by Blake Crouch
"This is it," Orson said.
A little after nine, I turned into the motel driveway and parked by the front office, beside a large sign with "Vacancy" and "BLUE SKY MOTEL" above it in cursive, neon blue letters. We both got out of the car and stretched. Though cold and windy, it felt good to breathe fresh air again and walk the stiffness out of my legs.
The motel was hardly spectacular. There was no pool or restaurant, only a two-story complex with twelve rooms on each floor. Across the street, live country music poured out of the New Atlas Bar, accompanied by rowdy laughter and yelling. Occasionally, a couple would stumble out the front doors and either cross the empty highway towards the motel or wander into the bar's dark parking lot. Farther up the road, the gas station glowed against the black prairie.
We walked into a single-wide trailer which served as the front office. To the right, a smooth-faced old man wearing a leather cowboy hat sat behind a desk. His feet propped up on the tabletop, he watched a small black and white television sitting on a rickety stool in the corner of the room. To the left stood a naked wall with a closed door in the center. I wondered if the old man lived in the trailer, too.
We walked to the desk, and he looked up, smiling comfortably. "How can I help you?"
"We need a room with two single beds," I said.
He muted the television, put his feet on the floor, and thumbed through the guest registry. "I've only got a double," he said. "Sign here please." He slid the registry towards me. "Write the names of anyone else staying in the room with you and your license plate number."
I entered my name and Orson's along with the plate number of the Buick. Orson stared over my shoulder while I wrote, looking down at the registry with peculiar concentration. When I'd finished, I closed the book and slid it back across the desk to the man.
"$39.50," he said, and I took out my wallet. While we waited for the charge to clear, I glanced at Orson. His eyes ran from the closed door on the opposite wall, to the old man, to the locked key cabinet behind the desk. He looked again at the registry and smiled strangely at me. The man handed my card back along with a receipt. Then he stood up, unlocked the key cabinet, and took out one key. He handed it to me.
"Check out's at eleven," he said. "Leave the key on the dresser."
We walked out of the bright trailer into the night, and I parked in front of our room. 218 was in the middle, on the lower level of the complex, and lights glowed from every first floor rooms except ours. I grabbed my suitcase from the backseat, and we got out and locked the car.
"I'm going to get a drink at that bar," I said to Orson as I forced the key into the lock.
"No. I want you to stay here," he said, and I didn't argue.
The room was warm and cozy, in a fake, cheap sort of way. The wood-paneled walls made it seem even smaller and kept it dark like the interior of a cabin. A double bed with a table on each side, rested flush against the left wall, across from which sat a dresser with a television on top of it. A tiny bathroom and a closet were located at the far end of the room, and the walls were adorned with a quilt, a Charles M. Russell print of a cowboy riding a horse into a bar, and a photograph of two bighorn sheep butting heads.
I set my suitcase on the brown-carpeted floor beside the dresser and turned on one of the bedside table lamps. It produced only a weak, orange light, giving the room a jaundice-like glow. My stomach ached with hunger, but I didn't complain. Sitting down on the bed, I kicked off my shoes and tossed my leather jacket onto the dresser.
"I'm taking a shower," Orson said. "Why don't you go to bed."
"I haven't eaten," I said.
Orson sighed heavily. "Can't you wait till morning?"
"What the fuck do you care whether I eat or not?"
"I don't want you to leave this room tonight," he said.
"Got a particular reason?"
"Just drop it, all right?" he said. He slid off the white fleece pullover, tossed it onto the bed, and began unbuttoning his black shirt. With his chest exposed, it amazed me again how cut he was. He laid the shirt carefully on the bed so it wouldn't wrinkle.
"You wanna read something good?" he asked. "Before you go to bed."
"No."
"Come on, Andy, it's a masterpiece. Open that bedside table," he said, pointing to the one nearest the door. I opened it and extracted a black hardback copy of a King James Bible.
"Get out of here," I said. "You said the Bible was soma for the weak-minded."
"One verse," he said. "It'll blow your fuckin' mind." He waited for me to ask.
"Which one?"
"First Corinthians 13:12."
I thumbed through the thin pages.
"Read it out loud," he said.
"For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known." I closed the book and returned it to the drawer. "So?"
"Just think about it," Orson said, unbuttoning his jeans and letting them fall to his ankles. Leaving them in a blue pile on the floor, he walked to the dark bathroom and stopped at the threshold. He turned around and stared. It scared me.
"I don't get that verse, Orson," I said. "Are you just fucking with me?"
"You will," he said, turning on a ceiling light in the bathroom. Though the tub was hidden behind the wall, I could see Orson's bare shoulders in the streaked mirror and the sink and toilet to his right. Laughter and moaning came suddenly through the walls.
"Go to sleep, Andy," he said lifelessly as he shut the door.
