now she’s wading through putrid water in a stinking drain. The only way to look is up.