The Girl in the Motel

by Chris Culver

  “She’s not safe here,” I said. “Christopher raped me.”

  Megan blinked and opened her eyes wide, but Emily barely reacted.

  “He raped you?” she asked.

  “Yeah. He gave me a drink, and it must have had something in it because I passed out.”

  “Then what’s the big deal? If you don’t even remember it, it’s like it didn’t happen.”

  “But it did happen,” I said. As soon as the words left my lips, I realized I was admitting it for the first time. It had happened. He had hurt me, and he’d do it again if given the chance. I didn’t know how to deal with it, and I needed a friend. I barely knew Emily, and I didn’t like her, but she was the closest thing I had to someone who cared about me. “I don’t know what to do. I don’t know who to tell. I’m so scared all the time that I hardly sleep at night, and I can barely keep food down. Some boy tried to talk to me at school, and I ran away and locked myself in the bathroom. I used to like him, but he looked at me like Christopher did.”

  Emily slipped her knife into her pocket. “What do you expect me to do about it?”

  My lips moved, but no sound came out.

  “What?” she asked again.

  “I don’t know.”

  “I don’t care what you do, but deal with it,” she said. “It’s your problem. I’ve got my sister. I’ve got my family. I’ve got my own shit to deal with.”

  Emily led her sister away. Megan looked at me and mouthed that she was sorry.

  “He’ll hurt her,” I said.

  Emily turned around and shook her head. “No, he won’t because I won’t let that happen. If you’re smart, you won’t let him hurt you, either. Now stay out of my way. I’ve got a good thing here. I’ve got a business, I’ve got my family. You fuck this up for me, I will make you regret it.”

  The two of them left, and I felt a weight press down on me. I had been alone for most of my life, but it took that moment for me to realize what that meant: No one would help me. It was stupid to pretend otherwise.

  I went into the kitchen. Emily was showing her sister around. I ignored them both and took a steak knife from the block on the counter. Both girls saw me do it, but neither said a word. They were lifers in the foster care system, too. They knew what it meant to be alone.

  I had to solve my problems on my own.

  15

  It was after sunset when I reached St. Augustine, and people swarmed the streets. I parked two blocks from my station in the first open spot I found and walked. At over twenty thousand square feet, my station—an old Masonic temple the county had purchased and renovated years ago—had far more space than we needed, but we made it work.

  I walked through the front door and smiled at Trisha, our dispatcher. She was in her mid-fifties and had curly brunette hair she kept secured behind her head with a clip. Technically, she was a sworn officer with the same training I had, but she didn’t go on calls herself anymore. She liked being behind the desk. Four computer monitors surrounded her.

  “The boss in?” I asked. She shook her head.

  “No, but he wants you to call him,” she said. “Also, Captain Julia Green from the St. Louis County police called. She wants you to call her, too.”

  “If Julia calls again, tell her you haven’t seen me,” I said. “And give me some warning if you see Travis.”

  She smiled. “Can do.”

  “Thanks, Trish,” I said, walking deeper into the station. Almost the moment I took a step, I smelled the rank odor of vomit. There was a college-aged kid handcuffed to a bench in the reception area. He was asleep, but he had puked on the ground in front of him, somehow missing both his pants and shirt. Good for him. His future friends in the drunk tank would appreciate not having to smell vomit-soaked clothing all night. I stopped walking and looked at Trisha.

  “Have you seen Sasquatch?”

  She typed for a moment. “He and Officer Reynolds are on foot patrol at the fairgrounds.”

  At twenty-two, Officer Preston Cain—Sasquatch—was the youngest guy in our department. He was developing good instincts and would become a good cop one day, but he wasn’t there yet. I liked working with him, though.

  “When he gets back, tell him he’s got puke to clean up,” I said.

  Trisha raised her eyebrows. “It wasn’t long ago that you were the youngest officer in this building and had to clean up the puke.”

  “I know,” I said, nodding. “Back then, I hated the system. Now, I see its utility.”

