I give the door a shove and it screeches on its hinges. It opens, swings all the way back as if it is inviting me to enter, unhindered, without opposition. A thick carpet of dust clings to every object, and the limited light that seems to have snuck in behind me illuminates the dust particles suspended in the stagnant air. A quick appraisal reveals nothing of importance, nothing that proves or disproves my mother’s story, but then what did I expect, the outline of a body?
The interior is in such bad shape, covered with not only dust but leaves and spiderwebs and other debris. Short of dusting and wiping everything down, nothing will be revealed here. There are window frames and glass panes covered in spiderwebs, and Mason jars, most of them in shards on the ground. There is a hammer on the table, but why wouldn’t there be? This is a shed, and sheds contain tools, so that’s nothing to be suspicious about. Even so, I only stare at the hammer, covered in some sort of white substance that has partially flaked off. Webs and spider eggs cover it, some of them round balls, others squishy and fluffy masses of silk. I don’t want to touch it.
I hear a cracking sound and I shift my weight. The floor is soft, almost springy it seems, and I twist the tip of my shoe into the ground. I bend down, wipe the leaves and debris aside, and underneath the floor is solid. And white. Gypsum. Plaster of Paris.
Outside the sun hides behind the clouds, not allowing for a fleck of light within this shed, not so much as a broken window permitting a spear of it to enter.
I can’t shake the feeling that this place is alive and dead at the same time. The only thing thriving is the hot and stagnant air, fecund with what has become apparent: my mother’s stories may not be stories after all.
—
At the Lark I try to avoid my likeness in the mirrors of the rooms I clean. I am as pale as the plaster I discovered on the floor of the shed and there are so many questions circling in my mind: Why is my mother telling me these stories? Is she trying to distract me with Quinn’s life so I don’t ask other questions that pertain to my very own past? Or maybe she’s just good at telling stories, and I know that’s a fact about her that is quite true.
Later, as I stock the cleaning cart, Bordeaux appears from behind, making me jump. A feeling builds in the pit of my stomach. Then my heart starts to beat even harder and faster, my hands move irrationally, pretending to count towels and sheets.
“You don’t look well,” he says.
“I’m okay,” I say and continue to count the towels, hoping he’ll just go away. “Stop sneaking up on people.”
“You’re not going to get sick, fall down, hit your head, and then sue me, are you? I’m worried about you. Do you feel as bad as you look?”
Bordeaux seems concerned, yet there are two people covering three shifts seven days a week—he can’t afford to lose me.
“Come to the lobby with me. Sit down and rest. I have to run out in a bit.”
Later, we have coffee in the lobby, me in front of the counter, Bordeaux behind it, hammering away on the keyboard.
“You frighten me with those looks on your face sometimes. Like you’re about to pass out.”
“I’m fine. The medication really helps,” I lie and scan my cart to make sure it’s fully stocked with cleaning supplies, towels, and sheets. “It’s the hard-core stuff. Don’t worry, I won’t fall and crack my skull open.”
“Are you sure?”
There’s something in the way he looks at me, not just looks at me but takes me in.
“Nothing to worry about,” I say.
“If you say so.” Bordeaux scans his computer screen. “We have three rooms booked, another five about to be. There’s a problem up at an RV site, something about the plumbing, and some campers need to stay here until the problem is resolved.” He studies the screen some more. “I’m running out to get some more coffee and donuts, maybe even some orange juice. We’ll be full for the next few days so I appreciate your commitment. You don’t look well, but you’re hanging in there. I appreciate it. I’ll be back, I won’t be too long.”
“No problem,” I say. Looking at Bordeaux now, he is nothing but a haggard man looking fifteen years older than he really is. There is a shortness about him, the way he deals with customers, always to the point. I wonder if there are hidden things that allow me to appraise him further, in the drawers and boxes all over this office.
After Bordeaux gets in his car and drives off, I go through the drawers behind the counter. I come up empty: nothing but receipts, magazines, pens and pencils, some loose change. Nothing meaning anything. Besides, I have no idea what I’m looking for.
