by Chris Culver
I couldn’t help but laugh. “Yeah, this’ll go over real well. Our two most experienced investigators miss out on a homicide because some rich guy on Pinehurst thinks the kid next door broke into his BMW.”
“I believe it’s a Mercedes, and they’ll get over it,” said Travis. “You seen your partner this morning?”
“Nope,” I said, sipping my drink. “You try the parking lot outside Club Serenity?”
“Are you implying your partner passed out in his car outside a cheap strip club?”
I smiled to myself.
“I hear they raise their prices for lap dances during fair week. It’s actually a very expensive strip club.”
“I think I’ll try his house first,” said Travis.
“Well, if you strike out, don’t blame me, boss.”
“Just get to the motel, smartass.”
He hung up before I could say anything else. I balanced my pecan roll on top of my drink and then slipped my phone into my pocket. The man who had admired my chest earlier took a step closer.
“You have a nice smile. You should break it out more often.”
I narrowed my gaze at him. “Why are we talking?”
“You’re here. I’m here. It seems like fate brought us together.”
I didn’t even roll my eyes. I just walked away.
“You’ve got to tell me,” he said, hurrying to walk beside me. “What happened on May 12th?”
The question made me stop. My back was straight as I adjusted the sleeve on my blazer to cover the date tattooed on my wrist.
“It’s none of your business. Stop talking and stop following me.”
“May 12, 2006. It can’t be when you graduated from high school. You’re not that old.”
He probably thought I was playing hard to get. I wasn’t, so I kept walking out of the shop. He must have taken that as a challenge because he followed me. I almost told him off, but I knew that wouldn’t have deterred him.
“Is that the date you lost your virginity?” he asked, lowering his voice. “I bet it was in the back of your boyfriend’s car.”
“If you keep following me, I’ll arrest you for harassing a police officer.”
He held up his hands and stopped walking. “I was just trying to be nice.”
“No, you weren’t,” I said. “You said something outrageous to persuade me to talk to you despite my request that you leave me alone. Now you’ve got two choices. You can either stop following me, or I’ll call my station and let them know I need help. Half a dozen large men will come and drag you to a jail cell. They might Tase you on the way. They might even pepper spray you. It all depends on who answers the call. It’s your choice. What do you want to do?”
He opened his mouth to say something, but then he thought better of it and walked back inside. I watched the door shut before turning and looking for my truck.
Rise and Grind occupied the bottom story of a hundred-year-old, three-story brick building in downtown St. Augustine. There were restaurants, antique stores, and a candy shop up the street. Already, the sidewalks were growing crowded with tourists and vendors. Many of them would go to the art fair that afternoon when it opened, but for now, most of them looked content to wander the historic downtown area.
I slipped through the crowd and walked half a block to my car where I took my first bite of my pecan roll. It was worth getting out of bed for, but I couldn’t focus on it too much. I had a body to see.
3
January 1998
It was so cold in the car I could see my breath. Outside, snow blew in the winter wind like sand in the desert. Mom had left a few hours ago, and already ice had piled up against the window, blocking some of my view of the motel’s parking lot. I huddled under a thick pile of threadbare sweaters in the back of our car.
My mom and I didn’t know where we’d spend the night most days, so we kept our clothes in bags in the back of her old SUV. She’d be mad when she found out I had used her sweaters as a blanket, but she wouldn’t hit me if I promised to put them away.
We didn’t sleep in the car often, but it wasn’t too bad when we did. In the summer, we’d open the windows and let the breeze in. In the winter, we’d snuggle together in the back. I liked those nights. We were like a real family then.
It hadn’t always been like this. When I was little, Mom and I had an apartment. I had a room with a window and a bed. It was nice. Mom slept on the pullout sofa. She had made us dinner almost every night, but even when she forgot to come home, Mrs. Sanders, the old lady who lived next door, took care of me. I liked Mrs. Sanders. She gave good hugs. Unfortunately, the man who ran our building was stupid and made us leave. That’s what my mom screamed as we were leaving, at least.
