Little Pretty Things (20 page)

“Hell, Juliet, I don’t know,” Billy said, pleading. “Who knows what they’ll do when the time comes? None of us knows how much of a chickenshit we are until we have the chance to show it.”

He could have said
hero
. He could have said that none of us knew to what heights we might rise if we were given the opportunity.

“Billy, I think we know how much of a coward you could be,” I said. “It’s your greatest natural talent.”

“No reason to get nasty with me, little lady. I didn’t have anything to do with your friend getting herself—”

“No,” I snapped. He stepped back from me. “She didn’t
get herself
anything. Someone did this to her, and if you had the chance to help her and you didn’t, well, I hope you don’t believe in heaven and hell, because you’ve made your choice.”

“Well, I made that choice a long time ago, didn’t I, when I moved into this place.” His fingers raced through his hair, three, four times until I thought he would pull out a handful. He’d never said a bad word about the Mid-Night. I didn’t know how to ask why he thought worse of his low-rent palace tonight. “You’re making the mistake of thinking you know everything about me, Juliet, but you don’t. You see my eye twitching and m-m-my—my—” The stutter only came out in dire situations. “
P-problems
, and you think you know all about it. I guess you go around thinking you know it all. You’re smarter than the rest of us, aren’t you? I got news for you—”

Billy stopped and turned his head. I’d heard it, too. In a moment in between cars on the highway, somewhere along the back of the motel’s south wing and its empty rooms, a branch had snapped.

He held a finger up to his mouth, as though I needed a reminder, and crept away, his rope over his arm like a lasso. A Bugs Bunny cartoon. I was in a Bugs Bunny cartoon.

Or a horror movie.

I clung to the corner of the building and braced myself for a chance to run. Like Billy so gallantly had put it: We didn’t know how chickenshit we could be until we got the chance. I’d had too many chances already for one week.

Billy’s dark figure melted into the shadows. I waited, all senses tuned to hear anything I could under the highway noise and my own blood pounding in my ears. Waiting in the dark reminded me of lying in bed at night as a kid, knowing something was under the bed or in the closet.

As a child I had a reoccurring dream of getting separated from my parents in a busy crowd. A mall, an amusement park. Even places I knew in real life stretched into vast seas of strangers and confusion in my sleep. My school, the IGA, the park. In my nightmares, any place I went with my family was a place I could lose them. Come daylight, I didn’t worry about such things—but of course daylight is when it happened. The dark didn’t seem as frightening, once you grew up, once you realized how many ways there were to lose someone.

Billy had been gone a long time when I started to wonder if he’d left me to fend for myself. I slid around the corner into the courtyard and looked around, trying to see anything or anyone, then worked myself around to the breezeway. I could one-up Billy in cowardice. I could slip through to the parking lot here and drive away. Never come back. I had never had more reason to walk away from the Mid-Night Inn.

But I couldn’t.

Maddy’s death should have made me want to run, but this was where she was. Here and the high school, but the best I could hope for there was a dumpy blue uniform and late nights with the industrial laundry machines.

I could work here for the rest of my life. What choice did I have? Maddy would be here, reminding me, making me wonder what kind of coward I was. I would have to see this to the end. And there might not be an end.

I kept going, following the perimeter of the motel until I was around the end of the south wing and could see the far end of the empty parking lot.

But then a strange sound came from behind me. A yelp. A wounded-bird cry, half swallowed.

I turned and was flooded by a bright light. Through my fingers, I could see the dark outline of someone on the other side of a flashlight and the glint of a gun. A gun, pointed in my direction.

“Let me see your hands,” a woman’s voice said.

“Courtney? Oh, God, OK, oh, good. I didn’t know—”

“Put your hands up, I said.”

I did as I was told. She approached, the light filling my vision until I couldn’t see anything but shine. She nudged my arms higher, and then patted at my hips. “You’re still wearing those ridiculous jogging pants?”

“Busy day,” I said.

