The Sun Down Motel(29)

The thought was terrifying. And yet.

And yet.

This was what I was here for, wasn’t it?

She’s someone.

I was in the right place. And now it was time to go back to it.



* * *



? ? ?

It wasn’t until we pulled into the parking lot that I remembered about the motel’s other guest. James March, whose name was written in the guest book.

The lights were back on at the Sun Down, including the sign, sending its message out over Number Six Road. The corridor lights were back on, feeble and pale in the darkness. My phone said it was 1:23 a.m.

Nick and I got out of the truck and stood in the parking lot. The Sun Down looked like any normal motel, but we both knew it wasn’t. It was just . . . sleeping, maybe. Napping. Come on in, the building seemed to say with its jagged up-and-down lights, its blue and yellow neon cheeriness. Get some sleep. Take it easy until the sun comes up again. And if you see someone sitting at the end of your bed, pay them no mind. That’s just one of my secrets. And I’m not going to tell.

The rooms were all dark. The sign over the office door was lit, and the light was back on inside, but that was the only light in the building.

“Room one-oh-three,” I said to Nick.

He came around the truck, hunched a little into his flannel shirt. I remembered again that he didn’t have a coat. “What?” he said to me.

“There’s a guest in room one-oh-three,” I told him. “A man. Or at least there was before all the commotion started.”

Nick followed my gaze toward room 103, which was dark like the others. “Hmm,” he said, and strode across the parking lot toward the door.

“We shouldn’t disturb him in the middle of the night,” I said, hurrying to follow him.

“If he heard any of that shit earlier, he’s already been disturbed,” Nick replied.

“Do you think he slept through it?” I asked.

“I have no idea,” Nick said. “I’ll ask him.”

But there was no answer to a knock on the door to the room. There was no light on, either. Instead, when Nick pounded harder on the door, it drifted open, as if it had been barely latched shut.

I looked at Nick as we stood in the dark, open doorway. He frowned at me, said, “Stay here,” and slowly walked inside. “Hello?” I heard him call.

A minute later, he came out again. “There’s no one in there. It doesn’t look like anyone’s been there, either. The bed isn’t touched, and neither is anything else.”

“His name is in the register,” I said. “Maybe he left.”

Nick came out to the corridor and looked over the parking lot, which held only my car and his truck. “What car was he driving?”

I thought back. There was a car. There had to have been a car. But I remembered pulling up to the motel office, finding it empty with the lights on. I’d thought that was strange at the time. I’d looked out to the parking lot and seen my own car, plus Nick’s truck. Like I was seeing right now.

I turned and walked down the corridor to the motel office. The door was unlocked, the lights on. Inside, the office looked like I’d left it, with my messenger bag on the floor next to the desk. I inhaled when I came into the room, searching for the smell of cigarette smoke. There was none.

Nick’s footsteps came behind me as I walked to the desk. I opened the guest book and flipped to tonight’s page. The name was there: James March, room 103. The handwriting was dark and spindly, and I didn’t recognize it. I walked around the desk and pulled open the key drawer. I rifled through the keys, and except for Nick’s key to room 210, they were all there. The key to room 103 was right there in the drawer.

I picked it up by its leather tab and held it out for Nick to see.

“He could have returned it,” Nick said. “The office door was unlocked, and so was that drawer.”

“There wasn’t a car,” I said.

“What did he look like? Did you check him in?”

“I have no idea, and no.”

“Who checked him in, then?” Nick asked.

“There was no one in the office when I got here tonight,” I replied. “It was open, the lights on, and this name was in the guest book. That’s all I know.”

Nick pulled the guest book toward him and looked at the name written on the page. “James March,” he said. “If he isn’t here, then where is he?”





Fell, New York

October 1982





VIV


There was a diner called the Turnabout on a stretch of the North Edge Road, close to the turnoff for the interstate. It was on the outskirts, when you were in the territory of overnight drivers and truckers, where you could find a place that was open until midnight.

The Turnabout wasn’t a fancy place, and the coffee wasn’t particularly good, but Viv found that she didn’t mind it. For three dollars she could get a meal, and there were people here—real people who knew each other, who sometimes sat around and talked. She’d forgotten what it was like to be around people who weren’t just passing through.

Tonight she sat in a booth and waited, fidgety and impatient. She had her notebook and pen with her, along with a manila folder stuffed with papers. She’d spent a week gathering everything, and tonight she would find out if she’d wasted her time.