The Sun Down Motel(74)

It was a refusal. A kind one, but still a refusal. Viv would weep if she could summon any tears. She would scream if she could find her voice.

“You’re saying the risk is too great,” she said.

“That’s exactly what I’m saying. You’re young, Viv, but I think you’re getting the idea. I’m the night duty officer in a small town—and I’ve worked for years just to get this far. I’ve fought tooth and nail. I’ve taken insults and abuse, and I’ll take more. I’ll take it for my whole career. I do it because being a cop is who I am, no matter who tries to tell me differently. But this . . .” She gestured to the papers. “I could lose everything with this. At least, the way it is now. I need more. I need physical evidence. I need eyewitnesses, confessions. No cop could take any of this to court, which means no cop is going to risk his career on it. Including me.”

Viv was numb. It was like Marnie, telling her the risk was too great. I quit. She’d promised Marnie she’d go to the police, get help, stop putting herself in danger. But Alma wasn’t going to help her, either. No one was.

She was in this alone.

“He’s going to kill her,” she said, her voice a murmur.

“You saw a man looking at a girl, that’s all,” Alma said. “It doesn’t mean anything. Men don’t go to jail for looking at girls. And you have nothing else you can prove. You saw a car you thought was his, driving away from the high school. You didn’t see who was in it—and even if you had, you still have nothing.”

“Okay.” Viv leaned forward and gathered up her notebook and papers, her maps and photos. “I appreciate you taking the time. I have to go to work now.”

“I’ve upset you,” Alma said.

She couldn’t take that. She couldn’t take Alma’s kindness, her pity that was big-sisterly, almost motherly. It meant nothing if the traveling salesman still walked free, if Tracy died. “He comes to the motel and he checks in under a fake name,” Viv said. “He has no reason to do that because he lives in town, but he does. And every time he does it, Betty Graham wakes up and goes crazy.”

Alma was silent.

“That’s how I know,” Viv said, standing up. “I’ve worked there every night for months, and that’s how I know he killed Betty. Because she tells me every time he’s there. Her body got dumped at the Sun Down, and she never left. You know that’s true as much as I do, except you don’t want to admit it.”

“Honey,” Alma said, “I think it’s time you considered seeing a doctor.”

Viv kicked her chair back and walked to the door. “That’s a lie and you know it,” she said, meeting Alma’s eyes. “You’ve seen her. So have I. The difference is that I listen when she tells me what she has to say.”

She left and closed the door behind her. Her only hope was the letter she’d sent. It was the only way Tracy Waters was going to stay alive.





Fell, New York

November 2017





CARLY


Tracy Waters was murdered on November 27, 1982,” Heather said. “She was last seen leaving a friend’s house in Plainsview, heading home. She was riding a bicycle. She was eighteen, and even though she had her driver’s license, her parents only rarely lent her their car and she didn’t have her own.”

I sipped my Diet Coke. “I know that feeling,” I said. “I didn’t have a car until I was eighteen, when my mother sold me her old one. She charged me five hundred dollars for it, too.”

“I’m a terrible driver,” Heather said. “I could probably get a car, but it’s best for everyone if I don’t.”

We were sitting in a twenty-four-hour diner on the North Edge Road. It was called Watson’s, but the sign outside looked new while the building was old, which meant it had probably been called something else a few months ago. It was five o’clock in the morning, and Watson’s was the only place we could find that was open. We were both starving.

“So,” Heather said, taking a bite of her BLT. She was wearing a thick sweater of dark green that she was swimming in. She had pulled the top layer of her hair back into a small ponytail at the back of her head. She flipped through some of the articles she’d printed out. “Tracy was a senior in high school, a good student. She didn’t have a boyfriend. She only had a few girls she called friends, and they said that Tracy was shy and introverted. She had a summer job at the ice cream parlor in Plainsview and she was in the school choir.”

I looked at the photo Heather had printed out. It was a school portrait of Tracy, her hair carefully blow-dried and sprayed. She had put on blush and eye shadow, and it looked weirdly out of place on her young face. “She sounds awesome,” I said sadly.

“I think so, too,” Heather said. “She went to a friend’s house on November 27, and they watched TV and played Uno until eight o’clock. Oh, my God, the eighties. Anyway, Tracy left and got on her bike. Her friend watched her pedal away. She never got home, and at eleven her parents called the police. The cops said they had to wait until morning in case Tracy was just out partying or something.”

I stirred my chicken soup, my stomach turning.

“The cops came and interviewed the parents the next morning, and they started a search. On November 29, Tracy’s body was found in a ditch off Melborn Road, which is between Plainsview and Fell. At the time, Melborn Road was a two-lane stretch that no one ever drove. Now it’s paved over and busy. There’s a Super 8 and a movie theater. It looks nothing like it did in 1982.” She turned the page to show a printout of an old newspaper article. LOCAL GIRL FOUND DEAD was the headline, and beneath it was the subhead Police arrest homeless man.