by S W Vaughn
I decided to just keep going, check into the resort, and get some sleep. Anything that seemed off about ‘Mr. North’ could be explained by an exhausted middle-of-the-night arrival. And if people got suspicious after that, if I wasn’t what they expected, I could just take off. It wasn’t even my money that had paid for the hotel.
My mind made up, I put everything back where it was, including the gun, and hit the highway toward Vermont.
Chapter Five
Marco
When the pleasant female voice coming from North’s phone informed me that my destination was on the left, I almost asked her if she was sure about that. The Whispering Pines Resort was not the sprawling, high-end luxury retreat I’d envisioned.
Rather, it was a three-story white building with a small parking lot tucked at the side that looked more like somebody’s house. Or possibly a funeral home.
I pulled the Jeep into the lot, where three other vehicles were parked, and stared through the windshield for a few minutes at the resort. It was a fairly large place with a wraparound porch and balconies running the length of the second and third floors, the windows and railings trimmed with moss-green that almost matched the darker green roof tiles. The kind of place that rich people from the city would probably describe as charming or quaint. No amenities or extras in sight, and it was at least two miles outside the small town of Landstaff Junction, which I’d driven through to get here.
So apparently, Donnie had booked himself two weeks in the middle of nowhere.
I almost changed my mind about checking in, but the lure of solid sleep in an actual bed was too strong to ignore. Even before the grueling trip here, I’d spent the last three days on the move in the city, never staying in one place for more than a few hours at a time as Nicky systematically hunted me down.
Now that I was dead, I could rest for a while.
I tucked the folded paper with the reservation printout in the pocket of the jacket and turned to look at the mountain of bags in the back. It would probably look strange if I checked into a hotel without any luggage, but I’d be damned if I was bringing all that crap in with me tonight. Besides, I wasn’t even sure if I was staying the full two weeks yet. I was still a little leery of the way the girl who’d answered the phone here had responded, with a bit too much familiarity.
At least if I had to take off suddenly, I had cash, credit cards, and a vehicle full of stuff to bring with me.
I got out, grabbed the wheeled suitcase I’d taken the clothes I was wearing from, and headed for the entrance. The front door opened onto a spacious room with hardwood floors and wood trim, peach wallpaper with green accents, and a small chandelier hanging from the center of the ceiling. Toward the back of the room was a gleaming wooden staircase leading to the second floor. A few couches and easy chairs were placed around the space, and off to the left, there was a wooden counter with a bulky, old-style computer monitor squatting on the right-hand corner.
The young dark-haired woman seated behind the counter, just a little spit of a thing, bounced to her feet and smiled when I walked in. “You must be Mr. North,” she said, offering a cheery wave. “Come on in. Welcome to Landstaff Junction.”
Her words relaxed me a little. It was the same voice I’d spoken to when I called, and she’d said you must be and welcome instead of something like, say, good to see you again and welcome back. Hopefully that meant she didn’t know the real Donovan North. I approached the desk with a confidence that suggested I knew exactly what I was doing, returning her smile with a tired one of my own. “How’d you know who I was?” I asked casually.
The girl’s pretty brown eyes crinkled with laughter. “Well, sir, it’s five in the morning, and that’s when you said you’d be here,” she said. “We don’t usually get folks trying to check in this early. Plus, I recognized your voice from the phone.”
“Oh, right,” I said with a sheepish grin to cover my relief. “Don’t mind me. I’m exhausted.”
“Long drive?” she asked sympathetically.
I nodded. “Listen, do you mind if I just get the key and head to my room?” I said, hoping to forestall any small talk. “Like you say, it’s been a long drive.”
“Sure, no problem. I’ll just have to put your information into the computer,” she said as she dragged a keyboard over from in front of the monitor and tapped the space bar. “My name’s Bethy, by the way. Bethy Goble.”
I produced the folded printout from my pocket, wincing slightly at my own rudeness. “Nice to meet you, Bethy.”
“Likewise,” she said with a grin as she accepted the paper, unfolded it flat on the desk, and started typing. “You’re the first person I ever met from New York, you know. Well, except for the Reverend, but that doesn’t count because he’s not from New York, he just goes there a lot. Anyway, Preston is going to be so jealous that I met you first.”
I flashed a polite smile and made a noise of agreement. Didn’t have to ask how she knew where I was from, didn’t care about any reverend, and didn’t want to know who Preston was or why he’d be jealous. He was probably another employee who similarly hadn’t met anyone from New York before.
He also had an unfortunate name. Where I came from, Preston was the kind of name that’d get your head shoved in toilet bowls.
Whatever Bethy was typing, it didn’t take long. A humming sound came from under the counter, and she pulled up a single sheet of paper and laid a pen on top of it. “If you could just sign here, Mr. North, and I’ll grab your key.”
I held back a frown as I scanned the paper, which basically said that I agreed to the conditions of renting the room as listed in my welcome packet, whatever that was. Probably standard hotel stuff — no pets, no loud parties, and you break it you buy it. There was a blank line at the bottom, and I scribbled something that resembled two words starting with a D and an N.
