Quintic

by V. P. Trick

  The walls were painted a dull pinkish-brown hue. The bathroom was at the back. Old tiles, old shower, old sink, no windows. In the farthest corner, the shower frame partially hid an empty linen closet; the door, crooked, did not close completely. No towels, facecloths, nothing. How did guests dry themselves after a shower? Considering the clientèle, surely showers were mandatory, before and after usage of the bed. Was hot water even running in this place? She checked the tap. Water dripped, almost warm, almost clear. The air smelled of mould and cheap disinfectant. She found the whole place depressing. Surely not a place for lovers rendez-vous. Somewhat like the houses she had brought for Christopher’s release, except more decrepit. Decades of it.

  She steered Charles to the third room, to the same furniture, same carpeting, same doors going nowhere, same design but in a mirror image. When she tried the handle of the inside door to the second room, she found it wasn’t locked on this side. Thinking the view through the rooms with all connecting doors opened would give an interesting effect − she might use it as an escape route in one book − she went to the fourth room and again tried the handle. If the door opened, she would ask Charles to push the bed. Unfortunately, the two communicating doors in the fourth room were locked, their keyholes glued.

  Hum. Maybe she could come back later in the week and ask the manager to open all the doors for her? She imagined the sight it would make! The glue wouldn’t be a problem; she could hire a guy to drill through the locks or have the lock casings removed. For sure her hermit friend Mario knew of such a man. Mario knew guys for everything. For some extra cash, she was sure the manager wouldn’t mind. It wasn’t like his place was rolling in gold.

  In the third room, Charles had enthusiastically succeeded in pushing the bed aside. Poor guy. She helped him push it back.

  After the bed moving, she had enough. She was hungry. Perhaps she could ask babysitter Charles to get her some food or better yet, she should ask him to lunch. Christopher might not like that, though. Before they exited, she took a peek in the bathroom. Any towels in this one? Nope. It was identical to the other, even for the linen closet not closing correctly. Although this cabinet turned out not to hide empty shelves but a door. She jiggled the handle and, as the door popped open, found herself looking out behind the motel. Neat.

  She stepped out into the sun-baked dusty field behind the building. A few shrubs here and there. A land pocked by small hills, the sandy ground resembling waves. The view of the freeway barely cut through the late afternoon hazy glow. From here, she couldn’t hear the sound of a single car. No wonder the motel’s parking lot was fenced right up to the building on both sides; that field must be full of rats and mice, perhaps coyotes.

  She turned to face the motel. The back view looked worse than the front. She counted three access doors to the field; all three decorated by mildew on their lower half, fading to dirt in their middle and peeling paint on their higher third. When Charles came through backdoor number one, she waved him back. Enough is enough, she thought. She was officially starving.

  “Give me a minute, and I’ll take you out for dinner,” she shouted at Charles. “Go get yourself a cruiser.” This was going to be a fun ride.

  Why did she turn to have a last look at the field? In retrospect, she couldn’t say. Another picture to take if she came back perhaps? She noticed something on the ground, barely higher than the top of a small hill. Taking a step closer, she stretched her neck. Hoping not to see a rat or some dead animal, she took another step. One more. Two. Three. Four. She did not recognise it was a man’s foot until she was standing right next to it.

  There he lied on his back, completely naked but for the black cloth covering his face. Some dark goo crusted the cloth. Great body if not for it lying dead naked. He wasn’t even wearing socks. Funny, wasn’t it? No socks but a cock ring. She stared at it before slowly shuffling back. And then she broke into a run, back to the door, back to the bathroom, where she stopped short. What to do? Had trouble found her again? Surely Christopher couldn’t say she had been looking for it, damn it!

  She barely managed to close the bathroom door softly, no need to attract Charles’s attention, and tried to calm down. She didn’t want to throw up. Luckily her stomach was empty. She coughed, spat, breathed and repeated. She was getting good at this. Coughed, spat, breathed, and again. She stopped when she felt light-headed.

  She opened the door gently, glanced into the depressing room, no signs of Charles. She crossed the room silently and peered out in the parking lot. Charles was waiting, practising an I’m-leaning-casually-against-a-wall pose. Not a success.

  “Grab your chance, Kiddie,” she whispered without looking at him. “Dead guy in the field. Through the back. Straight line out after the bathroom’s cabinet.”

  She heard Charles’s ‘Holy Moses’ as he went back to the room but she was already heading back to Christopher’s truck. She locked the door and sat with her eyes closed, breathing hard, trying not to think. At least, she thought, Christopher hadn’t been there to see her storm out of the room.

  Chris

  From the office where he was listening to the manager and the officer in charge going on and on without saying anything worth a shit, Chris saw both Patricia race to the car and Charles rush inside the room. Now what, he wondered? Surely the guy hadn’t been improper, not the type. Granted she had been a little flirty, but the kid looked too shy for it to lead anywhere. Then again, with her, anything was possible. Considering that the interrogation was going nowhere, the manager hadn’t seen anything, hadn’t heard anything, hadn’t known the girl, had watched television all night and hadn’t seen the client before or after, Chris decided he had heard enough. She might accuse him of being overprotective as usual but so be it. He headed back to his truck.

