Free Stateline by Dave Stanton

gold structure, then traded my ski jacket for a black cotton coat. I pulled a small forensics case and a roll of yellow crime-scene tape from the suitcase I kept in my trunk, and grabbed my generic gold badge, which was mounted on a black leather backing attached to a thin neck cord. Then I strapped on my shoulder holster with the Beretta and went into the hotel lobby.
    I walked around the perimeter, checked the restaurant, the lounge, and the men’s room, scouting for uniformed or plainclothes cops. It was almost nine o’clock on a Saturday night, and I hoped the detectives, forensics squad, and coroner would have already cleared out. I didn’t see anyone suspicious around, so I took the elevator to the sixth floor. The hallway was empty, and the door to 672 was sealed with three bands of yellow tape.
    I went back down to the registration counter. I waited there for a minute until a pretty Asian girl stepped out from a side door.
    “Hi, I’m Rich Conrad, Douglas County Sheriff’s Office,” I said. My coat was unzipped, the badge resting on my chest. “I need to go up to six seventy-two.”
    “Oh, yes,” she said, looking around. “My manager should talk to you, but I think he’s on break.”
    “I’ll only be a couple minutes, it’s standard procedure. My wife is waiting at home with a movie, so I’d like to get back soon.” I gave her my best “ah, shucks” smile. She glanced around again, then ran a plastic card through an electronic box. “I guess it’s okay. Here you go.”
    I went back to the sixth floor. After snapping on a pair of rubber gloves, I used a razor blade to slice the crime-scene tape crisscrossed over the doorjamb of room 672. Then I ran the card key through the reader and went in. It was nine-fifteen. I wanted to be in the room for no more than ten minutes.
    I avoided touching anything as I surveyed the crime scene. At the foot of the bed, a large bloodstain on the carpet spread past the boundaries of a taped silhouette of a body. The bedspread was pulled partially off the mattress, revealing a smeared streak of blood on the white sheets. A dried pool of vomit lay near the window, the sickly odor hanging in the air.
    I looked underneath the bed and saw nothing. I studied the pillows with my magnifying glass, but it was probably pointless. Forensic evidence can make a case if one has access to a lab, and the time to wait for results. Neither applied to me.
    I checked the bathroom and went through the dresser drawers, careful not to touch the white fingerprint powder. I didn’t really expect to find anything, but I felt it was important to check, to get a feel for the room, if nothing else. There was a large walk-in closet next to the bathroom. It was empty except for the non-removable hangers and ironing board. The closet floor had a few muddy scuffmarks, and I knelt down to see if I could make out a footprint. I couldn’t, but I did notice some lighter-color dirt, and I pinched some between my fingers. It was sawdust. I took a small flashlight from my forensics case and studied the floor carefully. There appeared to be a light coat of dust mixed with some fine sawdust, and then some heavier shoe dirt was scattered about. The sawdust could mean anything but was probably meaningless, I thought, and I was about to get up when I noticed an inch-long curlicue of wood shaving hiding in the crevice where the cedar floor butted up to the carpet.
    I picked up the shaving, then stood and took a better look at it, and when I raised my head I found myself looking at a neat little hole that had been drilled in the closet door.
    “Son of a bitch,” I whispered. The hole was an inch or so above my eye line and about a half-inch in diameter. I stood on my tiptoes, looking through it, then closed myself in the closet and peered out. I could see the bed pretty well, but not much else. I stepped back out, taking a look at the hole from the outside. It was right above a mirror mounted to the wood-grain