The Girl in the Motel

by Chris Culver

  “Yeah,” said Warren, nodding. “We’ll get everybody together. Steven ain’t around anymore, but Randy and Neil are still in town.”

  “Where’s Steven?”

  “Dead,” said Warren. “Shot by somebody.”

  “The fuck kind of world we live in?” asked Christopher. “Who would kill Steven? He was a good guy.”

  “I don’t know,” said Warren, already picturing in his mind Sherlock’s goons. “It’s a fucked-up thing.”

  Neither man said anything, but then Christopher cleared his throat.

  “We’ve got to talk. I’m in the backseat of a minivan on my way to St. Louis right now.”

  “We’re talking now,” said Warren.

  “In person,” said Christopher. “We’ve got to talk business. I need to get back to work. You still got that garage?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Meet me there in an hour,” said Christopher. “I’ll get money from the county, and I’ve got a few ideas about how I can best reinvest it.”

  “One hour,” said Warren, reaching to the bar for his drink. He gulped it down and then grimaced as the liquor tore into his throat. “I’ll be there.”

  “See you there, brother,” said Christopher. He hung up, and Warren stared at his now empty glass. The bartender came over, carrying a bottle of Wild Turkey.

  “You want another?”

  Warren shook his head and searched through his phone’s address book. The bartender stepped away and mixed drinks for the guys playing darts. Warren found the number he wanted and called.

  “Sherlock,” he said. “It’s Warren Nichols.”

  “You’re slurring your words. Are you drunk?” said Sherlock.

  “I am,” said Warren shifting on his seat so he could pass gas. He grimaced as his entire stomach tightened. At least he hadn’t shit blood today. Colon cancer was a bitch. He’d miss his daughter, but he looked forward to being done with everything. He had lived enough. “You got a problem with that?”

  The lawyer kept his voice tight and controlled.

  “I assume you have a reason for calling me.”

  “Christopher called, just like you said he would. He wants to meet me at my shop in an hour.”

  “You agreed?” asked Sherlock.

  “You’ll kill Candace if I don’t cooperate,” he said. The bartender cast him a curious glance, but Warren was many drinks past caring who heard him talk. “So yeah. I set up a meeting.”

  “Good. Go to your shop. My team and I will meet you there,” said Sherlock. “We’ll talk about your drinking later. I don’t like to be in business with drunks.”

  “Like I give a fuck about your business,” said Warren. “Now go do your thing. I’ll see you later.”

  He stood on unsteady feet and put a twenty on the bar, wondering whether he had just signed his own death warrant. That didn’t sound so bad.

  Sherlock hung up and looked to Diana. She bit her lower lip. The covers and their clothes lay on the ground. Her soft skin had the perfect amount of padding for a thirty-five-year-old woman, and he slid an arm over her waist and drew her close.

  “You’re going to leave, aren’t you?” she whispered.

  He nodded. “Yeah, but if you’re still naked when I come back, I’ll make it worth your while.”

  She walked her fingers down his chest and to his lower abdomen. “I could make it worth your while to stay.”

  He wanted to give in, but he shook his head and slid off the bed. She gave him a disappointed pout.

  “Sorry, darling,” he said. “Work is calling.”

  “What kind of work?”

  He smiled and walked to the bathroom. “I’m going to kill your ex-husband. Then I’ll come back here and screw you until neither of us can walk.”

  She purred. “That sounds perfect.”

  I didn’t know where the hell I was going, so I followed the minivan. Since the Wayfair Motel and the nearby strip club and truck stop had a steady stream of traffic to and from the interstate, I kept several cars between us on the road. We headed north toward St. Louis. Along the way, I took out my cell phone and called my station. The front desk rang three times before someone picked up. People were shouting in the background.

  “What’s your emergency?”

  The voice belonged to Jason Zuckerburg. He was a thirty-five-year veteran of the St. Augustine County Sheriff’s Department and could have retired with a full pension. He liked the work, though. In an emergency, we could put him out in the field, but he preferred working a desk now.