  Patricia was sitting with her eyes closed. She looked pale, and he noticed she was breathing through her mouth. ‘Something is up,’ both his instinct and the knot in his stomach screamed.

  He knocked and waited for her to unlock the door. When she didn’t move, he used his key fob and barely wrenched the door open. It could be a delayed reaction, the last weeks, months, had been straining to her. Her denying it all hadn’t helped any.

  She spoke, eyes closed, before he had time to say anything. “You were right, this is not much fun. I think I want to go now. You can stay and finish up. Could you call a cab or have someone drive me back?”

  Shit, something was definitely wrong. “How about I ask Charles to bring you back to your hotel?” He suggested, to see how she should react. Tell me, Angel, if the rookie was out of line.

  A shaken but excited Charles dashed out of the room. “I saw the body of a dead man,” he announced. “Naked Caucasian male, in the field behind the motel. Shall I go tell the chief?”

  Fucking shit, those stupid suburb cops had left a dead guy out back? What kind of shitty organisation was Floyd running?!

  “Why the fuck did I bother asking if you had searched the place? You had searched it, right?” He should have done it himself. Fucking incompetents. Incompetents infuriated him. Fuck, he was pissed and more than a little worried. What had she seen? The knot in his stomach tightened, and so did his fists.

  Patricia opened her eyes to look straight at him. Pondering his next move, Chris stared back. “Considering Officer Charles just found this new dead body,” she said. “I think you should let him take the lead, Big guy. I’ll take a cab.”

  Yah right, Officer Charles. Mentally composing himself, Chris took a deep silent breath. On the surface, he was cool and composed, but his fists remained clenched, the knot tight.

  Before she could add anything, Charles saved Chris from arguing with her. “I’m sorry to say, Sir, that I did not find the body. Ms Patricia did. It would seem that we have not searched the place completely.” No shit. Floyd might be lazy, but the kid had potential.

  “OK, Charles. Since Patricia here thinks you’re up to it, you go tell your chief. You’re in charge of securing the s
cene.” Charles left right away, leaving them to glare at each other. “Anything specific you would like to share with me, Princess?” Depending on how she answered, he would know if she was in shock.

  She sighed and gazed away for a few seconds.

  “Anything to tell me, Patricia?”

  “Tell you what? I do not know what you mean,” she whispered. The shadow of a smile at the corner of her mouth told him she was going to be all right.

  “OK then, Darling of mine. I will have an officer drive you home.”

  Even if this weren’t his patch, with a double murder and a rookie in charge, he would be staying awhile. Leaving it all to this lazy crew would be unprofessional. But if they had questions that Charles could not answer about their finding, well, they were going to suck it up and wait for tomorrow when she was less unsettled.

  Even if the chief didn’t really have a man to spare, Chris asked for a patrol car to drive her home. Under the circumstances, Floyd knew he couldn’t afford to say no. Chris helped her in the blue-and-white.

  She leaned out the car window to wave him goodbye. “Don’t work too late. And, Christopher, I do hope that I, hum, didn’t step on any pieces of evidence.” And off she was. Damn woman.

  Her Interlude

  As soon as she closed the room of her hotel suite, Patricia stripped and threw her clothes in the trash before taking a long shower to clean herself of the sweat and dirt from the field, and the smell of the dead. Rationally, she knew, since she had not touched the corpse, that she did not stink of dead, and yet the irrational part of her smelled something.

  At her request, Luis, the hotel barman, brought her up a glass of red wine from the hotel’s secret selection. The colour was beautiful, almost raspberry red and the taste subtle but deep, with just enough tannins, once again a delectable choice. Maybe she could get drunk. Or go to bed. She hadn’t eaten in what seemed like days. Those suburb cops had not learned how to drive correctly; she had felt like throwing up during the whole ride over.

  So she was grouching. Bitching was an important part of her instinctive reaction pattern to the recently departed, nothing more than an automatic reflex. See a corpse, throw up, grumble. She wondered yet again what it meant. Perhaps she simply hated dead people? She had yet to get used to them. How did Christopher do it? He always looked so imperturbable at crime scenes, not a muscle flinching.

  An old instructor of Christopher had told Lou, Christopher’s Captain, that the Big guy had been like that even in police school. It might explain why he was so good at what he did. No reaction to impair his brain, and quite a brain he had. She suspected he didn’t see corpses as people, more as problems with a multitude of possible solutions, like a challenging puzzle.

  She did like the Big guy. A lot. A whole lot more than like, in fact. Crazy about him. Which was a problem with no solutions. Impossible man. How could I have let that happened, she cursed herself again? The cursing was more and more one of wonder than anger. She might just say yes to moving in with him. Maybe. That glass of wine was really hitting her hard. Time for bed.

  When Christopher called around ten on his way back from the crime scene, she was already fast asleep on her couch thanks to some red wine and didn’t hear a thing.