Nobody really looked at signatures anymore, and she hadn’t asked to see my driver’s license. I figured I was safe.
By the time I finished signing the dead man’s name, the girl had turned back to me from the small cabinet mounted on the wall behind her, holding something in her hand. It was an actual key on a ring, with a keychain fob shaped like a pine tree. How quaint and charming. “Here you go,” she said as she handed it to me. “The Vista Suite is on the third floor. Take those stairs there, turn left down the hall, and it’ll be the last door on your left. Do you need any help with your luggage?”
“Nah, I’m good. I’ll get the rest of it tomorrow,” I told her, almost laughing at the idea of asking this petite young woman to help lug all those bags up two flights of stairs. My mother raised a gentleman — or at least, she’d tried to. It wasn’t her fault that my life had worked out this way. “Thanks a lot, Bethy Goble.”
She beamed at me. “You’re very welcome, Mr. North. I hope you like it here in the Junction. It must be so different from the big city. Nothing like you’re used to, right?”
“Uh, yeah. Seems like a nice place,” I said, blinking a few times. That was a strange way to put it. Wasn’t the standard for a hotel usually some variation of ‘enjoy your stay’? “Well, goodnight, then.”
“Goodnight!” she called cheerily.
I shrugged it off and headed for the stairs, feeling the weariness sink further into my bones with every step. I’d probably be lucky to make it all the way to the bed.
The door to the Vista Suite announced itself with a hand-painted plaque featuring the name of the room sprawled across a pastel mountain range. There was a heavy-duty lock above the doorknob, and I inserted the key and twisted the bolt back, pushed the door open, and dragged both myself and the suitcase through. The lock had a twist knob on the inside, so I didn’t have to use the key to close it back up.
It was actually a suite; I’d give it that. Past the short hallway behind the entrance was a nice-sized sitting room with a small kitchenette in a corner and sliding glass doors leading out to the balcony. There was a bottle of wine on the counter of the kitc
henette with a big red bow tied around the neck, and it made me briefly consider the six-pack I’d left outside in the Jeep. But at the moment, there were too many stairs between me and the beer.
A door on the right side led to a large bedroom with a king-sized bed, and an attached bath with both a walk-in shower and an old-fashioned clawfoot tub. Not exactly a Jacuzzi or a hot tub, but it’d probably do for a decent soak.
Despite my exhaustion, I decided to hit the shower before I fell in, just to wash off the stink of the past few days. I dropped the suitcase next to the bed, locked myself into the bathroom and stripped, turning the shower to as hot as I could stand before I stepped in. As the water poured over me and I relaxed into the heat, my thoughts returned to the real Donovan North, by now stuffed unceremoniously into some statie’s body bag, waiting for the coroner’s knife to slice him open and verify the obvious cause of death.
Yet another difference between us lay in the occupational hazards that marked my body — a gunshot scar here, an old knife wound there, and more than a few childhood souvenirs everywhere. I didn’t have time to strip-search his corpse for identifying marks, but I knew they wouldn’t be anything like mine.
I wondered what kind of life he’d led after juvie, and how long I could get away with living it in his place.
The longer I stood in the shower, the harder it got to keep my eyes open. I soaped down and shampooed my hair as fast as I could, barely rinsing everything off before I killed the water and dried myself with a surprisingly fluffy bath towel. I considered stumbling into bed naked, but at the last minute I stepped back into the discarded boxers and plodded into the bedroom.
At this point I didn’t give a damn if the bed was cloud-soft or cement-hard. All I wanted was sleep, and lots of it. I yanked back the green bedspread with a little too much vigor — and managed to elbow the bulky room phone off the nightstand and onto the floor. The old-fashioned device let out a muted, unhappy ding as the receiver clattered off the hook
I stared at the phone for a few seconds and decided I was too tired to bend down and pick it up. So I shoved a few of what seemed like a hundred pillows on the floor, and then crawled onto the mattress.
I barely managed to cover myself with the blanket before I dropped into the dead zone.
Chapter Six
Preston
She’d come into the station early, for all the good it did. Not that Preston expected either of her murder cases to miraculously solve themselves overnight. But she’d made a list of tasks that might help her make progress, however incremental, toward finding Lynn Reynolds’ killer — most of them repeats of things she’d already done. Go through the victim’s personal effects again, re-check her car, re-interview her friends, re-canvas her neighborhood for the third or fourth time.
There was nothing she could do for Jane Doe yet, at least not until the medical examiner finished looking her over and running his tests.
Even then, there might be nothing she could do. But she was going to try anyway.
She owed the girl that much.
Preston pushed back from her desk and sighed, rubbing the back of her neck with one hand. Sleeping on the couch last night hadn’t done her any favors. Maybe she’d pour herself a fourth cup of coffee before she started on her useless list of busywork that wasn’t going to help her find the killer, no matter how many times she went back over this stuff.
No, she couldn’t think like that. She would catch this bastard.
She was still deciding between coffee and hitting her phone call list when a shadow darkened her desk. She flinched a little, reeled her mind back from a million miles away to find Henderson standing in front of her, leaning casually against the wall with his muscled arms folded and a self-assured smirk on his face.
