Triage: A Thriller (Shell Series) (6 page)

“What was the name of the lounge? I can’t remember.”

“I think you—”

“Can’t even recall what city,” I said. “Memphis, Atlanta…Houston.”

“Dashiell?”

“Shell,” I corrected once more. “I must’ve had quite a bit to drink if you know the name Dashiell. Still, I wasn’t too inebriated to remember our good time. You were more flexible than most, as I remember it.”

“I think you—”

“Can’t remember where we were,” I said. “But I can still taste you.”

“Taste me? Are you serious? You think I’m one of your women?” she asked, a disgusted tone in her voice.

“Aren’t you?”

“God no,” she said. Her sniffles grew, allergies really causing her havoc.

I switched the phone to my left ear. “Who are you then?”

Sniffles; no reply.

“Siobhan?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Who are you?”

There was another long pause. Then she said, “Nevada’s friend. She never mentioned me?”

That set my gut on fire. “I have to go,” I said. “Sorry I can’t say it was nice talking to you.”

“Wait,” she said. “Please.”

“I don’t think we have anything to speak on,” I said. “Particularly if you’re a friend of Nevada’s.”

“Wow,” she said. “You
are
harsh.”

“Goodbye, Siobhan.”

“Please…”

I sighed. Thought of the redhead from the lounge.

Sarai. That’s what her name was.

Not Siobhan.

“Please,” she said again.

“Do you have freckles on the inside of your thighs?” I asked. “Could I bounce a quarter off your ass?”

“Say…what?”

“Simple enough questions,” I said.

“I’m not answering them.”

“How about freckles in your cleavage?” I said. “And are your breasts large?”

“You’ve lost your mind,” she said.

“Answer the questions,” I said.

“No. No way.”

“Then goodbye, Siobhan.”

“How can you be like this under these circumstances?”

“I don’t know you,” I said. “And you’ve been blowing my phone up all morning. I shouldn’t be surprised. This is just like some of Nevada’s bullshit. You are definitely her friend.”

Quiet.

A long and uncomfortable stretch. I had no desire to break through the wall of silence. But I’d give Siobhan a moment to make me reconsider our conversation. Just one moment.

“You don’t know,” she whispered.

I was a second away from disconnecting the call.

One second.

“Don’t know what,” I said.

There was a ruffling sound from her line; then the sniffles again, but more pronounced.

I realized it wasn’t sniffles from allergies. She was crying. Nevada’s friend. A woman I’d never spoken to before. One I didn’t even know about. Crying so deeply.

I stopped walking immediately and sat down hard on my ass, right there in the sand.

My heart rate ratcheted up to the level it had reached during my run.

“Don’t know what?” I repeated.

“Oh God, Shell,” she said. “This can’t be happening.”

My eyes were narrowed. My mouth as dry as C-Span. “Tell me,” I said.

She told me.

FOUR

FULL DISCLOSURE: SOME OF this is fashioned together by what Siobhan was able to tell me and by what I learned from reading online newspaper accounts, but the vast majority of it is my vivid imagination.

NEVADA PULLED INTO THE budget motel complex at an unreasonable hour in the morning. A new day’s light would color the sky in about three hours. Her tires spewed rocks as she drove over rough gravel. The gravel was the highlight of the complex. No greenery to speak of except for the overgrown grass along the fence line of the property. Crumpled napkins, foam coffee cups, used condoms, wine and beer bottles swathed in brown paper bags, that and other detritus trapped in those blades of browning grass. An overflowing Dumpster planted in the middle of all that chaos. The sign at the front of the complex didn’t make it clear, most of its letters were blown out, but the motel went by the unlikely name of The Gables. How the property owners came upon that name was a mystery Nevada didn’t care to try and solve. There was nothing architecturally distinguishing in the motel’s design. No pitched roofs, no triangular touches anywhere. It was just a grouping of four nondescript and connected two-story buildings. Rusted exterior stairways led to the second level. Stucco siding that was once white had turned the color of a heavy smoker’s ceiling. The outdoor swimming pool had a cover of leaves and other debris floating across its surface. An encyclopedic shithole from A to Z. There was no other acceptable way Nevada could describe it.

She parked crookedly by the check-in office, then looked over her shoulder and scanned the empty lot before sending up a quick prayer to her newfound God for both strength and redemption. After that, relaxed, she straightened her clothes with the flat of her hand, took a deep breath, turned off the ignition in her SUV, and got out.

NEVADA TOOK A QUICK inventory of the lobby: tattered furniture, poor lighting, and a heavy smell of disinfectant, though everything was dusty and did not appear to have been cleaned in the post-Y2K years. She knew the rooms would smell heavily of roach spray, and that the bedspreads would have organisms growing on them you’d find in a Petrie dish, that the shower stall would be mildew-ruined, the television remote blinking as its batteries were nearly dead, and a Gideon’s Bible missing pages of Psalms would be found in a dresser absent at least one of its leg’s casters. Despite this, she didn’t turn around. She didn’t have that luxury. She squared her shoulders and took another deep breath instead.

“I need a room,” she said to the male clerk at the counter.

He looked up slowly, his eyes begrudgingly leaving the page of his skin magazine, not a trace of shame on his unshaven, unclean face. He laid the magazine on the counter, centerfold page up. Holly from Ohio. Favorite ice cream was chocolate. She had a pet dachshund named Miss Sprinkles and was desirous of a man who’d mastered
Life
. The game.

