“Everything all right?” Trent bobbed his head toward the garbage can.
She leveled a glare at him. “I had everything under control in there.”
“I never said—”
“You didn’t have to say anything,” she said, talking over him. “And you let him steer the direction of the conversation.”
“I just thought—”
“That I report to you?” she spat.
“Not at all.” Trent diverted his gaze over her shoulder, then moved it back to meet her eyes. “I should have stayed quiet in there, listened and learned from you.”
“Are you bullshitting me right now?” Did he really think that by sucking up to her he would gain her favor?
“What?” His cheeks turned bright red. “No.”
She studied him. Was he still that eager-to-please Dumfries PD officer? He had to be thinking she was born yesterday to consider his speech was sincere, but by all accounts that’s exactly what she’d say it was. Either that or he was a good actor, and she had met her fair share of those in her life.
“Malone explained the situation to me,” Trent started.
“How I have history with Palmer,” she ground out as iron walls erected and clunked into place around her.
Trent shrugged in his coat as it seemed a chill ran through him. “He told me that I’m the lead on paper. He stressed ‘on paper.’”
The temperature was still below zero but her core warmed. She’d given him the opening to dissect her past and he hadn’t taken it. “And you’re good with that? Being the lead on paper?”
“Absolutely. I can learn a lot from you. You’ve been at this—what?—thirty years?”
“Hey.”
He smiled.
“Detective for seven.” Her fellow officers would talk and say she’d only advanced so quickly because of who her father was, but she’d worked her ass off every step of the way.
“That’s more than me. I’m on the ground floor here.”
“Glad you know where you stand. Tell you what: you go talk to the guests in rooms two and three, and I’ll hit seven and twelve. Whoever finishes first wins room fifteen. They might not like us knocking on their doors considering it’s after”—she looked at the time on her phone—“one thirty in the morning, but we need to find out everything we can tonight. Ask them if they saw anyone go into or come out of Palmer’s room in the last twenty-four hours or heard anything.”
They weren’t armed with a time of death yet, but she’d worked enough death investigations to know that rigor, as a general rule, took twelve hours to set in and started in the extremities such as hands and feet within an hour or two of death. Palmer’s hand had definitely been in a state of rigor.
“Sure.” Trent grinned, likely gushing at this opportunity to branch out solo and probably just about to thank her for the opportunity.
She turned before the conversation could become any cozier. It was a little uncomfortable as it was, and she had to draw the line. Besides, this little arrangement with Trent was only temporary, regardless of what Malone might think.
Six
Amanda grabbed some business cards from her car’s glove box before hitting her first room. Even with the pit stop, she beat Trent to room fifteen. Lucky her. The renter was some pothead who had no idea what day of the week it was and probably didn’t know he was on planet Earth, but he did tell her he’d checked in last night and offered up his sob story. He said he was only there because his old lady had kicked him out—as if he’d had no part in that happening.
She finished up with him at the same time Trent left room three and headed toward him.
“How did you make out?” she asked him.
Trent consulted his notepad. “Room two were two men—‘married to women,’ they stressed. Not sure why.”
“Guilt, shame at being caught, any number of factors.” She rolled her hand to hopefully encourage forward movement. When he didn’t seem to pick up on the visual cue, she said, “I’m more interested if they saw or heard anything that relates to our case.”
“Nothing.”
“And room three?”
“It was a lady who checked in a couple of days ago. She’s hiding out from her abusive husband.”
She tapped a foot. “Sad, but again more life story than I need.”
Trent scanned his notepad, flipped the pages. “She said that she kept her curtains closed and stuck to herself.”
“So she saw nothing?” Amanda pushed out.
“No.”
“So how did it take you so long to walk away with so little?”
Trent tucked his notepad into one of his back pant pockets. “Showing a personal interest can go a long way in getting people to open up.”
“Sure. About things that don’t matter.”
Trent clenched his jaw but didn’t say anything.
“Just remember with a death investigation we’re working on a fine timeline. The best chance of catching a killer is in the first twenty-four hours.”
“I’m well aware of that—” Trent clamped his mouth shut and stared off into the distance. His eyes held more embarrassment than anger, and she actually felt a twinge of remorse for talking to him like he was a child.
“You know that,” she shoved out, hating that she cared an iota about his feelings.
Trent simply nodded.
“I didn’t get far either,” she started. “Four people between the three rooms, but the guy in seven saw a short, squat man hanging around in the parking lot yesterday afternoon. The two in room twelve couldn’t agree with each other, except for the fact they didn’t see any men. One of them insisted they saw a thin woman, while the other described her as obscenely overweight. They couldn’t agree on the time either but thought it was Saturday afternoon or evening—they couldn’t decide. The guy in room fifteen was too busy carrying on a conversation with his invisible best friend while I tried to get him to talk to me. Apparently, his friend saw a tall, lean man.”
Trent’s lips twitched as he resisted a smirk. “We’re not getting anything from these people. They don’t want to talk to the cops.”
“Safe to conclude, Captain Obvious.”
The sound of a vehicle coming into the lot took her attention. It was a van with Office of the Chief Medical Examiner stamped on the side.
“Look at the timing on that,” Amanda said. Though it would have been more ideal if they’d arrived already and had updates such as time of death, manner of death, and speculative cause of death so she and Trent could get on with their next order of business and dig into the last few hours of Palmer’s life.
As the ME parked, Amanda went over to Becky and got another pair of plastic booties for her shoes. Trent had probably stuffed the ones she’d given him into a pocket. Then they headed to Palmer’s room to check in with the crime scene investigators.
The smiley CSI was just inside the door working her magic with an apparatus that magnetically charged a sheet of mylar. The process would attract any dirt particles and, if there were shoeprints to find, make them plain to see. A forensic investigator once told her that shoeprints are almost as distinctive as fingerprints, each one unique. Numerous factors such as brand of footwear, weight of the wearer, gait of the wearer, history of the shoe made each sole different. Lifting prints in a place like this would be hell though. Amanda couldn’t imagine the cleaning staff was too thorough.