Clyde Henderson was a caveman. Had been since high school, during which he was the most popular boy who wasn’t the captain of the football team, but had been the quarterback once, for four years running. He was good-looking and damned well knew it, and he viewed women as some kind of necessary nuisance to be used when he felt like it, but otherwise ignored. In Preston’s most private thoughts, she’d nicknamed him ‘Officer Ugh.’
She had to be very careful to never say that out loud.
“Hey, Preston,” Henderson drawled. “Daydreaming again? You must’ve been thinking about me. Hell, I can’t blame you.”
Her jaw clenched as she bit back an acid response. “Did you need something, Henderson?”
He narrowed his eyes, and for a moment they flashed with pure anger. Out of all the officers who’d applied for the detective slot, Henderson had protested her appointment to the position the loudest. He’d gone so far as to cry discrimination, claiming that the chief had given the job to Preston based solely on her gender, and had tried to lodge a complaint with human resources.
That had earned him a week of administrative leave, and he was still furious about it.
But he shrugged it off and straightened, fixing that smug smile back in place. “Listen, I know things have been tough around here for you lately,” he said, laying on the false sympathy so thick that he crossed the line into mockery. “So I thought I’d take you out to dinner. Tonight, at the Silver Barrows.”
For a few seconds she was too stunned to get angry. What the hell was wrong in his head, that he’d even think dating her was so much as a remote possibility — let alone have the gall to actually ask her?
“I’m married,” she said through gritted teeth, instead of screaming what she actually wanted to say: not if you were the last man on Earth, you knuckle-dragging troglodyte.
Henderson’s contemptuous laugh was a dagger. “Married?” he spat. “You’ve got to be kidding me. It’s been, what, three years? Come on, Preston, you know he’s—”
“Don’t you dare,” she growled as she shot to her feet. “We work together, Henderson, and that’s it. That’s all it’s ever going to be. And in case you forgot, I outrank you.”
The spasm of rage that crossed his features said he hadn’t forgotten, and now he would never, ever forget.
Damn it. She’d regretted pulling rank the instant the words were out of her mouth. Diplomacy and tact were crucial for a female detective, especially in a small town like the Junction. She knew that, and she’d planned to conduct herself calmly and professionally from the moment she’d accepted the job.
But Paul was off limits, a hot button that Henderson had just pressed hard. She couldn’t have stopped her reaction if she tried.
And now she’d basically made Officer Ugh an enemy for life.
“Let me make this clear,” she went on in a more controlled tone, knowing the damage had already been done, but she had to attempt to repair some of it anyway. “We will not discuss personal matters at work, period. It’s important for everyone here to focus on their jobs, especially now.”
His lip lifted in a sneer. “And how many cases have you solved since you got promoted, Detective?” he said.
“Goddamn it!” Lieutenant Kratt bellowed suddenly from across the bullpen.
Preston jerked and whirled around, certain he’d heard the argument and was coming over to reprimand them — mostly her. He’d been the one to warn her about the required diplomacy and the extra politics that came with the promotion, and even though she was in the right here, he’d be pissed. She hadn’t exactly handled the situation with tact.
But Kratt wasn’t storming the balustrades. He was in his office, and the shout had still come through his open door as loud as if he’d been standing right next to her.
Something was wrong.
She headed for his office double-time, not bothering to wait for an invitation before she walked in. Kratt was on his feet, circling his desk with rage written across his face like a billboard. He barely noticed her in time to stop short and avoid barreling straight into her.
“Kratt?” she said tentatively. She’d never seen him this mad, and she had been around more than a few times to witness him pop a cork.
Rapid footsteps approached and stopped just behind her, outside the office. “What’s going on?” The voice was August. He sounded confused, and a little afraid.
She wondered if for some reason, August was the target of Kratt’s fury. Because whoever he was mad at should be terrified out of their minds.
Kratt looked at her, and then past her at August and whoever else had gathered behind her. She could hear the murmurs, the shuffling, but she couldn’t tear her gaze from the lieutenant. The look on his face commanded attention. Anger, definitely, but there was something indescribably awful beneath it. Something broken.
“I can’t …” he said hoarsely. He froze in place, and then slowly held up his cell phone. “This just came in from Lamoille County dispatch.”
He put the phone on speaker and played the recording.
All the shuffling and whispering died when call playback started.
Operator: 9-1-1, what is your emergency?
Male caller: I need help. [pause, sobbing] Oh, God. Oh my GOD.
Operator: Sir, can you tell me what happened?
Caller: [incoherent] …dead. OH GOD.
Operator: Sir, are you saying someone is dead?
Caller: SHE’S DEAD!
Operator: Okay, sir, can you please tell me what happened?
Caller: She’s dead. In the bedroom. Someone … it’s just like Lynn. This can’t be happening. She … [incoherent sobbing]
Operator: [long pause] Sir, can you tell me your name?
Caller: Chelsea…
Operator: Is that your name, sir?
Caller: My girlfriend. Chelsea. Oh, God, there’s so much blood! [incoherent]