Carilla had removed the entire motor, leaving an open shell inside for hiding items.

And something was hidden there. Taped inside.

29

I carefully peeled back a strip of silver duct tape. A piece of what looked like metal was inside. But it was an odd shape.

I handed the item to Remy, pointing at a second piece, also taped inside. This was a square metal box, the size of my palm, and I gingerly pulled it away from the tape that held it in place.

I put the housing of the coffee machine down on the ground beside the truck and stared at our two findings, laid atop the shop towel.

The first piece I removed was about six inches long, with a squared-off flange down one end and a circular ring down the other.

“The hell is it?” Remy asked.

She laid the object across her palm, easily lifting her hand up and down, in a demonstration of its weight. Because although the piece looked like metal, it was light, like balsa wood.

“It looks like one half of the front of a set of eyeglasses,” I said. I ran my finger around the circular shape. But down where it would become the bridge, if it were a set of glasses, the metal-looking material terminated in a squared off blunt shape.

“It’s painted,” Remy said. “To look like metal.”

I turned to the second piece then, which was a small box, also plastic, about four inches by two inches by one inch. It had a curving piece of what looked like metal coming out the bottom of the box, and another one from the top.

It was hard to be certain what the hell we were looking at, but I had a thought.

“Do they fit together?” I asked.

Remy messed around with the two parts, trying to fit one to the other.

“Nope,” she said.

I pointed at the curved metal piece that protruded from the bottom of the box. “I think this might be a trigger.”

“To a gun?”

“A plastic model of one,” I said.

Remy took the box from me and pushed the metal flange that protruded from the top back and forth. “If that’s a trigger”—she pointed at the bottom—“then this thing might be the safety. And not a good one,” she added, pushing the flange back and forth. It didn’t lock well into place.

I took the box back, noting again how light it was.

“So it’s a toy?” she asked.

“Seems so,” I said. “Except for one thing.”

“The trail of dead bodies?”

“Make that two things,” I said. “The trail of bodies. And the fact that Carilla hid these two things inside a coffee machine and told a couple cops about it with his dying breath.”

I thought about the hotel room. Not this one, but the old guy’s. The Homewood Suites.

“The old guy could’ve shaved a piece like this down,” I said, turning over the box in my hand. “Could’ve created that pile that looks like metal filaments we found in his kitchen at the Homewood Suites.”