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from somewhere and hadn’t even unpacked yet.”
    “That’s what it looks like.”
    “Either that, or he was one of those anal types who packs the night before. But that doesn’t account for the fresh food in the refrigerator. Plus, the place just doesn’t seem lived in. It seems like it was closed up for a while and he just got here and immediately decided to get hammered. That’s kind of weird.”
    “Yeah,” Cody said. Cody’s beam slid off the suitcase and rested on a battered leather briefcase next to the cedar chest.
    “And something else, I just realized,” Larry said. “There weren’t any other liquor bottles in the kitchen. None. So unless he kept his bar out in the den where he burned up and every trace of it melted into the mud, the only bottle here was the one he was drinking.”
    “Um-hmmm.”
    “Which kind of makes me think he picked it up on the way here.”
    “Um-hmmm,” he said, taking several photos of the suitcase, the closet, the bed.
    “Hold it,” Larry said, moving farther into the room. He illuminated a dresser with several items on top; a comb, a Delta Air Lines envelope, a paperback, a pile of coins, and a wallet. “ID,” he said.
    “Wait a minute,” Cody said. “Before you pick it up let me take some shots of the layout and the stuff on the dresser. Then I want to superglue the room. Then you can check it all out.”
    Larry stared at him and Cody could feel his eyes on him in the semidark.
    “Cody,” Larry said, “what the hell are you doing?”
    “Investigating,” Cody said. “We’re investigators, remember?”
    “Fuck you. I’m saying accident and you’re not. You’re treating this as a homicide.”
    “I’m crossing every t and dotting every i, ” Cody said. “You know, like they teach us.”
    “Bullshit,” Larry said, his voice rising. “You’re trying to show me up.”
    “Not at all,” Cody said, opening his case and finding the extra-large can of superglue Fume-It. In a closed room, the aerosol glue would fog up the space and collect on any latent fingerprints on the surfaces of the walls, counters, or mirrors. Fingerprints would show on the flat surfaces like floral flocking on wallpaper.
    “I’ll wait for you in the kitchen, you…,” Larry said, not coming up with the foul name he wanted that fit the bill.
    “Just be a minute,” Cody said. “Close the door.”
    Larry slammed it shut so hard the rest of the house shuddered.
    Before releasing the spray, Cody threw the briefcase on the bed and opened it.
    *   *   *

    Ten minutes later, Cody opened the door to the dining area. “Got some shots,” he said. “The man was cleaner than hell. He must have scrubbed his walls. But I got some prints. Make sure we get the evidence tech to lift them.”
    Larry stood in the dark in the kitchen and said nothing. Then he shouldered past Cody into the bedroom. The dissipating fog of Fume-It made him cough. When he emerged, he pinched the flashlight between his jaw and shoulder so he could use both hands to hold the ticket jacket up and open it.
    “Used tickets and a baggage claim check,” Larry said. “Our man flew here on Delta from Salt Lake City three nights ago.” He dropped the jacket on the table and opened up the wallet.
    “His name was…”
    “Hank Winters,” Cody said.
    “You knew him.”
    “Yeah. He was my sponsor.”

3

    “Sponsor?” Larry said. “Sponsor?”
    As the realization dawned on Larry his face fell. “You mean, like Alcoholics Anonymous?”
    “Yeah,” Cody said. “He was my guy. I’ve been up here a couple of times. That’s how I knew where it was and who he was.”
    Cody shined his flashlight to where the east wall of the room would have been. “That entire wall was covered with books. Hank was a collector and he had some really valuable first editions. He bought them all over the country when he traveled. Some of those books were really old and dried out. When the fire got to them I bet they went up like