The Everborn - Nicholas Grabowsky [60]
Max shot an observing gaze about him and to the array of on-lookers gathered along the parking lot outskirts. A doleful, dark-toned gentleman nervously fondled a beaded necklace adorning bell-bottomed attire found only in thrift stores and the late seventies, as he beheld his own dismal fortunes reflected from beneath the rainswept skies and come to pass around him. A display of several city and county squad cars littered the lot, mingling amongst the parked vehicles of leftover motel patrons who spied from the discreetly parted curtains of their rooms. An ambulance rested not far from the corridor’s hedged cobblestone walkway leading in from the lot, its rear double doors gaping while a medic team patiently awaited the go-ahead to unload a gurney.
The uniformed officers, one at a time, caught sight of the lieutenant and the accompanying stranger until the two halted in their midst.
“Gentlemen,” McGregor commenced a hurried introduction, “this is Maxwell Polito, a one-of-a-kind private wonder-dick who’ll be joining me at this point of the investigation. Max, these guys are top-notch motherfucking street centurions. But even after a hard day of criminal kick-ass, they’re just like the sweethearts they bring flowers home to every goddamn night. Ain’t that right, guys?”
They snickered as though they had to.
Max nodded a greeting, after which he added, “Officers.” He then followed Matt through the doorway of room number “0”, according to the “0” hanging loosely upon the front of the door. He eyed a fallen, cast iron “6” at his feet as he then entered and stepped upon carpet, his next steps treading past a massive terrain of thick stagnant blood flow, dried and black and rank beneath the staleness of the room’s confining quarters. A square wooden table near the kitchenette beyond rested overturned upon its side facing the wall, flanked by two toppled chairs; its outstretched table legs reached toward and above a body bag stuffed and sealed and sprawled limply like a black plastic Hefty bag readied for the garbage man to haul away on Monday.
A woman gripping a clipboard stumbled into Max’s elbow on her way to exit, nearly losing her glasses. Two men in yellow rain jackets knelt and measured and conversed beside the body bag, their backs turned, a camera case dangling over the shoulder of one of them. Past an undisturbed queen-sized bed. In front of a sink counter and wall mirror in the rear portion of the room stood two other men in business suits, whispering to themselves below the crackling static of holstered radios. Max and McGregor caught their adverse attentions, just as the clipboard woman re-entered the room and brushed past Max on her way to the far end, joining the suited officials in their whispered banter.
“Listen, Max,” McGregor turned and spoke sternly but softly, “I need your insight on this.”
“That makes it ditto,” Max said. McGregor’s urgent summons had brought him here with unanswered questions and Max had been calm and observant so far. But any accumulated speculations were just as equally doubtful and hopeful as before he’d arrived, though of this new apparent homicide he entertained certain notions...after all, Matt would never have brought him here unless there were certain notions....
McGregor continued, unexpectedly sentimental, although ever so slightly this way as if to avoid an embarrassing bonding moment between them, “Maxy, you know we were destined to know each other....”
“You sound like my wife,” Max said.
“....because you’ve been on this thing for so many years now, this thing that happened to me so long ago, this thing you walked in on because of me and despite a career taking you through more demanding affairs, you’ve been on this thing all your life since.”
Max shook his head as if to shake free a confusion which suddenly came at him from all of this and when he looked back up and into Matt’s observing features, he responded by asking, “What happened here?”
They both were interrupted by one of the men in business suits, who now appeared at McGregor’s side. He plainly had more than