“Gonna need you to fill out this card,” the clerk said, licking each of his fingers, gaze traveling up and down Nevada’s frame, as he pulled one card from a stack held together by a thick rubber band. He had a malnourished, emaciated look; human fly bait. A centimeter away from being a biology prop, with recessed eyes, a few strands of hair he splayed out as best he could so they looked like fingers gripping his skull, cheekbones emphasized by tight and unhealthy and yellowed skin, an assaulting odor like wet dirt mixed with fertilizer.

A palsy of some sort created a tremble in Nevada’s hands. She didn’t trust herself with a ballpoint pen. The drive over had been Russian roulette. “Could you fill it out for me?” she asked. “I’ll dictate.”

“Dick take,” the smelly clerk said, wiping the back of his moist mouth with a hand caked with dirt. “I can certainly do that for you, young lady.”

Nevada rocked slightly on her heels, considering a retreat, frustrated that she couldn’t.

“Name?” he asked.

“Nev—” She stopped, regrouped. “Hope Jones.”

“Spell that.”

She did.

After a few false starts, he was able to get it down on paper correctly. Handwriting as though he’d written it with a child’s fat crayon, and left-handed when he was a natural righty. He exhaled when he’d finished, smiled briefly, pleased with himself.

“Address, Mrs. Jones?”

She told him that, too. Same number as her place, but a street over from her own. Easy enough to keep her lies in order if she based them somewhat in reality. The years had exposed her to many many tricks in which to catalogue her many many lies. Sadly.

He smiled again. Teeth caked with plaque and yellow as butter. The nine he had. “How come you find yourself here at our lovely establishment this morning? If I might ask.”

“Lucky I suppose,” Nevada said.

He nodded. “Tags?”

“Excuse me?”

“License plate number.”

“Oh.” She closed her eyes, pictured the plates. P-V-Something. Something-6-U. Some of it she remembered, but there were plenty of holes in her thought. Her stomach kept rumbling. Her mouth was dry as exhumed bones, her hands moist as the clerk’s mouth. A mess.

The clerk craned his swan’s neck, looked over her shoulder. “That you out there?”

“Black SUV,” she managed.

“It’s parked kind of…Yukon, ain’t it?”

Nevada nodded.

He eased from around the counter. He was tall and brittle thin. Had a disjointed walk, a lanky puppet controlled by an inebriated puppeteer. Wearing yellowed jeans and a plaid shirt, boots painted with mud and mowed lawn and absent of any laces. He squinted as he got to the front door and looked out at the parking lot, held the registration card up against the glass, and then up against the wall because the ink wouldn’t catch on the card, and wrote down Nevada’s license plate number one excruciating letter and number at a time.

Then he took that disjointed walk back behind the counter, plopped down hard in his chair. Its springs cried out and the armrest fell off. He left it on the floor, used to it coming apart. “Need to see your driver’s license, now, Mrs. Jones. Then I’ll have you wrapped up.”

“Miss,” Nevada said. “And I don’t have it with me.”

“Out in the glove box?” he asked.

“Home in a kitchen drawer,” she said, smiling and shrugging. “I’m forgetful.”

“Left in a rush?”

“Can we wrap this up, like you said?”

“It’s against the law,” he said, “driving without a license on your person.”

“Guilty as charged.” She tried to smile again, failed. “You gonna cuff me?”

“Mmm,” he moaned. The leer again.

“I’d like a room in the back,” Nevada said, moving on, hoping he would, too. “Is that possible?”

“I can do you in the back,” he said. “Be glad to. But I do need to see that license.”

“I’ll pay cash. Throw in a little something extra for you.”

“Something for me you say? That right?”

“Please.” She reached for the counter, placed a hand over one of his dirty paws.

He eyed her. Saw the desperation. Four in the A.M. Trouble had to be nipping at her heels pretty fierce. Nice looking woman like her. Not one to cause trouble he said, “Oh, okay. I always was a sucker for a pretty lady. And you sure enough are one. I won’t pull on your pud.”

She let out the breath she’d been holding. “Thank you so much.”

He nodded and quickly completed the transaction.

“Need help with any luggage?” he asked. “I’d be happy to lend a hand.”

It wasn’t a luggage kind of establishment, but he’d never suggest that.

“I’m fine,” Nevada said. “I really appreciate everything you’ve done.”

“I aim to please,” he said.

“You have.”

He nodded, went directly back to his skin magazine. He whistled at an image on the page—Miranda from Virginia Beach, Virginia—and Nevada backed out of the lobby. She stood there outside, waited a second for a breeze that never came, a cool breeze she desperately needed to kiss her warm face. She didn’t see the clerk take his eyes from the skin magazine, a minor miracle there. Didn’t see him watching her intently through the smudged glass, didn’t know he was wondering a whole bunch of things regarding her.

THE KNOCK SHOOK THE thin walls of her room. Nevada walked hesitantly to the door, dared a look-see through the peephole. Her heartbeat settled and her shoulders eased. She cracked the door a few inches, smiled, and unlatched the deadbolt. Her visitor stepped comfortably into a warm embrace. They stayed like that for several beats, in the embrace, at the threshold. She’d just stepped from the shower, and was wrapped in two towels, one covering her body, the other twisted like a turban around her somewhat wet hair. Her skin was damp, warm as just-machine-dried clothes.

Her visitor asked, “You okay?”

“I am now.” She smiled, touched his arm, squeezed. “Thanks for rushing over.”

“No problem.”

“I’m used to men treating me like a disposable camera,” she said. “It’s nice to know I can count on you.”

He smiled, a bit tight around the lips.

“Kept my eyes on the rearview mirror on the drive over,” she said. “I was scared out of my skin. I swore someone was following me. I didn’t see anyone, though. My paranoia, I guess.”