by Saul Black
He didn’t stop at the Motel 6. He wasn’t going to stop anywhere – he was afraid of stopping – but after another hour he felt dizzy and sick. He knew he was on the 70 east (the fat-faced Asian guy at the gas station had confirmed it, though he’d eyed Xander as if he was crazy) but every road sign he looked at started the objects jabbering in his head – and he couldn’t stop himself from looking at them. He kept thinking how bad it had been to see that bitch cop just right there in his house – in his own fucking house! – snooping through the rooms, touching his things. It was something he’d never imagined could happen. (That was the best thing about the money, being able to have a place no one could come into, a place most people didn’t even know anyone was living in.) Right at the moment he’d seen her the world had started shifting under his feet, like the moving floor in the Funhouse at the fair that day with his mother and Jimmy. He’d fallen on his ass and Jimmy had picked him up, roughly, laughing.
He slowed for an exit, wishing he’d shoved the jug up inside her properly, but he would’ve had to cut her and he’d heard sirens (hadn’t he?) and all that had mattered was getting out while there was still time.
The guy on reception at the Super 8 looked about eighteen. Had some black in him, Xander thought. Long eyelashes and a girlish face with full lips and his dreads pulled back into a little ponytail.
‘Cash?’ he said, when Xander opened his wallet.
‘Yeah,’ Xander said. He had to hold on to the edge of the desk to stop himself from swaying. He was unbearably hot. When he got in the room, he thought, he’d take a cold shower. Having thought of this, he was desperate for it, for how soothing it would be. There was a fat plastic Santa Claus on the reception desk, beaming, standing on one leg.
‘Sir, we’re going to need a credit card to hold against the room anyway,’ the kid said.
‘I can’t sign,’ Xander said, holding up his bandaged hand.
‘Oh that’s OK,’ the kid said. ‘You don’t need to sign with the card, we just run it through the machine. But, hmm, you need to sign the register.’
‘Well, I can’t.’
‘Can you sign with your other hand? I’m really sorry, sir. It just needs to be… You know, it doesn’t have to be perfect or anything. That’s too bad about your hand.’ The kid slid the registration form and a pen towards him across the desk.
Xander picked up the pen in his left hand.
Hell, this is going to be good. I can’t wait to see this. Come on, genius, let’s see what you can do.
The pen felt huge between his fingers. He thought he was going to throw up. The reception area smelled of damp carpet. The kid waited, smiling. His lips were constantly struggling to cover his teeth. Xander had an image of jabbing the pen into one of the kid’s big, dark, liquid eyes.
He held the tip of the pen against the dotted line where the kid had made a mark. A xylophone mark. X is for xylophone. It always mixed him up. ‘Xylophone’ started with the same sound as ‘zipper’. How could that be? How could that be? He didn’t believe in it.
‘Seriously, sir, just your initials are fine. It’s no biggie.’
Xander knew what his initials were. He’d had to sign them for the bank, when Lloyd and Teresa had got him an account. Lloyd had said: It doesn’t have to be your whole name, son. It just has to be a mark on the paper that identifies you. Don’t think of it as writing. Think of it as drawing a picture. I know you can draw. I’ve seen you do it. So look, just draw a straight leg with a straight foot pointing thataway, to the right. Then draw a big crescent moon right next to it. There you go, that’s an L and a C. Now you put any squiggle you like through the middle of it – same squiggle every time, mind you, so make it one you can remember – and you’ve got yourself a signature.
With his left hand Xander carved out the straight leg with the straight foot and a hopeless crescent moon. Didn’t bother with the squiggle. L was for lemon and C was for clock. Yet every time he had to sign he could only connect the marks on the paper to the straight leg and foot and the crescent moon. The lemon and the clock were something completely different. Lemon. Clock. Leon. Crowe. They had nothing to do with each other. It was why he didn’t believe in it.
‘Great,’ the kid said, big-smiling. ‘You’re all set. Here’s your room key. You’re in room twenty-three, which is left out of reception, up the stairs and all the way along to the end of the walkway. You need anything at all, just dial nine. Enjoy your stay.’