  “I don’t have one,” I said. “I’m calling the back line. This is Joe Court. What’s going on?”

  It was a dark night, and there were few cars on the road, so I kept my eyes in front of me at all times to avoid hitting anything. I let the minivan get about a quarter mile ahead of me so I could just see its taillights.

  “Shit, sorry, Joe,” said Jason. “We’re a little hammered here. Didn’t see your ID on the screen.”

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “Bar fight at Tommy B’s spilled out into the street. Three drunk soccer moms from St. Louis decided they wanted to get in on the action, so they started swinging, too. So far, we’ve got three in the hospital and nine in shackles.”

  I nodded and squinted at the road in front of me, thinking I had lost my minivan. I hadn’t, but it had sped up. The speedometer in my old truck only went to eighty-five, and I neared that speed now. Hopefully we wouldn’t be speeding up too much more because I didn’t think my forty-year-old Dodge could take it.

  “That’s surprising,” I said. “Alcohol usually brings out the best in people.”

  Jason grunted. “What do you need, Joe?”

  “I’m in my truck, and I need you to run a license for me.”

  I read him the plate number, and then I heard him type for a moment. Then I heard him warn somebody in the lobby that he’d charge her with destruction of government property if she vomited in the drinking fountain. There were a lot of things I enjoyed about law enforcement, but none more so than the sheer glamour.

  “Your minivan is owned by Anita Willits of Festus, Missouri. Looks like a solid citizen. She has no prior arrests and no outstanding warrants. Vehicle has been registered to her since 2015. She’s got a class-E license with an S endorsement.”

  Meaning she had a chauffeur’s license and could additionally drive a school bus. The minivan didn’t belong to one of his friends, then; Christopher had called a car service. He could have been going anywhere. This might be a long night.

  Before I could thank him, something crashed on the other end of the line. A lot of people shouted after that. Jason swore under his breath.

  “You okay there?” I asked.

  “Idiot threw a chair in the waiting room, so Sasquatch broke out a Taser. We’ve got it under control, but I’ve got to go.”

  “Good luck,” I said. He grunted and hung up. Jason was one of the more jovial members of our department. He had gray hair and a kind face. During the holiday season, he put on a Santa Claus outfit and handed out presents to kids at the local food bank. I didn’t get to see him flustered or angry too often. Then again, we didn’t get too many thrown chairs in the lobby, either.

  I tossed my phone to the seat beside me. We were nearing the outskirts of St. Louis, and I had about a quarter of a tank of gas left. My old truck guzzled gas, so I’d have to stop if we kept going too much farther. I shifted on my seat, took a deep breath, and readjusted my grip on the old rubber steering wheel.

  “Okay, Christopher,” I said. “You can pull off any day now.”

  29

  Alonzo pulled the hood of his sweatshirt over his head and huddled over the tailgate of his pickup, squinting in the faint light. The evening was cold, and the alley was dark. He had an old revolver inside his pocket. A gangbanger on Natural Bridge Road had sold it to him for fifty bucks just twenty minutes ago. Soot coated the weapon’s grip, barrel, and chamber. Judging by the smell, somebody had
fired it recently. More than likely, someone had already used it in a homicide. Maybe multiple ones.

  That was part of the reason he’d bought it.

  Gangbangers didn’t always take care of their toys, though, which made the weapon dangerous. If the cylinder and barrel had become misaligned, a round could get stuck in the chamber and blow his hand off; if the electrical tape the previous owner had wound around the grip slipped, his accuracy could be off; or if soot or other debris made the trigger stick, the weapon might not fire. He couldn’t take that kind of risk.

  Alonzo put the revolver on the tailgate of his pickup and then grabbed his kit from the passenger seat. He had spent the first six years of his adult life as a Marine. After that, he had become a cop, a job he thought he’d have until he retired. When he first became a cop, he imagined he was a knight who patrolled the streets and helped men and women in need. He saved people. Most people didn’t need saving, though. Alonzo didn’t know what they needed, but they didn’t need him.

  He slid the cylinder from the pistol’s barrel and sprayed every moving part with a solvent made for firearms.

