Free Binder - 02 by David Vinjamuri

over to where the big man was still struggling. “How’d you get the flexi-cuffs on him, anyway?”
    “I stopped the flow of blood to his brain first.”
    “Yeah, that’s what my wife does with me. Looks like a bunch of it landed on you, though,” Collins observed, gesturing to my face.
    I realized that the man had probably bled on me. I lifted fingers to my chin and felt a familiar stickiness over the day’s stubble.
    “Do you mind if I wash up?” I asked.
    “Not at all. I called the District Attorney’s office. They’re sending someone over to talk to you, but it’ll take a spell. Just come on back out when you’re done,” Sheriff Casto said. He opened up his notebook and turned to Collins.
    I had my hand on the doorknob to my room and the key in the lock when I froze. Something was missing. Something important. Two little pieces of cork I’d left wedged in the hinges of the door were gone. It’s a little bit of tradecraft that tells you if someone has been in your room. Not so useful in a high-end hotel, where you can count on a maid or mini-bar checker to eventually violate the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign on the door, and pros can generally spot the telltales if they’re looking for them, but in a little motel, the odds of someone having entered my room for a legitimate reason after it had been cleaned for the day were miniscule. I carefully withdrew the key from the lock and backed away from the door, toward Casto and Collins.
    “Someone’s been in my room,” I said.
    “Housekeeper?” Casto asks.
    I shook my head. “I was in the room right before dinner. I’m pretty sure they don’t have turndown service here.” Collins chuckled at that. “Maybe one of these thugs broke in, but I’m not going to bet on that. None of them looks smart enough to pick a lock.”
    “I’ll call Charleston,” Casto said. I looked at Collins quizzically.
    “With all the attention we’re getting right now, we need to play it safe. There are only two bomb squads in West Virginia,” he explained. “One for the Kanawha County Sheriff’s Office—they cover the capitol—and one for the State Police, also based in Charleston. It may take them a little while to get here.”
    “If there’s actually something behind the door, I’d really like to get a peek at it before the bomb squad carts it off,” I told Collins.
    “What do you think the odds are that anyone who set an explosive charge would have set a trigger on the window?” Collins asks.
    “Anything’s possible. But it would surprise me. Someone who’s smart enough not to open the door isn’t going to break a window to get inside his motel room. And rigging a device with a vibration sensor in a busy motel is tricky.” I answered the question reflexively. The look on Collins’s face told me I’d displayed a little too much expertise on the subject of bomb making.
    “Well let’s hope the staties think I’m dumb enough to not bother trying to get me fired for this,” Collins replied. He turned and walked over to the window, sliding his baton from his belt as he did. He covered his face with his jacket sleeve and hit the corner of the window hard with the end of the baton. The lower portion of the glass shattered and I ducked, instinctively covering my eyes. Nothing happened. I let out a breath that I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. Collins raised the baton higher and hit the section of window above the jagged gap. He cleared the glass from the sill, then pushed back the curtain and shone his flashlight inside the room. After a second he whistled. He turned to me slowly.
    “When’s the last time you saw an IED?”
     

11
    “The FBI investigates street fights?” I asked the brunette in the expensive suit.
    “That was hardly a brawl, Mr. Herne. The injuries were one-sided.” She was distractingly attractive, with eyes just greener than hazel, high cheekbones and an angular, exotic face that suggested a bit of Native American ancestry in her