would have to go somewhere for shelter. She would need food, clothes, water. Jeffrey looked up at the sun, wishing he had brought some water with him. Of course, given the state of the house, it was probably wise he hadn't ingested anything there.
At the top of the hill, he took out the map again, checking to make sure he was still on the right route. He saw skid marks on the road where two cars had almost collided and figured a couple of kids had narrowly missed getting their cars totaled.
Jeffrey could hear traffic from the highway as he took the next left. A large field on his right led into a dense forest, and he wondered if this was the same forest that backed onto the motel. Jeffrey consulted the map again and saw that it was. Lena could have walked from Hank's to the bar. The hospital was just a few streets over.
As expected, there were all kinds of trails crisscrossing the field. It was colder inside the forest and he put his jacket back on. There were no signs of secret hiding places, no trash other than some cigarette butts and more empty beer bottles than he
could count. Jeffrey could still see the sun peeking through the limbs and he made sure to keep it on his right as he walked a straight line toward the motel. He kept checking his watch as he walked so that he wouldn't lose his sense of time, which always moved more slowly when you thought you were lost.
Jeffrey was starting to get a little nervous when he heard the stream that he'd seen behind Hank's bar the other night. Briefly, he had the entertaining idea that he might find whatever Boyd Gibson had dropped, but by the time he reached the bank of the stream, he'd pretty much given up on that miracle happening.
Jeffrey saw the room he and Sara had shared. Someone who wasn't exactly handy had nailed a large sheet of plywood over the broken window. The door was ajar, and Jeffrey poked his head in and checked to make sure they had gotten all of their things. The room looked exactly as they'd left it, but for some reason, Jeffrey didn't find the place as disgusting. Maybe it was because he'd spent a couple of hours in Hank's house. He didn't know how Lena had stood it.
'Shit,' Jeffrey whispered. Lena
Jeffrey jogged to the front office. The night clerk was gone, but an orange-haired teenager was sitting behind the counter playing video games on the computer.
The kid didn't look up from the screen as he jabbed his thumbs at the buttons. 'What's up?'
'Was somebody, a woman, staying here last week about this tall.' Jeffrey held up his hand to indicate Lena 's height. 'Brown hair, brown eyes-'
'You mean Lena?' The kid kept his eyes glued to the screen.
Jeffrey reached over the counter and ripped the controller out of his hand. 'Give me the key to her room.'
'The sheriff's already checked-' The kid seemed to understand this didn't matter. He quickly handed Jeffrey the passkey, saying, 'Room fourteen. It's on the second floor.'
Jeffrey bolted up the stairs. He jammed the key in the lock and threw open Lena 's door as if he expected to find her standing there with a full explanation.
She wasn't.
He closed the door behind him and dropped the key on the plastic table. Lena 's toiletries were neatly lined by the sink, her clothes still folded in her suitcase. Jeffrey couldn't begin to know what, if anything, was missing because he didn't know what she had packed. Still, he opened all the drawers, checked the nightstand, even looked under the sink.
There was nothing except a rusted flathead screwdriver that had rolled under the air conditioner by the window.
Jeffrey sat on the bed, trying to think. He had never seen Lena carry a purse, but then carrying a bag wasn't conducive to the job. He would have to ask Sara about that. Or maybe Valentine would be the person to question since the sheriff had already checked the room. On second thought, there was no need to let the sheriff know he'd gotten one up on Jeffrey.
Jeffrey stood from the bed and lifted up the mattress, finding the remnants of what he guessed had been a couple of Cheetos but nothing else. He dropped the mattress, a rush of air blowing back on him. Jeffrey's olfactory system was understandably out of whack since his time at Hank Norton's, but he could have sworn he'd gotten a whiff of gun oil. He flipped the mattress off the bed and knelt down to examine the bedskirt that covered the boxspring. Glad that no one could see him, he sniffed around the thin cotton, stopping when he heard a key sliding into the lock on the door.
Jeffrey stood up just as the door opened. The maid did a double take when she saw him, a scowl on her face.
She demanded, 'What the fuck are you doing?'
'Can you come back in ten minutes?'
'Can you put that mattress back where it belongs?' Jeffrey didn't snap to, and she tucked her hands onto her hips. 'I ain't got all day, mister.'
He took out his badge and showed it to her.
She squinted at the tiny letters, unimpressed. ' Grant County. Sounds like a real shithole. You with the mattress division, checking to see if people pulled off the tags?'
Jeffrey put the mattress back in place, hoping he could keep her talking. 'Did you ever meet the woman who was staying here?'
'The one what gave Jake the slip?' She chuckled, walking into the room. 'And to think I voted for that dipshit.'
' Lena 's a friend of mine,' he told the woman. 'I'm trying to help her out.'
'Ain't you the gallant knight.' She took a rag out of her pocket and started wiping down the phone on the bedside table, mumbling, 'Must've used the phone a lot. Damn greasy fingerprints are all over it,' Her head was bent, but she looked up at Jeffrey as if she was wondering why he was still here.
'Thanks for your help,' he told the woman, though the opposite was the case.
Jeffrey was halfway toward the stairs when he realized the maid may have been more helpful than she'd intended. He hadn't seen Lena 's cell phone in the hotel room, so it must have been in her car. Frank Wallace, his second in command, could run a records check to see who she had been talking to before the night the Escalade was torched, or maybe even after. He would also put out his own APB on Hank's Mercedes and maybe have Frank call in a few favors with the Highway Patrol to see if they could keep an eye out for Lena. As with Jeffrey's phone, Sara's couldn't get a cell signal at the hotel, so he would have to call Frank on the walk back.
Jeffrey stopped on the bottom stair. Christ, what an idiot. If he couldn't get a cell signal at the hotel, neither could Lena.
He jogged toward the front office again. This time, the kid was waiting at the counter, ready to serve. He asked, 'Find anything?'
Jeffrey shot back his own question. 'Did Detective Adams make any phone calls while she was here?'
'She made a long-distance one before she left.'
Jeffrey knew from his own bill that the motel charged fifty cents a minute for local calls and two dollars a minute for long distance. The calls were big money and the motel would keep exact records. 'Let me see all of her calls.'
The teenager pulled a stack of papers off the printer. 'There was only one,' he explained. 'Got a nine-one-two area code.'
