Garfein shrugged, showed his hands palms up. “Go know,” he said. “The manager says there’s towels missing. When they make up the room they put out two bath towels and two hand towels, and both of the bath towels are missing.”

“He took towels from the Galaxy.”

“Then he probably took ’em here, but who knows in a dump like this? I mean who knows if they always remember to make up the room right. Same with the shower. I don’t figure they gave it a scrub after the last party left.”

“Maybe you’ll find something.”

“Maybe.”

“Fingerprints, something. You see any skin under her nails?”

“No. But that’s not to say the lab boys won’t.” A muscle worked in his jaw. “I’ll say one thing. Thank God I’m not a medical examiner or a technician. It’s bad enough being a cop.”

“Amen to that,” Durkin said.

I said, “If he picked her up on the street, somebody might have seen her get into the car.”

“A couple of guys are out there now trying to take statements. We might get something. If anybody saw anything, and if they remember, and if they feel like talking.”

“Lots of ifs,” Durkin said.

“The manager here must have seen him,” I said. “What does he remember?”

“Not a whole lot. Let’s go talk to him some more.”

* * *

The manager had a night worker’s sallow complexion and a pair of red-rimmed eyes. There was alcohol on his breath but he didn’t have a drinker’s way about him, and I guessed he’d tried to fortify himself with liquor after discovering the body. It only made him vague and ineffectual. “This is a decent place,” he insisted, and the statement was so palpably absurd no one responded to it. I suppose he meant murder wasn’t a daily occurrence.

He never saw Cookie. The man who had presumably killed her had come in alone, filled out the card, paid cash. This was not unusual. It was common practice for the woman to wait in the car while the man checked in. The car had not stopped directly in front of the office, so he hadn’t seen it while the man was checking in. In fact he hadn’t really seen the car at all.

“You saw it was missing,” Garfein reminded him. “That’s how you knew the room was empty.”

“Except it wasn’t. I opened the door and—”

“You thought it was empty because the car was gone. How’d you know it was gone if you never saw it?”

“The parking space was empty. There’s a space in front of each unit, the spaces are numbered same as the units. I looked out, that space was empty, that meant his car was gone.”

“They always park in the proper spaces?”

“They’re supposed to.”