Authors: Nichole Christoff
“That’s Eric’s room on the end,” Barrett told me. “Room twenty-four.”
I pulled into the parking lot, cruised past the motel’s desolate office. A placard pinned to the door spelled out weekly rental rates. And promised air-conditioning and free color TV.
“Wow,” I muttered. “Perfect place to watch the moon landing.”
It probably had been. The roofline overhanging the walkway running along the row of rooms was a spike-studded zigzag reminiscent of Sputnik and the early days of Space Age–inspired architecture. But to rise to looking retro, this motel would need a complete remodel.
Living here must’ve been quite a comeuppance for a real estate agent like Eric Wentz. Perhaps he lived here because business was bad. Or perhaps a room here was all he could afford because he footed the bill for his mother’s care at the facility he’d mentioned. I didn’t know. But given the beautiful Queen Anne where he and his father had their offices, and the farmhouse that had seen better days but wasn’t beyond repair, I’d have never expected to find him in digs like this.
I parked in front of No. 24. Barrett got out of the Jag. He made no objection when I got out, too. In front of No. 19, a bent old woman pushed a housekeeping cart along the lip of a cracked concrete pad designed to keep rainwater out of the rooms. She paid us no mind and I suspected that was part of the policy around here.
The door to Eric’s room had been bright red at one time. Now it was scuffed and scarred and the color of salmon sidewalk chalk. It was also ajar.
“Eric?” Barrett called.
He rapped on the jamb.
When we got no reply, I nudged the door open with my toe.
Barrett hooked my arm before I crossed the threshold. “You can’t just walk in there.”
“Why not?”
He couldn’t come up with an answer.
I went, leaving him to trail after me.
Nobody had pushed back the drapes so the room was deep in shade. The bed was unmade and the rumpled sheets gave off a stale, musty odor, as if the housekeeper I’d seen outside typically stored her linens in somebody’s basement. Across from the foot of the bed, a low dresser supported a television set that was older than I was. Courtesy of its cable box, it was tuned to ESPN. The anchors droned on about some football game or other. Beside the dresser, a wastepaper basket was stuffed with takeout containers from Charlotte’s diner. From their smell, I’d have said Eric enjoyed onion with all of his meals.
But there was no sign of Eric himself.
At the back of the room, a pink porcelain sink had been set into a Formica countertop. Both were chipped with age. A lengthy light fixture ranged above the accompanying mirror. Its low-watt bulb flickered on and off and bathed the reflection of my just-rolled-out-of-bed face in ghastly green. Barrett’s image, shaggy and unshaven, didn’t look much better. Huddling around the sink like refugees, Eric’s toiletries consisted of a travel-sized tube of toothpaste, a short stick of deodorant, a can of generic shave cream, and the thin chips of soap this run-down motel provided.
Just looking at these things made me sad.
The bathroom door was slightly open. The shower wasn’t running; my ears told me that much. Through the gap between the door and the frame, I could see the glare of another bulb, this one too bright for the small space.
“Eric?” I called.
He didn’t answer.
And a feeling I couldn’t name ran its icy fingers down my spine.
I nudged this door open, too. And there he was, Eric Wentz, sprawled in the bathtub, awash in his own blood. But he couldn’t see me staring at him.
Because his slack mouth was full of the twin barrels of his shotgun.
And even from where I stood, I saw enough to know both of them had been fired.
Chapter 13
The sight of Eric in that tub was like a slap in the face. And so was the raw scent of human blood and gore. Involuntarily, I clapped a hand over my mouth and nose.
But I wasn’t the only one who noticed the smell.
Too late, I sensed Barrett peering past my shoulder. I turned, intending to banish him from the bathroom. But before I could tell him to go, he took off.
He didn’t get farther than the bedroom, though.
And there I heard him retch.
Death was no stranger to Barrett. He was a soldier, and the two had met often enough. But Eric wasn’t a casualty of war. He was Barrett’s boyhood friend, devastated by the death of his teenage sister and troubled by his military service. And Barrett had felt responsible for him for decades.
I, on the other hand, could look at Eric without personal history or years of sentiment clouding my eyesight. So I made myself focus on him again. And mentally, I catalogued everything I saw.
Eric lay in a heap in the bottom of the tub, his heart’s blood turning black where it had flowed all over the fiberglass. His gun was in his mouth, sure enough. But gunfire is as hot as hellfire, and no scorching circled what remained of his lips.