# # #
"Get your ass out of bed," Orson whispered, and the dusky room came slowly into focus. The lamps on each bedside table shed their orange light upon the walls, and though the curtains were drawn, I had the feeling it was still night. I couldn't remember falling asleep.
"What time is it?" I asked, rubbing my eyes and sitting up against the headboard.
"Four-thirty," Orson said. He stood at the foot of the bed, still wearing his clothes from yesterday, his face flushed, sprinkles of blood on his white fleece.
"What did you do?" I asked.
"Get dressed. We don't have much time. Move!" he shouted.
Climbing out of bed, I dug through my suitcase, lying open on the floor. I put on a pair of blue jeans, a close-fitting long-johns top, and a green sweater. Then I forced my slim, yet bulging suitcase to close and stepped into my hiking boots.
"You got the room key?" I asked, lifting my suitcase.
Orson smiled sickly. "It doesn't matter now," he said, laughing.
Though only an hour from daybreak, the clouded sky was dark as midnight. Snow flurries bumbled in the air, and a brisk wind blew out of the north, so the tiny feathers of ice stung my cheeks and eyes. As we moved towards the car, now lightly dusted with snow, Orson tossed me the keys. I walked to the trunk so I could pack my suitcase away, but he stopped me.
"Put it in the backseat," he said.
As we pulled out of the parking lot, I looked across the road to the New Atlas Bar. It was dark now, the drunken crowds gone, the parking lot empty save two pick-up trucks. I looked up the highway towards the gas station, and it still glowed, the snow flurries visible in its artificial light. The motel was enveloped in an eerie, lifeless silence now, and Orson's over-anxiousness to leave this place frightened me.
We headed west on highway 89, and in several moments, the small transit community was only a fading splotch of light on the immense prairie. In the rearview mirror, I saw the eastern horizon, tinged now with the faintest trace of purple. It will be light soon, I thought, but a foreboding sensation flooded me as I thought of the coming day.
We'd been on the road for a half-hour when I asked him, "Whose blood is on your shirt?"
"You'll find out," he said. "I told you you'd know everything by tonight."
I put my foot on the brake and brought the car to an abrupt halt on the grassy shoulder of the highway. Turning the ignition back, the car died.
"I don't trust you," I said, glarin
g to the passenger seat. I could barely see Orson in the predawn darkness. "I don't have to drive you to Choteau. What'd you do last night? Drug me?"
"No."
"I think you're lying," I said. "I think you're lying about everything. I could be driving myself straight to prison. Even if you do confess, you could finger me, and I know you got the evidence to do it, with all your little fuckin' pictures and videos. You're such a pussy, you know that? I hope they fry your fuckin' ass."
"You done?" he asked.
"Yeah, I think I'm done driving you across the country. I'm done being your chauffeur."
"Then I'll get out," he said, reaching for the door. "But it's gonna look bad when you get arrested alone at the roadblock."
"What roadblock?"
He smiled. "The one the police are gonna set up on every highway in Montana when someone figures out what happened at the Blue Sky Motel."
"What happened?"
He turned and stared calmly into my eyes. "For two hours this morning, a police officer knocked on the doors of the eleven occupied rooms at the Blue Sky Motel. When a guest opened the door, this cop flashed a badge, said he was looking into a reported robbery, and was let into each room with virtually no hesitation. Once inside, he told the guest or guests to have a seat on the bed while he asked them a few questions. When they sat down, this police officer pulled out a silenced 9mm and shot them in the head. Most never made more than a dying groan.
"So tell me, Andy. How long do you think it'll take for someone to find out that motel's a morgue? In actuality, it may be a day or two, cause Billy Joe Bob motel manager is sharing a bed with one of his guests. But if someone stumbles into one of those rooms and calls the police, they'll set up roadblocks in a millisecond, and we'd never get through one with our cargo. You see, I'm planning on surprising the Choteau police department with Officer Barry in case they don't take my confession to heart. Hell, I might even wear the uniform again."
My fist landed square against his jaw. It popped, and Orson grunted, "Fuck." He leaned over on the dashboard, holding his jaw in his hands. My knuckles throbbed pleasantly.
"I'll take you to Choteau, you motherfucker," I said, starting the car. "I'd kill you."
We were doing a hundred before I realized it, and I slowed down. Orson sat up now, still holding his jaw, and I hoped it hurt him. The sky lighter now, it still snowed a little, the clouds a purplish-blue. A crushing sadness pressed down on me. I couldn't even think about what he'd done, so I told myself it wasn't true. It all felt like a dream. I was a dream.
I wondered if I'd pissed Orson off so much he'd want to drag me down. It was a terrifying thought, and I almost apologized for hitting him, but I convinced myself that he wouldn't want to share the blame for his killings. He'd want all the attention for himself, including his biography. He thought I was the only one who understood him, and he knew while I was free, he had me by the balls. I'd do whatever he said. I'd write his fuckin' book.