  She smiled and turned as a phone rang.

  “I’ll tell him.”

  I smiled and walked to my desk in the bullpen. On a normal evening, there’d be half a dozen officers at desks inside, filling out paperwork before they finished their shifts. With everyone busy with the Spring Fair, though, I had the room to myself.

  For the next hour, I transcribed my interview notes and wrote reports about what I had done and whom I had talked to. It was the boring part of police work, but it was just as important as anything else we did. One day, those reports might put somebody in prison. Or in this case, they might help Christopher Hughes get out. I still didn’t know how I felt about that.

  At half after six, I drove far past the edge of town to my two-story American foursquare home. It wasn’t pretty yet, but it was mine. The original homeowner had constructed it over a hundred years ago with parts and plans ordered from a Sears catalog. The materials had cost twenty-two hundred dollars plus the price of the land. I had purchased it and the surrounding five acres for forty thousand dollars.

  Some days, I still thought I got ripped off.

  When my realtor brought me by the place for the first time, she called it a teardown. The moment I researched the property, though, I fell in love. The home had fallen into disrepair—along with St. Augustine County—but for almost a hundred years, three generations of a single family had called it home. It deserved a second life, not a bulldozer.

  So I bought the place and fixed it up. I took out a loan and replaced all the windows, the clapboard siding, and the roof my first year. A contractor did most of that work, but I provided manual labor. Once the contractor finished the exterior, I did everything inside myself. It was a work in progress, but it was dry and comfortable now. And it was mine.

  I didn’t go in right away. Instead, I parked in the driveway and walked about a quarter mile to my neighbor’s house. Susanne Pennington sat on her front porch, drinking a cup of iced tea. Roger, my one hundred-forty-pound bullmastiff, sat at her feet. When the dog saw me, he raised his head, stood, and came running. His entire body trembled with excitement, but he stopped at my feet and sat down, looking up at me and licking his lips. I smiled, knelt, and held out my hands.

  He jumped to greet me and licked my cheek before turning his head for me to scratch his ears.

  “How’s my sweet boy?” I asked. As if understanding me, he bowed before me, telling me he wanted to play. “We’ll go for a walk soon.”

  I stood and started for the porch. “You doing okay today, Susanne?”

  My elderly neighbor smiled and gestured toward the rocking chair beside hers. Roger joined us on the porch and sat beside me. I scratched his head and neck. Susanne, Roger, and I had ended a lot of days together like that. It was a good life.

  “I feel good today,” she said, looking over her front lawn. “The sun was out, a warm breeze blew, and Roger kept me company all day.”

  She smiled at my dog. Roger walked over to Susanne’s house most days when I headed to work. He was about ten, an elderly age for a dog his size, and he had arthritis in his hips. I got him from an animal shelter when I bought the house. Back then, he was still young, and he used to chase every single squirrel, raccoon, or opossum that came into the yard. Now, he was content to sit on the porch and have someone stroke the fur of his back.

  I patted him and talked to my friend, and with each passing moment, the weight of the day lifted a little more. At about seven, I stood up and walked Roger home. It wa
sn’t much of a walk, but at Roger’s age, it was enough. He stopped and sniffed things alongside the road, and then he barked at a truck that drove by. When we reached the house, he walked to his bed beside the fireplace and fell asleep.

  I grabbed a container of macaroni and cheese from the fridge and then stepped to the bar in the living room. When people were around, I drank red wine. When I was alone, I skipped the pretenses and drank vodka on the rocks. It made things easier. I put on the TV for some background noise, but mostly, I sat and processed the day.

  About half an hour after I got home, Harry called. He had read my reports at work and wanted to check in. We talked for a few minutes, but neither of us had much to say.

  After hanging up with him, I poured myself another drink and then walked outside to the front porch. Roger continued to snore in the living room. It was a beautiful night, so I sat and looked at the stars, allowing their lonely stillness to calm me.

  I was out there on my third drink when my cell rang again. I answered, expecting my boss. Instead, it was Detective Ledgerman.

