Free Stone Kiss by Faye Kellerman

of sexual activity whatsoever.”
    “Okay, for the moment, let’s assume that the girl wasn’t up here.” Decker raised his eyebrows. “We’ll worry about her later.
     Anyway, Ephraim was kidnapped and taken up here—maybe in a duffel, maybe by his own two feet… somehow he got up here.”
    “That we know. What we don’t know is if he was dead or alive.”
    “Assume that he was alive when they took him up here.”
    Novack laughed. “You’re from L.A. Write the script, and I’ll play along.”
    Decker smiled. “Suppose somebody brought Ephraim here on his own two feet.”
    “Probably more than one person,” Novack said.
    Decker nodded. “Yeah, probably to get him upstairs without his breaking away, there had to be two people—dragging him upstairs
     with a gun pointed at his head. Maybe they duct-taped his mouth.”
    “Not when we found him.”
    “Ask the coroner to check for glue around his mouth.”
    Novack nodded, but he didn’t write it down.
    Decker went on. “They lead him to this room… pull the shades—”
    “By the way, I had some people canvass the next building over for witnesses.”
    “The one out the window?”
    “Yeah, that one. Nothing.”
    “Okay, okay.” Decker’s brain was reeling. “They pull the shades and pop him somewhere up here that’s not going to leave any
     splatter.” He looked at Novack. “Was his hair wet?”
    “Not when I got here,” Novack said. “But I will say this. His hair was short… almost shaved to the scalp. It woulda dried
     in a few minutes. You can see that in the postmortem pics.”
    Decker looked at the photos. Ephraim had had a very close-cropped haircut. “How about his clothes? You don’t have his clothes?”
    “No, we found him buck naked. What are you thinking?”
    “The toilet,” Decker said. “They dragged him into the bathroom, dunked him into the bowl, and popped him. The water washed
     away most of the blood. It also probably muffled the sound.”
    “Makes one hell of a splash.”
    “Was the floor wet?”
    Novack checked his notes. He shook his head. “No…I didn’t mention it. I think someone woulda noticed pink water on the floor.”
    “Towels in the bathroom?”
    Again Novack checked his notes. “No. It’s a crummy hotel.”
    “It still might provide towels in the bathroom. Someone should ask.”
    Novack was quiet. Then he said, “We should check underneath the toilet-bowl rim for splatter.”
    “Yeah. If you don’t find anything, you might want to Luminall it. Also, tell Forensics to check the vic’s lungs. He may have
     taken some water into his lungs before he died.”
    Novack scratched his neck and cleared his throat. “That can be arranged.”
    “Do you mind if I look around?”
    “Not too long.”
    “Ten minutes?”
    “Knock yourself out.” But after five minutes, Novack seemed annoyed. “What are you looking for, Decker?”
    “Just trying to figure out… how he got here.”
    “The room was registered to John Smith,” Novack said. “Paid for in cash. The receipts had already been taken to the bank and
     deposited, so we couldn’t pull prints off the bills even if we knew what we were looking for.”
    Decker gave the place a final scan. “And you found nothing at the scene?”
    “Only thing we found of any significance was a single pill.”
    “A pill?”
    “Yeah, like an aspirin pill. But it wasn’t aspirin. No imprint on it. Even generic drugs are imprinted.”
    “Ecstasy?”
    “Yeah, of course. But even those pills are usually imprinted with something—a ’toon or a heart. The guy had a drug problem;
     the pill may have come from his pocket. We sent it to Forensics. It’s being tested. If it’s a known drug like ecstasy, results
     shouldn’t take long.”
    “My brother said he used coke,” Decker remarked. “Do they make cocaine in tablets these days?”
    Novack shrugged. “I’m not an expert in these things. We don’t even got Vice in our hub, let alone Narc.”
    Decker held