The Sun Down Motel (28 page)

Fell, New York

November 1982

There was a moment, a few minutes after it happened, when Viv thought of the little girl she’d seen through Simon Hess’s front window. When she thought of Simon Hess’s wife, in her homemade clothes from a Butterick pattern, washing his dishes and keeping his house. What would those two do now?

But she had to confess: The thought didn’t last very long. Maybe he would have killed them. Maybe not. And right now there was too much to do.

The lights were back on. Betty was gone. And Viv was left with a dead body on the motel room floor.

She picked up the room phone, realizing when she heard the dial tone that she’d half expected the phone to be dead. Betty was unpredictable, especially when she was angry.

But the phone worked, so she dialed the number she had learned by heart because she’d stared at it so often on long night shifts, on a piece of paper tacked to the wall.

“Fell PD,” came a bored voice on the other end of the line.

Viv made her voice the drawl of a girl who was both bored and stupid. “Alma there?”

“Maybe. You have a problem, dear?”

“I can make one up.” Viv gave an empty giggle. “I’m working the Sun Down tonight. Honestly? I just want to know if she’s free to come visit me. I’m bored.” She glanced down at the floor, where Simon Hess lay still, her knife still in the side of his neck. He’d died quickly in the dark, a gasp and a thrash and a few twitches. Then it was over. His eyes were half closed, as if he were drowsy.

As soon as it was over, Betty was gone—as if that was what she wanted all along. But it wasn’t that simple. Betty hadn’t left the motel; Viv could feel her watching. She was no longer sure Betty
could
leave the motel.

“You girls,” the cop said, disgusted. “This is a job, not a gossip session. Hold on.”

A few seconds later, there was a click and Alma’s voice came on the line. “Viv?”

Viv was speechless for a second. She had never in her life been so overwhelmed with relief at the sound of another person’s voice. “Alma,” she said, her voice cracking and the bored façade breaking down. “Slow night.”

“Is it?” Alma said, because Viv was phoning her, and Alma wasn’t stupid.

“Sure,” Viv said. She glanced at the body again. Her first thought when she picked up the phone had been
Alma will understand
. Because she would, right? She knew what Viv had been investigating. She knew the evidence. She knew what Simon Hess was. She would know that if Simon Hess was dead, it was because Viv had no choice.

Now she wasn’t so sure. Alma might come out here and arrest her. In fact, she most likely would.

I should be arrested. I should go to jail.

Logically, she knew that. But deep in her heart, she wasn’t going to let it happen.

“Viv?” Alma said.

“It’s nothing,” Viv said. “I just got sick of having no one to talk to. I
can’t even tell you how bored I am. I finished my novel and I don’t have another one. I didn’t even like it very much.”

There was silence on the other end of the line.

“You’re working,” Viv said. “I forgot. It’s fine. I’ll talk to you later.” She hung up.

Shit.

She’d just called the police on her own crime, because she thought Alma would understand. She wasn’t thinking like a criminal. Because she
wasn’t
a criminal—she was a sheltered girl from suburban Illinois.

Not anymore. Now you’re a murderer. Start thinking like one.

What would you do if you ever saw real trouble?
Viv’s mother had said.
You think you’re so damned smart.

She turned and looked at Simon Hess, lying on the floor. “You’re the expert,” she said. “What’s the best way to hide a body?”

He was silent.

She thought that was kind of witty. There was something terribly wrong with her.

She stepped forward and took a closer look. He’d bled into the rug beneath him, but it was a small bedside rug placed over the carpet. If she could get rid of him and the rug both, there might be minimal cleanup in the room. But how would she lift him? And where would she put him? Panic fluttered deep in her belly as she started to truly realize what she’d done. Alma would come and find this mess. Viv would go to prison. Her parents, her sister would be mortified. She’d get old in prison. She might even die there.

It didn’t matter that Simon Hess was a killer—she’d still go to jail.

She’d told Betty on the phone that she was willing to sacrifice herself. That she didn’t matter. But now, faced with life in prison, she was starting to think differently.

She stared at his still face, at his hands curled lifeless on the rug. Hands that had killed so many and would never kill again.

It was worth it
, she thought. It would be worth it even if she went to prison.

