“Dey should be ready in jus’ a coupl’a minutes.”
“Thanks,” I replied, giving him a nod as I continued over to the stand where the brew was streaming from a stained filter basket into an equally soiled carafe.
Using what I saw as a judge, it was a safe bet the coffee wasn’t going to be top-notch, so I pulled one of the large cups from the stack and started prepping it with sugar packets. After dumping in six, re-examining the size of the vessel and adding another three, I began rooting through a tray of flavored creamers. After finding a half-dozen that matched, I lined them up then started peeling back the tops and dumping them in.
The fatigue had now worked itself into every nook and cranny of my being, so by the time I picked up the fourth creamer, my hands had decided not to operate in accordance with what my brain was telling them to do. Before I could manage to tear back the foil top, I fumbled the small plastic container, and it fell from my hand then rolled across the aisle floor. I turned and knelt down to retrieve the escapee, and when I did, my eyes caught a silvery glint of light bouncing from a somewhat familiar shape.
Wrapping one hand around the fugitive condiment, I pushed my glasses up onto my nose with the other and continued to kneel there, staring at the object. The gratuitous trinket section was positioned immediately across from the coffee; probably some marketing guru’s brilliant idea for how they could move high-profit-margin, cheap plastic toys by catching junior’s attention while the parent was getting a cup of java. I had no doubt that it was effective to some extent because it now had my undivided attention.
Of course, I was focused on a particular item. Dead in the middle of all of the junk was a peg which held several blister cards, each of them containing a toy police badge, whistle, and plastic handcuffs. Ben’s earlier comment rolled through my foggy brain, “You ain’t packin’ a badge, so you’re just another civilian ta’ them.”
He was correct. But now, like some fateful sign, here was a badge, and it even looked pretty convincing given the short distance between it and me. It wouldn’t stand up to any manner of scrutiny, that much was for certain, but if it was just a quick flash it might work.
“Ya’ okay over dere, cap?” the man called out.
“Yeah,” I answered and, realizing I’d been staring at the toy just a bit too long, offered up an explanation. “I just dropped a creamer, and I didn’t want to leave a mess over here for you to have to deal with.”
“Dere ya’ go,” he replied, a thankful note in his voice.
I sighed and looked away from the toy rack then muttered a personal admonishment under my breath as I stood, “Yeah Gant, impersonating a cop. That’d be really bright, wouldn’t it?”
Stepping back over to the low counter, I finished adding the creamers to the cup then poured in the just finished coffee on top. I was happy to see that it blended to a milky brown instead of the sickly grey I’d faced before at other such establishments.
Wandering over to the checkout stand, I placed the cup on the counter then dug in my pocket for my wallet.
“Dat gonna be two-sixty,” the man told me.
I tossed three ones in front of him.
“You gotta silvuh dime?” he asked.
I shoved a hand into my pocket in search of the change but found nothing but the car keys and the crumpled pages from the phone book.
“No, sorry,” I offered with a shake of my head. “Don’t worry about it. Just keep the change.”
“Awrite,” he replied, giving me a quick nod.
I picked up my coffee and started for the door but halted as the thought of the phonebook pages in my pocket began bludgeoning my grey matter. Then, without thinking anything through, I seized on one of the names I remembered seeing, turned back to face the man, and said, “Mind if I ask you something? I just drove in and I’m looking for the Keys Motel?”
“Dat’s no problem,” he replied, pointing past me. “Ya’ jus’ go down Airline a coupl’a miles and dere it is.”
“Great, thanks,” I offered with a weak smile then let out a nervous chuckle which I’m sure was more a product of the lie I was telling than any sort of acting skill. On the heels of the laugh I added, “You know, I heard there was a weird murder that happened there recently. You hear anything about that?”
“Naw, somebody told ya’ wrong on dat,” he told me, shaking his head and jerking his thumb in the opposite direction. “Da’ murder happened ovuh for da’ Suthun Hosp’tality. Dat’s back up da’ road.”
“Really?” I returned with a nod. “My wife will be glad to hear that. The story kind of spooked her a bit, you know.”
“Yeah, you rite.”
Adrenalin instantly dumped into my system, and my fatigue momentarily fled, along with anything I had that might have resembled good sense. I should have turned and left right then and there, but the impulse that had made me ask the questions was stuck in overdrive, and it didn’t care what trouble I might be making for myself. Instead I headed back in the direction of the coffee counter, my sights set on the toy rack as the lie took on another layer.
“F’get somethin’?” the man asked.
“Sort of,” I said over my shoulder. “I saw something over here I think my kid would really like.”
CHAPTER 4:
True to what the man at the gas station had told me, the Southern Hospitality Motor Lodge was just up the road. Its lighted sign became apparent shortly after I pulled back onto the main thoroughfare, and within moments I was swinging into the almost full parking lot. Once I found a space and nosed my car into it, I shut off the lights, then the engine, and proceeded to visually scan the front of the small motel.
From the outside, it definitely fit the image I had in my head as the kind of place Annalise would select for a kill. It looked clean but far enough out of date to be a throwback to the mid 1960’s, perhaps even earlier. I suspected the interior decor would reflect that as well, even if it had been partially updated at some point.
The office itself was located at the street end of a single level building that extended for several units before eventually connecting with an L-shaped two-story addition. In the far corner where they joined, I could see a large yellow X flapping gently across a room door. Unfortunately, this was something that had become an all too familiar sight for me in recent years, and I could almost certainly guarantee that the black lettering on the bars of the wavering X spelled out CRIME SCENE – DO NOT CROSS, or if not exactly that, something very close.
Before leaving the lot of the mini-mart, I had ripped open the blister card containing the toy, pulled out the thin, stamped metal badge, and tossed the rest into the garbage receptacle near the payphone. Since it was positioned toward the far end of the building, I hadn’t had to worry too much about the attendant seeing me throw away the bulk of my recent purchase, which I am betting would have raised a bit of suspicion.
Now that I was sitting here in the darkness, I pulled my wallet from my back pocket and emptied it, save for my driver’s license which I left in the display slot on one side. I was counting on the fact that being a Missouri issue would make it look different enough to appear like an official law enforcement ID. The rest of the contents, credit cards, cash and the like, I stuffed into my jacket pocket and zipped it closed.
Fumbling with the toy badge, I undid the pin and forced it through the inner layer of my wallet opposite my license, managing to stab myself in the fingertip twice while doing so. Once I succeeded in finally getting the fake shield decently positioned and secured, I simply sat back in my seat and stared at it. Out here in the darkness, it looked pretty good-to an untrained eye, maybe even like the real thing.
I practiced flipping the improvised ID case open, giving a silent count, then snapping it back shut, trying to instantly master what I’d seen Ben and the other cops I’d worked with do so many times in the past. My big problem was that I was going to need to look convincing but still only show the badge long enough to create a belief that I was official. If I was asked to let someone see it up close, I was in trouble.
If it weren’t for the fact that I was so nervous, I might have considered trying to throw a little magick behind the ruse. It was really all just the power of suggestion combined with a bit of inner energy to create what, in the parlance of WitchCraft, was called a glamour. In short, it was an illusion. A way of making someone believe they were seeing something that wasn’t really there. I actually had more than half the battle won already, given the
