substance-induced glaze. I didn’t really want to know which substance. Her vinyl skirt was too short, her top too tight, and her makeup too thick. She looked like she was in her late forties, but something about her felt like she was maybe all of fifteen.
I rummaged quickly in my pocket, withdrew a book of matches and tossed them the short distance to her. She missed the catch even though my aim was dead on, so she stooped to pick them up. While she was doing so, I took a quick glance around to make sure I wasn’t being set up for a mugging or some such and then hurried on to my vehicle.
As she stood again, she let out a hoarse giggle and called after me, “Ah won’t bite, shuga. Unless tha’s what ya’ wan’ me ta’ do.”
By now I had the car door open and since I had originally backed in was just getting ready to turn and slip into the driver’s seat. Out of reflex, I shook my head while saying across the top of the sedan, “No thanks.”
I heard her reply as I was pulling the door shut.
“Ya’ sure ya’ not lookin’ fuh comp’ny, bay-bee?”
If she said anything after that, I didn’t hear it because the windows were up, the engine was running, and I was already pulling out of the parking space.
CHAPTER 3:
Ben had given me something to go on whether he realized it or not. It was tenuous, I admit, but it was something. He’d told me they found the victim in a motel room, specifically, the no-tell type. So, that was where I would start my search.
When I first set out, I even gave serious consideration to the fact that the murder might have happened right where I was staying. In fact, I was less than a mile up Airline Highway when I literally thought about turning around and going back, imagining for a moment I might be able to exchange some cash for information from my next-door neighbor. That sort of transaction would probably make me her easiest client of the night. Of course, that would all hinge on whether or not she actually knew anything, and she hadn’t struck me as the type to stay up on current events that weren’t a part of her immediate future. Besides, at the rate she’d been going, she had most likely already found someone in need of her particular brand of personal services by now, and I would have to wait until I could catch her between clients. In my mind, standing around waiting for that to happen wasn’t exactly an enticing prospect considering the fact that I was sure to be faced with extricating myself from another sort of proposition yet again. On top of that, it didn’t sound particularly safe either. But, in the end it wasn’t fear or even the distaste that kept me from making the U-turn. There was a niggling hunch in the back of my head, and it kept telling me that I needed to look somewhere else. So, I listened to it.
I had seen the crime scenes in Saint Louis; therefore, I knew the types of venues the killer chose. While they were certainly establishments of the hourly rate persuasion, they were more along the lines of seedy in a quaint, un-redecorated sense-things like outdated, mismatched furniture and paint or wallpaper that hadn’t been in style for over twenty years. But, the important point was that they were clean. They definitely weren’t anything on the order of the squalid hole where I had taken up temporary residence.
There was a gut feeling I had about Annalise, or maybe it was her alter ego, Miranda, for all I knew. Perhaps both. It was the product of an ethereal connection I’d made at the second Saint Louis crime scene, and all I could say was that I had picked up an impression. That impression had now formed itself into a theory. To me, it seemed she saw herself as above such a place as the Airline Courts. In fact, I was dead certain she perceived herself as above most everything and everyone.
Even so, she still picked motels well known for clandestine meetings of a sexual nature for her kills. There could be a handful of logical reasons for this, not the least of which was the fact that she could almost count on absolute privacy, given the nature of the business. But, logic wasn’t what drove a serial killer. Something the experts liked to call a stressor was the motivational culprit.
So, while the logical reasons may well be factors, if my feeling was correct, she was choosing them for an altogether different, and very specific reason-that being nostalgia. My guess was that, in typical serial killer form, she was attempting to recreate something from her past, possibly even her first kill.
The question that remained for me was which one of them was responsible? Based on the period of the motels, it almost had to be an event in Annalise’s life, since everything so far indicated Miranda had been dead for better than a century and a half. But then, why was Miranda seizing on it?
Of course, that was just another part of the big, scary puzzle.
I’m sure my theory wasn’t new. The FBI profilers had more than likely come up with the very same idea, or something close. However, mine was based on observation and a quick brush with the Twilight Zone , as my friend would say. So, when all was said and done, I had no credentials to back it up; therefore, it was really just a mental stab in the dark. Still, it was all I had to work with, and right or wrong, it narrowed down my possibilities significantly.
Or, so I thought.
That last assessment changed the moment I pulled into a combination gas station/mini-mart and thumbed through the hotel listings in a tattered phone book. Even after discounting all lodging that was obviously upscale or I knew to be a reasonably respectable chain that didn’t fit the image I had kludged together, there was an exorbitant number of local motels that I didn’t know enough about to confidently exclude. In fact, I gave up on my cursory count when I hit 50 and there were still more to go.
What started out in my head as a promising slip up by Ben had now turned into a daunting task that my exhausted brain wasn’t at all interested in tackling. It then crossed my mind that my friend hadn’t actually slipped up. He probably already knew how overwhelming it would be.
Of course, even if the list had only been a dozen or so locations as I had hoped, I still had yet to figure out how I was going to determine which one actually was the scene of the homicide. Calling the numbers and asking if they’d recently had a murder in one of their rooms didn’t present itself as a terribly attractive or even productive option. Nor did driving to each one and hoping for a psychic impression to tell me when I’d arrived where I needed to be. Given the way my head already felt, I probably wouldn’t be aware of one if it happened anyway.
I still had an option though. Ben had told me they didn’t run a story in the paper, but I wasn’t entirely sure I believed him. He could have been lying, which was something he was more than willing to do if he felt it was in the best interest of the person he was trying to protect, namely me.
If that was the case and it actually had been reported in the newspaper, maybe it would point me to the correct place. I knew that idea was full of if’s and maybe’s, but it was really my best option at this point. However, it was also something that wasn’t going to happen at this hour. It would have to wait until well after sunrise when I took my planned trip to the New Orleans Public Library because the paper I needed would be nearly a week old, and that would probably be the only place I could get my hands on it, if at all.
I actually felt my shoulders fall in a physical response to the realization. The growing weariness had been held at bay by sheer will, and that was now crumbling in the face of failure. The extra high dose of aspirin I had taken wasn’t helping either. While it was only doing a little to dull the edge on my headache, it was definitely going a long way toward enhancing my exhaustion. I caught myself yawning as I stood at the payphone and knew what little energy I had left was draining from me as if someone had just pulled a cork to let it out.
Now that I had to postpone this nocturnal quest, my thoughts were relegated to returning to my motel room, so I could at least try to get a few hours sleep. I ripped the pages from the phone book and stuffed them into my pocket, just in case, then turned and started back toward my car. Before I made it as far as the front bumper I stifled two more eye-squinting yawns.
I stopped in my tracks and sighed heavily, rubbed my forehead for a moment, then turned and aimed myself at the door of the mini-mart. If I was even going to make it back to the motel in one piece, I was going to need a cup of coffee.
“I jus’ started ‘em fresh,” the man behind the counter offered as he watched me head for the coffeemakers.