In room twenty-three, Xander put the shopping bags on the bed, undressed (avoiding the mirrors) and took his cold shower. For a few minutes afterwards he felt better, but every time he thought of the bitch cop and the young patrolman he got angry, and the anger turned to heat with the jabbering objects in his head. He redressed his hand, but blood still seeped a red blotch through the lint and into the fresh bandage. He should have bought clean clothes. Should have. He hadn’t done so many of the things he should have done. His head was like the wasps’ nest in Mama Jean’s backyard, never entirely still. And the slightest disturbance could set it swarming. His face itched. The fucking beard. Naked, he went back into the bathroom, plugged in the new shaver, found the attachment like the ones they shaved soldiers’ heads with in movies, and began to remove it. The buzzing of the thing made everything worse, and it was tough to do with his left hand. But he was determined.
When he’d finished, he moved the shopping bags from the bed, pulled back the covers and climbed in. The heat had left him. Now he was shivering.
He didn’t sleep well. The pain from his hand kept waking him. Painkillers. He would buy painkillers. Why did he always think of these things afterwards?
It was just after six thirty when he went back to reception to check out. The same kid, drinking a Coke, surprised to see him. Xander observed him realising he’d shaved off the beard.
‘Everything all right, sir?’
‘Yeah. Just need to get back on the road.’
The kid opened his big mouth to say something – then decided not to. Smiled instead. Xander was used to people smiling when they were thinking something else. Someone smiling always meant something else. Paulie had smiled when he’d told him about the little girl.
You want to fix this, you need to start with that.
‘Hey,’ Xander said (the idea had opened like a flower in his brain), ‘you think you could help me with the GPS?’ He held up his bandaged hand again. ‘I can’t… You know?’
‘Sure,’ the kid said. ‘Let me get those bags for you, too.’
At the van, Xander had to let the kid sit in the driver’s seat to work the gadget. He smelled a little like those stores that sold incense and other Asian shit. His fingernails were weirdly perfect.
‘OK,’ the kid said, having tapped the screen a couple of times until the destination cursor blinked. ‘Where you headed?’
EIGHTY-THREE
Carla left the hospital immediately after the interview with Claudia Grey. During it, she hadn’t said a word to Valerie, had barely looked at her. Carla had asked all the questions. She was thorough, Valerie had to concede. There wasn’t anything Valerie would have asked that Carla didn’t. She’d perfected the requisite calm neutrality too: Claudia, I have to ask, though I understand this is painful for you: was there any sexual assault? Claudia had turned her head away for a while, eyes closed. No tears. (The tears would come later, Valerie knew, in the small hours of the months and years ahead, in the quiet moments of a sunny afternoon or in the middle of washing dishes; Claudia would be ambushed by memory for the rest of her life. Claudia would be a different Claudia as long as she lived. But she would live. There was that.) Eventually, Claudia had said: No. But Valerie knew what an excuse for the truth that was. A letter of the law truth. In the spirit of the law the whole ordeal had been a sexual assault.
‘So how fucked am I right now?’ Valerie asked Will in the corridor, once Carla was out of sight.
‘Look, Carla thinks you’re suspended. I had to do a lot of sweet-talk
ing to get her to let you sit in just now. She threatened to leak your Reno meltdown and blood test results to the press. But the truth is Deerholt hasn’t even signed off on the sick leave story yet, or he hadn’t when I left the shop. So technically it’s just verbal, all of it. And you haven’t exactly made it easy for him, what with finding the killer and saving a young woman’s life and all.’
‘Not me. Russell Crowe. And I lost the killer.’
‘Yeah, yeah, yeah. It looks like luck. It always looks like luck. But who found Zoo Guy? Who ID’d the tree in Redding? Who bothered to come down here and sit through the mall tapes?’
‘OK, I’m a genius. Is Carla going back?’
‘I doubt it. Not with the Colorado lead. If it is a lead. It’s still a needle in a state-sack even if he’s there.’