After that, we lived in a big building with a lot of other women and their kids. I liked it there, too, because there were always people to play with. We all went to church every day, but that wasn’t too bad. We even got to eat dinner together at night. I had friends there, so I liked it. The nuns who ran that place were stupid, too, though, so we couldn’t stay long. My mom, I guess, was too smart for them.
Tonight, though, we’d sleep in a real bed. Mom had a job. I didn’t know what it was, but she visited men and made them happy. I guessed they talked or something. Afterwards, we’d have a hotel for the night, and we’d order a pizza or Chinese food. The next day, we’d sleep until ten or eleven in the morning. Sometimes, if my mom was in a good mood, we’d go to Walmart. She’d buy me socks. She always told me socks were important. If you wore socks, you wouldn’t get sick.
Sometimes, people would get mad at Mom and tell her I should be in school, but they didn’t know what they were talking about. I went to school some. When we lived in the apartment, I had gone every day. It was fun, and I had learned stuff, but not the stuff I learned with my mom. Mom taught me to wear socks to avoid getting sick and to go to restaurants right when they closed to get free food.
Restaurants always gave out free food at closing time. The managers were always nice, too. They smiled at me. Sometimes they even gave me ice cream. They didn’t seem to like my mom, but as long as I was there, they were nice. I didn’t know what Mom had done to them, but sometimes people were just stupid.
That was something else Mom taught me. The world had two kinds of people: smart and stupid. Most people were stupid, but there were smart ones, too. Sometimes I wondered whether some people Mom thought were stupid were actually smart, but I didn’t know.
I wrapped my arms around my chest, clutching an itchy wool sweater. A tickle built in the back of my throat. My nose already felt a little stuffy. I had been sneezing a lot, but I didn’t want my mom to know that. She always got mad when I got sick. She liked to work and said she got sick every time I got sick. Nobody, she said, wanted to be with her if she had a runny nose. Runny noses didn’t bother me, but my opinion didn’t count. I wished I had money to pay her to make her happy, but I didn’t.
Something tickled my nose, so I covered my mouth to keep myself from sneezing all over Mom’s sweaters.
And then the police car pulled into the lot.
Two men in uniforms got out. They had guns and a lot of other stuff on their belts. I slunk lower in the SUV so they wouldn’t see me.
I didn’t know much about police officers except that they were mean. Mom always said the police wanted to take me from her. They were motherfuckers. I didn’t know what that word meant, but my mom’s boyfriend told me it. He was weird, and he always smelled bad. And he was always smoking these cigarettes he made himself. I didn’t like him.
He and Mom broke up a long time ago, but he still came around some. When he was around, we’d drive to a park so I could get out and play. He and Mom would stay in the car for a while. They must have been working because Mom didn’t want me around then. After they finished their work, he’d take us out to eat. Sometimes, we even stayed in his apartment. I slept on his couch while he and Mom slept in his room. Sometimes, we’d even stay there for a few da
ys, but then he and Mom would fight, and we’d leave.
One of the police officers stopped outside my mom’s room and knocked hard. The other one ran for the front office. I slunk even lower in the car so my back touched the floorboards. I pretended I was invisible. They couldn’t see me if I didn’t move, I thought.
Within seconds of the police officers arriving, an ambulance pulled into the lot. Curious, I sat up a little. The door to my mom’s room was open. My stomach plunged into my feet. My nose had been itchy for a couple of days, but I hadn’t told Mom because I didn’t want her to get mad. She must have gotten sick, though. I was so stupid. I should have told her. She could have worn thicker socks.
I sat upright and put on my shoes so I could tell the paramedics that Mom just needed socks.
Then I saw a police officer walking from one car to another. He had a flashlight, and he was looking in the backseat of each vehicle. I slipped my shoes on but didn’t get the laces tied before I had to slide down again and hide.