But she wasn’t in prison yet.

She gripped the edge of the rug and pulled at it. Squatted on her hamstrings and put her weight into it. The rug with the body on it slid one inch, then another. She stood and realized the lamp was on, shining a beacon out the room’s window, so she walked to it and turned it off. She opened the room door in the dark and looked out. There was still no one in the parking lot, no one for miles. The corridor lights were back on, the room doors all innocently closed, the road sign lit up as usual. Betty was quiet, but Betty was watching.

“I did it,” Viv said out loud. “Are you happy?”

There was no answer.

“Of course you’re not happy,” Viv said. “You’re still dead. You’ll always be dead. But now so is he.”

She turned away from the open doorway and started pulling the rug again. There was nothing for it but to get Simon Hess out of here.

He was impossible to move. He lay as a dead weight, his blood soaking the rug. The knife was still in his neck, and when Viv looked at it her stomach turned. She didn’t quite have the nerve to pull it out.

Time was running out; someone would come sooner or later. Either a customer or Alma Trent, dropping by to find out why Viv had sounded so strange on the phone. Viv pulled harder, got the rug slid halfway across the floor to the doorway. She was so focused on her task that she didn’t hear the car pull up in the parking lot.

But she heard the footsteps as they came up the stairs. She froze with her hands gripping the edge of the rug. The room was dark, but the door was open. It was the only open door in the entire motel.

The footsteps got closer, and Viv silently let go of the rug, inching back, away from view of the doorway. There was no way to close the door now. The instinct to get out of sight was overpowering.

She was trying to silently crawl back in a crab-walk when a voice called, “Vivian? Is that you in there?”

Marnie.

Viv opened her mouth to shout something—she had no idea what—but there was no time. The footsteps came to the open doorway and Marnie appeared. She went very still, and Viv knew that she could see enough from the light in the corridor: the body, the knife, the blood, the rug, and Viv herself, crouched on the floor, most likely looking wild and insane.

“Vivian,” Marnie said. “What the hell have you done?”

“What a mess,” Marnie said over and over again as they folded up the edges of the rug around Simon Hess’s body. “What a damn mess. You couldn’t do it in a way with less blood? Hit him over the head or something?”

Viv shook her head numbly, as if this question required an answer. She was still in shock over how quickly Marnie had adapted to the situation—and how in control she seemed to be. The entire night was seeming more and more like a crazy dream.

“Hold on, Viv,” Marnie said darkly, as if reading Viv’s mind. “No spacing out. What did he say to you?”

Viv felt tears sting her eyes, but she breathed deep and blinked them back. Her emotions were running wild, trying to get out of control. Panic, anger, hopelessness. “Everything,” she said to Marnie. “He told me everything.” She blinked harder, the body going blurry in her vision. “He thought he was in love with Betty. He kept saying she was his.”

Marnie was quiet for a second. “Somehow I doubt Betty agreed,” she said, her voice even. “Why bother telling a girl you love her when you can stuff her in your trunk instead? And the others?”

Viv shook her head. She couldn’t repeat the horrible things Simon Hess had said, not right now.
A mistake. I wanted to know if I could do it again. She was so obviously alone.

“Damn,” Marnie said, again as if Viv had spoken.

“Why are you here so late?” Viv asked. “I thought you were done. Why did you come to the motel?”

“I heard about Tracy Waters. I had the radio on, and they said they
found her body, and I thought . . .” Marnie looked down. “I knew it was him. We could have stopped it.
I
could have stopped it.”

“I tried,” Viv said. “I called the school. I wrote her parents. It wasn’t good enough. I failed.”

“At least you did something,” Marnie said. “Now I get to do something. Did you ever see
Psycho
?”

Viv felt her eyes go wide. “Are you saying I’m Norman Bates?”

Marnie said, “Go get the shower curtain from the bathroom.”

Viv did. They wrapped the rug in it, with Hess inside the rug. They were about to drag the entire package through the doorway when Marnie paused again.

“The knife is still in him with your fingerprints on it,” she said.

Viv swallowed. “Should I take it out?”

“Take it out and get rid of it.”

