The Girl in the Motel

by Chris Culver

  The gunshot was deafening. A curtain of blood coated the driver’s side window the instant after the round pierced his skull. One down.

  Before the man to my right could react, I yanked hard on the weapon again. Diana fired once more, and this time, the round shattered the window to my left. The now deceased driver slumped to the right, dragging the steering wheel with him.

  The Oldsmobile’s tires crunched as they left the gravel, but then the heavy car hit the uneven grass beside the road. I bounced out of my seat and then slammed forward and back as the sedan careened into a tree. The airbags popped open, slapping Diana in the face. She slumped forward and dropped her firearm. My head hit the back of the driver’s seat with a dull thud, and my vision washed white.

  The world spun, but I forced myself to focus. My life depended on it. I looked at the guy beside me. For a moment, I didn’t understand what had happened. Then, like a shot, it came back.

  He dove for the gun Diana had dropped, but his seat belt held him in place. I hadn’t worn one, though, so I snapped the gun up before he could touch it. Diana had fired two shots, which meant I had plenty left. My hand wrapped around the firearm’s grip just as a fist slammed into the back of my head. My vision blurred once more, and I felt my hands go weak, but I didn’t drop the gun.

  I couldn’t. If I did, I’d die.

  The thug reached for my arms and pushed the barrel of the weapon toward the ceiling just as I pulled the trigger. The sound was deafening, but I couldn’t focus on it. I had to get away. I brought my legs up and kicked him in the face while trying to get some distance between us. He didn’t even flinch. His eyes looked crazed and angry. Blood dribbled from his nostrils.

  With his left hand forcing my weapon toward the ceiling, he reached for my neck with his right. He had long arms, and my legs weren’t strong enough to push him away. His body crashed against me. I gasped but didn’t let go of my firearm. With his heavy body pressed against mine, I couldn’t move.

  Then, my door popped open, and a guttural, animalistic scream filled the car. It was Julia, and she had a tire iron. She whacked the thug on the back of his skull. Every time she hit him, he grunted, but he didn’t move.

  Tears filled my eyes as I pushed with my legs. He was so heavy and so strong. With every passing moment, I felt his fingers overpower mine as he tried to pry the weapon from my grip. He was stronger than me, but if I let go of that gun, I was dead. So was Julia. She had risked her life to save me; I couldn’t let that happen.

  Digging into some reserve I didn’t know I had, I flexed the muscles of my legs hard, forcing him back. Julia must have seen what I was doing because she hooked the tire iron around his neck and jerked hard. His head lifted, and then I grunted and pushed again, forcing him out of the car.

  The thug fell onto the ground outside and eyed me and then my foster mother. I could see the mental calculations in his eyes. He could overpower me, but I had a gun and some space now. He wasn’t going anywhere, so he put up his hands. Julia kicked him as I slid out of the car.

  “That’s enough,” I said, looking at them. “Roll onto your belly and put your hands above your head.”

  As I said that, the front passenger door slid open, and Diana tumbled out. She looked at me and then rolled onto her belly and ran. I didn’t hesitate before raising my weapon and firing wide to her right.

  “I swear to God and all that is holy that I will shoot you in the back, Diana!” I screamed. “Put your hands up and lie on the ground.”

  I needed to sound angry and unhinged. I needed her to believe that I’d shoot her in the back. By her tense shoulders and the way she stopped moving, I’d say I had succeeded.

  “Back up until you hit the vehicle. Then turn around and put your hands on the hood.”

  I shifted to my right, creating space between me and Diana’s hired thug while keeping Diana in my line of fire.

  “Julia, there are handcuffs in the car,” I said. “Find them and lock this asshole up.”

  She did as I asked and then handcuffed my assailant. I felt better with him restrained.

  “What do you want to do about Diana?”

  I glanced at Julia and then walked toward the vehicle, still giving the thug a wide berth.