The cop was right beside our car, peering into the windows of a hatchback beside us. I held my breath as he panned his light across the gap between our vehicles.
Then I felt it in the back of my throat. A sneeze.
The light passed over the sweater covering my face. I shut my eyes tight, hoping he would go away. If he caught me, he’d take me away. I didn’t know where I’d go, but that was what Mom always told me. Stay away from the police. They’d break up our family.
So I stayed there and felt the tickle grow in my throat. Then, the light left my car as the cop went to the vehicle beside ours. My shoulders relaxed, and I felt better. Then it happened. A great, loud sneeze—like something out of a cartoon. The light panned to my car again.
I didn’t know what else to do, so I scrambled onto the middle seat and opened the door. The night air was freezing, and the wind bit through my sweater and jeans. The moment my feet hit the asphalt, I ran.
“She’s running,” said the cop.
To my seven-year-old ears, his voice was a wicked snarl, a battle cry from a monster who would catch me and eat me up. I sprinted. The tears froze on my cheeks. I didn’t know where I was, only that I had to get away. There was a grocery store beside the motel, so I ran toward that, unsure where else to go.
“Honey, stop!” he called. “It’s okay.”
I hardly heard him. My feet pounded across the pavement. The cold squeezed my chest and made my lungs hurt, but still I ran. My shoes were loose, so I kicked them off. When I reached the grocery store, the front doors slid open, and I went inside. A man in a red apron near the door saw me coming and pulled a cart out of my way.
“You okay, honey?”
Like the police officer, I ignored him, too. I had to run. I had to find somewhere safe. Mom had taken me into that grocery store before, so I knew the layout. I ran through the produce section, pulling apples onto the floor behind me. There were two police officers chasing me. One of them knocked into a display of bananas, making a mess on the floor. He stopped, but the second guy kept going.
Please, God, don’t let him get me.
I said it over and over in my head, pleading and crying at the same time.
Finally, I reached the rear of the store. Between the deli and a bakery, there was a hallway that led toward the bathroom, and I darted right toward it. The cops were both men. They couldn’t go into the girls’ bathroom, so I was safe. Once I got in, I huddled under the sink with my back to the wall and my arms across my chest, breathing hard. No one was in the stalls.
For a moment, I was alone. Then the door cracked open.
“County police. Is anybody in here?”
I held my breath.
Please go away. Please go away. Don’t eat me.
I pleaded with him in my mind, and I prayed to whatever God had ears to hear. Then the door swung open, and I saw him. He had a bushy brown beard, brown eyes, and a hateful black gun on his hip. When he saw me huddled beneath the sink, he knelt down near the door but stopped moving otherwise.
“Hey, hon,” he said. “I’m Ross. Are you Mary?”
I pulled my legs tighter to my chest but said nothing.
“I saw you lost your shoes in the parking lot. Are you hurt?”
I eyed him but said nothing. He nodded as if I had said something profound anyway and then sat down with his knees bent in front of him. The door opened again, but he waved away whoever was behind it before I could see them.
“Your mom got sick. We’re taking her to the hospital.”
“She wasn’t wearing socks,” I said without thinking. “That makes you sick. And my name is Joe. Only my teachers call me Mary, and I hate them.”
He looked down at his hands. “Your mom overdosed on something, but we’re not sure what yet. She’s going to the hospital. We think we got to her in time.”
I didn’t know what an overdose was, so I didn’t respond. Officer Ross stayed with me for two hours. He even turned off his radio. He did most of the talking and told me about his two daughters in middle school. One was a cheerleader, but the other played basketball. I told him about how important socks were, and then I told him which restaurants gave out the best food at closing time. That seemed to make him sad.
After I ran out of things to talk about, he asked whether I wanted a blanket. He didn’t have one with him, so somebody outside the bathroom gave it to him. I got out from under the sink, and he draped it over my shoulders. It warmed me up, which was nice. I let him pick me up after that. He seemed sad, so it felt like the right thing to do.
