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Zayne grips the doorknob, then slowly pushes open the door, the sound of flowing water becoming louder. Taking a step forward, I’m greeted by the feeling of something hard and fragile crunching at my feet.
A single sweep of my eyes and gun reveal a woman is face down on the floor with her shoes still on, her legs pressing against the basket that’s jammed against the door.
The receptionist screams, turns on her heel and dashes out the room, for which I’m glad. No doubt the gruesome sight will be burned into her memory. If she looked any longer, she might’ve not been able to get rid of the images.
I squat down, a tight feeling coiling in my gut as I scan the bottoms of the dead woman’s high heels. It’s odd for someone to be wearing shoes when they’re about to shower. But then I see her face. Something’s protruding right in the center of her forehead.
A machete.
Blood has dripped from the base of the blade, but not onto the tiles. Leaning forward, I register the blood in the head wound has clotted.
The woman’s been dead for a while. At least two to three hours.
Her eyes are open wide and grayed, the image of her killer burned into them. Even though the forehead is the last thing I want to look at after seeing the room, I can’t tear my eyes away from it. The machete’s buried deep and standing almost perfectly upright. On the handle is a complicated design that I wouldn’t expect to see on an ordinary weapon.
The machete is a vulgar object, but this one is a prized weapon.
“Chase,” Zayn says in a low voice. “What about the client?”
I slowly push to my feet, realizing he’s right. This motel is a known bordello. The woman’s a prostitute.
She was in the bathroom getting ready. The bed is messy and empty, but she’s not bleeding nearly enough to stain the bed to that magnitude.
There’s another body.
Carefully stepping over the dead woman, I hook the waterproof curtain surrounding the shower with the tip of my gun. Carefully, tensely, I draw it half-open.
“Contact Gail,” I state flatly. “I think I found our client.”
Since he’s been under the pounding water the whole time, he’s significantly less bloody than I imagined he would be. But there’s no mistaking the large slash wounds on his chest, as if something swiped at him with claws. “A shifter,” I mutter.
There are little splashes and trails along the ceramic of the bathtub. He’d been dragged. Above the shower, I register a broken window, shards of glass and splinters scattered everywhere.
“Gail will definitely want to see this,” Zayn says, appearing behind me.
I nod. “He went to all this trouble to hide the client here, I doubt the killer would’ve left fingerprints, but until forensics arrive, we can’t be sure.”
With that, I head towards the bloodstained bedroom, leaving Zayn to watch over the two bodies.
It’s time to see what final message the sick bastard left in the note.
* * *
“Jesus,” Gail comments.
“The room looks a lot worse than the state of the body,” I say. “Only the murder of the client makes sense, since the gash would be enough to stain the bed like this.”
Gail walks around the bed and kneels down to pick up one of the many petals scattered around the bed. “Flowers?” she questions, looking back at the two corpses covered in white draping. “Makes sense.”
I open the envelope and pull out the letter for everyone to see.
Praise my name.
“What the hell…” Zayn mutters.
Gail and I stay silent. The letter only has that one single phrase right at the very center of the wrinkled page. All of a sudden, it makes sense why the client tried to throw it away.
“Looks like our killer has a sense of humor,” Gail spits.
