He stepped inside and then over to the tiny open window. Glancing out he saw a young girl, wrapped in a towel, on the lower roof of the office below.
Patty slid in next to him and they both said, “Shit.” Then they sprang into action. But once he had gotten back to the main room he froze, because it was empty too. He turned and said, “You get the girl, and I’ll go after the man.”
Patty darted out of the room at least knowing the last location of the runaway. Stallings shot down the closest stairway into the trash-strewn parking lot. Nothing. His head swiveled in every direction as he dashed toward the street. He looked in both directions on the main street but only saw a few pedestrians and a couple of cars. The panic of a parent who’d lost their child at the mall built inside him. He didn’t want this scared runaway to screw up her life. He raced back toward the hotel and down the hallway between the one-story office and two-story hotel. As he crossed a doorway to the covered parking area he slammed into someone like two trucks on a highway.
Stallings dropped backward onto the ground, already apologizing and trying to see who he’d run into. Then he froze as a smile washed over him. On the ground next to him was the pudgy man from upstairs, his towel unwrapped and blood dripping from his cut lip.
Stallings sprang to a crouch, but the man didn’t move. He stood slowly, making sure none of his middle-aged bones were broken, then looked down at the unconscious man.
From the end of the hallway Patty called out.
He looked up and breathed a sigh of relief when he saw her with the girl, unharmed and crying like she had just found her older sister. Patty wrapped an arm around her and said, “Let’s go get you some clothes.” She had worked in the unit long enough to realize how confused this girl was and the fear of being caught with an older man. It was not the typical detective’s assignment. Not cut and dried, guilty or innocent, but layered like a counselor’s job, with several sides to every story. For every kid that ran from abuse and neglect there was another who left for reasons no one could ever explain.
A few minutes later, Stallings sat with the motel manager, a neat Pakistani man with a name tag that said WOODY. He had asked for all the registration slips from the hotel and Woody had pleasantly complied.
He waited while the little Asian family, who had rushed in from the pool after the excitement, checked at the desk to make sure everything was all right.
Stallings stood next to the manager like another employee and said to the father, “We’re sorry for the inconvenience. We’ll be happy to give you your room free for three nights.”
This caused Woody to turn and stare at him in shock.
The Asian man beamed and thanked them as he turned with his kids in tow and headed out the door. The little girl turned and smiled at Stallings, who returned it. That felt good.
Now Stallings looked at the manager and said, “Relax, I’ll pay for the room.”
Woody said, “Forget it. Chasing away the drug dealers will help me more than milking that guy for a few nights. Besides I charge sixteen dollars a day to park.” He winked at Stallings, but saw the look on the detective’s face and tore up the parking card as well.
“How long have those jerk-offs been bothering you?”
“Maybe a month now. They came over two days a week, threw some cash at me and said they’d burn the place down if I called the cops.”
Stallings nodded as he went through the registration slips Woody had provided.
Patty sat in the car out front with the girl leaning on the hood, sobbing softly. The creep, who had checked in under the name “Joe Smith,” sat in the backseat in cuffs, still only wearing a towel.
Stallings thumbed through the flimsy sheets of paper, then paused, reached into his shirt pocket, popped out the cheap reading glasses he had picked up at Walmart, and resumed his search with more clarity. He had resisted the glasses until last year, when his arms no longer reached the distance he needed. His youngest daughter, Lauren, told him the glasses made him look smart, so he didn’t mind. He doubted many smart people had scarred eyebrows from fistfights or a knife wound just under their left armpit, but he liked the illusion anyway.
After he had established a signed slip as the only record for Mr. Smith, Stallings handed the registration slips back, thanked the manager, and started to turn away when he caught a whiff of something that stopped him. He turned and said, “What’s that smell?”
Woody shrugged and said, “I’ve been smelling it too. But I checked. No gas leaks. Nothing unusual.”
Stallings stepped one way then the other, trying to find the source of the odor, following it toward a narrow hallway with several closets. “What’s in here?”
The manager stepped from behind the desk, looking like an adolescent next to the taller, beefier Stallings. “All storage.”
“What kind of storage?”
“Beach chairs, suitcases, lost and found.”
Stallings stood in one spot to let the smell drift to him, then took a few steps to one side. Finally he said, “Open the middle door.”
The manager fumbled with a ring of more than fifty keys and opened the solid wood door. The stench slapped Stallings in the face.
The manager said, “You’ve got a good nose. I couldn’t tell where it was coming from.”
Now Stallings was more precise, careful not to touch the door as he flicked on the light in the long, crowded storage room. He looked down one wall and back the other until his eyes fell on a thick, black duffel bag shoved in next to the wall on the dusty cement floor. He nudged it with his finger, then stepped closer, the manager following him into the cramped room.
“Where’d this bag come from?”
The manager shrugged. “I think the other clerk slid it in here when someone forgot it in the lobby yesterday. He mentioned there was a heavy suitcase left here.”
Stallings studied the small lock on the bag, dug in his front pocket for a Leatherman tool, and used the needle-nose pliers to rip it off the bag. The manager, mesmerized by the action, didn’t protest.
Stallings hesitated with his fingers on the zipper, then yanked the tiny handle down the track of the zipper about ten inches until he saw the pale, pretty face of a young woman.
“Oh, no, no, no, this is a dreadful thing,” said the manager, his accent becoming much more pronounced. Then he was quick to add, “She wasn’t a guest. This isn’t our fault. I don’t know who she is.”
Stallings sighed. “I do. Her name is Lee Ann Moffit.”
This was a day that would change his life.
Two
Patty Levine had just handed off the runaway girl to a county social worker, who was taking her to a shelter until they worked out something with the parents. The second she looked up from her metal notebook and saw John Stallings, Patty knew that something had happened. Stallings’s handsome face was usually a mask of calm during times of stress. His curly brown hair framed his blue eyes and made him look like a stylish doctor who had played rough sports as a younger man. He rarely showed any reaction, preferring, like any good cop, to keep people guessing, but now he was leaning out the front door of the motel motioning her to come in and she knew something bad had happened. She could tell their day had swung off the ordinary track. The Xanax she had sneaked at lunch kept her reactions smooth, but she popped another just to be on the safe side and swallowed it dry. She was careful never to allow any nervous tension to show at work. As one of the few female detectives, Patty felt as if she had to set an example and be twice as tough as any male cop. That only led to more stress. She didn’t drink like a lot of the cops, so this was her answer to dealing with the job. It was a decent rationalization that worked most of the time.