BOILER

Chapter 24

There were tyre tracks just about visible in the long grass leading up to a barn-sized building of corrugated steel. Toland read the number on the box and checked it again on the card. He looked at the building beyond the post box and walked the tyre tracks up to the doors. There was a steel chain and padlock red with rust like a bullet wound. It was obvious people hadn't bothered this place for a while and so nature was on its way to reclaiming it with foxes moving in and out of the barn, and smaller creatures scattering out of his path. A windchime played a tune over the brush of the grass. He went around the barn and saw a small home behind it.

The wind dropped as he came up the porch. It picked up again and the windchime played an encore. There was only a screen door left to block entry with the main door propped against a hallway wall. Hare droppings were persistent through the ground floor and up the pink carpeted stairs. There were numerous dead birds and tv guides. There was a glass ornament of a grand piano over the fireplace and a long mirror still hung on the wall.

He went around the bedrooms upstairs and found an assortment of metal toy cars that looked to be collectable, and dolls and their outfits. The bones of the place groaned in the wind. He looked out of a broken window and saw a sign for the Moonlight Motel.

The Moonlight had a handful of cars in the parking lot. Somebody took the brave choice to paint it lime green, and they'd made that choice a long time ago. Reception had a clicking air conditioner just barely attached to the wall and a new Coke and ice machine. Next to this machine was a bald man with a lot of hair on his arms who was wearing a Hawaiian shirt. He was taking deep breaths, slowly. The only thing at the desk was one of those drinking bird ornaments that go back and fore to perpetuity.

'Do you work here?' Toland asked the man. The man stared at something near Toland. Maybe the air around him.

'Is anybody here? Is anybody there?'

The man shook his head and shrugged.

'You might wanna brace yourself before that hole gets too deep.'

The man took an extra deep breath like he was going for a dive and folded his thick arms. Toland went through a door behind the counter and kicked a man sleeping in a chair. The man snorted, woke up and reached for a drawer. Toland caught him by his hair and pulled him off the chair. He told him to stay still. The man sat on the tile floor with his head bowed, asking to be left alive.

'I'm not gonna kill you. I'm looking for one of your guests, Jerry Nixon.'

'I don't know any Jerrys.'

'I said he's a guest here. I wanna know what room he's in.'

'All right, I can check for you. Can I get up?'

'Yes.'

The man put his hands up. Toland told him to put them down. The bald man was buying a Coke from the machine.

'There isn't a Jerry in here, man.'

'What?'

'There's no Jerry.'

'Do you take ID or anything when someone checks in?'

'Does it look like we take ID? You think that guy wants us taking his ID?'

The bald man was drinking his Coke, standing very still, breathing slow and deep.

Toland accepted the point silently. He thought about it and asked, 'So, who checked in over the last few days?'

'Gimme a sec.'

'Then tell me if any of them didn't check out yet.'

'Just give me a sec.'