Viv put down her end of the shower curtain. Hess was curled in on himself, twisted to one side, his body undignified. She had to move him to get at the knife. It slid out easily, though the sound it made would haunt her for the rest of her life. Hess’s blood was cold now, and none of it spilled when she pulled out the blade.

“Wrap it in a towel,” Marnie said. “We’ll deal with it later.”

Viv carried the knife to the bathroom and wrapped it in one of the thin, rough hand towels. She would have to figure out where the spare towels were kept, and whether there were spare shower curtains. She was thinking like a murderer now. She put the knife in its towel on the shower curtain next to Hess.

“We need his keys,” Marnie said. She was good at this. “They’re probably in his pocket. And I’m not doing it.”

Viv gritted her teeth and bent to the body again. She had to touch it—touch him. Even after he was dead, touching Simon Hess made her recoil, as if she could smell all the dead girls on him, as if he’d reach up and put a hand on her that had beaten Betty Graham, that had pushed Cathy Caldwell into her car, that had strangled Victoria Lee and thrown
her in the bushes. A hand that had stripped Tracy Waters and left her in a ditch after violating her.

Still, she patted his trousers, his skin ice-cold through the fabric, feeling his pockets. His keys were in the inside pocket of his jacket, and when she felt them she had to pull the lapel away from his shirt and put her fingers in the pocket. She could feel the soft, dead flesh of his chest, the pucker of a nipple. She grabbed the keys and yanked her hand back.

They checked through the open door. There was still no one in the parking lot.

It was hard work getting Hess down the corridor and the stairs, but Viv was ready now. She held up her half of the wrapped-up shower curtain as she and Marnie maneuvered it. Grunting and panting, they worked with the speed of the panicked. They carried him to the car, and Viv used Hess’s key to open the trunk. They dropped one end of the shower curtain and rolled him in, inside the rug. The knife tumbled out, hitting the bottom of the trunk.

“Put it in the back seat,” Marnie said. “We’ll dump it.”

Hess didn’t quite fit, and Viv had to push his feet in, tuck them under the edge of the trunk while Marnie folded up the shower curtain. Viv was reaching up to the trunk lid to close it when headlights swept across the parking lot.

Marnie swore and dropped the shower curtain. Viv slammed the trunk.

The car stopped and the headlights went out. A door slammed.

“Alma,” Viv said.

“Oh, Jesus,” Marnie whispered. “A cop.”

Alma approached them. She was alone, in uniform, one hand on her hip. She looked back and forth from Viv to Marnie.

“I know you,” she said to Marnie. “You’re one of the photographers we sometimes use.”

Marnie said nothing.

Alma looked at Viv again. She took in Viv’s disheveled appearance,
her flushed face lined with cold sweat. “Vivian,” she said. Her voice was strangely flat, empty of its usual Alma confidence. “Tracy Waters is dead. We found her body early this morning.”

“I know,” Viv said.

“I think . . .” Alma looked away, closed her eyes for a second. She opened them and turned back to Viv and Marnie. “I think I was wrong. I think you might have been right when you came to me, but I didn’t listen. So I did something that I don’t normally do. When I heard they’d brought Tracy’s body in, I looked up Simon Hess’s phone number and called to see if he’d come to the station for an interview.”

Both women were silent. The only sound was the wind howling through the trees.

“He wasn’t home,” Alma said. “His wife said he’d gone out very early this morning, before six, and she hadn’t seen him since. She doesn’t know his schedule. She thinks he might be home tomorrow.”

She looked at the closed trunk. Viv felt her hands clench, felt cold sweat on her back and in her armpits.

“I would have called Simon Hess’s scheduling service, but they were closed for the day,” Alma said, still looking at the trunk. “I was going to call first thing in the morning to ask if they know where he is.”

Then, finally, her gaze wandered to the shower curtain, crumpled in Viv’s hands. There were thick smears of blood on it.

Alma’s face went very still. She raised her eyes to Viv’s. “Vivian,” she said, echoing Marnie. “What did you do?”

“He told me everything,” Viv said, as if that explained.

Alma was quiet for a long minute. “He checked in here?” she asked finally.

“Yes.”

“And he did all of them? He told you that?”

“Yes. Betty, Cathy, Victoria. Tracy. Maybe more. I couldn’t get it out of him. He was laughing at me, because to him it was a game.”