As the sky brightened into morning we sped through the prairie, and in the distance, a range of snowy mountains rose up out of the horizon. The clouds had dissipated, and now the early rays of sunlight made the snowpack glitter. I tried to focus on the remote, isolated beauty of the land rather than the fear, growing minute by minute inside of me. Orson didn't speak. He just sat there, holding his jaw, watching dawn break across the sky.
# # #
At seven-thirty in the morning, we sat in a Waffle House in Choteau. We occupied a booth, and a large, glass window at the end of our table looked out towards a chain of mountains called the Lewis Range. For the first time in hundreds of miles, I could see trees. At the foot of the mountains, still five miles west of town, a forest of tall, elegant pines spread across the yellow prairie. They stretched halfway up the slopes until the timberline began, a brown, lifeless zone of rock and scraggly undergrowth, coated with snow the higher it climbed. A thousand feet below the summits, the snowpack was so deep most of the boulders were hidden, and the contrast between blinding white and vivid blue where the peaks met the sky was ethereal.
I stared down into my cup of steaming black coffee. Lifting the cup to my nose, I inhaled the scent of charred, smoky beans, and took a small sip.
"Will you talk to me?" I asked, looking up at Orson. "About Vermont."
He sighed.
"Who was David Parker?" I asked.
"A friend of mine," he said.
"A friend?"
"We were colleagues in the history department at Middlebury."
"You never told me you were a professor."
"I never told you a lot of things."
"Why'd you quit teaching?"
"I didn't quit. I was removed. They found out my credentials were fake. Dave did actually, and he had my position taken away."
"Do you know how I found him?" I asked.
"Of course I know," he said, "and I took care of that rancher and his bingo-loving wife." Orson smiled. "Don't look so surprised, Andy. It's not like you aren't used to it now."
I sipped my coffee. "Did David know about you?" I asked. "About your hobby?"
"No one did."
"He looked just like you, Orson. He sounded like you. Even walked like you. Part of me still thinks you're buried up there. I don't know what the fuck happened."
"Yes, that is strange," he said.
The waitress was standing by the table, staring down at me, dumbfounded.
"Pull up a chair, Marge," I said, reading her nametag. "Join our private conversation."
She looked at Orson and then strangely at me. "Would you like more coffee?" she asked.
"No," I said, and she walked away, her face reddened with embarrassment.
As I lifted my coffee, I glanced at the left side of his jaw, swollen so much it looked like he had a golf ball in the corner of his mouth. But it didn't seem to bother him much.
"You ready to go do it?" I asked, finishing the last sip, but he shook his head. "We're here, in Choteau. What do you wanna fuck around this town all day? Aren't you in a hurry to be infamous and all that other bullshit you told me yesterday?"
"Yes. But it's at the price of my freedom. That's a difficult thing to just hand away."
"I know," I said.
"You know…" Orson laughed spitefully. "You know shit."
My eyes narrowed. "Wasn't I held against my will in a fuckin' cabin all summer? You know what you made me do," I whispered. "That's worse than losing your freedom."
"I helped you," Orson said. "I did you the favor of your life, and you will thank me."
I pushed my cup towards the center of the table and looked again out the window. A car drove by on what I presumed to be the main drag through town. Further down, buildings threaded the street. I saw a homely feed store and a cinema showing movies two months after they'd premiered in real cities. The sidewalks were narrow and empty. My eyes moved again to the Lewis Range. Were it not for those towering, icy pinnacles, this dead town would be unbearable.
# # #
At a quarter to noon, I pulled into a visitor’s parking space at the Choteau Police Department. Orson opened the door and stepped out onto the pavement, a manila envelope under his left arm.
We walked quickly along the sidewalk, strewn with dead leaves from two aspens on the building’s front lawn. Across the street, a dirt road climbed into a thicket of pines, blanketing a modest hill. We were as close to those snowy mountains now as we'd been all day, but the surrounding foothills blocked them from view. I couldn’t even see the downtown, only the narrow country road running beneath the blue sky and this police station, isolated from the minimal bustle of Choteau. It seemed out of place here among the foothills of the Lewis Range.
The police department was a meager, brick building. It was small, resembling a miniature version of a decrepit public school, only in place of yellow buses, there were police cars. We ascended the concrete steps, and Orson stopped me in front of the glass double doors.
"I’m the only one who talks in
there," he said. Then he grabbed me suddenly and pulled me into him, crushing my chest in an awkward embrace. He opened the door and I followed him inside, walking straight through the lobby, littered with cheap furniture on brown carpet. The walls inside were a darker brick, and they gave the interior the musty feel of a wine cellar.
There was a desk at the end of the room and behind it, a hallway, perpendicular to the lobby. On the brick between the two corridors, Choteau Police Department, was spelled out in bold, brass letters. A secretary was talking on the phone when Orson walked up to the desk. He snatched the phone from her hands and hung it up.
