He fingered the keys inside his other fist until he found the right one. He turned the lock, and twisted the knob, and parted the door open.

***

They heard heavy breathing, and a hissing whir.

They heard a grunt. And a gurgle.

Jock shouldered the door open, aiming the revolver into the room with both hands. Kanani peered inside the room from behind him.

One light bulb was on, flickering from above. This had once been a nice break room, with a new icebox and cupboards, a Formica table, and a spartan but roomy sofa. A phone housing was mounted to the wall, the remains of a severed cord hanging from it—belonging to that handset out in the corridor.

Charlie Selfer lay on the floor, his back slumped sideways against the sofa as if he’d been trying to heave himself up. One arm was stretched out, looking twice as long as the other, which had curled up in his lap, the hand clawed. His face was battered, misshapen, bloodied, one eye a clot of black and blue and syrupy blood. His other eye stared at them. A bubble of blood expanded at a nostril, rising and falling. The crotch of his khaki trousers was seeping with blood. His right leg was bent back, but in the wrong direction as if the knee had been broken.

His Colt lay on the floor, just out of his reach.

Frankie sat at a table with blood sprayed on him from head to toe. He was pale, his skin a mustard. Under his chair a pool of blood was widening out from a trickle that rolled off his left arm, down and off the chair. He held the left arm tight with his right hand, but blood was oozing out through his whitening fingers.

Kanani tried to piece it together. Selfer must have been hiding and ambushed Frankie and got a shot off before Frankie lunged. Then . . .

Three other chairs were upended about the room along with more debris—shards of plates and mugs, magazines, wrappers and greasy wax paper and meat and vegetable scraps—the contents of the garbage can. This nasty fight had either started or continued out in the hall, but it had ended here. The reek was bitter and sour and yet fresh, like a compost pile just stirred. And that overhead bulb kept flickering and buzzing like an electric ranch fence shorting out.

Kanani blew air out of her mouth. She couldn’t look at Selfer, even though his dull one eye had set on her. Jock had eased a bit, his feet taking a wider stance. There wasn’t much work left for the bloodlust here, he must’ve realized.

Frankie grunted something. He raised a foot and his boot slid right off, into the slimy muck of the debris.

“We need all the keys,” Jock said to both men, keeping to the doorway to avoid slipping on the muck.