  “Hey. It’s Joe Court. What can I do for you?”

  “Just wanted to call and tell you to go fuck yourself.”

  It wasn’t the first time a rude phone call had interrupted my evening, and it wouldn’t be the last. Still, it surprised me. Ledgerman and I had ended things well.

  “Okay. Message received,” I said. “Any reason you’re upset?”

  She sputtered something, but I didn’t understand her.

  “You want to repeat that?” I asked.

  “You have a lot of nerve,” she said.

  I didn’t know whether she wanted an answer, so I didn’t respond.

  “You have nothing to say?” she asked.

  I sipped my vodka and shrugged. My old chair creaked beneath me as I rocked.

  “As angry as you seem to be, nothing I can say will lead to a productive conversation. Not only that, you’ve said enough for both of us,” I said. “We can talk tomorrow when you’ve cooled off some.”

  “Did you call Angela Pritchard right after I dropped you off, or did you wait for a while and think things through?”

  Angela Pritchard’s name was familiar, but I took a moment to place it.

  “The weather girl on channel three?”

  “For fuck’s sake,” said Ledgerman. “You’re slurring your words. Are you drunk?”

  I looked down at my glass. “No, but I’m getting there.”

  “Angela Pritchard is an investigative journalist for channel three. She ran a story about Megan and Emily Young.”

  I put my drink glass on the ground, crossed my arms, and leaned back so my feet could reach the porch rail in front of me.

  “You had to know the story would come out.”

  “I did, but my department planned to call a press conference so we could do it responsibly.”

  And by responsibly, she meant they wanted to release the information in a way most favorable to themselves.

  “If you want to accuse me of leaking the story, go ahead, but I didn’t do it.”

  “She knew their names, Detective. Even in my reports, the victims are Jane Doe 1 and Jane Doe 2. The leak didn’t come from me or my department. Hence, it came from you.”

  I considered for a moment. “I think you’re kind of missing the obvious third choice: Sherlock Holmes.”

  She paused for a moment, but when she spoke again, her voice had a measure of control it had lacked before. “James Holmes is cooperating with my department and the county prosecutor’s office. He wants his client out of jail. They’re already in discussions about a monetary settlement for Christopher Hughes’s pain and suffering. This leak didn’t come from my office or his. Using the process of elimination, that leaves you.”

  “Okay,” I said, nodding. “I see why you called me. What’d you hope to get out of this conversation?”

  She started to call me a bitch, but then she caught herself and drew in a slow breath.

  “You are a real piece of work.”

  “So you’ve told me.”

  “Stay away from my investigation,” she said. “I don’t care what you do down there in Hillbilly County, but if I see you at a crime scene in St. Louis again, I’ll arrest you. And if I find out you had anything to do with the deaths of Emily or Megan Young, I will charge you with murder with special circumstances.”

  “That’s out of line,” I said. “You can accuse me of leaking a story to the press all you want, but accusing me of murdering two people is a step too far. I don’t appreciate that.”

  “I don’t care what you think,” she said. “Here’s what I think, though. Christopher Hughes raped you, Emily Young, and Megan Young when you were in high school. That’s awful, and I’m sorry that happened to you. Instead of going to the police, though, you three got even. You faked Megan’s death and framed Christopher Hughes for her murder. Then you laughed your ass off as the state dragged him to prison. When Sherlock’s private investigator came and asked about Megan, you killed your co-conspirators before they could turn on you.”

  I shook my head and closed my eyes. “That’s ridiculous.”

  “It’s plausible,” said Ledgerman, her voice dripping with malice.

  “Good luck proving that plausible theory,” I said. “Anything else you want to tell me?”

  She hung up without saying another word. Roger poked his head out the front door and came to sit beside me. I scratched him behind the ears.

  “She doesn’t seem to like me,” I said, picking up my glass again and taking the final swallow. I didn’t know who leaked the story or why, but I recognized one thing: This case had just gotten a lot harder. I was almost glad I wouldn’t be part of it too much longer.

