There was no acceptable way to extricate himself from this situation, so without saying anything else, he turned and left, going out the way he came in, knowing that the maid, the clerk and the manager would start talking behind his back the second the door closed.
He was still angry, but his anger had been tempered by bewilderment. He had no idea what was going on or why, and it had left him feeling decidedly uneasy. This was their last day in Tucson, however, so there wasn’t much else that could go wrong. His goal at this point was to get through it, get out of here, then write a scathing email to the president of the company that owned the resort, letting him know exactly what type of shenanigans were happening on his watch.
Maybe their stay would be comped.
Or maybe they’d be offered a free stay next time—hopefully at another resort.
He and Shauna spent the day exploring Tucson, staying as far away from The Sonoran as possible. They returned in the evening after a nice dinner at a historic Mexican restaurant. The plan was to leave early in the morning so they could get back to San Diego by lunchtime.
It was their final night, and he expected Shauna to come in and share the shower with him, but she didn’t, so he made a special point of not washing his crotch. Let her suck it dirty. Lightly toweling himself dry, he walked out of the spacious bathroom naked, ready to—
The bed was covered with blood.
No.
Heart pounding, he croaked out her name, though there was clearly no one else in the room. “Shauna?”
He moved forward on wobbly legs, checking to see if she—
her body
—was lying between the bed and the wall, but that narrow space was empty. Up close, the blood looked far too red, and there was much too much of it. A large spreading stain covered both the center of the fitted sheet and a significant portion of the turned-back covers. Splashes of blood had spattered on the pillows.
His eye was caught by something incongruously shiny in the center of all the gore.
A nametag.
Rosa.
Realization dawned on him.
She was trying to frame him for murder.
But how could all of this have happened in the ten minutes he’d been in the shower? And where was Shauna? Chapman rushed back into the bathroom and clumsily put on the clothes he’d taken off and left in a pile on the floor. His hands were shaking. He picked up his cell phone and tried to call 911, but a message on his screen said: No Reception. How was that possible? He immediately picked up the room phone, but there was no dial tone.
What was going on?
Feeling panicked, Chapman opened the door to the room, intending to rush over to the lobby and order someone to call the police. On the concrete path, heading toward him, dimly lit by lamps that lined the walkway, he saw a grim-faced Ralph Covey, the manager, flanked by two angry-looking security guards.
“Sir?” the security guard on the left said as Chapman approached. “Stay right where you are. I’m going to have to ask you to wait here until the police arrive.”
“My wife…” Chapman managed to get out. “I can’t find her.” He gestured behind him, into the room. “There’s…”
“We know all about it,” Covey said coldly. “The police are on their way.”
How did they know? Who could have told them?
“It was all within the last ten minutes! She either killed Shauna or kidnapped her, which means she can’t be far!” He looked down at the ground, saw no trail of blood. Hope rose within him. Maybe it was all part of some elaborate hoax.
Covey frowned. “Who are you talking about?”
“The maid!”
In the darkness, Chapman saw movement over the men’s shoulders. His eyes grew wide.
“There she is!”
The maid, pushing a towel cart, had moved into the illumination of one of the lamps lining the path.
The manager turned to look, then swiveled back, fixing him with a cold stare. “I just hired that woman. She’s new. She started her first shift less than fifteen minutes ago.”
“And that’s when it happened! Fifteen minutes ago! She’s the one who told you about it, right? And her name’s Rosa?”
“Her name is not Rosa, but that’s none of your business. We’re just going to wait right here for the police to come and sort everything out.”
“But it’s her!” he insisted.
The maid had reached them by this time, and she left her cart, moved around the manager and walked up to Chapman. In her extended hands were four small bottles of hair conditioner. “Here you go, sir,” she said.
Numbly, he took the plastic containers from her as, smiling, she turned away.
SCHOOLGIRLS
(2016)
When Cherie killed her parents, she didn’t give it much thought. All the kids in the neighborhood were doing it. But when she awoke the next morning and there was no one to make her breakfast, it occurred to her that maybe she’d made a mistake.
There were still some Eggo waffles left in the freezer, and she popped two of them in the toaster before getting orange juice out of the refrigerator and pouring herself a glass. The bodies were already starting to smell, and she knew she was going to have to do something with them. Jan, next door, had dragged her mom into the alley and left her by the garbage cans so she could be picked up on Thursday when the truck came. Winston, across the street, dug a hole in the back yard and buried his parents in it.
Cherie pressed her nose into the orange juice glass to cover the stench. She was going to have to do something, but she was younger than most of the kids in the neighborhood, and her parents were fatter, so she was probably going to need some help.
At school, the kids on the playground still made fun of her. She thought they might start to be nicer since she’d killed her mom and dad, and they were, a little bit, before school, but at recess, things were back to normal. She had one of those no-plan, pay-as-you-go phones, and Shelley McComber laughed when Cherie pulled it out and tried to call her cousin Ray. Her parents had always told her to ignore those sorts of taunts, explaining that girls who made fun of things like what type of phone she had were just insecure, but her parents were dead, and they’d never really understood how important phones were for kids her age anyway.