‘Get Leon’s picture out again, with beard and without. And make sure they run the info that he’s got a wounded right hand. I want it on every news channel. Ditto the van plates. Get it out right now.’
‘Sure, but it’s Christmas Eve. Everyone’ll be watching shit.’
‘I know. Do it.’
‘What are you going to do? Drive around Colorado with a broken head?’
‘Who’s on duty at home?’
‘Half a dozen of the regulars. Ed and Laura tomorrow. I’m off tomorrow, but we’ve got my mom and Marion’s parents, so feel free to call with a non-emergency.’
‘Any hotline calls I need to know straight away. Anything, anywhere.’
‘You’re staying here then?’
‘It’s closer to Colorado, and Colorado’s all we’ve got right now. Besides, Claudia might remember the name of the town.’
‘There’s more in there she’s not telling.’
‘I know, but whatever she did she did to stay alive.’
‘Fuckin’ A. Girl’s a rock star.’
‘One last thing. My car.’
‘You’re not driving.’
‘Yeah, well, since I’m still technically your boss, let me put it another way: go get my car, fucker.’
*
Claudia was hanging up a cell-phone call when Valerie went back in to see her alone.
‘Your parents?’ Valerie said.
Claudia nodded. ‘One of the nurses lent me her phone. They’re kind here.’
‘They coming?’
‘I told them not to, but yeah. My sister too.’
‘That’s great.’
Valerie sat by the bed. She was feeling terrible. The anaesthetic was wearing off and the stitches itched. Her hands trembled. Nausea came and went. She was sweating, despite the A/C. She hadn’t had a drink for forty hours. The word ‘withdrawal’ flashed, sent warm shame through her. Drunk slut baby killer. She forced herself to ask the question: Do you want a drink right now? The answer was: Yes.
‘I’ve been trying to remember,’ Claudia said. ‘The name of the place. I’m sorry, I just can’t.’
‘Don’t worry about it,’ Valerie said. ‘Sometimes the way is to not think about it then it pops right in there.’
‘How’s your head?’
‘Itchy. Should I shave the other side, do you think?’
‘No, it’s better like that. Asymmetry.’
It was strange between the two of them. Every time their eyes met brought back their shocking introduction. An insistence on intimacy between two people who didn’t know each other.
Valerie said: ‘I’ll let you rest now.’
But Claudia took her hand.
‘I never thanked you,’ she said.
Valerie felt her throat tighten. Don’t cry.
‘I’m sorry I didn’t get there fast enough,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t get him.’
The word ‘him’ was an obscenity, quietly there in the room between them. Valerie thought, briefly, how such words ‘him’, ‘he’, would at some deep level always bring this back to Claudia. The girl looked traumatically newborn, lying there.
‘You were kind to me,’ Claudia said. ‘You saved my life. Thank you.’
EIGHTY-FOUR
Jared Hewitt, twenty-one, was doing something he’d never done before: having sex on Christmas Day. With a white girl. Not that he’d ever had sex on Christmas Day with a non-white girl. He’d never had sex on Christmas Day, period. Nor did he feel fully entitled to use the term ‘white girl’. Not because Stacey Mallory, four years older than him, wasn’t white – she was, and a natural blonde, too – but because he wasn’t, strictly speaking, black. His mother was part African-American, part Mexican, his father (whom he’d never met) was, allegedly, Jewish. Jared’s young life had been accented by this legacy of being neither one thing nor another, of being misidentified, misdescribed, miscalculated. The upside of the legacy was that he was ridiculously good-looking. Women looked at him, unequivocally. Older women especially. He had a lackadaisical relationship with the gym, but there was no denying he had the goods. Six-one and leanly muscled with eyelashes those same women envied. He wasn’t vain, just willing to take on the import of empirical evidence.
‘OK,’ Stacey said, after she’d come for the third time, cowgirl style. ‘Your turn. What do you want for Christmas?’
