Hideout by Jack Heath (iphone ebook reader txt) 📕

‘Every cleaner finds one eventually,’ she said, in a Russian-accented rasp. ‘It’s part of the job. Don’t let it get to you. Just call the manager, and don’t touch anything.’

I had never met the manager. He was just a shape behind the venetian blinds in a little office up the back of the lot and the name on the emails that I never bothered to open.

One day I knocked on the door of room twelve, called out, ‘Housekeeping,’ and unlocked it with the master key. Within ten seconds I knew something was wrong. All the personal belongings were missing—there were no clothes scattered about, no chargers plugged into the wall. It looked like the occupant had already checked out, except that I knew he wasn’t supposed to leave until Friday. I soon found a suitcase behind the bed, closed and zipped, as though the occupant had packed all his belongings away in case the cleaners were thieves.

This reminded me to check his desk for jewellery to steal. There was none, but there was a note, written on motel stationery. It said:

Tell Melanie I’m sorry. She deserves better. I hope she finds the man she deserves. Holden

I pushed open the bathroom door and found a man floating in pink bathwater. He was pale, shiny and deflated, like an inside-out football. A steak knife lay on the tiles next to the bath.

If you measure it by years of life lost rather than lives lost, suicide is the leading cause of death in America. Nothing else comes close. And it leaves behind a certain kind of grief among the victim’s friends. It’s not just the loss of the person, it’s the realisation that they were so unhappy.

The way Zara is crying, I feel like I already know what happened to Samson.

‘What do you mean?’ Fred is asking. His Zen smile is gone; now he just looks worried.

‘Did I fucking stutter?’ She did, actually. It’s like she’s choking on the words. ‘He’s dead.’

‘Hey, hey.’ Fred puts his arms around her. ‘Talk to me. Tell me what happened.’

‘I just wanted to give him some food,’ Zara sobs into his shoulder. ‘That’s all I wanted.’

Fred kisses her hair and rubs her back, too fast to be relaxing.

‘Where is he?’ I ask.

Zara points wordlessly, without looking. I walk through the living room, the kitchen and around the corner towards the bedrooms. I don’t know which room is Samson’s, but one of the doors is ajar. I put my palm against the wood and push.

Samson’s room has the same packed-away feel that motel room had. No abandoned clothes, no books. But maybe it’s just sparsely decorated. There’s an aloe vera plant on the bookshelf and a framed photograph of a bodybuilder on the wall. A ukulele propped up in the corner. A bowl of stir-fry upside down on the carpet in front of the door. The window is padlocked shut.

Samson is lying on the double bed in the middle of the room. His shins are hanging down over the side of the bed, like he was sitting and then flopped backwards. A pistol is still clenched in his hand. There’s a small, round hole in his temple.

‘Oh, shit.’ Fred is behind me, his voice muffled, his hands covering his mouth. ‘Jesus Christ.’

‘I sent him a message, like you said.’ Zara’s voice wobbles. ‘He didn’t reply. So when I got back after searching the woods, I sent him another one. I heard his phone go off in here. I realised I hadn’t seen him all day, so I thought maybe he was sick and he might like some food. He didn’t say anything when I knocked, so I just …’ She sniffles. ‘If I’d gotten back earlier, maybe he …’

A hundred clues assault me at once. Not much blood around the bullet hole, so he probably died instantly. No blood on the walls or the ceiling or the sheets, so the bullet is likely to be still in his skull. When I walk around him, the lack of an exit wound confirms my theory. It’s common for low-calibre bullets to stay in the skull. Less common for nine-millimetre rounds, like the P320 in Samson’s hand would take.

No smell of gun smoke in the air, so he’s been dead at least half an hour. I put my hand in his armpit.

Zara slaps my hand away. ‘You really need to check his pulse, Lux?’

‘Room temperature, or close to it,’ I say. ‘He’s been dead for hours. Wouldn’t have mattered if you came back early.’

Samson must have killed himself at about one-thirty pm, right after we all left to search the woods. Any later and there would still be body heat, any earlier and someone would have heard the gunshot.

‘I could have checked on him last night,’ Zara sobs. ‘I knew he was acting weird. Maybe he wouldn’t have done this.’

‘What are we gonna do?’ Fred’s hair is a mess, as if the stress has unravelled it. ‘How do we … oh God.’ He bends over, like he’s going to hurl. So much for choosing how to feel. He’s no stranger to violent death, but when the victim is one of his friends, he doesn’t take it well.

I open my mouth to tell him not to puke on my crime scene, and then I remember that’s not my life anymore.

Instead, I turn to Zara. ‘Where’s everyone else?’ I ask.

‘I don’t know. Still out searching, I guess.’

‘How long ago did you find him?’

‘Right before you got here.’

Makes sense. Otherwise she would have called Fred, I assume. I touch the upturned bowl of stir-fry. Still warm. Consistent with her version of events.

Samson’s face is slack and oddly peaceful. I know from experience that people don’t look like that when they’re about to commit suicide. Death does loosen