Still, the contents of his brain box splattered the shower’s back wall. Chunks of tile and the mud bed beneath it had been blown away in the blast. However, the middle of the mess was centered almost six feet from the floor, suggesting Eric had been standing when the shot was fired. How he’d fallen and kept the gun in his mouth, I had no idea. But to my way of thinking, that was only the first troubling tidbit. Because a second blast marred the wall almost two feet below the first. Which meant a second shot had been fired as Eric slid down the tile on his way to the tub.
All in all, the setup made my hackles rise. Because, at first glance, this looked like a suicide. Except I was pretty sure it wasn’t.
Without touching a thing, I retreated to the bedroom. I found Barrett slumped in the rickety desk chair. He cradled his head in his hands.
He’d dumped the takeout containers from the wastepaper basket, tossed his own cookies into it. I snatched up the bin, slipped an arm through his. And I hauled him to his feet.
“Come on, soldier. We’ve got to get you out of here.”
“I’m not leaving Eric like this—”
“Listen to me. Rittenhaus can’t find you here. Not after Eric waved that shotgun in your face.”
“No!” Barrett ripped his arm from my grasp. “I won’t go!”
But I was the daughter of a man who’d risen to the rank of major general on his way to becoming a U.S. senator. To my father,
no
had never been an acceptable answer. Consequently, it wasn’t acceptable to me.
With enough steel in my voice to found a Midwestern city, I said, “Adam, I’m telling you you’re leaving this room. And whatever happens, I’ll handle it. Now
move
.”
Barrett eyed me like he’d never seen me until that moment.
Before he could get fussy again, I hustled him into my Jag and stashed the wastepaper can in the trunk. Stepping into the room again, I snatched up a tissue, used it to shield my hand as I called 911 from the room’s phone and anonymously reported a suspicious death. Though the dispatcher tried to keep me on the line, I dropped the receiver onto the nightstand, hopped in my car, and sped to the nearest safe place I could think of: Charlotte’s diner.
Barrett and I pushed into the café, and the heads of all the locals swiveled toward us. When they saw Barrett’s familiar face, they exchanged arch glances. I didn’t like the look of that, but before I could figure out what it meant, they returned to their conversations.
I elbowed Barrett onto a stool at the counter. Behind it, Charlotte was taking an order from a customer. Maybe it was the slump of Barrett’s shoulders, but she left her customer in midsentence and hurried down to us.
“Adam, are you okay? Jamie, what happened?”
But she was the sheriff’s girlfriend. And the sheriff had sworn he’d lock up Barrett if he so much as blinked at Eric. So I ignored her question and started asking a few of my own.
“Can you do me a favor, Charlotte? Or better yet, can you do one for Adam?”
“Of course.”
“Then keep him here. Feed him soup or something. And don’t let him leave. Can you do that?”
Charlotte nodded, and in their clip, her coppery curls bounced like crazy.
I spun on my counter stool, just as three of Rittenhaus’s patrol cars screamed past the diner’s plate-glass window. An ambulance followed a moment behind. Not that an ambulance would do Eric Wentz any good now.
Given that I’d phoned in a suspicious death, the sheriff himself was probably in one of the cars. He wouldn’t be happy to learn his caller had left the scene without sticking around to answer his questions. But while his obligation was to Eric and the law, mine was to Barrett. Barrett had gotten himself in enough trouble by going AWOL and harassing Eric all week long. He didn’t need to end up neck-deep in more.
A few of the café’s patrons jumped from their seats and ran to the window to peer after the cruisers. The rest buzzed excitedly as they speculated about where the cars were headed. Only one customer didn’t seem to care at all.
Seated in the same spot the little family had occupied the evening before, this guy didn’t look any more at home in Fallowfield than I did. For one thing, his wardrobe was all wrong. I hadn’t met many locals who wore black leather motorcycle jackets down on the farm, but even if he’d worn flannel and denim, I would’ve recognized this guy.
Because he’d taken me to dinner last Friday night—and he’d kissed my cheek when I’d told him I wanted to go home.
Special Agent Marc Sandoval.
Marc flipped through the menu lying on the tabletop in front of him like all he wanted in life was a hot lunch. But I knew that wasn’t true. Just as I knew he wasn’t in Fallowfield by accident.