Not only was her phone embarrassing, but she’d worn mismatched socks today, too. She’d noticed it in class and had made an effort when she stood to pull her pants lower so the pantlegs would cover her mistake, but it was impossible to hide something like that on the playground, and it was Shelley McComber’s friend Dina who pointed and laughed and called her out.
It was par for the course. She never did anything right. Back in September, she’d been the last girl in her grade to kidnap an old person’s pet, even though she had been the first one to eat it, and that had set the tone for the whole year. She always seemed to be behind the curve, and even when she wasn’t, no one noticed.
It was only a matter of time before Dina and Shelley saw that she was wearing a baby brand of jeans, and that the stitching was coming undone beneath the left armpit of her shirt.
Maybe she could go back inside the classroom, Cherie thought. She could tell Miss Kaycey that her head hurt and that she needed to rest at her desk for a few minutes.
The teacher didn’t open the door at recess anymore, though. Not after the principal had beaten her almost beyond recognition, walking into their classroom unannounced and, with no warning, punching her in the face. Miss Kaycey had cried out but made no effort to protect herself, and the principal had cuffed one side of her head and then the other before socking her right in the mouth and walking out.
The kids had all laughed at the way the teacher tried to talk through her swelling lips (“Retard!” Shelley McComber shouted at her, throwing a wadded piece of paper that bounced off her left boob, making the class laugh even harder). But Cherie knew what it felt like to be beaten, and she actually felt a little sorry for the teacher. She wasn’t about to let
anyone else know that, of course, and she kept her feelings to herself, but when she saw Miss Kaycey crying after school that day, she made her a card covered with hearts and burned it and dropped the ashes into Miss Kaycey’s purse when no one was looking. She’d felt closer to her teacher after that, had felt ever since as though they were kindred spirits. Maybe Miss Kaycey realized it, too, and maybe she would let her back into class.
Even if she didn’t, though, Cherie could still stand in the hallway outside the classroom and wait until recess was over and the door opened. At least she’d get away from Shelley and Dina and their friends.
To her surprise, the classroom door was already open, though the teacher did not appear to be inside. “Miss Kaycey?” Cherie said, walking in slowly. She looked around to make sure the teacher wasn’t lying on the floor or hadn’t been strung up by the principal.
The room was empty, and, emboldened, Cherie walked over to the window, looking out at the playground. The other kids were playing on the swings, the slides, the monkey bars. Some of the girls from her class, the snobby ones who were always picking on her, had pulled down a younger boy’s pants and were taking turns pulling on his little wiener, seeing who could make him scream the loudest.
She thought of what it would be like to set their hair on fire, and she laughed thinking about how the girls would look, running around and screaming, hitting their own heads in an effort to put out the flames.
“What are you laughing about?”
Cherie jumped, startled, and turned around.
It was Dina again. She’d come into the classroom, probably looking for her, and Cherie’s heart started pounding. “Nothing,” she said.
“No one laughs at nothing,” the other girl said, advancing. “Not unless they’re crazy. Are you crazy?”
“No,” Cherie said defensively. She’d been retreating as Dina approached and had backed herself into the corner by the bookcase.
“I think you are. I think you’re crazy. Do you know what happens to girls who are crazy?”
Miss Kaycey walked through the open doorway. She glanced from Cherie to Dina as she strode toward them. “What seems to be the problem here?”
Dina snickered. “What’s the problem? Look at her socks! They’re two different colors. And those pants—”
Miss Kaycey punched her hard in the stomach.
The other girl fell backward, gasping for air. Her head hit the floor, and the teacher kicked it as though it were a soccer ball. Cherie heard a satisfying thud as Miss Kaycey’s shoe connected hard with the space behind Dina’s ear. “Twat’s that? I cunt hear you.”
Dina was sobbing, and though she still hadn’t completely caught her breath, she was able to croak out a weak “I’m telling—” before Miss Kaycey stomped on her midsection. A spurt of blood erupted from the girl’s mouth, and then she was still.
Turning away, Miss Kaycey walked up to Cherie, smiling. “Feel better?”
She nodded, smiling back.
“And what was she talking about? What’s wrong with your pants? I like your pants.” She pointed to her own. “I’m wearing the same kind.”
She was!
Cherie looked into her eyes. “Don’t the other teachers—?”
“What? Make fun of my clothes?” She laughed easily, and Cherie thought she had never heard such a wonderful laugh in her life. “Adults don’t do those kinds of things,” she said. “Only schoolgirls pick on people who are different like that. Once you’re a grownup, you get to be yourself and no one can tell you how to dress or how to talk or how to act or anything. It’s all up to you.”
That sounded wonderful, and she glanced over at Dina’s bloody face, wondering why she had ever let girls like her and Shelley intimidate her.
Miss Kaycey must have guessed what she was thinking. “It gets easier when you get older,” the teacher said kindly. “Didn’t your parents ever tell you that?”
Cherie nodded slowly. “Yes, they did,” she said, and began to cry. “Yes, they did.”