As we walked out of the grocery store to another ambulance, he whispered that everything would be okay. Without realizing it, I cried and sobbed against him. I couldn’t help it. He kept telling me I had nothing to be afraid of and that he’d keep me safe, which made me cry even harder.
My mom had told me a lot of things. She told me to shut up at least once a day; she told me that socks would keep me from having to go to the doctor; she told me to be quiet when the police came by; and she told me never to upset her boyfriend by crying when he was over. She never told me she’d keep me safe, though, and she never told me everything would be okay.
I didn’t cry because that police officer scared me; I cried because he didn’t. I felt like somebody cared about me. I felt safe.
And even then I knew it would never last.
4
The Wayfair Motel was a two-story building wrapped in white aluminum siding. From a distance, it looked pleasant enough, but on closer inspection, it was hard to miss the cigarette butts and broken glass, the cracked asphalt, or the broken spindles on the second-story railing. The parking lot was full of minivans and other family cars. During fair week, the hotel did a brisk business with tourists, but during the rest of the year, few of its guests stayed overnight.
I parked in an open spot near the front office, ate the last of my pecan roll, and grabbed a fresh notepad from my glove box before stepping out of my old truck. Three uniformed officers stood near a pair of police cruisers parked in the fire lane at the far end of the building. A fourth officer strung yellow crime scene tape from the support poles that held the second story aloft.
A local man named Vic Conway owned the Wayfair Motel and surrounding businesses. He had sat on the County Council for almost two decades and even ran for a seat in the Missouri House of Representatives once. That was before my time, though. I only knew him as a dirty old man who owned a strip club, truck stop, and a cheap motel by the interstate.
The Wayfair was the crown jewel in Vic’s portfolio. Whether by design or happenstance, his businesses formed a cozy triangle for the young and desperate. Young women—some fourteen or fifteen years old—came from St. Louis and the surrounding areas to work the parking lot of the truck stop as prostitutes. Those industrious enough could earn upwards of a thousand bucks a night, half of which Vic took for protection.
When those girls turned eighteen, they got boob jobs and worked in the strip club. After their d
ancing shifts were over, many took clients to the Wayfair for paid trysts. Girls could earn good livings well into their late twenties, but once his employees got too old to dance or turn tricks, Vic hired them as maids for his hotel or clerks for his convenience store.
We had half a dozen active investigations into Vic’s activities, but none of them ever went anywhere. He had enough money to buy off most witnesses, and those he couldn’t buy disappeared. Sooner or later, he’d slip, and we’d put him in prison, but not today.
The uniformed officers perked up when they saw me. St. Augustine County had almost fifty sworn officers on staff, and we all knew each other well. Some of my colleagues had a gift for police work, but most didn’t. Everyone tried their best, though, which was all I could ask for.
“What have we got?” I asked, reaching into the inside pocket of my blazer for a pair of polypropylene gloves. I snapped them on and then took out my notepad. Nicole Bryant stepped forward. She was in her mid-forties and had brown hair pulled back from her face. At five-seven, I wasn’t tall, but I had at least three inches on her.
“Morning, Joe,” she said, reaching to her utility belt for her own notepad. “Dispatch received the phone call from the front desk at 6:43 this morning. A guest had returned home and found what he thought was blood on the ground. He contacted the front office, and they contacted us. Dave and I arrived at 7:09 and found what appeared to be blood spatter on the ground outside room 127. No one inside the room answered our knock. Fearing that we might have had someone hurt inside, we contacted the front office. The clerk let us in with his master key. Inside the room, a young woman lay on the floor. I felt her neck for a pulse and found nothing. I then stepped out. Nobody else has been inside, and nobody’s touched anything.”
Most of the time, they would have needed a search warrant to enter someone’s hotel room, but the blood and lack of response gave them exigent circumstances. It sounded like a good search. It also sounded as if they had protected the scene well.
