Ben had given me something to go on whether he realized it or not. It was tenuous, I admit, but it was something. He’d told me they found the victim in a motel room, specifically, the no-tell type. So, that was where I would start my search.
When I first set out, I even gave serious consideration to the fact that the murder might have happened right where I was staying. In fact, I was less than a mile up Airline Highway when I literally thought about turning around and going back, imagining for a moment I might be able to exchange some cash for information from my next-door neighbor. That sort of transaction would probably make me her easiest client of the night. Of course, that would all hinge on whether or not she actually knew anything, and she hadn’t struck me as the type to stay up on current events that weren’t a part of her immediate future. Besides, at the rate she’d been going, she had most likely already found someone in need of her particular brand of personal services by now, and I would have to wait until I could catch her between clients. In my mind, standing around waiting for that to happen wasn’t exactly an enticing prospect considering the fact that I was sure to be faced with extricating myself from another sort of proposition yet again. On top of that, it didn’t sound particularly safe either. But, in the end it wasn’t fear or even the distaste that kept me from making the U-turn. There was a niggling hunch in the back of my head, and it kept telling me that I needed to look somewhere else. So, I listened to it.
I had seen the crime scenes in Saint Louis; therefore, I knew the types of venues the killer chose. While they were certainly establishments of the hourly rate persuasion, they were more along the lines of seedy in a quaint, un-redecorated sense-things like outdated, mismatched furniture and paint or wallpaper that hadn’t been in style for over twenty years. But, the important point was that they were clean. They definitely weren’t anything on the order of the squalid hole where I had taken up temporary residence.
There was a gut feeling I had about Annalise, or maybe it was her alter ego, Miranda, for all I knew. Perhaps both. It was the product of an ethereal connection I’d made at the second Saint Louis crime scene, and all I could say was that I had picked up an impression. That impression had now formed itself into a theory. To me, it seemed she saw herself as above such a place as the Airline Courts. In fact, I was dead certain she perceived herself as above most everything and everyone.
Even so, she still picked motels well known for clandestine meetings of a sexual nature for her kills. There could be a handful of logical reasons for this, not the least of which was the fact that she could almost count on absolute privacy, given the nature of the business. But, logic wasn’t what drove a serial killer. Something the experts liked to call a stressor was the motivational culprit.
So, while the logical reasons may well be factors, if my feeling was correct, she was choosing them for an altogether different, and very specific reason-that being nostalgia. My guess was that, in typical serial killer form, she was attempting to recreate something from her past, possibly even her first kill.
The question that remained for me was which one of them was responsible? Based on the period of the motels, it almost had to be an event in Annalise’s life, since everything so far indicated Miranda had been dead for better than a century and a half. But then, why was Miranda seizing on it?
Of course, that was just another part of the big, scary puzzle.
I’m sure my theory wasn’t new. The FBI profilers had more than likely come up with the very same idea, or something close. However, mine was based on observation and a quick brush with the Twilight Zone , as my friend would say. So, when all was said and done, I had no credentials to back it up; therefore, it was really just a mental stab in the dark. Still, it was all I had to work with, and right or wrong, it narrowed down my possibilities significantly.
Or, so I thought.
That last assessment changed the moment I pulled into a combination gas station/mini-mart and thumbed through the hotel listings in a tattered phone book. Even after discounting all lodging that was obviously upscale or I knew to be a reasonably respectable chain that didn’t fit the image I had kludged together, there was an exorbitant number of local motels that I didn’t know enough about to confidently exclude. In fact, I gave up on my cursory count when I hit 50 and there were still more to go.
What started out in my head as a promising slip up by Ben had now turned into a daunting task that my exhausted brain wasn’t at all interested in tackling. It then crossed my mind that my friend hadn’t actually slipped up. He probably already knew how overwhelming it would be.
Of course, even if the list had only been a dozen or so locations as I had hoped, I still had yet to figure out how I was going to determine which one actually was the scene of the homicide. Calling the numbers and asking if they’d recently had a murder in one of their rooms didn’t present itself as a terribly attractive or even productive option. Nor did driving to each one and hoping for a psychic impression to tell me when I’d arrived where I needed to be. Given the way my head already felt, I probably wouldn’t be aware of one if it happened anyway.
I still had an option though. Ben had told me they didn’t run a story in the paper, but I wasn’t entirely sure I believed him. He could have been lying, which was something he was more than willing to do if he felt it was in the best interest of the person he was trying to protect, namely me.
If that was the case and it actually had been reported in the newspaper, maybe it would point me to the correct place. I knew that idea was full of if’s and maybe’s, but it was really my best option at this point. However, it was also something that wasn’t going to happen at this hour. It would have to wait until well after sunrise when I took my planned trip to the New Orleans Public Library because the paper I needed would be nearly a week old, and that would probably be the only place I could get my hands on it, if at all.
I actually felt my shoulders fall in a physical response to the realization. The growing weariness had been held at bay by sheer will, and that was now crumbling in the face of failure. The extra high dose of aspirin I had taken wasn’t helping either. While it was only doing a little to dull the edge on my headache, it was definitely going a long way toward enhancing my exhaustion. I caught myself yawning as I stood at the payphone and knew what little energy I had left was draining from me as if someone had just pulled a cork to let it out.
Now that I had to postpone this nocturnal quest, my thoughts were relegated to returning to my motel room, so I could at least try to get a few hours sleep. I ripped the pages from the phone book and stuffed them into my pocket, just in case, then turned and started back toward my car. Before I made it as far as the front bumper I stifled two more eye-squinting yawns.
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.”