Alma’s face was fully shut down now. She shook her head. “That’s what this is all about, isn’t it? I get it now. You heard about Betty and where her body was dumped. That’s what set all of this off.”
“A schoolteacher,” Viv said. “Killed and dumped. The articles say her body was ‘violated.’ What does that mean? Does that mean rape? They didn’t say Cathy was violated.”
“Vivian, this isn’t healthy. These kinds of topics aren’t normal. A nice girl like you, you should be thinking about—”
“Parties? Boys? Movies? Cathy and Victoria cared about those things, I bet. Betty, too, maybe.” She tapped the article sitting between them. “Her body was dumped at the Sun Down Motel.”
Alma’s voice was tight. “It wasn’t the Sun Down Motel. Not then.”
“No, it was a construction site. He killed her and dumped her body on a dirt heap at a construction site.”
“It was years ago.”
Maybe, but Betty is still there. She’s still at the Sun Down. I’ve seen her, because she never left.
She’s still there, and she’s telling me to run.
Betty had been twenty-four. Unmarried with no boyfriends, no enemies, no wild habits. Gone from her own house in the middle of a Saturday, never seen alive again. Betty’s parents were still grieving, still looking. “We just want to know who would do such a thing,” Betty’s father was quoted in the article as saying. “We can’t understand it. I suppose it won’t help in the end. But we just want to know.”
The photo of Betty was of the woman she’d seen at the Sun Down. Her hair was tied back and there was a smile on her face for the camera, but it was her.
“What does ‘violated’ mean?” Viv asked again.
Alma shook her head. “You should drop this, honey. These are dark things. They aren’t good for you.”
“Dark things are real things,” Viv said. She’d sat reading articles in the Fell library, her stomach sick. She’d gone home and wept soundlessly on her bed, the sobs coming as drowning gasps, thinking about the woman in the flowered dress, how she was still there where her body was dumped, as if she couldn’t leave. “Listen,” she said to Alma yet again. They were both due on shift in ten minutes. “The last person to see Betty alive was a neighbor who saw what she thought was a traveling salesman knock on Betty’s door. She opened the door and let him in.” Her blood pounded so hard in her temples that she heard her own voice like an echo. “There’s a traveling salesman who comes to the motel. He uses fake names every time he checks in.”
That made Alma go still for a minute as she thought it over—but only for a minute. “So you’ve seen a traveling salesman, and you think it could be Betty’s killer?”
“A traveling salesman who comes to the Sun Down, where her body was left. And doesn’t say who he is.”
“Okay.” Alma looked at her watch. “Look, I’ll tell you what: Get me something, anything I can look up, and I’ll look it up for you. Hell, no one gives a shit what I do on my shift anyway. Next time this guy comes in, get me something. Try to get a name, make and model of car, a license plate, the company where he works, anything. Chat him up a bit. Be nice, but be careful. You’re a good-looking girl and not everyone is as nice as you are.”
“I know.” She knew that now.
“Okay then, we have a deal. I have to go to work now. See you later, Vivian. And if nothing comes of this—please drop it. If not for yourself, then for me.”
Viv nodded, though she knew she would never drop it. It was in her blood now. She gathered her papers and notebook and went to work.
There was no one in the office again, though the lights were on and the door was unlocked. She put on her uniform vest and sat at the desk.
Next time this guy comes in, get me something.
She hadn’t told Alma about the ghosts. About the woman in the flowered dress. About the fact that every time the traveling salesman checked in, the motel woke up and became a kind of waking nightmare.
As if the Sun Down didn’t like him at all.
Next time this guy comes in, get me something.
Run.
Maybe it was nothing. It was probably nothing, and she was just a stupid girl who didn’t know what she was talking about.
“Betty?” she said aloud into the silence.
There was no answer. But when she breathed in, Viv caught a faint trace of fresh cigarette smoke.
What does “violated” mean?
The man in the car, his hand on her thigh.
What does “violated” mean?
Get me something.
Betty, then Cathy, then Victoria. Three women murdered in Fell in the past few years. Their bodies dumped like trash. Even if one of them was solved, that still left two whose murderer was still out there. The salesman was the only lead she could think of, the only place to start.
She had a problem: She didn’t know when the salesman would come again. She was stuck for however long, until he chose to check in. If he chose to check in ever again.
When he was here before, he’d left no trace of who he was. Except . . .
Viv thought it over and smiled to herself.
Maybe she wasn’t stuck after all.
Fell, New York
November 2017 CARLY
Libraries were my places. I was that girl who maxed out her library card every week, starting with The Hobbit and The Witch of Blackbird Pond and moving up from there. I could kill an hour by wandering into an unfamiliar part of the Dewey Decimal System and checking it out. Computers, card catalogs, microfiches—I could navigate them all.
So the Fell Central Library was immediately familiar. It was set in the middle of downtown in a building that was large-ish and supposed to be prestigious