  “Diana Hughes,” I said. She looked at me but kept her hands on the hood. “You’re under arrest for the murder of James Holmes and a bunch of other bad shit. You know the drill. I’ll use what you tell me against you in court, the court can appoint a lawyer if you can’t afford one, and you don’t have to tell me anything.”

  She looked at me and then to Julia.

  “I’ll give you five million dollars cash if you shoot Captain Green in the head and let me and Alonzo go.”

  Without thinking, I balled my right hand into a fist and punched her in the jaw. It had been a lot of years since I had last punched someone, and pain lanced down my knuckles and into my wrist. I gasped, but Diana fell back.

  “Captain Green is my mom, bitch.”

  45

  I wish I could say that life returned to normal after that, but it didn’t. Travis had given me a week off to think about my job before he accepted my resignation, and I planned to use every moment. As soon as I could, I picked up Roger from the animal hospital. He moved slower than before, and he had to wear a cone for a while so he wouldn’t pull out his stitches, but I had my buddy back.

  Susanne came over every morning that week for coffee. We’d talk for an hour, and then she’d go home to work in her garden or to clean her house. She was lonely. I hadn’t seen that before, but I did now. Maybe I was lonely, too.

  To keep myself busy in the day, I planted a garden. It was nice. I also tried to stay abreast of the investigation into Christopher Hughes and his former associates. We charged Alonzo with the murders of Emily and Megan Young, and Warren Nichols.

  To avoid the death penalty, he pled guilty to every charge. He also filled in a lot of gaps in our understanding of what happened. Diana Hughes had nothing to do with most of the murders, but she had killed James Holmes, and she had abducted Julia and me. Even if she had killed Sherlock in self-defense, she couldn’t say the same about a kidnapping. She’d die in prison.

  Agents from the Treasury Department arrested Randy Shepard and Neil Wilcox—Christopher Hughes’s only surviving business partners—for money laundering. They’d go to prison but not for long.

  Everything came down to money. Sherlock had a scheme to make himself rich, but it blew up in his face and got people killed. Only Mr. Mendoza did well for himself. Diana said she gave him ten million dollars. I suspected we’d never see him again.

  Several days after we arrested Diana Hughes, a woman I went to the police academy with, Gwenn Collins, called me out of the blue as I sat on the front porch with Roger. Since Gwenn and I had been the same size and age, she had been my partner during the self-defense portions of our training, making her one of only two people I had ever punched in the face. She didn’t hold that against me.

  “Gwenn, hi,” I said. “It’s been a while. How are you?”

  “I’m good,” she said, her voice soft. Gwenn had a lilting southern accent that a lot of men found beguiling and the tender heart of a kind woman. From almost the first day I met her, I worried about her, not because she was weak or fragile, but because she was good. Before joining the academy, I had lived with a police officer. I understood how it could drain a person, and I hated the idea of watching the world extinguish Gwenn’s light. “You’re famous now. I don’t know many famous people.”

  “I am famous now,” I said, smiling to myself. “Just this morning, I got a call from my high school asking whether I’d give the commencement speech at next year’s graduation.”

  “Really?” she asked.

  “No,” I said, smiling. “I made that up. You’re the only person in the world who thinks I’m famous, so I wanted to revel in it a little longer. What can I do for you?”

  “I work in the crime lab in Clayton, and I’m calli
ng because I’ve got a box with your name on it. It’s evidence from a case twelve years ago.”

  “Oh,” I said, feeling my shoulders drop some.

  “I’ve read the reports about what you’ve gone through,” she said. “Your case is closed for good now. I thought you might like to see the evidence before it’s destroyed. It might help you get closure. I hope I didn’t overstep.”

  “You didn’t,” I said. “Some bad things happened back then.”

  “I get it. I’ll box this up and have it sent off. If you’re ever in the area, call me. There’s a great wine bar by my apartment. We should catch up.”

  I almost told her that sounded great, but I caught myself before I did.