  16

  Breakfast was Sherlock’s favorite meal of the day. He could order lox and cream cheese, or he could order gooey pancakes covered in syrup. He could start and finish in ten minutes, or he could stretch the meal to an hour. It all depended on what he wanted. Lunch was almost always a quick affair full of unhealthy food, while dinner came with too many expectations once it was over—sex, business, witty conversation. He had to become an entertainer after dinner. Breakfast, though, came with a freedom no other meal possessed.

  Today, he had brought bagels, cream cheese, pastries, and coffee from a local bakery. It wasn’t fancy or pretentious; it was food that tasted good. He liked that.

  He had two employees with him in the car that morning: Scott Gibson and Alonzo Morrison. Both were former police officers who had become private investigators. They did as he asked, and he paid them well for their time. More than that, he protected them. Everyone had skeletons in his or her closet. In Scott’s and Alonzo’s cases, those bodies were real, and they had buried them in the woods or dumped them in the Mississippi River or left them to rot in abandoned buildings in north St. Louis.

  Behind him was a white Ford Focus. Its driver—a man Sherlock knew only as Mr. Mendoza—had picked it up from a rental car facility near the airport very early that morning. Most of the time, Sherlock preferred knowing everything he could about the men and women with whom he worked, but knowing too much about Mr. Mendoza or his business partners would earn him an unmarked grave. Ignorance in this case was bliss.

  They pulled to a stop in front of McFarlane Motors in north St. Louis. A chain-link fence topped with barbed wire surrounded the lot, giving the business a menacing look and feel. The property had started as a gas station, and it still had the overhead metal canopy that had, at one time, shielded the pumps from the elements, but now the shop’s owner had removed those pumps and expanded the main building from two garage bays to six. There was a warehouse next door with an additional five garage bays and ample room for storage.

  Alonzo and Scott waited outside while Sherlock and Mr. Mendoza went in. Though it had been several years since he had last stepped foot in that building, Sherlock remembered the shop’s layout. He and Mendoza walked to a smoke-filled employee lounge at the r
ear of the station. Linoleum tile covered the ground while kitchen cabinets lined two of the walls. In the center of the room was a sturdy Formica-topped table with six chairs, four of which had men sitting in them.

  Sherlock put the bagels on a clear section of counter and opened cabinet doors until he found a stack of paper plates. Those, too, he put on the counter.

  “You want to tell us why you called a meeting, counselor?” asked Warren Nichols, the garage owner. “I’ve got a business to run and shit to do.”

  “I’ll make it worth your while to listen,” said Sherlock, pulling a chair from the table to sit down. “First, though, I brought cinnamon crunch bagels. They’re delicious, and breakfast is the most important meal of the day.”

  Two guys laughed before standing and digging into the food. The others followed suit shortly. Sherlock waited at the end of the line and slathered a thick layer of apple cinnamon infused cream cheese on his own bagel before sitting down and enjoying the quick, unhealthy breakfast at the table. After a few minutes of relative silence, he took a drink of coffee and cleared his throat. The men focused on him.

  “Don’t stop eating on my account. It’s breakfast. Let’s keep it casual,” said Sherlock, looking to the men around the table. “First, I’m here because you were all in business with Christopher Hughes. He’s a friend of mine, just as he’s a friend of yours. I’m here with a business proposal that can make all of us rich.”

  Randy Shepard, a hotel owner from East St. Louis, crossed his arms. “Who the fuck are you, and why should we trust you with any kind of business deal?”

  Sherlock nodded to him.

  “I’m James Holmes, but most people call me Sherlock. And you shouldn’t trust me. You shouldn’t trust anyone. Our business relationship will be transactional.”

  Randy raised an eyebrow, but Sherlock ignored him and reached into the briefcase at his side. He pulled out four manila folders and handed them out to the men around the table.

  “Open them,” said Sherlock. “Each folder is custom made for you.”