The Girl in the Motel

by Chris Culver

  “That’s good work. Nicky, call Harry. He’s supposed to be my second on this case. Tell him everything you told me and then tell him to get to the station. I need him to fill out an affidavit for a search warrant for the hotel room.”

  She wrote the request down and nodded but then looked at me with her eyes narrowed.

  “We still need a search warrant with a body on the ground?”

  I nodded. “Yeah. You had exigent circumstances, which allowed you to go into the room, but there’s no murder scene exception to the Fourth Amendment.”

  She nodded. “Learn something new every day. Anything else?”

  “Yeah. Once you get in touch with Harrison, call Dr. Sheridan and tell him we’ve got a body and need his expertise. Once you’ve got that done, I need you to start a log book so we can keep the scene secure.”

  I looked to the other officers. “Dave and Bill, I need you knocking on doors. We need to talk to as many guests as we can before they leave. If anybody heard or saw anything weird last night, tell me. I want to talk to them myself.”

  Dave nodded, but Bill looked a little uncertain.

  “I’m supposed to be working the information booth at the fair this morning,” he said.

  “Now you’re working a homicide,” I said. “Is that a problem?”

  He blinked a few times and then straightened. “Shouldn’t we wait for the real detectives on this? Delgado and Martin will be taking over anyway, right?”

  My cheeks grew warm, and I locked my eyes on his. Bill had at least four inches and fifty pounds on me, but he took a step back beneath my glare. I pushed my jacket back to expose the badge on my hip.

  “Do you see my badge, Officer Wharton?”

  He straightened. “Yeah, I can see your badge.”

  “Does it look like the ones Detectives Martin and Delgado carry?”

  He closed his eyes but said nothing. I repeated my question, so he crossed his arms and nodded.

  “Yeah.”

  “Good. I am a real detective, and this is my case. Do you have a problem with that?”

  He tilted his head to the side. “It’s just that they handle the murder cases is all. I’m used to working with them. You’re a good detective on burglaries and thefts, but this is a murder. Have you ever worked a murder?”

  “Stop talking,” I said. “I’m the detective assigned to this case. I earned it, and it’s mine. Do as I asked or go home. Your choice.”

  He stood straighter. “Don’t get your panties in a bunch. I’m just trying to clarify everybody’s role on this.”

  I nodded toward his cruiser. “Get out of my crime scene. You’re done for the day.”

  “I’m doing my job, lady.”

  “If you were doing your job, you’d be knocking on doors right now with Officer Skelton. You’re not, which means you’re wasting my time. Now get in your car, call Trisha, and ask her to send somebody who brought his big-boy pants to work today.”

  He muttered something, so I took a step closer to him.

  “Something you want to share?” I asked.

  “I’ll talk to Travis about this,” he said. “You can’t just send me away like I’m some kind of naughty kid.”

  “As the primary detective on the case, I can, and I am,” I said. “Now leave, or I’ll write you up for insubordination.”

  He straightened to his full height and then looked down his nose at me. He was trying to be intimidating, but I didn’t plan to back down. After a few seconds of posturing, he got in his car and left, and I took a deep, relieved breath.

  My department had over a dozen female officers, but I was the only female detective, and they had made me claw and fight my way to the position. I’d earned my badge the same way every other detective on staff had: I busted my ass. This was my job. I wouldn’t let some lazy asshole tell me how to do it.

  Once Bill left, I looked to Officer Marcus Washington. He stood straight and nodded.

  “Marcus, you’re going across the street. There are security cameras outside the truck stop and strip club. Find out whether any were pointed this way last night. Once you’ve done that, talk to the manager and any dancers you can find at Club Serenity. Ask them whether anybody saw something weird. They’re not going to talk to you, but we might get lucky. While you’re over there, if you find any prostitutes working the truck stop this early, detain them, call for backup, and then interview them to see whether they saw anything.”

  He nodded and looked over his shoulder to the truck stop before looking at me again.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  I looked at each of my officers.