  “I would like to catch up sometime. We’ll do that, but don’t send the box out yet,” I said. “I’m in St. Augustine, but I’d like to see it. This is part of my life. I can’t run from it forever.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah,” I said, nodding, my voice stronger. “I’ll be up as soon as I can.”

  I thanked her and then hung up. Before leaving, I filled the dog’s water bowl, and then I drove. Traffic wasn’t bad, so I made good time to Clayton. Gwenn met me in the county police headquarters’s lobby and escorted me to her office in the basement.

  I didn’t know what to feel as I saw the white file box on her desk. Though Julia had kept her own interview notes and paperwork, that box held the physical evidence used to put Christopher Hughes in prison twelve years ago. I pulled the top off to uncover dozens of clear plastic evidence bags, each of which had Julia’s or Travis’s signature on the chain of custody form.

  “Do you need a minute?” asked Gwenn.

  I looked at her and nodded. “Please.”

  She nodded. “I’ll get coffee, then. I’ll be back in a few.”

  She stepped out of the office, and I reached into the box for an evidence bag holding a navy blue scrunchy that had belonged to a girl named Sarah. I never knew her, but I was her sister. Christopher had done the same to her that he had done to me. I reached into the box again and pulled out bags holding hair ties, necklaces, and panties. All of them came from young women Christopher had raped.

  Then, I pulled out a bag with a young woman’s white cotton underwear. It was my bag. I couldn’t look at it, so I put it away. Near the bottom of the box, I found the ring that had sealed Christopher’s fate. It had belonged to Megan Young.

  And my heart jumped because it was all wrong.

  I boxed up most of the evidence but took the bag with the ring to the floor’s break room. Gwenn was cleaning out the coffee maker as I entered.

  “Can I take this upstairs?” I asked, holding up the evidence bag. “I need to show it to somebody. It won’t leave the building.”

  She paused for a moment. “I’m not supposed to let it out of my sight.”

  “It’s important,” I said. “I’ll take it up to Captain Julia Green, and then I’ll take it right back. It was her case twelve years ago.”

  She blinked and then sighed before nodding. “If it’s not going to leave the building, go ahead.”

  “Thanks,” I said, already rushing out of the room. My heart was pounding, and my stomach churned a mile a minute. I didn’t want to wait for the elevator, so I sprinted up the stairs to Julia’s floor. Her office door was open, so I didn’t knock before sticking my head inside. She was on the phone, but when she saw me, she hung up.

  “Hey, Joe,” she said. “Something wrong?”

  I walked inside and shut the door behind me. As a captain, Julia had a corner office with windows on two sides. It was bright and clean. I crossed the room and put the evidence bag on her desk beside a half-full coffee mug.

  “You bagged this twelve years ago,” I said.

  Julia looked at it and then looked at me with her eyebrows raised.

  “Refresh my memory. I’ve bagged a lot of evidence over the years.”

  “This is Megan Young’s ring. Diana Hughes found it in a box in her garage. Christopher supposedly took it from Megan’s body after he killed her.”

  “Okay,” said Julia, leaning back and crossing her legs and arms. “I remember now. That box did him in. Before Diana found it, he claimed he was innocent. Afterwards, he confessed to murdering Megan. In retrospect, Diana set her husband up.”

  “I want to believe that.”

  Julia said nothing at first. Then she laced her fingers together and leaned forward.

  “Why don’t you believe that?”

  “Megan Young’s case was originally given to two detectives in homicide. When I came forward and claimed Christopher Hughes had assaulted me, your department opened a parallel investigation into those claims. You and Travis handled that investigation.”

  “That’s right,” she said, nodding.

  “You investigated me. You talked to people I knew at school, you talked to my teachers, and you talked to my old boss at the movie theater. You talked to Megan’s teachers, friends, and sister, too. By the time you finished your investigation, you knew more about me than anyone alive. You knew more about Megan than anyone else knew, too.”

  “That was my job.”

