The End Of Desire argi-8

by M. R. Sellars

  I stopped in my tracks and sighed heavily, rubbed my forehead for a moment, then turned and aimed myself at the door of the mini-mart. If I was even going to make it back to the motel in one piece, I was going to need a cup of coffee.

  *****

  “I jus’ started ‘em fresh,” the man behind the counter offered as he watched me head for the coffeemakers. “Dey should be ready in jus’ a coupl’a minutes.”

  “Thanks,” I replied, giving him a nod as I continued over to the stand where the brew was streaming from a stained filter basket into an equally soiled carafe.

  Using what I saw as a judge, it was a safe bet the coffee wasn’t going to be top-notch, so I pulled one of the large cups from the stack and started prepping it with sugar packets. After dumping in six, re-examining the size of the vessel and adding another three, I began rooting through a tray of flavored creamers. After finding a half-dozen that matched, I lined them up then started peeling back the tops and dumping them in.

  The fatigue had now worked itself into every nook and cranny of my being, so by the time I picked up the fourth creamer, my hands had decided not to operate in accordance with what my brain was telling them to do. Before I could manage to tear back the foil top, I fumbled the small plastic container, and it fell from my hand then rolled across the aisle floor. I turned and knelt down to retrieve the escapee, and when I did, my eyes caught a silvery glint of light bouncing from a somewhat familiar shape.

  Wrapping one hand around the fugitive condiment, I pushed my glasses up onto my nose with the other and continued to kneel there, staring at the object. The gratuitous trinket section was positioned immediately across from the coffee; probably some marketing guru’s brilliant idea for how they could move high-profit-margin, cheap plastic toys by catching junior’s attention while the parent was getting a cup of java. I had no doubt that it was effective to some extent because it now had my undivided attention.

  Of course, I was focused on a particular item. Dead in the middle of all of the junk was a peg which held several blister cards, each of them containing a toy police badge, whistle, and plastic handcuffs. Ben’s earlier comment rolled through my foggy brain, “You ain’t packin’ a badge, so you’re just another civilian ta’ them.”

  He was correct. But now, like some fateful sign, here was a badge, and it even looked pretty convincing given the short distance between it and me. It wouldn’t stand up to any manner of scrutiny, that much was for certain, but if it was just a quick flash it might work.

  “Ya’ okay over dere, cap?” the man called out.

  “Yeah,” I answered and, realizing I’d been staring at the toy just a bit too long, offered up an explanation. “I just dropped a creamer, and I didn’t want to leave a mess over here for you to have to deal with.”

  “Dere ya’ go,” he replied, a thankful note in his voice.

  I sighed and looked away from the toy rack then muttered a personal admonishment under my breath as I stood, “Yeah Gant, impersonating a cop. That’d be really bright, wouldn’t it?”

  Stepping back over to the low counter, I finished adding the creamers to the cup then poured in the just finished coffee on top. I was happy to see that it blended to a milky brown instead of the sickly grey I’d faced before at other such establishments.

  Wandering over to the checkout stand, I placed the cup on the counter then dug in my pocket for my wallet.

  “Dat gonna be two-sixty,” the man told me.

  I tossed three ones in front of him.

  “You gotta silvuh dime?” he asked.

  I shoved a hand into my pocket in search of the change but found nothing but the car keys and the crumpled pages from the phone book.

  “No, sorry,” I offered with a shake of my head. “Don’t worry about it. Just keep the change.”

  “Awrite,” he replied, giving me a quick nod.

  I picked up my coffee and started for the door but halted as the thought of the phonebook pages in my pocket began bludgeoning my grey matter. Then, without thinking anything through, I seized on one of the names I remembered seeing, turned back to face the man, and said, “Mind if I ask you something? I just drove in and I’m looking for the Keys Motel?”

  “Dat’s no problem,” he replied, pointing past me. “Ya’ jus’ go down Airline a coupl’a miles and dere it is.”

  “Great, thanks,” I offered with a weak smile then let out a nervous chuckle which I’m sure was more a product of the lie I was telling than any sort of acting skill. On the heels of the laugh I added, “You know, I heard there was a weird murder that happened there recently. You hear anything about that?”

  “Naw, somebody told ya’ wrong on dat,” he told me, shaking his head and jerking his thumb in the opposite direction. “Da’ murder happened ovuh for da’ Suthun Hosp’tality. Dat’s back up da’ road.”

  “Really?” I returned with a nod. “My wife will be glad to hear that. The story kind of spooked her a bit, you know.”

  “Yeah, you rite.”

  Adrenalin instantly dumped into my system, and my fatigue momentarily fled, along with anything I had that might have resembled good sense. I should have turned and left right then and there, but the impulse that had made me ask the questions was stuck in overdrive, and it didn’t care what trouble I might be making for myself. Instead I headed back in the direction of the coffee counter, my sights set on the toy rack as the lie took on another layer.

  “F’get somethin’?” the man asked.

  “Sort of,” I said over my shoulder. “I saw something over here I think my kid would really like.”