  “Everybody clear on what to do?”

  Nicky said yes. The men nodded again.

  “Okay,” I said. “Let’s get to it.”

  I watched for a moment while my team shuffled off to do their tasks. Our officers weren’t perfect, but they did good work on most cases. St. Augustine didn’t get too many murders, and when we did, we had three experienced detectives on staff. I had assisted other detectives on four homicides, but this was my first murder as the primary officer.

  A small part of me—the part I allowed everyone else to see—knew I had the experience and expertise to work the case. The other part of me—a far bigger part—was scared shitless.

  I took a breath and did the same thing I did when I was a girl standing on the high-dive board for the first time: I jumped in.

  I walked toward the room, taking pictures of the exterior door frame with my cell phone. Though we needed a search warrant to process the scene for fingerprints and other forensic information, I could still look around and take pictures now. Those things I found in plain sight, I could use in court. Anything else, I’d have to wait for a warrant.

  I stepped over the blood in the doorway and walked inside. Aside from the blood, the room looked clean. Someone had rumpled the comforter near the foot of the bed, but it didn’t look as if anyone had slept in it. The victim’s body was near the bathroom, but I didn’t pay her much attention yet. She wasn’t going anywhere.

  There was a brown leather purse stamped with gold rosettes on a table near the front window. A brass buckle on the side of the bag identified it as a Louis Vuitton. If it was real, it would have cost more than I made in a month.

  I snapped pictures of the purse with my cell phone before crossing the room. There was a black Tumi suitcase on the dresser beside the television. Whoever the victim was, she had liked expensive things.

  Since I was already deep into the room, I looked at the body next. She lay on her belly with long black hair covering her face. Her skin—at least so far as I could see it—was caramel colored, and she looked young. She wore gray yoga pants and a loose-fitting turquoise shirt. By her clothes, she could have just come from the gym, or maybe she was getting ready for a relaxing night inside.

  There was a large exit wound on her back. About a year ago, the sheriff and I had worked a homicide in which a man shot his neighbor with a .45-caliber full metal jacket round at about four feet. The entrance wound on the victim’s forehead was about the size of a dime, but the exit wound on the back of his skull was the size of a golf ball. Whatever hit my victim here was larger. This wasn’t a handgun; it was a rifle, and a damn big one. Somebody should have heard it go off.

  Aside from the blood, her shirt looked clean. A shot at point-blank range would have left powder marks, but I couldn’t see any.

  I left the body and focused on the table by the front window. I could think of two scenarios to explain what I had seen. In the first, the shooter hid outside in the parking lot with a rifle until the victim opened her door. The moment he saw her, he opened fire. He then crossed the parking lot while carrying his rifle, dragged the victim inside, and then shut the door to hide the body.

  In the second scenario—the one I found more likely—we had two murderers. The first murderer knocked on the door and then ducked. When the victim opened the door, the second murderer opened fire. The first murderer t
hen dragged the victim inside and shut the door behind him.

  However it happened, we’d have ample forensic evidence. Unfortunately, I doubted we could use it. A hotel room wasn’t a public space, but even if we could find a usable fingerprint or hair that placed a suspect at the scene, he could claim he had been in that room weeks ago. It was a seedy motel, and I doubted the maids got on their hands and knees to scrub the place down between guests.

  We’d collect as much evidence as we could, but this investigation wouldn’t come down to forensics. We’d have to find our shooter the old-fashioned way: We’d comb through our victim’s life to find out who wanted her dead, we’d talk to everyone within a two-block radius to see whether they saw anything, and then we’d use forensic evidence to bolster our case in court.

  And it all started with our victim.

  I unzipped her purse and caught a whiff of marijuana. Inside, she had a glass pipe and several vacuum-sealed bags full of dope. It was more weed than a recreational user would have. Her wallet was near the bottom, so I pulled it out and put the purse down.

  Then I saw the victim’s picture on her driver’s license, and my heart skipped a beat. My legs felt weak, but I didn’t let myself sit down.

