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Wilkerson’s throat.
    The itty-bitty psycho died before he could finish the job, though a half-finished decapitation did the job just the same.

Chapter 5
    For the fourth time in forty minutes, a police officer came to take their statement.
    Scott and Crystal were seated on the bed. This way they wouldn’t be obstructing while the crime scene was photographed, detailed, and marked. This way too they could have a wall between them and the dead bodies.
    Out of sight, out of mind, right?
    Not always, no.
    It didn’t help that police officers were continuing to ask them the same questions over and over again. They’d say what happened, from the moment they arrived in the lobby to the moment their next-door neighbors, an elderly couple named Friedrich and Alice Van Dyke, knocked on their door to get them for the love of God to turn down the volume on their TV. They relayed what was said by the French-speaking intruder. They relayed what was said by Wilkerson. They relayed the name of the movie.
    And then the police officer would thank them for their time, tell them to remain in the bedroom, and leave.
    And, two minutes later, another police officer would enter and repeat the exact same process.
    “Look,” said Scott to the fourth cop, an unfortunate fellow damned with both a comb-over and a wart-encrusted cheek. “I know you’re just trying to do what you need to do, but we already told all this to the other guys.”
    The cop nodded, spat out his gum into a receptacle by the vanity, and took out his handheld recorder. “Let’s start at the beginning.”
    “How about we start at the middle this time just to change things up?”
    If the cop had a sense of humor, he didn’t show it. Perhaps he didn’t like having to do this at 2 A.M. Poor fellow. Scott and Crystal didn’t like having to do this at 2 A.M. either. Through it all, they squeezed each other’s hands to remind themselves of themselves.
    Finally, the cop left. They fell back on the bed and harmonized groans. The mattress was so comfortable and they were so exhausted that they quite easily could have fallen asleep, even with all the ruckus in the other room, had a fifth cop not poked his head in at that moment and said, “Oh hi, do you—uh—do you have a minute?”
    Or maybe he wasn’t a cop. He wasn’t in uniform, unless a raggedy blue button-down and a pair of jeans now constituted a uniform in Atlanta. On his head was a UGA Bulldogs cap. On his feet were a pair of tan loafers that looked like they’d been chewed up by a pack of bulldogs. He had dark skin, dark eyes, and two cups of dark coffee.
    He handed the cups to Scott and Crystal.
    “I didn’t know what you wanted in them, so I didn’t have them put anything, but I can go get you some sugar or cream or whatever,” he said, “if you want. There’s probably some in the, you know, kitchen.”
    Neither of them were big coffee drinkers, so they just took what they were given with silent apathy.
    “Anyway, I’m Detective Konquist. I got some cards somewhere…” He patted himself down for a few seconds. “They must be in my other pants. Don’t you hate that? You put on one pair of pants because it’s cleaner than your other pair of pants except you leave all your important stuff in the other pair of pants. It’s a metaphor for something. So. You’re Scott and Crystal.”
    They nodded.
    “First off, if no one’s said this yet, let me be the first to apologize for forcing you to sit through all this procedure. If you ask me, it’s unfair. We’re the ones who are on the clock. You’re the ones who have just been through a trauma. I say—let you rest! It’s not like you’re going to develop amnesia between now and tomorrow morning. But my captain loves eyewitness testimony and the fresher the better, although between you and me, that’s a load of bunk. Eyewitness testimony is the least reliable evidence in all cases. Why? Because we’re just people! We make mistakes. We don’t do it