  CHAPTER 4:

  True to what the man at the gas station had told me, the Southern Hospitality Motor Lodge was just up the road. Its lighted sign became apparent shortly after I pulled back onto the main thoroughfare, and within moments I was swinging into the almost full parking lot. Once I found a space and nosed my car into it, I shut off the lights, then the engine, and proceeded to visually scan the front of the small motel.

  From the outside, it definitely fit the image I had in my head as the kind of place Annalise would select for a kill. It looked clean but far enough out of date to be a throwback to the mid 1960’s, perhaps even earlier. I suspected the interior decor would reflect that as well, even if it had been partially updated at some point.

  The office itself was located at the street end of a single level building that extended for several units before eventually connecting with an L-shaped two-story addition. In the far corner where they joined, I could see a large yellow X flapping gently across a room door. Unfortunately, this was something that had become an all too familiar sight for me in recent years, and I could almost certainly guarantee that the black lettering on the bars of the wavering X spelled out CRIME SCENE – DO NOT CROSS, or if not exactly that, something very close.

  Before leaving the lot of the mini-mart, I had ripped open the blister card containing the toy, pulled out the thin, stamped metal badge, and tossed the rest into the garbage receptacle near the payphone. Since it was positioned toward the far end of the building, I hadn’t had to worry too much about the attendant seeing me throw away the bulk of my recent purchase, which I am betting would have raised a bit of suspicion.

  Now that I was sitting here in the darkness, I pulled my wallet from my back pocket and emptied it, save for my driver’s license which I left in the display slot on one side. I was counting on the fact that being a Missouri issue would make it look different enough to appear like an official law enforcement ID. The rest of the contents, credit cards, cash and the like, I stuffed into my jacket pocket and zipped it closed.

  Fumbling with the toy badge, I undid the pin and forced it through the inner layer of my wallet opposite my license, managing to stab myself in the fingertip twice while doing so. Once I succeeded in finally getting the fake shield decently positioned and secured, I simply sat back in my seat and stared at it. Out here in the darkness, it looked pretty good-to an untrained eye, maybe even li
ke the real thing.

  I practiced flipping the improvised ID case open, giving a silent count, then snapping it back shut, trying to instantly master what I’d seen Ben and the other cops I’d worked with do so many times in the past. My big problem was that I was going to need to look convincing but still only show the badge long enough to create a belief that I was official. If I was asked to let someone see it up close, I was in trouble.

  If it weren’t for the fact that I was so nervous, I might have considered trying to throw a little magick behind the ruse. It was really all just the power of suggestion combined with a bit of inner energy to create what, in the parlance of WitchCraft, was called a glamour. In short, it was an illusion. A way of making someone believe they were seeing something that wasn’t really there. I actually had more than half the battle won already, given the physical appearance of the toy. But, casting a glamour involved affecting someone’s will, and while I wasn’t so white-light as to have a problem with that, I did seem to be having issues controlling my own will at the moment, much less someone else’s. Applying magick to the situation just seemed like a very bad idea, especially magick born of anxious energy. Of course, everything about what I was planning to do fell smack into the middle of the bad idea category, so it probably didn’t matter.

  At one point it even dawned on me that some of the most notorious serial rapists and killers in recent history had used this very trick to gain the trust of their victims. This type of musing wasn’t new to me. I’d had thoughts like it before. In fact, I often wondered if my unfettered psychic connections to both the victims, and at times the criminals themselves, were doing irreparable damage to my psyche. This was, however, the first time that such contemplation left me afraid that due to that possible damage, I might be becoming just like them.

  I sighed and tried to forget about the knot of fear that my wandering brain had just created in my already churning stomach. I had enough to worry about without tossing that in on top of it.

  The time had been pushing 3:45AM when I shut off the car, and by now I was sure to have been sitting here for a solid fifteen minutes, maybe even longer, prepping the phony badge and trying to work up the courage to actually use it. I looked across the lot at the office. It was dark except for the pink neon glow of the NO VACANCY sign in the window. This wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, and I hoped that it just might work to my advantage.

  I took one last sip of my coffee and swallowed hard before settling it into the cup holder and getting out of the vehicle. Though the temperature had been mild earlier, and I am certain that it hadn’t suffered any significant change, I felt a damp chill run the length of my spine. It hit me like a rush of excitement in fact, and that worried me. However, I pressed on across the quiet lot.

  Arriving at the office door, I reached out and gave it a tug, only to find that it was locked just as I had hoped it would be. It would definitely increase my chances of being able to pull this off if I could hang here in the shadows where the darkness could obscure the telltale giveaways surrounding the lie.

  I hesitated for a moment, then reached up and rapped my knuckles hard on the glass pane of the door. I waited as thirty seconds stretched into one minute, and then that folded itself into two. Seeing no movement inside, I hammered my fist against the door again. This time a dim light switched on and was visible through the doorway behind the small check-in desk. I stood watching my reflection in the mirror on the back wall and waited. A short moment later, a disheveled, middle-aged woman in a housecoat appeared through the opening and squinted at me. Immediately shooting me a disgusted look, she pointed at the glowing NO VACANCY sign and started to turn.

