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 It looked clean but far enough out of date to be a throwback to the mid 1960’s, perhaps even earlier.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 like 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.”
If she had noticed my slip-up, there was nothing in her face that said as much. She simply pointed to the mail slot in the door and replied, “It’s no problem, hun. You can just drop the key in here when you’re finished.”
“Will do, and thank you very much. Again, I’m sorry I had to disturb you at this hour.” I was doing my best to recover from my stumble and sound official, so I added, “Now, make sure you lock the door behind you.”
She simply nodded in reply, but I waited until she was back inside and I heard the click of the deadbolt before I turned and headed toward the room.
“Dammit! Stupid. Stupid.” I muttered the admonishment to myself as I walked.
Concerned that I might need to simply veer toward my car instead of continuing on with this insanity, I cast a furtive glance back over my shoulder. Fortunately, I didn’t notice anything unusual, such as her spying on me from the window, so I mutely worked at convincing myself she was half asleep and had completely missed the gaffe.
It didn’t take me very long to cover the distance between the office and the far corner of the building, and though I made it a point to walk at a modest pace, my heart was thumping hard against my ribcage by the time I arrived at the door.
I stood there for a minute, simply inspecting the surroundings. The physical characteristics of the building made room 7 an obvious choice even over and above Miranda’s penchant for the number. The way this particular end of the structure terminated, there was an open stairwell leading up to the second story of the addition. That dead space would have acted as a sound barrier to dull any errant cries from her victim. Still, there was a room on the opposite side of this one and, given the limited availability of lodging in the city lately, it almost had to have been occupied by someone. Had that been the case, surely the guest would have heard something.
I gave my head a small shake then reached up and massaged my temples. I was tired, I had a headache, and I had just lied my way into a crime scene. My brain was launching into rampant speculation while ignoring the facts. It remained that a murder had occurred in room 7, and no one had reported anything suspicious, so I needed to stop over thinking the situation and just do what I came here to do.
Glancing back toward the office, I still didn’t see anything to raise any alarms. Turning in place, I saw nothing on the parking lot to worry me either. Giving up and deciding I must be in the clear, I stuck the key into the lock.
The moment metal touched metal, I felt the chill on my spine once again. This one, however, was just like the first, carrying with it not fear but a feeling of excitement. As sick as it seemed, the sense of elation literally felt like the passionate rush of anticipated sexual release, and it coursed through me, branching out to touch every nerve. At that instant, there was no doubt in my mind that Annalise and Miranda had been here.
I closed my eyes, drew in a deep breath, and then let it back out slowly as I struggled to ground myself, mentally fighting to maintain a solid earthly connection and not allow the cries of the dead to drag me across the veil. Then, opening my eyes once again, I twisted the key in the lock and pushed the door open, tearing the tape seal between it and the jamb in the process.
Ducking beneath the yellow crime scene tape, I stepped into her world.