We all walked to the office. I glanced back and saw them removing one of the bodies on a gurney. Looked like they took my suggestion.

The manager was a greasy little man with hairy shoulders and a beard. He wore dirty slacks and a wifebeater. Pretty much looked the part of a cheap-motel manager from an old movie.

I introduced myself and immediately saw that there was a video monitor behind the desk.

“That thing work?” I asked.

The manager nodded.

I looked at Wheatley.

He shrugged. “We were getting to it.”

The recordings were pretty bad quality. We fast-forwarded through much of it until we hit three a.m. That’s when we spotted a figure walking through the parking lot heading to the first door.

I couldn’t make out much more than an outline, but it was clear that the figure was in bad shape. He/she/it was super thin and limping badly, dragging one leg. The shape went to the first door, the body we’d seen, and entered without a key.

“You fingerprint the doorknobs?” I asked Wheatley.

He nodded. “All we got was the maid and the occupants.”

I went back to the recordings. After a few minutes the shape exited and went straight to the next door. The walk was different now. It wasn’t dragging its leg anymore.

The shape went into the next room, and the next, until it had hit all the rooms in the L-shaped motel. By the time it exited the last room you could see it was a man, broad shouldered, shaped like a wrestler, wearing some kind of hood. He didn’t have a limp anymore and was much bigger. Then he disappeared off camera through the small parking lot the way he’d come in.

“Well, that was fucking weird,” I said.

“I’ll say,” Wheatley said, backing me up. “Any thoughts?”

“Plenty of thoughts. Nothing useful.”

We thanked the twitchy manager and made for the exit. Outside the office there were cops and coroner personnel everywhere. I asked Wheatley if I could look at the rest of the rooms. He nodded.

We walked from room to room. About half the bodies had been loaded out and taken away, but there were still human-shaped wet stains on the mattresses. The rooms with the other victims were much the same as the first: dead body, featureless, covered with some sort of slime.

Once I’d looked over the scene I said my goodbyes. Before I left, I spoke one last time to the coroner as she oversaw the removal of the last bodies.

“Mind if I stop by the morgue later?” I asked. “I’d like to hear your thoughts.”

She looked at me for a long time. I pretty much thought she’d tell me to fuck off, but instead she nodded.

“I’ll be at it all night,” she said. “Come by later after I’ve had a chance to dig in.”