  “And you did it well,” I said, nodding and sliding the evidence bag toward her. “So when Diana Hughes showed you this box, you recognized this ring as belonging to Megan.”

  She took a sip of coffee and then drew in a breath. Her eyes widened and then closed as she realized what I had found.

  “I did.”

  “You showed it to Christopher Hughes. He included it in his written confession. He said he took it from Megan’s body and then hid it in the box as a souvenir of what he had done, but you knew that was a lie.”

  She said nothing for at least twenty seconds, but then she nodded.

  “I lived with Megan. I didn’t get along with Emily, but Megan and I talked some. This was a promise ring. Megan’s boyfriend gave it to her and promised to exchange it for an engagement ring one day. She wore that ring for six weeks before her boyfriend broke up with her, and then she never wore it again. She kept it because it was gold and she planned to sell it when she aged out of the foster care system.

  “You were a sex crimes detective. You knew everything there was to know about Megan Young’s sex life. You knew she and that boy had broken up, you knew she didn’t wear this ring, and you knew Christopher Hughes didn’t take it from her dead finger. You knew Christopher Hughes’s confession was bullshit, and yet you and Travis let him make it.”

  She drew in a slow breath. Her entire body seemed deflated.

  “All true,” she said, her voice a whisper. “The moment Diana showed us that box, we knew she was setting her husband up. I persuaded Travis not to say anything. It was my fault. Don’t blame him.”

  “Is that why he moved to St. Augustine? He didn’t want to work with you anymore?”

  Her eyelids fluttered, but then she shrugged.

  “You’d have to ask him.”

  “I will,” I said, “but he’ll tell me it was his fault and that you had nothing to do with it.”

  “That sounds like him,” she said. She paused and then looked down. “Christopher hurt you and a lot of other girls. He would have hurt a lot more people if we didn’t stop him. We didn’t have the evidence to put him away, so when Diana showed us that box, it felt like an answer to our prayers. Travis and I had to keep quiet about what we knew.”

  I nodded. “Did you tell Christopher what to say?”

  She shook her head. “We showed him the evidence we had against him, and he wove his own story. In exchange for his confession, the prosecutor dropped the rape charges against him and agreed to a sentence of life without parole.”

  “Thank you for the truth.”

  Neither of us said anything for another minute, but then Julia cleared her throat.

  “So what happens now?”

  I bit my lower lip and looked at the table, unable to look her in the eye.

  “Almost everyone connected
to this case is dead or in prison,” I said, swallowing hard. “Nobody wins if I turn this over to your internal affairs division.”

  “You should, though. It’s the right thing to do.”

  “Fuck the right thing,” I said. “I’m tired of doing the right thing if it only hurts the people I care about. Christopher Hughes deserved everything he got.”

  Julia locked her gaze on mine and then looked down as she reached to her waist. A moment later, she put her gold captain’s badge on the desk and slid it toward me.

  “If my decision twelve years ago costs my daughter her integrity today, I’m done. I don’t deserve to wear the same badge she does. Travis doesn’t, either.”

  Julia loved being a cop. It was part of her identity. I shook my head.

  “Don’t do that,” I said. “You did it to protect me.”

  “That doesn’t make it right. I’ve been at this job long enough to know what happens when you stop playing by the rules.”

  I looked at the table.

  “I’m sorry I put you in this position, Mom.”

  She stayed silent long enough that I looked up at her to make sure she was okay. She smiled and reached toward me. I let her hold my hand.

  “You’ve never called me Mom before,” she whispered. “Thank you.”

  I swallowed a lump in my throat.

  “I never called you Mom before because I thought I hated my mom. I thought my mom abandoned me when I needed her most. That lady wasn’t my mom, though. You’ve been my mom since the day I met you. I’m sorry it’s taken me this long to figure that out.”

  She squeezed my hand.

  “I love you.”

  “I love you, too.”

  I stayed in the office for another few minutes but then stood when Gwenn knocked on the door and poked her head inside.