If he was on the job, however, he wouldn’t thank me for walking up to his table and saying hello. So I promised Charlotte I’d be back to collect Barrett soon, slid from my stool, and made for the door. But from the corner of my eye, I caught Marc’s hand hovering over his phone where it rested beside his bill of fare—so I wasn’t surprised that as soon as the sole of my shoe struck the sidewalk, my cell rang.
When I answered it, Marc said, “You’re a long way from home.”
“I’m just helping a friend.”
“Lucky guy.”
“On the contrary,” I said, thinking of what Barrett had seen in that bathtub.
“This friend of yours wouldn’t have a predilection for shooting heroin, would he?”
I couldn’t even imagine Barrett and heroin in the same sentence.
Vance, however…
“No, but one of his buddies might.”
“That’s a story I’d like to hear. Meet me tonight.”
Tonight seemed so far away.
But Marc didn’t take my silence as discouragement.
He said, “There’s a place called the Roadhouse on State Route 691. It’s halfway to Syracuse, so it’ll take you some time to get there. Meet me at eight.”
“If I can,” I pledged, “I will.”
“In that case,” Marc said, and I could hear his wicked grin as I slipped into my Jaguar, “it’s a date.”
He disconnected before I had the opportunity to set him straight. But I had bigger things to think about than Marc Sandoval’s dedication to flirting. I had to think about Eric Wentz’s death and its impact on Barrett—and the fact that it looked like murder.
By the time I got back to the motel, Sheriff Rittenhaus and his team of investigators had acquired quite a crowd. The mechanics working in the cut-rate garage across the road loitered in the mouth of their bay to watch the proceedings. A lineman in a telephone company hardhat didn’t seem in a hurry to descend the pole he’d climbed. Trucks and minivans cruised slowly up and down the street. The drivers craned their necks to see what was what.
In front of No. 24, one of the deputies had cordoned off a nice slice of the parking lot with rope. Behind the skinny barrier, the lights on the sheriff’s patrol cars rolled from red to blue and back again. A couple of EMTs waited alongside their ambulance, too, but I knew there was nothing for them to do.
Someone had strung yellow crime scene tape along the walkway in front of Eric’s room as well. I stuck to the civilian side of it, stepped up to the officer keeping watch there. He was a grizzled guy who’d probably been on the force since the Reagan administration.
I said, “I’d like to speak to the sheriff, please. I have information pursuant to this investigation.”
He blinked like I’d just addressed him in Greek. But Deputy Dawkins, with his monobrow and mustache, saw me when he paused at the motel room’s door to fumble with a set of Tyvek booties. He stripped the covers from his footwear and came over to talk to me.
“I’m sorry, ma’am. Sheriff Rittenhaus has his hands full right now.”
“Yes, I know. But he’s going to want to hear what I have to say about that mess in the bathtub.”
Dawkins’s brow shot to his hairline. He didn’t ask me how I knew about the crime scene. He just lifted the tape in silent invitation to join him on the other side of it.
This time, when I walked into Eric’s room with booties on my shoes and Dawkins at my elbow, the curtains were still drawn, but every light in the place had been turned on. A pair of deputies with high-powered Maglites searched each item in the alcove that passed for a closet. Another deposited Eric’s pathetic toiletries into individual evidence bags.
And then the sheriff himself emerged from the bathroom.
He frowned when he saw me.
“If you’re still headed back to Washington, you’re going the wrong way.”
“I made a detour,” I said, “to talk to you.”
“I’m busy.” He pointed his blue nitrile-gloved hand at Dawkins. “Go get one of the big evidence bags. The coroner’s about done in there. Help him lift the shotgun.”
Dawkins got his rear in gear, grabbed a bag from another deputy, and disappeared into the bath.
I said, “That’s what I want to talk to you about, Rittenhaus. The shotgun.”
He crossed the room to me, dropped his voice. “What about it?”
“Eric didn’t kill himself with it.”
“Who,” Rittenhaus growled, “said Eric is dead?”
“Are you going to tell me he isn’t?”
“I’ll tell you I think you’re damn lucky the cleaning lady makes it a point to never notice anything in this place.” The sheriff stripped off his gloves. “And I’ll tell you if I find out you entered this room and placed an anonymous phone call to nine-one-one, I’ll run you in for questioning.”