  I hadn’t seen this woman in twelve years, but I had thought about her often. She and I had lived together in a foster home in Chesterfield, Missouri, until her death. The police had never found her body, but they’d charged our foster father with her murder.

  I palmed the ID card and backed out of the room, my heart thudding in my chest. Once I reached the parking lot, I called my boss.

  “Hey, Travis, it’s Joe Court. I’m at the Wayfair Motel with the body. I need you to come out here. The victim’s dead.”

  Travis paused for a moment but then spoke slowly. “I know the victim is dead. That’s why I sent you out there.”

  “No, Travis, you’re not hearing me. The victim is dead. I’m looking at her ID right now. It’s a fake. It says her name is Kiera Williams, but this is Megan Young.”

  Again, Travis paused. “That can’t be right. Megan Young died twelve years ago.”

  “Yeah, but no one found her body. I think we now know why.”

  For a third time, Travis paused before speaking. “I’m on my way. I hope you’re wrong.”

  “Me, too.”

  I hung up and stepped outside the crime scene tape. Several hotel guests had already woken up and left, but most were still in their rooms. It seemed like a peaceful morning, but that would change. If I was right, news vans from every TV station, radio station, and newspaper in St. Louis and the surrounding area would descend on that parking lot like locusts.

  Because if that was Megan Young in that room, and if she had died last night, my boss and his former partner had sent a man to prison twelve years ago for a murder that never happened.

  This would be bad.

  5

  March 2000

  A hush fell over the classroom as the principal’s voice came over the speaker. It was my third week in the school, so I didn’t know many people yet. Half the class didn’t even recognize my name when the principal called for me, but the kids who knew me gave me knowing glances. Several kids tittered, thinking I was in trouble.

  As a long-term ward of the foster care system, I had bounced through a lot of homes and schools over the years. This was the third school I had attended in the past year alone, but it had been my favorite so far. I hadn’t bothered to make friends, but the other kids were nice. They didn’t even try to fight me on my first day like kids at other schools had. I left people alone, and they left me alone, so it surprised me when the principal called my name over the loudspeaker. She wanted to see me in her office, so I looked at my teacher.

  “Go ahead, Mary,” she said, smiling.

  “It’s Joe,” I said. “That’s my name.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Go ahead, Joe. You don’t want to keep Mrs. Hall waiting.”

  I slipped off my seat and walked out of the room. In other schools, I had gotten called to the principal’s office every other week for getting into fights, but I had behaved well here. I liked it here. My foster family was nice. The first day I met them, they took me out to buy new school clothes, and then we went to a bookstore, where they let me pick out a story. I chose Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. Heather, my foster mother, had read a little with me every night. None of my other foster parents had ever bought me a present before. Holding that book had made me cry.

  My footsteps were slow. Every part of me trembled. I knew they were kicking me out, but I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to leave Heather and Todd. They weren’t my real parents, but I liked them. She barely knew me, but Heather still hugged me at night. It felt nice to hug somebody and not have them want something in return.

  Once I reached an intersection in the hallway, I stopped. A pair of glass doors to my left led outside. I watched as two squirrels chased each other up a tree. They looked so happy, just running around and doing squirrel things. I wished I were a squirrel. Squirrels didn’t have social workers. They could go wherever they wanted. They weren’t screw ups, like me.

  I thought about pushing that door open and running. It wouldn’t have been the first time I ran from a foster family, so I knew the routine. I’d run, they’d chase me, and then I’d come back. They’d put me in a new home, but that wasn’t always such a bad thing. Now, I wished everybody would just leave me alone with Heather and Todd.

  By the time I reached the office, my cheeks hurt from holding back tears. Mrs. Hall, the principal, was waiting for me, but so was Mrs. Shapiro, my social worker. The moment I saw Mrs. Shapiro, everything inside me broke. I couldn’t hold back the tears, but I didn’t want to let them see me crying. I looked at the ground and swallowed hard as my vision blurred.