I hear the doorbell jingle and Ariana appears, dragging the scent of fabric softener and dryer sheets behind her.
“Chica,” she says and smiles. “So glad you’re back.” Ariana is in her forties, pretending to be ten years younger with perfectly drawn Sharpie eyebrows and a lip liner making her lips unnaturally pouty. Ariana works in push-up bras and skinny jeans, and she has five girls whose names all start out with the letter A, but I can’t ever remember a single one. She still might try for a boy, she told me the other day, if it wasn’t for her husband driving a semi and being gone most of the time. “I hate working with Bordeaux alone. He’s a creep. You all better?”
“Yes, I’m all better. Do me a favor?”
“Sure, what you need?”
“Keep an eye on the lobby and text me when Bordeaux gets back?”
“Ay, chica, what are you up to?”
“I need to check on something.”
“Go ahead. He’ll be gone for a bit, he gets the donuts cheaper at the other side of town. Don’t worry.”
I leave my cart in front of 101 and walk the entire row of rooms down to 120, then I cross the parking lot toward the suites. I don’t know what I’m looking for. I know Bobby wouldn’t approve of my snooping at all, and it’s just a hunch, an instinct of sorts, but the building seems to be sitting there just waiting to be explored.
I know the suites are as old as the rest of the motel and none of the rooms except the lobby were ever renovated since it was built in the late sixties. James Earl Bordeaux Sr. worked at the Lark all through my high school years and beyond, according to Bobby, until he was wheelchair-bound and his son, James Bordeaux Jr., took over.
As I stand in front of the suites, I know one thing for sure; when playing truth or dare, I’d always picked dare. I pause by the first door and wipe the dirty sign with my fingers. 301. This one must be the storage room.
I unlock the door and step inside, leaving it ajar. I pause long enough for my eyes to adjust to the dimness of the room. The air is thick; even the feeblest breeze seems to be unwilling to cross the threshold. I give the room a quick survey: an array of unused furniture, headboards stacked one in front of the other, mattresses leaning against a wall, MicroFridges, about half a dozen of them, stacked on top of one another. The entire room is covered in a layer of dust. I back out, holding my breath in the process, and I wait until the door closes before I breathe again.
302 doesn’t unlock with my universal key and so I move on to 303. It’s a somewhat intact room, though there’s no bedding or mattress. Where a dresser and a TV on a desk should be, there is nothing more than three cheap metal shelves holding nesting bins, numbers written on them. On the floor lies the paperback I tossed in days ago.
I step closer to the bins. I struggle to connect the numbers, miss the connection between them. I sound them out in my head, one by one, and finally a pattern emerges; the bins are numbered by years, 6972 is 1969 through 1972, 7375 is 1973 through 1975, and so forth. I rummage through the bins and find the usual items: stuffed animals, watches, single earrings, books, shoes, clothes, a couple of flip phones, purses, and duffel bags. Most of the containers are dusty, and there are occasional spiderwebs stretching from one bin to another. There’s only one item that catches my eyes: a briefcase, reddish leather, with a three-dial combi
nation lock, its surface not as dusty as the rest of the items. Not only does it seem out of place, but it looks like it’s been handled recently.
My cell rings and I see Ariana’s number pop up. Something tells me that I have nothing to lose, that I can return it later, and even if I don’t, no one will miss it, and so I grab the briefcase and on my way back to push my cart in front of 101, I throw the briefcase on the backseat of my car. With a thud it bounces off and comes to rest on the floor, half hidden underneath the passenger’s seat.
The rest of the day goes by quickly. The RV people need directions to Laundromats and grocery stores, and after Ariana leaves, I mop the lobby and wipe down the tables covered with powdered sugar.
As I clean up spilled coffee in the lobby, I have a moment of courage. I don’t know how far I can go, how far I should go, but the feeling has been building up for a while. I’m not alone—Bobby is across the street, just like always. It’s how Quinn must have felt after she collected the crickets in a jar. It’s as if life can’t be lived in a state of fear. You get accustomed and then you forge ahead.
“James,” I say, “do I call you James or Bordeaux?”