  The next morning, she went to that little French café she had discovered a few months ago close to Main Street and worked on her manuscript. She had a routine for writing days. Get up. Drink the fresh orange juice waiting for her on the entry table that Benjamin, the hotel’s weekday valet, brought up around seven. Take a shower, no matter if and how many she had taken the day before. Get dressed. Her writing dress code was casual; today she had on sleek jeans, a loose navy blue t-shirt falling on one shoulder, a strapless navy blue bra, navy blue panties and a pair of sandals to complete the navy blue workday outfit.

  The routine continued with: grab breakfast in the hotel’s small restaurant. She sat on the kitchen’s countertop to watch Lewis prepare the breakfast orders for the other guests, scrambled eggs that morning. The eggs were delicious: farm eggs scrambled with milk and a touch of cream, some shallots, red peppers and slices of browned maple sausages, all served with thick slices of white pain de ménage buttered all the way to the crust. Perfect. Once she packed her laptop and wallet, she was good to go.

  She almost called Christopher but figured he had got home late the night before hence she didn’t. She almost cheated and packed her mobile phone. She was trying to quit her mobile dependency. It wasn’t that she chatted on the phone a lot, but she did photograph (spy on might be more accurate) the world around; the habit was becoming way too addictive.

  Mario had installed all kinds of applications on that thing, turning it into a simile James Bond phone. Mario’s phones were not of the type an average person would or should find useful. She loved her phone, but since she aimed to be normal, she left the phone back in her room. Besides, if Christopher called today, he was going to ask about the motel incident for sure. If she didn’t bring her phone, she’d miss that call. Childish.

  As she walked to the café, a good half-hour walk, she observed her fellow early birds rush along on the sidewalks, in their cars, coming in and out of apartment buildings and offices. Lucky her, she was in no such hurry. As she did not allow herself to ruminate on the previous afternoon, she was enjoying her morning stroll.

  At the coffee shop, she sat at her usual table in the front window, her back against the wall. There again she studied people on the street. She also had a front-row view of the coffee shop, not that she had much to admire at this hour.

  With its dozen small tables, barely big enough for a laptop, this was not the kind of place where students hung out. Their loss. The coffee was excellent and the owner, Marcel, a true Frenchman. When she took breaks after a couple of pages of writing or an intense scene, they talked about the weather, the news, films coming out, anything really, all in French. C’était charmant! Marcel kept her informed on the hockey, football, baseball and whatever-ball scores or the players’ injuries or exchanges. In French, it all sounded much more interesting. Sometimes, she would talk about the game with Christopher. The man was an ex-jock, but he was gentleman enough not to ask her about too specific questions that might have betrayed her limited interest of the games.

  She drank way too many lattes and worked straight until the evening; the sandwich Marcel had made her was long gone. She grew tired from her full day of sitting. Time to go home, take a long bath and go to bed.

  Her answering machine flashing light indicated two messages; her mobile phone message icon showed one missed call. She listened to Christopher’s messages first.

  He had left one on her machine in the late morning. “Call me.” Then, early afternoon, he had left a more detailed message on her mobile. That message demonstrated his gentlemanly ways once again as they did not mention the dead guy in the field. Had he foreseen she didn’t want to talk about the motel thing? So perceptive of him.

  “I’ll be working late, Angel. Have a nice evening, and try to think about me some.” Cute. “I have to go out of town for a few days for some police business. Last-minute meetings with the big Brass.”

  A free business trip, she translated; Central’s way of sucking up again. Didn’t they know he hated the trips as much as the sucking up? Too bad for him but quite good for her, she was off the hook. When he got back, in a black mood from the bootless errand, his workaholic tendencies were going to kick into overdrive. Each week, the Big guy went over each of the team’s cases with each of the guys, pondered the latest developments and discussed the findings with the team; upon his return, he’d want to play catch-up in the cases. The motel murders weren’t his, so she considered herself off the hook for her motel trespassing. Hopefully.

  “And Patricia? Please stay out of trouble. I hear the library is lovely this time of year.” Damn him.

  It had been a while since she had gone to the precinct. For some reason, she kept postponing it. Of course, the team would be happy to see
her, as would she them, but with Christopher away, it wouldn’t be as much fun, would it? Besides, no doubt they would all keep an eye on her as their damn usual.

  Her fun was foremost, in the Monday morning meeting reviews. Going out with the team to interrogate a person of interest was good research too. She had missed this week’s meeting, and no way was the team going to let her tag along without Christopher’s permission. They had their orders, and they all were very conscientious about following them (when Christopher issued them at least). Had she burned the team too many times? During her first weeks, she had successfully tagged along with each of the Big guy’s officers (tricked them into it most of the time). Unfortunately now, they saw her coming from parsecs away and kept her busy at the office when Christopher wasn’t there. Such was his leadership. Her manuscript would be getting her full attention then.

  The second message on her machine was from that Charles officer.

  “Yes, good afternoon Ms Patricia. If you could, please return my call at your earliest convenience. It regards your deposition as an eye witness.” A witness of what? The guy had been by her side; he had seen the same damn thing she had.

  She called Charles back nonetheless. As it was late, she counted on the rookie officer to have left for the night already. Talking to answering machines was way easier than talking to real people, especially about cadavers. Unfortunately for her, Charles had not left.