  “Please don’t send me away, Mrs. Shapiro,” I whispered. “I don’t know what I did, but I’ll be better. I promise. Tell Heather I’ll be better. Whatever I did, I won’t do it again. Please tell her not to send me away.”

  “Oh, honey,” said Mrs. Hall, crossing the small reception area to put a hand on my shoulder. She knelt in front of me and looked in my eyes. “You’re not going away. Mrs. Shapiro brought someone here to see you.”

  “Heather and Todd aren’t making me leave?” I asked, looking to Mrs. Shapiro. She shook her head and smiled.

  “No, Mary. Heather and Todd care about you a great deal. I talked to them this morning. They’re thrilled to have you.”

  “Who’s here, then?”

  “You’ll see,” said Mrs. Hall, leading me out of the office. “She’s in the conference room.”

  I followed my principal and social worker down the hall to a room I had never noticed before. There was a big table and a lot of chairs. Motivational posters covered the walls. My mom waited for me inside.

  “Hey, baby,” she said, standing from a chair at the far end of the room. “You’ve gotten big.”

  “Mom,” I said, walking toward her. She hugged me, and I was so surprised I didn’t hug her back. We talked on the phone three or four times a year, but I hadn’t seen her in person since she overdosed three years ago.

  “I’ll give you guys privacy,” said Mrs. Shapiro. “Mary’s class just went to recess, so you’ve got about twenty minutes before she needs to go back.”

  “Thank you,” said my mom, smiling as the social worker and principal left. When she looked at me, she shook her head. “They can’t even get your name right, Joe. I’m sorry about that. Did you miss me?”

  “Yeah,” I said, lying. “I’ve missed you.”

  She smiled and cupped my cheek.

  “How have you been, baby? Tell me everything.”

  “Everything’s good,” I said, unsure what she wanted me to say. When Mom and I talked on the phone, she had always dominated the conversation. I didn’t know how to talk to her in person. “We’re playing the recorder in music. I’m thinking about joining the band next year. Heather—she’s
my foster mom—said she’d take me to and from practice.”

  She reached over and touched my hand. “You don’t have to worry about what Heather says anymore. You’ll be coming home soon. It’ll be like old times. My lawyer is helping me put together a good case. She’s got me in these parenting classes. They’re a waste of time—I mean, how stupid do you have to be if you can’t even raise your kid, right?—but my lawyer thinks the judge will like it. And do you remember Tony? We’re married, now. We’ve got a place to ourselves. The lawyer says having a stable home looks real good.”

  I nodded, feeling my heart skip a beat.

  “Great,” I said, trying to smile. For a moment, Mom narrowed her eyes at me, and then she grabbed my forearm.

  “Don’t you look at me like that, girl,” she said, her voice sharp and low. “I’m working my ass off for you. At least look happy to see me.”

  “I am happy, Mom,” I said, letting the tears streak down my cheek. “I miss you. I didn’t know if I’d see you again.”

  Gradually, Mom let go of my wrist, and then she brought a hand to my face to wipe away a tear.

  “Oh, baby, they’ve got you so messed up, you don’t even know up from down. I’ll take you home soon. Things will be okay again.”

  “Okay.”

  She didn’t notice I had started crying again. For the next ten minutes, she told me all about her life with Tony. We had stayed at his apartment years ago, so she thought I’d remember him. And, of course, I did. I couldn’t forget him. I remembered that he yelled at me, and that he drank all the time, and that he used to hit her. She mentioned none of that, though.

  Then she told me stories about work. According to her, she worked as a research assistant for an attorney who specialized in international business. She said she traveled the world and saw exciting places. What was more, she went to church and had good friends. It sounded nice, but I knew my mom. It was a fantasy. Mom may have had a job at a law firm, but she wasn’t a research assistant. She could barely read.

  Still, I smiled and pretended to feel excited, all the while my insides twisted. After we talked for a while, Mrs. Shapiro came back in and told my mom we had just another minute. Then she went into the hall again. Mom looked in my eyes and smiled.