“Bordeaux is fine.”
“So, I was thinking about something. About the girl in the woods everyone is talking about.”
“What about her?”
“I don’t know if you know but I was the one who found her. I’m the jogger they talked about on the news.” I wait for a reaction but there is none.
“Is that right? That must have been quite exciting, finding her.” His voice is flat and his features have become lifeless in the bluish light of the computer screen.
“I didn’t tell you about the rest, did I?” I say and watch him closely.
“Tell me what?”
“Since I fell in that creek and I hit my head, I’ve been having these episodes. I see things, and I hear voices.”
“You shouldn’t underestimate a concussion. Did you see someone about this? Are you still taking your medication?” he asks as he hammers away at the keyboard.
“It’s not a concussion, not a medical problem, Bordeaux, it’s more like . . . like”—I look past him as if I’m trying to find the right words—“it’s more of a psychic thing. I’m just worried something is going to happen to other girls,” I say casually.
He looks up then, startled, but immediately catches himself. “You have quite the imagination.”
“You never know. Jane Doe stayed here, right?” I check the time and drop a cup in the wastebasket. I feel like I have nothing to lose. “Did the cops ever question you? About her? I would think they must have.”
“Like I said, I don’t know much about it,” he says. “She stayed for one night and left the next morning.”
“I better go. Look at me just chatting along.”
He flicks on the Vacancy sign. It stutters for a second but then illuminates the lobby in an eerie reddish glow.
I leave the Lark and take off faster than I usually do. When I reach the farm, I turn on the overhead light in the car and sit the briefcase on my lap. The three-digit code is stuck at random numbers and as I wonder about a tool I can use to pry the locks, I swipe the rectangles toward the outside and the locks snap open. I open the lid and I stare at twelve rectangular compartments with jewelry boxes neatly positioned in a gray foam layer. Prized Possessions is printed in the corner of each box in ornate gold letters. I dig into the edge of the foam and there are two more levels beneath. Only the top layer has three vacant spots; the other layers contain twelve boxes each. I pull out one box and open it.
Within the box rests a bracelet with charms. The pouch in the leather interior of the briefcase holds an inventory sheet: 36 boxes, Assorted Charm Bracelets, 1 dozen each. For demonstration only. It lists a travel theme, a fairy-tale theme, a Chinese zodiac theme.
I arrange the boxes on the passenger’s seat. The Chinese zodiac has animals: rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, goat, monkey, rooster, dog, and pig. The travel theme: a ship’s wheel, compass, globe, suitcase, Eiffel Tower, airplane, passport, cruise ship, sombrero, Aloha written across a lei garland. The fairy-tale theme: shoe, key, clock, handheld mirror, teapot, ring, chair, quill, and frog. Nothing seems to make sense, I get confused, can’t count, the charms blend into one another. I run out of room, I drop some on the floor mat of the passenger’s side, and I attempt to count again. After the buzzing in my hands ceases, my head begins to hurt, but this is where I’m at: eleven zodiac, eleven travel, and ten fairy-tale bracelets. I tuck my trembling hands under my thighs.
Seared into my brain stem are two images: a printout of the charm bracelet Jane Doe wore—a ship’s wheel, a compass, a globe, a suitcase and a camera, an airplane and a passport, and a sombrero. The second image is the sparkle among the leaves and soil and acorns when Jane’s hand began to move. A shiny glint, a silver flicker, a shiny bauble among the forest debris.
Trinkets to ward off evil or bring good luck, a memory of a trip, a gift, and charms added over years, some girl’s rite of passage. To the killer they are bait, a piece of jewelry given for a purpose. I think of Bobby, what Sheriff de la Vega told him years ago. There were more women. Easy prey, illegals, the women no one looks for. The ones who could be anywhere. And they just might be.
I see the Bordeaux connection, yet I can’t prove a thing. I take a deep breath. I need more time, time to sort this all out. Yet every scent, every shadow, every memory disguising itself as a vision, could be my last.
