I sighed and tried to forget about the knot of fear that my wandering brain had just created in my already churning stomach. I had enough to worry about without tossing that in on top of it.
The time had been pushing 3:45AM when I shut off the car, and by now I was sure to have been sitting here for a solid fifteen minutes, maybe even longer, prepping the phony badge and trying to work up the courage to actually use it. I looked across the lot at the office. It was dark except for the pink neon glow of the NO VACANCY sign in the window. This wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, and I hoped that it just might work to my advantage.
I took one last sip of my coffee and swallowed hard before settling it into the cup holder and getting out of the vehicle. Though the temperature had been mild earlier, and I am certain that it hadn’t suffered any significant change, I felt a damp chill run the length of my spine. It hit me like a rush of excitement in fact, and that worried me. However, I pressed on across the quiet lot.
Arriving at the office door, I reached out and gave it a tug, only to find that it was locked just as I had hoped it would be. It would definitely increase my chances of being able to pull this off if I could hang here in the shadows where the darkness could obscure the telltale giveaways surrounding the lie.
I hesitated for a moment, then reached up and rapped my knuckles hard on the glass pane of the door. I waited as thirty seconds stretched into one minute, and then that folded itself into two. Seeing no movement inside, I hammered my fist against the door again. This time a dim light switched on and was visible through the doorway behind the small check-in desk. I stood watching my reflection in the mirror on the back wall and waited. A short moment later, a disheveled, middle-aged woman in a housecoat appeared through the opening and squinted at me. Immediately shooting me a disgusted look, she pointed at the glowing NO VACANCY sign and started to turn.
I thumped the heel of my palm against the door once again to get her attention then flipped open my wallet and pressed it against the glass. Up until this point I could have turned and walked away, no harm, no foul. But now I was committed, and in the back of my head I was telling myself that was exactly what I needed to be, committed-although my inner voice was using a vastly different sense of the word.
The woman squinted at me again, and I watched her closely as my heart raced. Her face sagged, and then her posture seemed to relax somewhat as she started through the opening and out around the desk. It then came to my attention that I was holding my breath, so I let it out slowly and took in a fresh lungful of air as I waited. She continued across the lobby toward the door, and when she was within a few feet, I slowly pulled the wallet away, flipped it shut and tucked it into my jacket pocket.
A moment later the deadbolt clicked, and she pushed the door open.
“How can I help you, officer?” she asked through a tired yawn. While her voice was definitely cloaked with the hallmark cadence of the region, her accent seemed to hail more from the mid-South; therefore, she lacked the clipping of syllables I’d learned to expect from natives of the area.
I felt a fresh chill traverse my spine, but this time it wasn’t a sense of excitement. It was more a sense of fear-but not for myself. I was afraid for her and the fact that she had so willingly believed I was a cop without closer inspection of my credentials. I tried my best not to let it show and instead simply pasted on what I believed to be an official looking expression.
“Sorry to disturb you, ma’am,” I launched into my spiel. “My name is Gant, I’m a special investigations consultant with the Major Case Squad in Saint Louis, Missouri.”
I had considered using an alias but figured I would just stumble over it if I did. Considering the amount of deception I was forcing myself to engage in all at once, I thought keeping it simple would be my best course of action. Besides, if I did this correctly, I could get away with a majority of planned misdirection and only a little actual falsehood. In fact, so far I hadn’t lied so much as tested the elasticity of a not quite current truth. I was, in fact, a consultant to the MCS, just not lately. Splitting hairs, I know, but I was trying to work within a scheme that would keep my anxiety at bay, otherwise I knew I would never be able to pull this off.
“I’d love to help you, hun, but cop or no, I still don’t have a vacancy.”
“Actually, ma’am, I’m here on official business,” I continued. “There was a homicide here last week, correct?”
“Yes, and I’ve been paying for it ever since,” she grumbled. “Fortunately, it hasn’t kept the Feds from renting the rooms.”
“So I see,” I acknowledged, pointing toward the neon sign. “Well, the reason I’m here is to look over the scene.”
She cocked her head then asked, “But I thought you said you were from Missouri, hun?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I replied with a nod. “I can’t really get into any details other than to say we have a couple of cases in Saint Louis that appear to be related to this one.”
“Like maybe a serial killer, you mean?” she pressed.
“I really couldn’t speculate about that,” I replied, shrugging as I shook my head. “I’m just here to look at the crime scene.”
She reached up with her free hand and rubbed her eyes, then shot a quick glance at her watch. Looking back to my face, she asked, “This couldn’t wait until morning?”
“I know.” I shook my head apologetically. “But the lieutenant sent me down here for a quick look. I just got in a little while ago and drove straight here. My flight back home leaves at ten so I only have a few hours.”
“They don’t give you much time to work, do they?”
“That’s just how it happens sometimes.”
“All right then, hun,” she said. “Let me get my shoes, and I’ll take you on down to the room.”
“You know,” I offered. “I’ve really disturbed you way too much already. If you just want to give me the key, I’ll go have a look and then drop it back through the mail slot when I’m done. That way you can get back to bed.”
“Okay,” she said, giving me a quick nod. It sounded almost as if there was a note of relief in her voice. “Let me get it for you.”
She turned and headed back around the check-in desk, rummaged beneath it for a moment, then returned to the door with a key that was attached to a bright red, diamond-shaped piece of plastic, which was emblazoned with a large number 7.
Handing it to me, she pushed the door open a little farther and pointed down the length of the building. She stifled a yawn then said, “Room seven. All the way down in the corner, hun. Can’t miss it with that damn tape up.”
My face must have betrayed the sudden flutter in my stomach as I took the key. Room 7 had been the ongoing theme with Miranda. It was the number on the doors where both Hobbes and Wentworth were killed in Saint Louis. And, it had even been the room at the no-tell palace where Felicity had taken a potential victim when under the Lwa’s control.
“Something wrong, hun?” the woman asked.
“N…no,” I half stammered, catching myself and quickly trying to come up with a plausible excuse for my sudden reticence. “I was just thinking that seven wasn’t such a lucky number for the victim.”
“That’s a fact,” she replied with a shallow nod. “Odd enough he specifically asked for it too.”
I wasn’t surprised by the comment. The desk clerk where Wentworth was murdered had said the same thing. He had explicitly requested room 7.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “Odd that it was even available. When I called down here it took forever to find some place with a vacancy.”
The words were out of my mouth before I even realized what I was saying. I had just managed to contradict my entire fabrication with a single slip of the tongue. A fresh spasm hit my stomach, but I tried to ignore it and nonchalantly turn my head toward the distant room in hopes that I could hide any expression it might involuntarily evoke.