Chapter 10: Room Twelve

Samson found Tull's wife in two hours.

He ran the plate on the flatbed that had been parked at the roofing yard, and it came back to a motel in Oxnard.

Room twelve, on the ground floor, behind a dead ice machine.

He drove, and I sat with the lawyer's letter folded in my lap.

"You haven't mentioned the kitchen," I said.

"I'm trying to be professional."

"You're driving fifteen miles under the limit."

"I'm being careful."

"You're being a coward."

He glanced at me, and the corner of his mouth moved.

"The rule stands," he said. "Your rule. I'm respecting it."

"How's that going?"

"Terribly."

I looked out the window so he would not see me smile.

The woman who opened the door of room twelve was in her late forties, with gray roots and a cardigan buttoned wrong.

She saw Samson's badge, and then she saw me.

"I know who you are," she said. "I watched you slap my husband on a roofing lot."

"I'm sorry about that."

"I'm not. I would have done it myself." She stepped back. "Come in. He's asleep. Don't wake him, he hasn't slept in three days."

The room had two beds and a TV on mute.

Russell Tull lay on the far bed in his clothes with his boots still on and a wet washcloth over his eyes.

He was snoring.

Samson and I sat on the other bed, and his wife sat in the only chair and lit a cigarette she did not smoke.

"He's not a bad man," she said. "He's a stupid one. That's different."

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