Thirty-six
MEMPHIS
A scream sounded in the distance. Its echo traveled toward the shed, pulling Quinn back into the present. It tore through her like a shard of glass: she knew that scream, had heard it many times before. She dropped the bloody hammer and it landed on the table with a thud, bounced and slid across the surface, knocking over everything in its path; bottles without stoppers tipped over, others broke and then spilled, their contents mingled with one another, odors around her so powerful she was about to faint.
Though Quinn felt dizzy, her hearing remained sharp and clear. The screams continued, one after the other in short rapid screeches. She had recognized Tain’s voice with the first scream and Quinn feared for the baby, feared for its very life. She had no time to waste, even as she’d only been able to hit Nolan once. She wanted his death to be grand, as epic as his abhorrent treatment of her had been. Quinn wiped off her face, stumbled across the shed’s threshold, and tripped over his fallen body, barely able to hold on to the door. The latch, cold and rusty, seemed to be put in her hand by some higher power, the only thing allowing her to remain on her feet, breaking her fall. Trapped is what she wanted Nolan to be, trapped in the stench and the filth and the smut. If he wasn’t dead already from the hammer to his skull, he deserved to be engulfed by his chemicals, his lungs full of poison. Quinn slammed the door shut, heard the latch engage. She prayed the shed would crumble and fall on top of him, a fitting burial for the man he was.
With blurry vision she recognized the path ahead, then focused on the cracked dirt underfoot, and stumbled along as the cries got louder and more intense with every step. Her heart fell and Quinn knew what was to come; she’d run upstairs, enter Tain’s bedroom, and there the infant would be, blue and lifeless. Birdbrained Tain had rolled on top of the baby in her sleep, suffocating her like an inconsiderate child would fall asleep on top of a doll. But she wasn’t mad at Tain. It was her fault, she should never have left Tain with the baby, half-witted Tain, Quinn should have known, and she was to blame.
Quinn busted through the front door, taking two steps at a time. She felt sluggish, the chemicals making her body feel like dough, expanding and folding in on itself. She felt as if she was in one of those dreams where her legs moved slowly as if she was trapped under water, powerless and drained of all energy. Quinn stopped at the top of the stairs.
Another scream. Shrill, pierci
ng. Dramatic. The screams didn’t come from upstairs, but from the kitchen. She turned and stumbled, tripped, managed to hold on to the railing, pulled herself up, back to her feet, and she realized going down the stairs was so much harder than up. The steps seemed to merge and she wasn’t sure where one ended and another began.
Tain stood in the kitchen, her nightgown sticking to her breasts, milk leaking down the front of her body, and there she stood, rooted to the ground, screaming.
“What’s wrong? Where is the baby?”
Tain continued to scream, one cry after the other, as if she couldn’t bear silence altogether. Quinn surveyed the kitchen, didn’t see anything amiss and went back upstairs, one step at a time, careful not to fall and injure herself this time. Tain’s bedroom was empty; so were the other rooms.
Back downstairs, Quinn embraced Tain and finally the girl quit screaming, allowed herself to be held. “The baby, Tain, where’s the baby? What did you do with the baby?” Quinn held Tain by her shoulders, shook her until her head bobbed back and forth. But no word came from her mouth but a croak.
Quinn searched the house. She started upstairs again, one bedroom at a time, peeked into the bathroom, moved the shower curtain, even, kitchen, living room, and back porch. Nothing.
Quinn thought about going down to get the sheriff, telling him about the missing baby, but he’d ask for Nolan, and then they’d find him in the shed and he’d throw her in a cell. Creel was an important name, still held weight in Aurora, still contained the power of what once was. But Quinn didn’t care, the baby was all she cared about. She went outside, into the barn, then to the well. She took the cap off and peered inside, wondering what she’d do if she heard a whimper. Or if she saw a body, floating.
And like magic there was a whimper. At first she thought it was a figment of her imagination, just a trick her mind played on her, but there it was, a shriek, gentle at first, quickly spiraling into urgency until it was a full-blown cry. It wasn’t coming from the well, it wasn’t in the barn or behind it, not from the shed, but it came from upstairs, from the bedrooms, through the open window.
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