“Making the rounds, I heard. Except I don’t know if you’re doing Nancy Drew or worse.”

“Where’s Billy?”

The light dropped away from my eyes at last, showing me Billy’s prone body at our feet. He waved. “Thanks for your concern, Jules,” he said. “You know, ten minutes later.”

“Shut it, Twitches,” Courtney barked. “From what I heard a few minutes ago, you’re probably a few wait-and-hope-for-the-bests shy of karma helping you out of a bind. Your story sounded a little different back when I was the one asking you questions. Why are you here?” Courtney said.

Billy heaved himself to his feet and dusted off his jeans. His rope had been transferred to Courtney’s arm.

“Keep telling you people, I live here.”

“Not you,” Courtney said. “You. What are you doing here, Juliet? And don’t say you work here. We shut down the bar after last night’s shenanigans.”

It was a decent question, considering she didn’t know that I had to be here, that I couldn’t not be here until this thing was finished. Like the dark things under the bed and in the closet behind a door not pulled tight, Maddy—not a ghost, but my memories of her—peered at me from every place I looked. But I couldn’t tell Courtney Howard that. She’d only write it down. Write it down and make me feel bad for it later.

“I don’t know,” I said, finally.

The flashlight lit up my shoes. Courtney gave me a chance to think of something else to say, but I didn’t. I didn’t try. Every time I said something, I could only feel myself slipping deeper into the story she wanted to tell. Maybe the best approach was to say nothing at all.

“Trespassing at a known crime scene,” she said, her voice telling me I only had myself to blame.

“I work—” I started, and then let my mouth snap shut.

“It’s late,” she said, lowering the gun at last. “Maybe you two had a date? I did hear some talk of moaning. Rough stuff. That what you’re into?” The flashlight flicked over my face, and I flinched away.

I waited for Billy to say something he’d regret, but he was keeping a low profile. Smarter than he seemed. He knew this was about me more than it was about him, the motel, the murder, or Maddy. Where was Courtney’s police partner? I wasn’t the only one here for suspicious reasons. But I said nothing. Two roads appeared, and neither of them seemed to go anywhere I wanted to visit.

“Let me give you a ride home, Juliet,” Courtney said.

“My car is—”

“You can get it later. Right now I want to see that you get home and tucked in for the night. You must be tired of those stripes on your pants. Let’s get you home to your bunny slippers and maybe some cocoa before your head’s in bed.”

Billy and I exchanged a quick, silent glance.
Heads in beds
was the motto of hotel management everywhere, code for filling rooms, filling beds, making quotas, making money. And a head in a bed meant a guest asleep—a satisfied customer who wouldn’t be at the front desk at 1:30 a.m., asking when the music in the bar went off, a rested guest who got back on the road bright and early without complaints or special requests. Heads in beds was everything. And now I was the overtired traveler who needed to be put away before I became trouble.

Courtney had hit one thing square. I was exhausted. I did need to go home. I remembered the silver running man hiding out in my car and skipped the argument over who would get me home. I let Courtney lead me around the corner into the courtyard. She shined her flashlight up over the closed-off rooms.

“Wait, what about Billy?” I said.

He was still lying low, waiting for Courtney to leave before he moved a muscle. Courtney said, “You want to take him home with you?”

“No, I want him to open the office so I can clean up my arm.”

She pointed the flashlight at my arm. A dribble of blood ran down my forearm and across my elbow. There were bits of dried leaves stuck to the trail. The flashlight hit my face again. “You didn’t come here to do anything untoward to yourself, did you?”

“It’s a cut from the rope, Courtney,” I said. “Just get the keys.”

Billy came jingling. He got the lights while I borrowed the keys and opened up the supply closet. A wave of familiar scents washed over me. In a pocket in the cart, we kept a first-aid kit, almost empty. I found a bandage and retreated to the front counter to perform surgery. My skin felt hot. I could have used some ice. Billy shuffled his feet under Courtney’s watch. I had the bandage in place and was throwing out my handful of trash when I saw another shadow flit past the window.

