Audi backing out and said, 'What the fuck?'
'Exactly,' Bobby said. He reached over, turned the key and heard the high-performance engine rumble to life. He shifted into first and followed the Tempo and the Audi out of the motel lot, going right on Rochester Road, hanging back, giving them room, but not too much. They took another right on Fifteen Mile and caravanned all the way to downtown Birmingham.
Bobby watched the Audi drive in a parking garage. He parked in a metered space on Pierce Street, next to a big red-brick hotel, and waited. A few minutes later Wifebeater came out of the parking garage, crossed the street in front of Bobby's car, walked to the end of the block and took a right. Bobby followed and watched him go in the hotel, nice-looking place called the Townsend. He'd bet everything he had that's where Karen was at that very moment, chilling, thinking about all the things she was going to buy for herself with her newfound wealth. Bobby enjoyed the situation now that he had superior position. He drove past the hotel entrance, saw bellhops in green uniforms, helping a couple with their luggage. He saw the red Tempo parked on the street, a girl with purple hair behind the wheel.
Lloyd said, 'If she's in there let's go get her.'
There was Lloyd jumping the gun again. 'Know what room she's in?'
Lloyd gave him a dirty look. 'What do you think?'
'I don't think you do,' Bobby said. 'And I don't think she registered in her own name, and even if she did, you think the hotel people are going to tell us? Oh, you looking for Karen Delaney? She's up in room 225. Why don't you go up and surprise her.'
Lloyd said, 'Don't use that high-and-mighty tone or I might have to reach over and break your fucking nose, okay?'
'You want to go in look around, be my guest. I'm going to wait till she comes out. What do you think of that?'
Chapter Nineteen
Karen saw Johnny flip the bedspread off him. He looked at her and grinned and got up. He chased her out of the motel room and down the stairs to the parking lot. She ran along the side of the building to the breezeway, and that's where Johnny cornered her, in the alcove by the janitor's room. His shirt was completely soaked with blood and his face was pale white. He aimed his gun at her and said, 'Why'd you shoot me?'
Karen said, 'I was afraid for my life. I…' That's when Bobby appeared aiming Lou's. 45 and blew Johnny off his feet. Bobby looked at her and said, 'Where's the money?' She opened her eyes and looked around the room. She was in a junior suite at the Townsend Hotel, sweating and afraid. It was a dream but it was as vivid as any dream she'd ever had. You didn't kill someone-even in self-defense-without repercussions.
Karen got up and went in the bathroom and brushed her teeth. She came back in the bedroom and turned on the TV. A line moving across the bottom of the screen said, Channel 1 Action News Exclusive. Now the camera panned a motel courtyard as a reporter's voice said, 'A forty-year-old white male was found shot to death this morning at a local motel.'
The camera framed the reporter, a middle-aged journeyman who looked vaguely familiar. He was standing on the second floor balcony of the motel. The room they'd found Johnny in was behind him. He said, 'Fifty yards from where I'm standing, Troy police discovered another shooting victim in the back seat of a stolen minivan less than twenty-four hours ago. Are the two deaths related? Police are investigating.'
Karen pushed the power button on the remote and turned the TV off. She started to get paranoid, picturing police dusting for prints and finding hers all over the van and the room. She saw herself in orange jail fatigues, her wrists cuffed to a belly chain, besieged by reporters as she made her way into court escorted by her attorney, Mr. Robert P. Schreiner.
She'd had the presence of mind to wipe off the minivan steering wheel, but what else had she left her prints on? She'd opened the motel room door and touched both sides of the door handle, and touched the ice bucket and the bedspread. Could they get fingerprints from a bedspread?
Karen had planned it all so carefully, every detail, and nothing had gone right. Two people were dead, and she was the prime suspect. Maybe not at the moment, but it could happen at any time. There was plenty of evidence if they looked in the right place. Samir stole her money and she was just trying to get it back. Wouldn't a jury sympathize with that?
She tried to calm down, analyzing the situation. So what if they found her fingerprints? She'd never been arrested. The police wouldn't have her prints on file. But a lot of people had seen her at the motel and could ID her, like the hillbilly manager who helped her put the suitcase in Johnny's car. Add it all up and it didn't look good.
But on the positive side, Karen had gotten her car back so there was nothing connecting her to Johnny. Fly had parked the
Audi where she told him to on the fourth floor of the parking garage, the extreme west side. Karen had watched to see if anyone followed him. Nobody had. She could look across Pierce Street from her hotel room window and see her car.
She'd picked up a backpack at Moosejaw and stuffed $500,000 in it. She'd put the rest of the money in two safe deposit boxes at a bank a couple blocks away. Her plan was to drive to Chicago, see her friend Stephanie, then head south to Miami and get on a cruise ship to the Bahamas, and deposit her money in a Bahamian bank-no questions asked. Then she'd fly to Nice and disappear in the coastal towns along the Mediterranean.
Karen had applied for a passport a couple weeks earlier. She had it sent to her mother's in Garden City, figuring she'd be on the run. She called her mom from the hotel to find out if it had arrived. No mail had come for her except for a Garden City High School 15 Year Reunion flyer.
'You're going, aren't you?' her mother said.
Karen said, 'When is it?'
'The day after Thanksgiving.'
'Mom, I've taken a modeling job in Europe. I have to leave as soon as my passport comes.'
'Weren't you going to tell me?'
'I didn't know all the details until today,' Karen said.
'Oh, dear,' her mother said. 'I'm so proud of you.'
Karen wondered how proud her mother would be if she found out about all that had happened, hoping her picture didn't appear on the evening news and give her seventy-one-year-old mom a heart attack.
Karen called the passport office in Chicago and was told her passport had been processed and was going to be sent the next day. Finally. She decided to leave the hotel as soon as it was dark and find another place to stay. She had to keep moving. But where?
O'Clair was asleep when he got the call from Ann-Marie Karmo telling him Johnny had been killed. Troy police had knocked on her door at eight o'clock in the morning to give her the bad news, but few details. She wanted to know what happened and asked O'Clair if he'd look into it for her. What was strange, she didn't sound sad or upset, maybe it was a relief after all Johnny had put her through.
Now O'Clair was on the second floor balcony of the Red Roof Inn, looking across the parking lot at the building where they'd found Johnny. It was entertaining to watch the local cops secure the crime scene, taking O'Clair back to his own days on the force.
He stood there like one of the renters who'd gathered on either side of him, coming out of their rooms to see the action. Guys with shaving cream on their faces, cigarettes in their mouths; couple of girls in tank tops, girls drinking beer, smoking cigarettes- up all night, or just getting up-their idea of breakfast-breakfast of champions. It was strange seeing people partying so early in the morning.
At the far end of the building he saw a black maid in a China doll wig come out of a room and wheel her cart toward him. The wig was shiny black and had bangs that came down to her eyebrows. O'Clair moved toward her, blocking her way and said, 'How're you doing?' Her skin was the color of dark chocolate and she had high cheekbones and dark eyes that wouldn't look at him. 'You know what happened,' O'Clair said. 'Don't you?' Now she glanced at him.
