“He might not even be in there,” Lula said. “Maybe someone came and picked him up, and we'll sit here 'til the cows come home.”
“Then we'll check out the car that drops him off, and maybe that car will belong to the partner.”
“You sure you don't want me to go up there and poke around?” Lula asked.
I cut my eyes to her. “You're not going to give up, are you?”
“I should have brought my bride magazines to read. I got nothing to do here. I sit here much longer, I'm gonna get that thing they were talking about on the morning show... restless leg syndrome.”
“Okay already, go see if he's home.”
Lula marched across the lot and into the building. Five minutes later, she was back at the car.
“Nobody home,” Lula said. “I tried the door, but it was locked.”
“That doesn't usually stop you.”
“I fiddled with the lock a little, but I couldn't get anything to work. Too bad, because this here's a good opportunity to snoop.”
I called Ranger. “I'm watching an apartment off Route 1, and I'd like to get in but it's locked up tight.”
“I'll send Slick.”
I gave Ranger the address, and Lula and I waited with slightly elevated heart rates. Breaking and entering was always tense. Especially since it was a crapshoot if Lula could squeeze under a bed. A shiny black Rangeman SUV
pulled into the lot and Slick got out and went into the building. He was out of uniform, dressed in jeans and a baggy shirt. Wouldn't be good if he was seen picking a lock in Rangeman black. Five minutes later, he walked through the door, looked my way, and nodded. He got into the Rangeman SUV, and drove away.
“Rock and roll,” Lula said.
We took the stairs to the second floor and went directly to Zero's apartment.
I turned the knob, and the door opened. We stepped inside and closed the door.
“Hello,” I called out.
No one answered.
We were standing in an area that was living room, dining room. Beyond was the kitchen and a hall that would lead to the bedrooms. The furniture was old and collected for comfort with no thought to design. Empty beer cans and Styrofoam coffee cups with days-old coffee still in the bottom were left on end tables.
A couple newspapers had been tossed to the floor. Mud had been tracked onto the rug. Not that it mattered. The rug looked like it hadn't been vacuumed in a long, long time. Maybe never.
We glanced at the kitchen and moved into the hall. It was a one-bedroom, one-bath apartment, and the bedroom door was open. Lula and I looked through the open door and froze. There was a man on the floor, toes up, eyes open, bullet hole in the middle of his head. Dead.
“I hate when we find dead people,” Lula said. “Dead people give me the heebie-jeebies. I'm not doing this no more if we keep finding dead people. And I'm getting out of here. I'm not staying in no room with a guy with a hole in his head.”
Don't panic, I told myself. Take it one step at a time. I followed Lula back to the living room, did some deep breathing, and punched Morelli's number into my cell phone.
“Talk,” Morelli said.
“I found another dead guy.”
“You want to run that by me again?”
“Lula and I decided we'd talk to Stanley Zero, so we knocked on his door, and the door swung open, and we found a dead guy in the bedroom.”
There was a moment of silence, and I knew Morelli was either popping Rolaids or counting to ten. Probably both. “The door swung open when you touched it,” he finally said.
“Yeah.” No need to go into details on how the door got unlocked, right? I mean, he didn't ask how it got unlocked.