The Witness

engaging view of the hills, he set up his laptop on the glossy old desk. He appreciated the amenities—the complimentary Wi-Fi, the flat-screen TV, the carefully (he imagined) selected furnishings, and the generous shower.
    A great deal of the time he worked out of crap motels with piss-trickle showers and stingy slivers of soap, or out of his car, where the facilities ran to a Mason jar he could empty of urine periodically.
    Such was the life of a private investigator.
    He enjoyed it, even the crap motels and Mason jars. Two years as a cop had taught him he didn’t work all that well with rules and regs. But he’d been a pretty good cop, and that had segued into a job with Stuben-Pryce Investigations. In the nearly ten years he’d worked there, he’d proven himself reliable, inventive and dogged. Qualities appreciated by the firm.
    He also enjoyed his bonuses, and hoped to net another on this job.
    He unpacked—cargo shorts and pants, tees, sweats, rough boots.He’d selected the wardrobe to go with his cover as a freelance photographer, one that would allow him to wander the town, the outskirts, take photographs, talk to locals.
    He didn’t like the client. Roland considered Lincoln Blake a first-degree asshole, and the fruit of Blake’s loins a raw pimple on society’s ass.
    But work was work, and Blake generated a lot of income, being a nosy, pushy, scheming first-degree asshole. When the boss said go, Roland went. Especially since he had one kid in private school, another who’d enroll in the fall and—surprise—a third on the way.
    He loved his family, and the pay from Stuben-Pryce, plus bonuses, gave them a good life, which included a hefty mortgage on their new four-bedroom in West Little Rock.
    So asshole or not, the client was king. If Blake wanted to know all there was to know—especially the dirt—on one Abigail Lowery, Roland would find out all there was to know. The same for Brooks Gleason, Bickford’s police chief, and according to the client, Lowery’s lover.
    The client claimed the two in question, along with the Conroys—the owners of the hotel with the very nice view and amenities—had set up his son in order to extort money. Blake fervently, and loudly, denied his boy had caused the extensive damage to the hotel’s premier suite as claimed, nor had he assaulted Russell Conroy, nor had he pulled a knife on the chief of police.
    Roland, nobody’s fool, fervently but quietly believed the butt pimple had done all that and more. But he’d do his job, earn his salary. And pay his bills.
    He checked his camera gear, his recorder, his notebook and lock picks. Then called his wife on his cell phone to let her know he’d arrived safe and sound.
    He told her he wished she were there and meant it. The room boasted a king four-poster. Pregnancy turned Jen into a sexual dynamo.
    As he packed up for his first walk about town, he promised himselfhe’d make a return trip, with Jen, after the baby came, and her parents were still dazzled enough to take on three kids for a long weekend.
    He shouldered the camera bag, hung the Nikon around his neck on a strap decorated with peace signs. Wearing cargo shorts, Rockports and an R.E.M. T-shirt, he slipped on sunglasses, checked himself out in the mirror.
    He hadn’t shaved that morning, deliberately, and thought the scruff added to the look. He liked pulled-on personas and, given the choice, kept them fairly close to his own. Natural, easy.
    He considered himself to be a personable guy. He could talk to anyone about anything, as vital a tool as his computer. He wasn’t bad-looking, he thought, as he added a Greenpeace ball cap to his ensemble.
    Though he was starting to worry about male pattern baldness. His brother, only two years older than Roland’s thirty-four, already showed a fist-sized patch of bare scalp at the crown of his head.
    He thought fleetingly of picking up some Rogaine—why not try preemptive measures—as he walked out of his room.
    He’d wrangled a room on the top floor, though the reservation clerk had offered another, due to construction noise. But he’d brushed off the warning and inconvenience. This way, he should be able to get a look at the suite the client’s son hadn’t trashed, if you believed first-class assholes.
    He strolled down the hall, noted the door, firmly shut, a sign apologizing for the inconvenience due to unexpected repairs. The noise, somewhat muffled, sounded more like demo than repair.
    He’d