  He had liked being a cop. It made him feel powerful, and he got to bust a lot of heads, but the job didn’t leave him with a lot of money for the work he put in. He wanted more. That’s where Sherlock came in.

  Alonzo scrubbed the weapon clean and then adjusted the cylinder so it aligned with the barrel. The gun only needed to fire once as he pushed it against a man’s head. Then it needed to sink in the Mississippi.

  Sherlock was a lawyer, but he wasn’t a bad dude, and he always paid for what he needed. Tonight Sherlock had given him an easy task: kill everybody in a room and get out. Alonzo didn’t like killing people, but the money made it worthwhile. Not only that, he didn’t kill innocent people. Nobody would miss the fuckers he planned to kill tonight. Hell, the city ought to throw him a parade for what he was about to do. Now he just needed to get it done.

  Where other neighborhoods in St. Louis had gentrified, Hyde Park had changed little since Christopher Hughes had last been in it. Christopher tapped the driver on the shoulder and pointed toward a well-lit building that looked like a gas station. A chain-link fence surrounded the property. There were cars everywhere. In contrast to the surrounding neighborhood, Warren’s garage looked as if it were prospering. Good for him.

  “That’s it,” said Christopher. “You can drop me off out front.”

  His driver nodded and darted her eyes around the neighborhood. She looked scared, and he couldn’t blame her. It wasn’t the best neighborhood in town, but if she stayed in the car and kept driving, she’d be fine.

  The danger would come at stoplights. If somebody liked her minivan, she’d lose it. Even in north St. Louis—one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the country—murders were rare events. Carjackings happened a lot more often.

  That wasn’t Christopher’s concern, though. He wanted to see an old friend and to talk business. Sherlock got him out of prison, but somebody needed to bring the lawyer down a few pegs. You couldn’t screw a man’s wife without getting the shit beaten out of you. Warren may have been too old for a recreational beatdown, but he’d know people who were up for one. This would go just fine. Everybody would have a good time tonight.

  Almost everybody, at least. Sherlock needed to find out who held the power in their relationship.

  I parked on the side of the road about a block from a mechanic’s shop. A brick three-story building cast a long shadow on the road to my left, cloaking my old truck in darkness. It was a dark night, and none of the nearby overhead lights worked. A flashlight would have been nice, but I didn’t want to give my position away by turning mine on. I’d rather stumble on the broken sidewalk than get shot by a paranoid Christopher Hughes.

  As I got out of my truck, the orange tip of a cigarette burned to my right. Three young men sat on the front steps of a row house not too far away. As the breeze blew toward me, I caught a whiff of flavored tobacco, but there was something else there, too. It wasn’t marijuana; it almost smelled like oregano, which made me think it was synthetic weed.

  At the moment, I was more interested in my safety than their drugs, so I crouched against my truck and kept my hand over the firearm on my belt. The herbalists didn’t seem to care I was in the area. They kept talking and passing their cigarette back and forth. Hopefully they wouldn’t become a problem.

  I was out of my jurisdiction, but I crept forward anyway, being careful to stay in the shadows cast by nearby buildings. If Christopher wanted to have a normal conversation with someone, he could have picked up a phone. If he didn’t like phones, he could have met someone for coffee. If he didn’t like coffee, he could have hosted someone in his hotel room.

  He had done none of that, though. He waited until the police car in front of his hotel disappeared, and then he snuck away to visit a mechanic’s shop in north St. Louis in the middle of the night. A man who wanted to catch up with a friend would meet him in a bar, while a man looking to score some weed would ask around at a club. That wasn’t the behavior of a man who wanted to catch up with an old friend. I didn’t know what Christopher planned, but I intended to find out.

  I looked over my shoulder to make sure the smokers I had seen earlier weren’t following me. Even with my eyes now adjusted to the gloom, I could barely see them. One of them waved. I considered flashing a badge at him to see what he’d do, but instead I turned and faced the garage again.

