The Sun Down Motel(106)

I stayed with Heather for another month, and then I moved into Viv’s apartment on the other side of town. Most people would think it strange that I would take over my aunt’s place after she was indicted for murder—specifically, voluntary manslaughter—but Heather didn’t. “Why not?” she said when I suggested it. “It fits in with the rest of this weird story.”

So I moved in. I quit college—another pissed-off lecture from Graham—and researched what I really wanted to do. For the first months of winter, I lived a quiet life. I read books. I walked. I hung out with Heather. And I spent dozens of hours, days, in the Fell Central Library, reading and researching. Thinking.

Callum’s autopsy showed that he had died of a brain aneurysm that night at the Sun Down. A quick and painless death, apparently. I was glad he hadn’t suffered. There was a funeral, but it was small and private. I wasn’t invited, and I didn’t attend.

The body of Callum’s grandfather, Simon Hess, was officially identified by police in early December. The cause of death was two stab wounds, one to the chest and one to the neck. The neck wound, said the coroner, had likely been the one to kill Hess, though if left untended the chest wound would have done it in time. The murder weapon was not found on the body, though it was determined to be a hunting knife, very sharp, the blade four to six inches in length.

Vivian Delaney’s defense claimed she had killed Hess in self-defense when Hess admitted to her that he was a serial killer. It made state and national headlines when Hess’s DNA was matched to the DNA found on Betty Graham, Cathy Caldwell, and Tracy Waters. There was no DNA found on Victoria Lee, since she was killed in haste and not raped.

Betty’s, Cathy’s, and Tracy’s families found closure. Victoria’s did not.

I didn’t go back to work at the Sun Down after that night, and neither did anyone else. The building was damaged from the roof to the foundation. Chris, the owner, tried to keep it open, but there were no customers and a county health inspector informed him that he had to close it down. The mold and the damp were a health hazard, the plaster ceilings and walls were starting to crumble to inhalable dust, and the heat didn’t work in the cold. The water pipes froze and the electricity went out, the sign going dark for good.

So Chris did what any sensible man, saddled with an unwanted and unviable business, would do: He got an insurance payout, put the land up for sale for next to nothing, and had the building condemned.

In late December, just after Christmas, a quick chain-link fence went up around the Sun Down, laced with signs that said PRIVATE PROPERTY. The motel sign came down and was carted away in a specialized truck. And in February, when the sky was muddy gray and the ground was churned with dirty snow and slush, the bulldozers and other vehicles moved in.

I watched it. I parked my car on the side of Number Six Road and walked to the chain-link fence, my gloved hands in my pockets and a hat pulled over my ears, the wind freezing my nose and my cheeks, chapping my lips. It wasn’t dramatic or even very interesting; there was no one else there to watch as the machines rumbled around the demolition site, pulling down walls and drilling into the concrete of the parking lot. There was no swelling music, no choir or curtain to fall. Just the streaked, darkening sky and the snow starting to fall as the crew worked day in and day out.

Betty Graham wasn’t there. Neither was Simon Hess, or the little boy, or Henry the smoking man. They were all dead and gone.

My phone rang in my pocket as I stood by the fence, and I pulled it out and yanked off my mitten to answer it. “Hello?”

“Victoria’s case is being reinvestigated,” said the voice on the other end. “They’ve pulled all the evidence and are going over it again. Including reexamining her clothes for traces of the killer’s DNA.”

I turned and started walking back to my car. “Don’t tell me how you know that,” I said to Alma Trent.

“Don’t worry, I won’t,” Alma said. “I managed to make a few friends on the force over the course of thirty years, despite my personality. That’s all I’ll say.”

“If they can pull scheduling records, it will help. Viv’s notebook says that Hess was scheduled on Victoria’s street the month she died.”

“I know. I’ve read the notebook.”

“Not recently,” I said. The notebook was mine now; I’d kept it. By now I’d read it a hundred times. “Have you called Marnie and told her?”

“I have no idea who you’re talking about.”

“Of course you did,” I said as if she hadn’t answered. “You called her first, before me.”

“The name sounds familiar, but I can’t say I place it. You’re thinking of someone else.”

“Tell her I said hello.”

“I would if I knew who you mean.”

I sighed. “You know, one of these days you’re going to have to trust me.”

“This is as trusting as I get,” Alma said. “I’m just a retired cop who takes an interest in the Vivian Delaney case. Call it a hobby, or maybe nostalgia for the early eighties. Where are you? I can hear wind.”

“On Number Six Road, watching the Sun Down get bulldozed into oblivion.”

“Is that so,” Alma said in her no-nonsense tone. “Do you feel good about that or bad?”