  I thumped the heel of my palm against the door once again to get her attention then flipped open my wallet and pressed it against the glass. Up until this point I could have turned and walked away, no harm, no foul. But now I was committed, and in the back of my head I was telling myself that was exactly what I needed to be, committed-although my inner voice was using a vastly different sense of the word.

  The woman squinted at me again, and I watched her closely as my heart raced. Her face sagged, and then her posture seemed to relax somewhat as she started through the opening and out around the desk. It then came to my attention that I was holding my breath, so I let it out slowly and took in a fresh lungful of air as I waited. She continued across the lobby toward the door, and when she was within a few feet, I slowly pulled the wallet away, flipped it shut and tucked it into my jacket pocket.

  A moment later the deadbolt clicked, and she pushed the door open.

  “How can I help you, officer?” she asked through a tired yawn. While her voice was definitely cloaked with the hallmark cadence of the region, her accent seemed to hail more from the mid-South; therefore, she lacked the clipping of syllables I’d learned to expect from natives of the area.

  I felt a fresh chill traverse my spine, but this time it wasn’t a sense of excitement. It was more a sense of fear-but not for myself. I was afraid for her and the fact that she had so willingly believed I was a cop without closer inspection of my credentials. I tried my best not to let it show and instead simply pasted on what I believed to be an official looking expression.

  “Sorry to disturb you, ma’am,” I launched into my spiel. “My name is Gant, I’m a special investigations consultant with the Major Case Squad in Saint Louis, Missouri.”

  I had considered using an alias but figured I would just stumble over it if I did. Considering the amount of deception I was forcing myself to engage in all at once, I thought keeping it simple would be my best course of action. Besides, if I did this correctly, I could get away with a majority of planned misdirection and only a little actual falsehood. In fact, so far I hadn’t lied so much as tested the elasticity of a not quite current truth. I was, in fact, a consultant to the MCS, just not lately. Splitting hairs, I know, but I was trying to work within a scheme that would keep my anxiety at bay, otherwise I knew I would never be able to pull this off.

  “I’d love to help you, hun, but cop or no, I still don’t have a vacancy.”

  “Actually, ma’am, I’m here on official business,” I continued. “There was a homicide here last week, correct?”

  “Yes, and I’ve been paying for it ever since,” she grumbled. “Fortunately, it hasn’t kept the Feds from renting the rooms.”

  “So I see,” I acknowledged, pointing toward the neon sign. “Well, the reason I’m here is to look over the scene.”

  She cocked her head then asked, “But I thought you said you were from Missouri, hun?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I replied with a nod. “I can’t really get into any details other than to say we have a couple of cases in Saint Louis that appear to be related to this one.”

  “Like maybe a serial killer, you mean?” she pressed.

  “I really couldn’t speculate about that,” I replied, shrugging as I shook my head. “I’m just here to look at the crime scene.”

  She reached up with her free hand and rubbed her eyes, then shot a quick glance at her watch. Looking back to my face, she asked, “This couldn’t wait until morning?”

  “I know.” I shook my head apologetically. “But the lieutenant sent me down here for a quick look. I just got in a little while ago and drove straight here. My flight back home leaves at ten so I only have a few hours.”

  “They don’t give you much time to work, do they?”

  “That’s just how it happens sometimes.”

  “All right then, hun,” she said. “Let me get my shoes, and I’ll take you on down to the room.”

  “You know,” I offered. “I’ve really disturbed you way too much already. If you just want to give me the key, I’ll go have a look and then drop it back through the mail slot when I’m done. That way you can get back to bed.”

  “Okay,” she said, giving me a quick nod. It sounded almost as if there was a note of relief in her voice. “Let me get it for you.”

  She turned and headed back
around the check-in desk, rummaged beneath it for a moment, then returned to the door with a key that was attached to a bright red, diamond-shaped piece of plastic, which was emblazoned with a large number 7.

  Handing it to me, she pushed the door open a little farther and pointed down the length of the building. She stifled a yawn then said, “Room seven. All the way down in the corner, hun. Can’t miss it with that damn tape up.”

  My face must have betrayed the sudden flutter in my stomach as I took the key. Room 7 had been the ongoing theme with Miranda. It was the number on the doors where both Hobbes and Wentworth were killed in Saint Louis. And, it had even been the room at the no-tell palace where Felicity had taken a potential victim when under the Lwa’s control.

  “Something wrong, hun?” the woman asked.

  “N…no,” I half stammered, catching myself and quickly trying to come up with a plausible excuse for my sudden reticence. “I was just thinking that seven wasn’t such a lucky number for the victim.”

  “That’s a fact,” she replied with a shallow nod. “Odd enough he specifically asked for it too.”

  I wasn’t surprised by the comment. The desk clerk where Wentworth was murdered had said the same thing. He had explicitly requested room 7.

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “Odd that it was even available. When I called down here it took forever to find some place with a vacancy.”

  The words were out of my mouth before I even realized what I was saying. I had just managed to contradict my entire fabrication with a single slip of the tongue. A fresh spasm hit my stomach, but I tried to ignore it and nonchalantly turn my head toward the distant room in hopes that I could hide any expression it might involuntarily evoke.

  A second later I sighed then turned back to her and said, “I’m sorry. I’ve really kept you long enough, ma’am.”