  The garage wasn’t too far away, but it was lit well. I didn’t know how I would sneak up there and listen to whatever was going on inside, but I didn’t have a choice. No matter what Christopher Hughes said in interviews, he wasn’t the victim in all this. He was a predator, and predators never changed. They just got smarter. If we left Christopher alone, he’d be running underage prostitutes through St. Augustine by week’s end.

  I wouldn’t let that happen.

  30

  Christopher’s nervousness spiked the moment he saw the minivan pull away. He could call another and have it pick him up within a few minutes, but he wondered whether meeting his old friend at this time of night in this neighborhood was such a good idea. He liked Warren, but he hadn’t seen or talked to him in twelve years. A man could change in twelve years.

  He looked at the phone Sherlock had given him. It was like a computer with a touch screen, like something off Star Trek. Before going to Potosi, he had owned a top-of-the-line cell phone from Motorola. It had set him back almost five hundred bucks in 2004. They called it a flip phone, and it didn’t have a big screen. It only made calls and stored a few dozen numbers, but he didn’t need anything else. Now, his phone checked his email, fed him news, and kept all his contacts in one spot. If he could figure out how to make calls with it, he’d be golden.

  His finger hovered over an app for Uber. Twelve years ago, if you wanted somebody to pick you up in St. Louis, you called River City Cabs or a friend. Now, you hit buttons on a phone, and a stranger would pick you up within minutes. The world had changed while he had rotted in Potosi. Sometimes, he wondered whether he should take his money and go. He could move to the Bahamas, live large, and fuck a bunch of island girls.

  It sounded perfect, but Christopher knew he’d never be able to survive a life of leisure. Even as a kid, he had hustled. He’d bought Ding Dongs from one friend’s lunch for a dime and sold them to another for a quarter. In junior high, he had downloaded pictures of naked girls from the internet, put them on a floppy disk, and sold them to his friends, ten pictures for a dollar. Beaches were for vacations. He lived on the streets. After twelve years behind bars, he planned to live it up.

  As he walked toward the garage, Christopher smelled grease and pneumatic fluid. Before he had gone to prison, Christopher had marveled at Warren’s immaculate shop. The world may have shifted, but at least that hadn’t changed. Inside the garage, Warren’s mechanics had put away every tool, swept the floors, and lowered the lifts so customers could drive right in the next
morning to get their oil and filters changed. The fire extinguishers beside each lift looked out of place, but the fire marshal had probably ordered Warren to put them in.

  Christopher stepped through an open garage door and then into the front office to his left. Near the front window, two couches faced one another. A television hung on the wall. Warren sat behind the receptionist’s desk. His face was gaunt, and his hair had grayed. In the dim light of a desk lamp, his skin had a greenish pallor. He looked sick.

  “Hey, Warren,” said Christopher. “You okay? You don’t look so good.”

  “I’m dying,” he said. “Cancer. My doctor gave me a year, maybe two.”

  Christopher opened his eyes wide and stood straighter.

  “Aww, man,” he said. “I’m sorry, brother. I didn’t know.”

  He drew in a breath and nodded before looking over Christopher’s shoulder and nodding. Then he looked at his former business partner again.

  “I’m sorry, too, Christopher. This ain’t personal.”

  Before Christopher could say anything, someone pressed a gun against his back.

  Scott Gibson loved the dark. It was his element. He felt powerful in the dark, working in the shadows. A Ranger school washout, Scott had been a good but not exceptional soldier in the Army. He had spent the last six months of his enlistment riding a desk, but that wasn’t so bad. Nobody had shot him, at least.

  Now, he worked in the field again. After leaving the military, he had become a cop. He had driven through neighborhoods, talked to people, threw knuckleheads in jail, and then went home. It was a paycheck, nothing more.

  Now, he had a good job. He was a private investigator with one of the best defense attorneys in town. The money was better, the hours were shorter, and the work was a lot more fun. He didn’t have to deal with drunks or meth heads so high they might attack him as soon as they saw him. Now, he took pictures of parking lots, he interviewed witnesses, he helped people out. It was detective work without all the bullshit rules.