The day had been long over, and the moon was full as it could get as it looked down on my little pickup pulling into the parking lot of the Sage and Sun Motel in Casper, Wyoming. Elise groggily lifted her head from my shoulder as my truck bounced up the drive from the highway, and I cruised to a stop near the manager’s office.
“Shit,” Elise mumbled, seeming a little embarrassed as she straightened up, “sorry. I didn’t mean to fall asleep like that.”
“No worries,” I said, shifting the stick into neutral and turning off the engine. No worries, indeed. The last few hours where her un-beanied head had been laid against me had been the best hours of the trip. I was almost sorry this leg of our little road trip was coming to an end. “It was a long day, and you drove for a good four or five hours of it.”
She reached out and wiped my shoulder a bit with a wadded up napkin she must have taken from the diner back in Yellow Rose. “Think I drooled on your shoulder, though.”
I twisted my head to the side and tried to catch it. “Changed my mind,” I said, trying to brush it off.
She laughed a little before realizing how close she was still seated next to me, her side practically against mine as her legs lay across the seat, down into the passenger-side foot well. She readjusted herself and said, “Whatever, Jake.”
Silently lamenting that she’d moved back to her side of the bench, I leaned forward and peered into the darkness, up at the motel office sign ahead of us. “This is the place, I guess.”
Elise leaned forward. “Looks like it. Think we’ll find a lead here?”
“Hope so. We’re batting about a thousand so far, and I’d hate to break that streak.”
“Especially after such a long drive,” she said, rubbing the back of her neck beneath her long mane of curls. “Think we should get a place for the night?”
I nodded. “Probably a good idea. Place looks pretty skeezy, though.”
“Think we can stay without getting hepatitis?”
“We’ll sweep for syringes first. Back in a minute.” I left the keys in the ignition for her and climbed out of the pickup. Hands on my lower back, I gave myself a good stretch before stomping up to the front office and going inside.
The room was unremarkable. Ugly plants, uglier paint. A boring painting of a cattle-drive on one wall. The room was separated by a wooden counter, with a kind of dopey-looking guy in his late-twenties sitting at a small desk on the other side, his legs kicked up and his smartphone propped on his knees.
He just looked up at me, his face nearly blank.
“Evening,” I said. “Need two rooms for the night.”
He groaned, swung his legs off the desk, and dropped his phone on the desk. “Sure. Two rooms, just for tonight?” He grabbed some papers and got up from his seat before coming to meet me at the counter.
“Preferences? Smoking, non-smoking?”
“Non-smoking if you have it.”
We went through the process of picking out the room and prices. Screw syringes giving us hep. At these prices, I might’ve contracted it already by just stepping foot in here.
“Hey,” I said as he was bent down over a carbon-copy form, filling it out, “I got a question. I’m looking for a couple of girls that stayed here maybe a month ago?”
“Get a lot of people passing through.”
“One had curly black hair, the other with long blonde dreadlocks, I think. Girl with black hair would’ve been going by Lilith or Eve. The other Jasmine.”
“Yeah,” he said, furrowing his eyebrows in concentration as he slid the form over to me to sign. “I remember ‘em. Real pretty. Got a lot of noise complaints first night the black-haired one showed up.” He looked up at me, his lips pressed together. “You a cop or something?”
I shook my head, reaching for my clip with my business cards. “Private investigator out of Colorado. Trying to help the family find the girl with the noise complaints.”
He picked up my card and examined it as he idly scratched his head. “The blonde one, she stayed here for a little bit. Both checked out when the black-haired one showed up.”
“Any chance I could get into the room they stayed in? Maybe look around?”
He looked up at me, eyebrow raised.
I reached back into my pocket and pulled my wallet, pulling out a fifty. “What about this?” I laid the bill down in front of him and pushed it his way. “If it’s vacant, just give me that room for the night. How’s that sound?”
He slid the bill off the counter and deftly tucked it into a pocket. He fished around for a moment behind the counter and pulled out two sets of keys. “Here you go, man. Room 23, that’s the one the blonde girl stayed in. Was here for a few weeks before the other got here.”
“Thanks,” I said, stuffing both keys into my breast pocket. “If I have any other questions, I’ll let you know.”
The clerk made a face like he was torn between making a little bit more money on the side or playing on his phone.
“Easy pay, man,” I reminded him.
Finally he shrugged and nodded. “Sure, dude, why not.”
I nodded before I turned and headed back out to find Elise. She climbed out of the pickup, both of our bags in hand, as I reappeared. “Anything?”
“Got the room her friend stayed in,” I said, patting my breast pocket, the keys jingling together. “Figure we’ll look that over, then split up for the night.”
She hesitated just a moment before nodding and handing me my bag.
Together we headed over to room 23, both quiet, the length of the day settling in on us like a blizzard of snow.
There’s a kind of ache that settles into the body after a long drive. The kind that’s really only relieved by a long soak in a hot bath, followed by a good night’s rest. One glance around the Sage and Sun, with its peeling paint, distinct smell, and dingy windows, told me I’d be better off just taking a long soak in a sewage run-off.
We came to a stop in front of the room and gave each other a look. It wasn’t lost on me how strange it was that I was renting a cheap motel room with Elise, even if I wasn’t going to be sharing it with her. It certainly wasn’t what I’d envisioned when I first met her.
“Ready?” she asked anxiously.
“Ready.” I slid the key into the lock and twisted it to the side. I opened the door as the bolt slid back, stepped inside, and flicked on the light.
Yep. It was a shitty motel room, alright. Bedspread the color of sand and Wyoming skies, carpet as old as the seventies. I took a discreet sniff as I walked into the room, picking up the fragrance of mold and mildew, like a wet sheep on a cool, misty morning.
Elise shut the door behind us as she stepped into the room, tossing her bag full of clothes on the little table near the door. I slung mine off my shoulder and put it on the floor.
“Think we’ll find anything?” she asked.
“If this were any other motel, I’d be iffy. But the clerk said the girl Eve met stayed here for almost a month beforehand, so there’s bound to be something she left behind that the maid missed.” I looked around, at the dust on the table and a little bit of paper in the corner. “And, the way their cleaning service is here, I have a feeling that’s likely.”
“Where do we start, then?”
“Pick a spot,” I said as I went over to the TV stand and the little fridge tucked in next to it. “Any spot.”
We searched for the next ten or fifteen minutes. I staked out the bathroom and began my search there. Nothing of interest, really. There was a smell of something like mouthwash, maybe, and toothpaste build-up on the sink. The bathtub actually did look surprisingly clean and the shower curtain looked new. So the room had that going for it, at least.
But nothing else. Dammit. I was sure we’d be able to find something, a clue or flower or number scrawled on a piece of paper. Something, anything, we could use to try and find Eve. Maybe our luck was running out.
I was just about to lift the lid on the toilet’s tank, moving onto a deeper search, when Elise called out from the room. “Jake! Come check this out. I think I found something.”