“Jesus,” Castile said.
I was kneeling next to the body. Castile was keeping his distance, though he was close enough for us to be able to speak in hushed tones. The only light was from the one lamp in the room where we’d been talking, and it made Castile cast a long, irregular shadow, helping make the already eerie, absurd situation all the more unsettling.
“So much for my nothing’s-going-to-happen-tonight theory,” I said.
“How can you… touch him?”
I was examining the body.
“Well I’m not getting a kick out of it,” I said. “But it’s not going to kill me, either.”
“You have such a soothing way of putting things,” he said.
“Thanks.”
I could find no wounds of any kind-bullet or knife or anything else, although if he’d been killed, say, with a long narrow needle or something, the wound wouldn’t be readily visible, particularly in this lousy light. One thing was obvious enough: his neck was broken; he’d landed on it, after apparently having fallen the entire four floors.
“Who’s sleeping on the upper floor?”
“Just Waddsworth… was. I believe.”
“Well he’s sleeping downstairs tonight.”
“You don’t think this is… your Turner’s work? Do you?”
“Maybe. Probably. Janet said she heard arguing. Maybe this is the aftermath of a quarrel up at the fag convention upstairs. I don’t know.”
Castile touched his throat, like he just heard Dracula was in town. “Then Turner could be inside the lodge… right now.”
“He could be. Or his partner could’ve done this. Or Waddsworth could’ve slipped and fell.”
“You don’t really believe this could be an accident.”
“I don’t believe anything except that this sucker’s dead as they come, and he could be starting a trend.”
“My God.”
I stood and joined Castile and we both cast long shadows on Waddsworth.
“We’re not telling anybody about this,” I said. “Somebody in the lodge already knows, of course… whoever pushed Waddsworth, that is… and that somebody’ll expect us to wake everybody up and start hollering and everything. We won’t do that.”
“We won’t?”
“No. We won’t do anything that’s expected of us. Whoever is responsible for this has thrown me off balance… and I’d like to do the same back at him.”
“The poor son of a bitch.”
“Who?”
“Waddsworth.”
“Oh. Yeah. Sure. Anyway, let’s go ahead and search the place and see if we can find Turner.”
“Then you do think he’s in the lodge?”
“He could be. But it’s a good idea to batten down the hatches anyway, right? You want to get that gun of yours?”
“All right.”
“And tell your wife you’re switching rooms. Take another room on the same floor, but get out of that room you’re in now.”
“What excuse’ll I give her?”
“Tell her there’s a draft in the room. Tell her anything. But don’t tell her about Waddsworth. We’ll save that little surprise for morning… if we make it to morning.”
“Jesus.”
“Go on. Get the gun. We’ll search the place together.”
He nodded, and headed toward the stairs. He glanced back once, at the naked dead figure sprawled on the rust-color shag carpet, and shuddered and went on.