I pulled up the room’s only chair and sat down. I put my head in my hands.
“Marnie had all of this, all this time,” Nick said.
“She must have,” I said. “But where is Viv?”
His voice was gentle. “Dead, maybe. It’s been thirty-five years.”
“She left that night,” I said, still staring down between my knees as I cradled my head. “She ran. She wasn’t abducted. She killed Hess and took off without her car or her wallet. Without money. How?”
I heard Nick move to the bed and move the papers. “She had help.”
“Which means Marnie, and maybe Alma, have been hiding her all these years. Maybe supporting her. Why? Why not turn her in?” I shook my head. “Hess was a serial killer. The pattern is right there in Viv’s notes. He was dangerous. Why not call the police and claim self-defense?”
“Because she’d still go to jail,” Nick said. “No matter who she killed, she’s still a killer. The circumstances could be mitigated a little, but that’s the best-case scenario. The worst case is that there’s no evidence at all that Hess killed anyone—at least nothing that can be proved in court. So Viv goes down as a crazy girl who decided to commit murder one night and chose an innocent man as a victim. Either way, she goes down.”
Maybe she should have, I thought. I’d seen the car parked in the old barn, the dried blood on the ground beneath it. Maybe the person who did that should go to trial. To prison. If she didn’t, what was to prevent her from doing something like that again?
“Do you smell smoke?” Nick asked.
I lifted my head and realized I did. Cigarette smoke, fresh and pungent. The smoking man, though I’d never felt him up here on the second floor before.
“Henry,” I said.
“What?” Nick asked.
I stood up. “Henry. That’s the smoking man’s name.” I walked to the door and opened it, looking over the dark parking lot. Waiting for the lights to go out.
The lights stayed on. Nick’s truck and my car were the only cars in the lot. But standing in the middle of the lot was the figure of a man. He was thin, cloaked in shadows. I watched him raise a cigarette, watched the smoke plume around him. He was facing my way, and I was sure he was watching me.
Then he lifted a hand and pointed down Number Six Road. I froze still. There was a figure on the side of the road—a man, walking quickly along the shoulder, his hands in his pockets, his head down, his shoulders hunched. I peered into the darkness, trying to decide if I recognized him, trying to see if he was a living figure or a dead one. I didn’t know the difference anymore.
But before I could decide either question, the man approached the motel and ducked around the corner toward the office, out of sight.
I looked back at the parking lot, looking for Henry. But the parking lot was empty. He was gone.
• • •
The office was dark, but someone had kicked the door. Nick and I had heard the thumps as we left his room. Now even in the reflected light from the road sign I could see the marks of a shoe where it had hit the wood.
“What the hell was he thinking?” Nick said, his voice low. “Did he think he could get in?”
I stared at the shoe marks, unsettled. “Callum MacRae followed me from town,” I said. “I had to drive to Alma’s place before he left me alone.”
“MacRae,” Nick said. “Do I know him? His mother is a professor at the college, right? What does he want with you?”
“I’m not really sure.” Callum’s interest in me had sometimes seemed personal, sometimes not. “But tonight he wanted to tell me that he’s Simon Hess’s grandson.”
Nick paused, then shook his head. “Fuck it, I’ve been gone too long. I don’t know all the town gossip anymore. If I ever did.” He stepped back and looked around. “If he followed you, then he was driving.”
“Yes.” Though that didn’t explain why he was walking along the side of Number Six Road now. Or kicking the office door. If it was even Callum at all.
“He didn’t go back to the parking lot. He must have gone this way.” Nick walked around the corner toward the empty pool.
I followed him, shoving my hands in the pockets of my coat. It was darker back here, on the other side of the building from the corridor lights. The dark made it seem colder. I kept close to Nick as he walked toward the broken-down chain-link fence around the pool, his boots scuffing in the layers of dead leaves.
“MacRae!” he shouted.
There was no answer.
“Let’s just go back,” I said.
Nick held up a hand. “I hear him.” He took a step and paused. “MacRae!”
I looked around, trying to see in the darkness. The empty pool with the fence around it. The broken concrete walkway that had once been the path that guests would take to the pool. The back doors that led to the utilities room and the storage room. From the other side of the building a truck went by on Number Six, making a loud, throaty barreling sound. There was the faint click I recognized as coming from the ice machine in the AMENITIES room, forever making ice that no guest ever used.
“There’s a break in the fence,” I said. I picked my way toward it, trying not to trip on the broken concrete. It was on the far side of the pool.
“Wait,” Nick said. “Be careful. Let me check it.”
“I can’t tell if it’s recent or not,” I said, touching the edge of the break without going through it toward the pool. “This fence is so old it might—”
A shadow came out of the darkness. Big hands grabbed me and shoved me through the break. I stumbled back toward the pool, letting out a scream.
“Carly!” Nick shouted.
The hands shoved me
