A few minutes later, the rattling stopped and the door opened. Coleman saw his pal standing with impatiently folded arms. “Serge, what are you doing in the ladies’ room? Can you believe these flowers?”
“You knucklehead!”
Coleman whispered close to Serge’s ear. “Twice in one day. That’s like a record! And with a really hot one.”
“I’m sure she shits rainbows,” said Serge. “But you did just give me a great idea.”
“Really?”
“Remember when I said you needed a gimmick for our new gig tomorrow? Excuse me a moment.” He walked over to Liv, who’d removed her costume head to freshen up at the sink. “I’ve got a proposition for you.”
She winked. “I knew you’d come around.”
“This is a business proposition.”
Chapter 28
The Next Day
Fluorescent yellow crime tape was back up at the Florida Motel in Miami. This time, stretched around the general vicinity of room number four. The parking lot filled with marked and unmarked police cars.
Someone dusted the Do Not Disturb sign for fingerprints. A detective scribbled in a notepad as he questioned the whiskered manager in a bowling shirt for the Biscayne Guttersnipes.
“You say you didn’t have much contact with them?”
“Not really.” He swatted a love bug off his arm. “Kept to themselves, some of the best tenants I’ve had. Paid cash up front for the last three days.”
“Did you notice anything unusual about forty-eight hours ago?”
“Not really, except for some music by K.C. and the Sunshine Band, if that helps. Plus, hundreds of twirling spots of light on the curtains.”
The detective looked up from his notebook. “What?”
“Probably a disco ball.”
“And that’s normal to you?”
“Do you know how many meth labs and portable sex dungeons we’ve had to clean up at this place? I see a disco ball, I say, ‘Go with God.’”
“Okay.” The detective flipped his pad closed. “Just one more thing. We’ll need to check your guest registry against the stack of Xeroxed driver’s licenses you provided us by law.”
The manager stared at his shoes, which were Keds, then at the detective’s shoes, which weren’t.
“You did make copies of their licenses, didn’t you?” said the officer.
“Oh, of course, of course,” said the manager.
“Because if you didn’t, that’s a serious offense,” said the detective. “We’ve already arrested several managers along this strip for taking bribes not to make copies.”
“I remember very clearly now. I definitely asked for their licenses.”
“That’s better.”
The manager headed toward his office. “Just give me a few minutes to find them.”
Another patrol car arrived. An officer opened the back door, and a pizza deliveryman got out.
“What’s going on?”
“We’ll ask the questions here.” A detective flipped to a fresh page. “I understand you made a delivery to room four a couple nights ago.”
“So?”
“Did you notice anything unusual?”
“Not really.”
“Do you recall what they were wearing?”
“The thin one had a beauty contest sash, the chubby guy was in a panda head, and the dude tied up in the chair wore an orange safety cone on his head.”
“And all this seemed normal to you?”
“You must be new in town,” said the driver. “Have you ever delivered a triple-cheese meat special to an orangutan-smuggling ring?”
Inside room number four, more detectives milled with Styrofoam cups of coffee. One of them eyed a box of cupcakes, but knew it would be wrong. Camera flashes strobed out of the bathroom. A forensic technician emerged with a phone in a sealed evidence bag.
“Is that the cell he used to call 911?”
“We’ll know as soon as we get it to the lab. But it’s a safe bet . . . It’s kind of a shame.”
“How’s that?”
“More and more people are making emergency calls from cell phones,” said the technician. “If they came from landlines, we could pinpoint the exact locations. But if the person is incapacitated and can’t communicate—like our victim in there—we can only get a general location by triangulating pings off cell towers. He might have made it.”
“Why couldn’t he communicate?”
A stretcher rolled past them with a zippered body bag. The forensic tech glanced back at the bathroom. “See for yourself. It’s clear to go in now.”
A pair of detectives arrived in the doorway as the last photographer left. The medical examiner made notes on a clipboard. He noticed them staring at the plywood and cement blocks that had been moved to the side. “Those were used to keep him from getting out of the tub.”
“You mean someone drowned him?”
“Just the opposite.” The examiner sadly shook his head. “This was so tediously planned in sadistic detail that it could be nothing other than the result of extreme, prolonged rage. Whoever did this had a serious grudge with this guy.”
“But if he didn’t drown in the tub,” asked the first detective, “then how did they kill him?”
The examiner bent down and retrieved a few tiny granules near the drain.
“What’s that?” asked the second detective.
“Rice,” said the examiner. “My staff just carted away several huge bags of the stuff. The tub was filled to the brim, completely covering the naked victim. We’re going to do a chromatograph to see where it was bought, but in this quantity, my guess is Sam’s Club. We’re still trying to figure out why the killers left him with a cell phone taped to his hand.”
The first detective crunched his eyebrows. “Rice killed him? But how?”
“Dehydration,” said the examiner. “Rice pulled a bunch of water out of him in a major rush. First leg cramps and delirium, migraine-level headaches, speech loss and, at the end, a falling domino line of organ failure.”
“Rice does that?”
“You know how you’ll sometimes buy a moisture-sensitive piece of electronics, and you open the box and there’s a little porous bag that tells idiots not to eat it? That’s a chemical substance similar to rice to keep your product dry. Or you might have heard that if your cell phone gets wet, you can stick it in a bag of rice to save it?” He glanced back at the tub. “Doesn’t work so well on people.”
“Thanks, Jerry.”
“I’ll send over my final report by the end of the week, but you already have the main talking points.”
The two detectives left the room and strolled across the parking lot. “Rice. Just when you think you’ve seen everything.”
“What was he yapping about with the cell phones?”
“That’s true. I accidentally splashed some water on my phone near the sink, and rice fixed it,” said the first detective. “One of my kids told me about the tip. Apparently they’re constantly getting their phones wet and have to deal with it before their parents find out.”
They entered the motel office. The manager stood behind the counter and handed over a Xerox. “That’s him. That’s the guy who paid for the room.”
“Are you positive?”
“I’ll never forget the face.”
“Thank you for your time.”
The detectives drove away from the motel, hot on the trail of a retired couple from Peoria.
Hialeah
A stereo blared.