The Sun Down Motel(88)
The wind howled through the open door, and footsteps ran past in the dark, heading for the stairs. “You got him!” the little boy’s voice cried out. “You got him!”
She could see nothing in the darkness. She heard a deep, gasping breath from Simon Hess, the sound of his footstep as he backed away. She let go of the knife handle and left it stuck in his chest as he moved. This isn’t happening, she thought wildly. It isn’t real.
All of the doors in the corridor were open now, and she could hear them banging. She blinked in the darkness, unsure whether she should step forward or retreat. There was a thump in the empty air of the room, then another, harder one. Simon Hess hitting the floor.
He was still breathing. She could hear it. Heavy, shaking, slow breaths. He might stop, Viv thought. He might die. Here, now. She didn’t want that yet. She stepped forward into the blackness, following the sound of his breathing. She knelt on the floor and crawled toward it, her eyes adjusting so she could barely see the shapes of her hands.
She reached out and touched something covered in fabric. Something hard, the bone of a knee perhaps. A hand shot out and grabbed her wrist, jerking her off balance. The hand was big and soft and cold, so slick with chilled sweat she almost slid out of its grasp. But Hess was still strong, and he shoved her so she landed on one side, her hip hitting the floor and her head banging against something hard—the edge of the bed, or maybe the nightstand. This is the second time I’ve been attacked tonight, she thought. I’m going to have bruises.
They wrestled in grim silence for a minute, Hess trying to grasp her with his slick hands, the strength in his arms faltering, Viv thrashing back and kicking him. Hess gave a dark grunt and grabbed at her again, his neat, trim fingernails trying to dig into her flesh. Outside, there was the slow click of high heels in the corridor and a strange, rotten smell.
She kicked Hess away again and then his hands were gone. There was a wheeze as he seemed to fall back to the floor, weak. She flipped her body and put her hands on him again, feeling numbly along his torso. Her fingers hit warm blood.
“Tell me,” she said urgently. “Why Betty? Why?”
He reached up and grabbed her hair, twisted it, but his strength was failing. “Betty was mine,” he said, his voice a harsh whisper as if he were telling her a secret. “I loved her. I just wanted her to see.”
She had so much she needed to know. There was no time. She went still as his hand twisted harder in her hair. “And Cathy?”
“My daughter went to the dentist’s office where she worked.” He wheezed, and she recognized the sound as a sick sort of laugh. “She meant nothing to me. She was so obviously alone. So easy. I wanted to know if I could do it again. It turned out I could.”
She was so obviously alone. That was what they had in common. Not hair color or age or build. Betty, living her spinster life. Cathy with her husband deployed. Victoria with her fights and her anger. Tracy with her parents who didn’t keep her home.
Viv thought of Cathy’s baby, of her grieving husband, of her mother on the phone. A sweet girl who wanted to earn her next paycheck and raise her baby. Do you know who killed her? Can you end this for me? Her fingers gripped Hess’s shirt, soaked in blood. She wished she could see his face—and yet she didn’t want to see it at all. “Victoria?” she asked, her voice cracking.
“A mistake,” Hess replied. He cleared his throat. His hand was still wound in her hair, his grip surprisingly hard, and Viv stayed braced in case he attacked her again. They were in a strange embrace, here in the dark, fighting and telling each other secrets. “She was there when I sold her mother a lock system. I thought she wouldn’t be a challenge. But she fought me. She bit me, that little bitch. And the location wasn’t right. It was hasty and too exposed. I had to cut my losses.”
Cut my losses, to Simon Hess, meant strangling a teenaged girl and throwing her in the bushes in the rain. The tips of Viv’s fingers touched the handle of her knife, still sticking out of his chest. She gritted her teeth as bile rose in her throat. Or perhaps it was tears. She made herself say the final name, grind it out of her furious throat. “Tracy Waters.”
Hess coughed, the sound wet. “What do you think?”
“She was good and sweet,” Viv said. “Innocent. She had a family who loved her. She never did you any harm.”
Hess laughed. “You haven’t caught on. None of them did me any harm.”
“She wasn’t beautiful,” Viv said. “She wasn’t sexy or cruel. She’d never even met you. She was a girl. Why did you do it?”
His hand twisted in her hair, and his grip was strong but she could feel him trembling. “Because no one ever stopped me,” he said. “Because I could.”
“How many others are there?”
He was quiet. She could hear his breathing. She knew this was a game—he had something she wanted, knew something she wanted to know. And she desperately wanted to know. Did I miss someone? What girl didn’t I see?
“The map in your suitcase,” she said, more urgently now. “What is that?”
He didn’t answer, torturing her.
She struggled in his grip, changed her angle, and grabbed the handle of the knife. She gave it a shove, tried to twist it. It was stuck solid, as if in thick glue. Simon Hess gave a low groan of pain.