• • •

Hand in the air. Mop top from the back.

“Yes,” D.D. called on him.

“Dry ice is the lie. I mean, who hacks off a limb and places it in dry ice?”

“Better yet, who brings dry ice to a squalid motel?” D.D. commented, then shook her head. “No, dry ice is not the lie, but I’ll be the first to admit, an unusual element at a crime scene. In addition to the dry ice, we found rubber gloves—blood-soaked—and a hacksaw—also blood-spattered—on the floor next to the toilet. In the sink, we discovered several round green pills. Being a savvy detective, my partner Neil ran the number stamped on the pills through the drug ID website and determined they were OxyContin.”

Fresh hand in the front.

“Yes.”

“The drugs are a lie. Who brings painkillers to a dismemberment?”

“Great question. Who indeed? The pills are not a lie, but a clue. Given the lack of a prescription bottle, most likely they’re illegal, a street buy, and, finally, something I would expect to find in this type of motel. Meaning maybe this is why our rich DG ended up in this place—for the narcotics.”

“Dry ice and painkillers,” someone commented from the back. “Hey, wait a minute—”

“No, no, no,” D.D. interrupted. “No skipping ahead. A crime scene is like a novel. One thing at a time here. So by this stage, my partner Phil is back from meeting with the night manager. He has the name DG used to rent the room: George Clooney. We went out on a limb and agreed this was an alias. Man paid cash, of course. And yes, there’s a video camera for the parking lot, which the night manager let Phil watch. Unfortunately, all Phil can see is the back of a man, carrying an enormous duffel bag, walking down to the room, then unlocking the door. DG definitely has two legs at this point, and appears to be a well-dressed gentleman, maybe a business executive. But that’s about all Phil can tell.

“At this stage, Phil and I exit the motel room to allow the ME to move in. I leave Neil behind, because, being a former EMT, he likes to conduct his own study of the body.

“Neil gets the body. Phil and I fan out around the parking lot to see if we can find DG’s vehicle, which would hopefully include registration information with his name. But we strike out. If DG drove, he didn’t park out front. I get the bright idea to have a patrol officer canvass the nearby area and shoot photos of the license plates. We can check back in twenty-four hours and see which vehicles have never moved—maybe one of them belongs to the deceased.

“Now, we reach a lull in our investigative efforts. We have an unidentified DG missing a limb. Yeah, we have some leads. Dry ice for one. Can’t be that many places where you can buy it. We can visit the nearest distributors, see if one of them can identify our DG, but that’ll have to wait till morning business hours and I don’t want to wait. I’m a homicide detective. I need leads I can pursue now, because every single hour that goes by decreases the odds of me solving the case.”