UNDER MIDWEST SKIES
(2016)
The rental car did not have a satellite radio, and when the Wichita station finally faded completely into static, Louis pressed the Seek button, looking for something—anything—that would keep him awake along this endless stretch of straight flat highway. He was a New Yorker born and bred, and ordinarily everything he wanted or needed was within the twenty-two square miles of Manhattan. He was not used to driving for hours to get from one town to another.
But this new job required him to actually visit the local governments to whom they were trying to sell GIS systems instead of just emailing or talking over the phone. Lee was framing it as an exciting opportunity, but he and everyone else in his department knew that it was a demotion. This was grunt work, and it should have been handled by the newest newbie, the lowest man on the totem pole, not someone in his position. He should have remained in the office monitoring this trip, not taking it, but Lee had been out to get him ever since Louis had upstaged him at the September presentations, and it seemed as though the manager had finally found a way to insert the knife.
Although, if Louis could pull this off, Lee might soon find their roles reversed.
The radio stopped on a voice—98.7 on the dial—and he was grateful to hear the sound of another person. He only hoped it wasn’t some hillbilly preacher giving a sermon about how the godless denizens of America’s coasts were dragging the rest of the U.S. toward the pit of hell. He’d heard enough of that crap on this trip, and after two days, he was beginning to understand how paranoid conspiracy theories were able to take hold among the widely spaced residents of the vast rural Midwest.
This man on the radio didn’t sound like a preacher, though, and it took Louis several seconds to realize that he was listening to some type of news bulletin or emergency announcement.
“Repeat,” the broadcaster said. “A tornado warning has been issued for Harris County. All residents are advised to take refuge in the nearest shelter. Travelers on Highway 55 are urged to pull off the road and follow proper procedures.”
Highway 55?
He was on Highway 55!
Was he in Harris County? He didn’t know. Louis experienced a rush of panic. What were “proper procedures?” Where was the “nearest shelter?” He was totally out of his element here. He’d seen the movie Twister as a kid, but that was the extent of his tornado knowledge. He knew nothing about what to do in the event of a tornado.
“Repeat. A tornado warning has been issued for Harris County…”
He peered through the windshield, looked out the side windows. There were clouds in the sky, but they didn’t look like storm clouds. And he could see no sign of any tornado. Hell, there didn’t even seem to be much of a breeze.
But his knowledge of tornados was on a par with his knowledge of Edwardian dress design. He knew jack shit about either. There was urgency in the voice of that repeated warning, and the smartest thing to do would be to find a town or a building, someplace with people who knew what to do.
“Travelers on Highway 55 are urged to pull off the road and follow proper procedures…”
There was a green sign ahead, and he sped up to reach it, then slowed so he could read the words. According to the sign, the town of Barclay was eighty miles in front of him. The town of Whitesville was a hundred miles beyond that. But a smaller second sign was posted below the first, and on it an arrow pointed to the left where the town of Hayfield was only six miles away. Indeed, there was a two-lane road intersecting the highway just past the sign, and Louis quickly turned on to the road, going well over the posted 25 miles per hour speed limit.
If he was going to find refuge from this tornado, it would be in Hayfield.
The asphalt ended, the paved road turning into a bumpy dirt lane. He continued on, speeding down a wash, up a small hill, not slowing until he saw a cluster of trees and buildings on the horizon ahead. What had happened to the tornado? Had it disappeared? Petered out? The radio
station was now playing country music, and the warning he’d heard was no longer being repeated. Maybe he wasn’t in Harris County. Maybe that was farther back on the highway. Or farther ahead.
The car suddenly started shuddering and shaking, and he gripped the steering wheel tighter as he braked to a halt. He recognized that shudder. It was a flat tire. Sure enough, when he got out to inspect the car, the right rear tire was little more than a ragged ribbon of black rubber surrounding the metal rim.
Taking out his cell phone, he tried to call AAA, but he had zero bars, no connection, and even a 911 call wouldn’t go through. It could be due to the tornado—wherever that was—but, more likely, there were no cell towers out here and the locals relied on land lines.
He opened the trunk, looking for a jack and a spare, but saw neither. A lot of cars had them underneath the vehicle, but he wasn’t about to go crawling around under there. He looked toward the buildings up ahead. Hayfield? Probably. And it couldn’t be more than a fifteen-minute walk. His best bet would probably be to find a phone to call AAA, or have some local gas station mechanic either locate and put on the spare, or get him a new tire.
Louis glanced up at the sky. Still no sign of any tornado.
He locked the car, took out his laptop case—didn’t want to leave that in there—and started up the road.
The town was farther away than it looked. It was six miles from the highway, and he wished he’d checked the odometer to see how far he’d come before breaking down. As it was, it took him nearly forty-five minutes to reach the first building, a real estate office. He was hot and sweaty, but at least the tornado had never shown up.
The dirt road had turned back into pavement, and he looked ahead as he walked, searching for a gas station or garage. Something about the town seemed wrong, and it took him a moment to figure out what it was.
Where were the cars?
Where were the people?
That was the real question, because while the town did not look abandoned—streets were nicely kept up, stores and businesses appeared to be open—he saw no sign of human habitation.
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