Sheriff Wyatt went to the sink and steadied himself. His eyes had reddened. His hands trembled. He washed his face with cold water, then dried it with the paper towels provided by the Cowboy Motel, the only motel in San Aquino County with massage beds and headboard electric outlets for any device you might want to plug in. Batteries were sold at the front desk.
He glanced at the young deputy in the mirror. His mouth was moving.
"You eating something?" asked Wyatt.
"No. Just sucking on a Mary Jane."
"You get outta here, boy, before I bust you. Get out."
Sheriff Wyatt brushed his crewcut with his hands as he heard the door slam. He replaced the Stetson he had parked on the top of the urinal and strode back into the lobby, ordering people back into their rooms, saying everything was under control.
The motel owner was standing by the suite when Wyatt reached it.
"Stay out. My deputy will have questions for you."
"Uh, sheriff. I don't know how to say this, but, you know, I recognize one of the victims. They didn't pay in advance. They had American Express and now there's no one to sign."
"What do you want from me? He's one of your kind."
"I'm Armenian," the owner said.
"That's Jew, ain't it?"
"No. You see. ..."
"You look Jew."
"I'm not."
"Tough titty, baby, 'cause you sure look it. Now you stay outside of this suite. I'm going in. You see the bodies?"
"Yes."
"Pretty horrible, huh?"
"When there's no one to sign, it's very horrible. You see the Cowboy Motel is a marginal business...."
Sheriff Wyatt shut the door behind him. And there they were on the bed with the massager still running. Both of them naked, like two fruits. Who would have thought it of Feinstein? Sure, Sheriff Wyatt called him faggy, but not faggy like that. Not faggy nude in bed with the young fellow who according to the ID card was Silas McAndrew, a geologist for the Department of the Interior. The fellow Wyatt had talked to the day before.
Sheriff Wyatt kept focusing on the knees and groins to keep from looking at their mouths. He didn't want to look at their mouths or their heads. He looked at the water that soaked the bed near the men's waists, and then his eyes strayed up to their heads and he ran from the room again.
What he had seen was two men with their intestines squeezed out through their mouths, like they had choked on their own stomachs, dark red balloon organs squeezed like toothpaste from the bowels of their bodies.
He had been warned there could be deaths like that. One could even await him. But he hadn't really believed it. Not until now.
Wyatt lurched into the men's room again and made it to the urinal but there was nothing left and he just stood there, leaning into the flowing water. Naturally, he had parked his Stetson on top of the plunger before surrendering to his stomach.
The bathroom door opened again and the deputy came in mumbling something about looking for the sheriff again because the photographer was here to get the pictures of the two bodies.
"Go ahead. Take 'em."
"Should I question the owner too for a report?"
"Yeah."
"Then remove the bodies, sheriff?"
"Yeah. Bodies."
Sheriff Wyatt gasped for air.
"Sheriff?"
"Yeah?"
"Uh, some of the fellows just got a bag from Binky Burger and we got an extra goulash here with sloppy joe sauce if you want it."
"Get the bodies out of the motel," said Sheriff Wyatt, who did not fire his deputy on the spot only because he was too weak to do so.
Out in the San Aquino sun, looking down the hillside at the rising spruce and the valley beyond that and the mountains beyond that, with the homes dotted here and there, clean and fresh and sprawling, not cramped like some other places, Sheriff Wyatt regained his breath and his composure, then ambled across the gravel shoulder to his official car parked there. Even on an investigation, he would not park the official car in front of the Cowboy Motel lest there be nothing there to investigate and someone should later remember seeing the red bubble and the sheriff's gold stars on the black and white Plymouth. Then the rumours.
Rumours could kill an elected official.
Sheriff Wyatt plopped himself into his front seat, drew another breath, then drove to the offices of the First Aquino Trust and Development Corporation, Lester Curpwell IV, President, marched across the neat conservative gray rug, past the two secretaries with their polished wood desks, and into a panelled office where he waited for Lester Curpwell IV.
Curpwell was there in five minutes.
"Harris Feinstein is dead," Wyatt said as soon as Curpwell entered.
Curpwell sat at the brown leather chair behind his wide desk, without looking up, just staring vacantly at the desk. He sat under a larger-than-life-sized portrait of the first Curpwell, and like the portrait, said nothing.
Wyatt fingered his Stetson some more. He shifted his weight.
"Oh, no," said Curpwell, bleakly. "What happened?"
"Damned if I know. Harris and this guy from the Interior Department were found about twenty-five minutes ago, dead in the Cowboy." Sheriff Wyatt did not bother to say Cowboy Motel. Everyone knew the Cowboy was the Cowboy Motel. "Naked as the day they was born. I spoke to this McAndrew fellow just yesterday. He talked to Feinstein and I guess he came back with him for a look-see. Beats me why they came to the Cowboy to play fag games."
"Not a word of this must get in the papers," said Curpwell. "Have you notified Mrs. Feinstein?"
"Well, gee, not yet, Mr. Curpwell, I came here as soon as...."
"Good, I'll do it."
"I don't know about the papers. There's been a lot of talk, a lot of people at the motel, and. ..."
"You don't have to report he was found nude, with a man."