Jared already got what he wanted for Christmas, which was to be able to Do His Own Thing. It had worked out perfectly. His mom had been dating a guy for the last ten months and the two of them had gone to Mexico for the holidays. Which meant he got the house to himself. Stacey, who was a crazy sexed-up female with such a mess of half-credentials (failed actress, failed dancer, failed college student) that Jared wasn’t sure which parts of her history were true, and who had come back to Grand Junction off the back of a short-lived relationship with a death-metal bass player in Denver and was now crashing at her sister’s, did not come from the sort of family, apparently, in which it was frowned on to not be at home for Christmas Day, even if you were in the same goddamned city.
‘Turn around,’ Jared gasped. Their ratio of orgasms had been established a while back: Stacey had three or four to every one of his. Not because he was blessed with superhuman restraint, but because Stacey could have three or four in less than five minutes. And another three or four after he’d had his. It was the sort of wonderful thing he was scared he’d break if he thought about it too much. So he did his best not to.
‘You’re a bad man, you know that,’ Stacey said, clambering into a sixty-nine. They were in his bedroom with the curtains closed, flickered over by the muted TV’s light. Last night they’d been drinking vodka snowballs. The room smelled of sex and sugary booze.
‘Uh-huh,’ Jared said. He was in a delicious state. He’d come straight here when his shift at the motel finished. They’d fucked, twice, then slept like the dead, and now here she was again with the daylight barely up and running, wide awake and ready. Stacey had left her shoes on (she’d slept in her shoes), though everything else was off. Black strappy high heels with what looked like bondage cuffs around the ankles. Jesus fucking Christ this girl knew what she was doing. She eased the condom off and took him into her heavenly mouth. Jared felt peace and goodwill to all mankind.
‘Holy mother of God,’ he said, a little while later, when he’d more or less recovered from one of the most explosive ejaculations he’d ever had. Stacey’s warm golden head rested on his thigh. His hands cradled the fabulous cheeks of her ass. ‘Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.’
‘Blasphemy on Christmas Day,’ she slurred. ‘You’re going to burn in hell, my friend.’
‘You’re an angel.’
‘Hardly, but I’ll take it.’
‘A sex-angel.’
‘A sex-angel is for life,’ Stacey said. ‘Not just for Christmas. I think you should make me another snowball. Also – and this is not a minor detail – I’m starving. I’m assuming you’ve got food?’
‘Are you kidding?’ Jared said, kissing her left butt-cheek then turning his head to see what was on TV. ‘My mom’s left enough food here to feed the— Holy fuck!’
‘Again with the blasphemy.
What are you, a Satanist?’
‘Hey – shit – shit – get up a second. Holy crap.’
‘Cramp?’ Stacey said, beginning to disentangle herself. ‘I still want something to eat, mister.’
But Jared was off the bed, on the floor, fumbling for the remote. ‘Jesus,’ he said again. ‘I don’t fucking believe it. This dude… This guy was…’
‘… a wound in his right hand,’ the news voiceover said. ‘The suspect is armed and extremely dangerous and should not, repeat not be approached. Anyone with information should call the number on screen now. That number is also available on the website at KJCT8.com. In other news, a Denver man is suing the City for what he describes as—’ Jared hit mute and stared at the screen, mouth open.
‘What?’ Stacey said. ‘What’s going on?’
EIGHTY-FIVE
Valerie had just got out of the shower back at her Best Western room when the call from Laura Flynn came through.
‘How long ago?’ Valerie said.
‘I just got off the phone with the kid,’ Laura said.
‘Does Carla know?’
‘Ed’s on the phone with her right now.’
‘Where is she?’
‘Hold on.’
Agony. Agony. Agony.
Laura came back on the line. ‘She’s at the TownePalace Suites. There’s a chopper available at the St George PD.’
‘Call Ellinson,’ Valerie said. ‘Whatever eyes they’ve got there, tell them to open them.’
‘I’m on it,’ Laura just had time to say, before Valerie hung up.
Dressed in less than twenty seconds, Valerie drove to the St George station with the siren on. A maddening minute with the desk sergeant to establish who she was. Another maddening minute to get through to the helipad. The chopper was about to take off. Carla was on board.
‘Get out,’ Carla said, as soon as Valerie had wrenched open the door and flung herself in.