Free The Upright Man by Michael Marshall

for a moment, then a quiet swishing sound. Silence again.
    “Nina,” he says finally, “come in here.”
    She knew that meant just her, so she raised a hand to signal the other guys to hold position. She allowed her other arm to drop a little, but wasn’t yet ready to let go of the gun.
    The bedroom seemed even hotter than the other room. There was a strong odor. The television was a low burble up high to the left, fixed to the wall with a metal bracket. Monroe stood on the other side of a queen-sized bed.
    A woman sat in the bed, watching television. She was in her late twenties. She had long brown hair. She didn’t move when Nina entered, because she was dead. She was sitting bolt upright in bed, her head flopping slightly forward. She was dressed in well-worn blue cotton night-clothes with a floral motif. Her stomach had begun to distend. Her face looked like painted putty. Her eyes were open. So was her mouth. Something had been put inside it.
    “Jesus,” Nina said.
    She leaned forward. The object in the woman’s mouth was about the size of a waitress’s notepad, about a quarter of an inch thick, two inches wide, and probably a little over three inches long, though it was difficult to be sure without removing it. It seemed to be made of shiny metal. A very narrow label along the protruding end had a string of numbers and short lines on it.
    “What the hell is that?” Monroe said. He was breathing hard, and a line of sweat glinted on one temple.
    Nina shook her head. “I don’t know.”
     
    THIRTY MINUTES LATER N INA STEPPED OUTSIDE . The first wave of forensic geeks had arrived. With the drapes still drawn and the heat still trapped, it was like milling around in a crowded, hellish cupboard. Nina made sure to take a thorough look around the suite, which was always easier when it had been established you weren’t going to be shot at, and then left. Monroe was still inside. It would take the arrival of cameras to flush him out.
    There were no other bodies in the room. The swish Nina had heard was the sound of Monroe checking the bathroom. It was devoid of personal possessions. There was no sign of the clothes the woman must have been wearing when she arrived. You can’t wander into a motel dressed in pajamas. Even at a place like the Knights. You would normally think to bring some toiletries, too, a handbag. There would be identification of some kind, somewhere, however accidental. Cops were already canvassing missing persons reports, but something told Nina news wouldn’t arrive soon.
    She walked out through a sunny courtyard that was full of yet more cops and the quickly moving bodies of civilians who thought they were going to be able to check out of this death block quickly and get back to their anonymous lives, but who were about to spend a large number of hours being asked a small number of questions. That evening they would see, on television, the place they’d spentthe night before, as the media repeated its name again and again to make it one of those venues the mention of which would tug at the memory for years and possibly decades to come. Nobody involved was going to forget today in a hurry, least of all the woman Nina saw when she left the courtyard and walked back out into the lot. Patrolman Peterson was still sitting on the bench. Two of his colleagues were trying to restrain this woman, whose name was Monica, who had arrived to find that her husband’s remains had already been taken to the morgue and who was screaming at his ex-partner because there was nothing else to do.
    Only when Nina was clear of the entrance and standing some distance from anyone else did she get out her cell phone. She walked to where she couldn’t be overheard, and hit John Zandt’s number on speed-dial. He didn’t answer after twelve rings, and she was put through to the phone’s answering service.
    “Hi, it’s me,” she said to the machine. “I know you don’t want to talk about this kind of thing