Courtney turned to see what I was looking at. “What?”

“Nothing,” I said. “Must have been—”

I stopped. I’d seen what I’d seen, but it made no sense.

“Probably one of them cats you feed,” Billy huffed. He’d forbidden us from feeding animals that showed up. But not all the strays were cats.

I hurried to the door and pushed it wide. “Jessica?” I called into the parking lot. “Billy, turn on the lights.”

“It’s probably nothing,” he said, but finally reached for the panel under the desk. The Mid-Night’s front walk and parking lot flooded with light. The girl had been slinking away under the cover of blackness, but now she blinked away from the glare.

“Who is it?” Courtney said at my shoulder. “Miss? Can you come back here, please?”

“What’s a young girl like that doing out here this t-time of night?” Billy said from behind the counter, his fingers going to his hair, once, twice, three times. He cycled through a few more tics before sliding his hands into his pockets to still them. “This used to be a nice place.”

In measured steps and her head down, the girl made her way back. “What?” she said. “It’s a free country, isn’t it?” The lights on the side of the motel created deep sinkholes where her eyes should have been.

“This particular patch of country is private property, shut down by the police,” Courtney said. “Can you tell me why you’re here?”

Jessica shrugged, her face still tilted toward the sidewalk. “Just wanted to see, you know,” she said. “See where that woman died.”

It sounded like a lie, and not even a good one.

Courtney turned to me. “You know this one?”

“Midway,” I said. “She’s a strong runner.”

Jessica glanced up, and that’s when I noticed something wasn’t right. “Hey,” I said.

Courtney was way ahead of me. She pulled out her baton flashlight and lit Jessica’s face from below. The deep hollows of her eyes weren’t shadows. She was growing one hell of a black eye. She ducked her head away from the light, but we’d had a good look.

“Jesus,” Courtney said. “What happened to your face, kid?”

Behind me, I heard Billy make a noise. He came to the door and looked over my shoulder.

Jessica shook her head.

Courtney put away the flashlight and was silent for a moment, looking off into the parking lot. “Look,” she said. “If there’s something going on with your parents—”

“It was a—a man,” Jessica said. “Tall, big. He—grabbed me.”

“Are you hurt? Besides the eye?” I asked.

“Did you get a look at him?” Courtney said.

Jessica held up her hands. “No, no—look, forget it. He was nobody—”

“How tall? Was he white, black, what?” Courtney’s voice was rising, excited. I saw what she was thinking. Maybe Maddy’s killer had made another attempt, and this time left a witness.

“No, no,” Jessica pleaded. She glanced at me. “OK, he was tall, like—just tall. And, uh, maybe not white?”

“Think hard,” Courtney said sternly. “Not white? Black? Hispanic maybe?”

Jessica nodded slowly.

“Hispanic?”

“Yes. Maybe. Not black. Maybe—I don’t know. It was so fast.” The tears came finally. This time when she hid her face, we let her.

Courtney called for backup. While she went to look the place over, we hurried behind the desk and into the laundry room, kicking the piles of dirty sheets to the side. Billy didn’t have a word to say, which went to show how rattled he was, or how much he feared losing that stupid star.

In the end, Jessica wouldn’t admit to any other injuries or give much more of a statement. She also wouldn’t take a ride home from Courtney. Her car wasn’t too far away, she kept saying, so finally Courtney talked her into accepting a ride to the car, and offered her the passenger seat.

Then she offered me the back door, where the criminals sat.

“Come on,” I said, but got in, and let her guide my head under the roof, allowed her to close the door behind me, and didn’t bother with further complaints when she set the lights rolling. We dropped Jessica off at her car, which was indeed across the road, in the dusty lot of the construction site there. We waited for her to get in, start the car, and drive away. Courtney gave the site a long look, then started off toward my house.