The Sun Down Motel

She ducked from the window again and squat-walked to the back yard, opening the latch to the backyard gate and peering in. It was a suburban fenced back yard, with a patio and a lawn in the dark. Still no sign of children’s toys. Viv closed the gate again and backed out.

She had no idea what she was looking for—just something. Something that would put her closer to him, reveal something about him. She walked low against the house to the front again and saw the salesman’s car in the driveway.

She crouched and moved to it. Peeked in the windows. The car was clean, as if he had bought it yesterday. No rips in the upholstery. No wrappers or junk. Nothing that said a man had just traveled in this car to Buffalo and back, that a man traveled in this car all the time.

She circled the car. If someone came by right now, she would be in plain view. The neighbor across the street could likely see her if he was looking out his window. The house across the street was dark with no car in the driveway. Still, she had to be fast.

The passenger seat had a few pieces of paper on it. Viv tried the passenger door and when it opened, unlocked, her blood went hot and pounding in her veins. She reached in and picked up the papers.

It was a schedule, typed up and run through a ditto machine. The ink smelled like school, and for a second Viv was dizzy with memories of class. Then she focused on what she was reading. It was a schedule, the words typed neatly.

Monday: Mr. Alan Leckie, 52 Farnham Rd., Poughkeepsie.

Wednesday: Terra Systems, Bank Street, Rochester.

Thursday: Monthly meeting at head office.

Viv almost laughed. This was from the salesman’s actual scheduling department, the one she’d pretended to be a few hours ago. She flipped back and saw the schedule for the previous week, and the week before that. How long did they keep records? She wondered.

The schedule pages had letterhead, a contact name, a phone number. Viv slid the bottom page from the pile—maybe he wouldn’t notice the bottom page gone?—and folded it into her pocket. She was just pushing the door shut when she looked up and saw the face in the living room window.

It was a girl, about ten, with long, straight hair tucked behind her ears. She was watching Viv with no expression.

Viv started. There had been no sign of kids anywhere. She should run, but instead she followed an impulse and met the girl’s eyes through the window. She put a finger to her lips. Be quiet, okay?

The girl gave no indication of agreeing or not. Instead she lifted a hand and pointed silently in the direction of the front door. He’s coming.

Adrenaline spiked straight through Viv’s body, up the back of her neck and down into her gut. She ducked down the driveway and jogged to her car, trying to look casual in case anyone was looking—I belong here! I’m just trotting down this street, no problem! She got to her car and slid into the driver’s seat as the front door of the salesman’s house opened. She flattened herself down on the seat, trying to make the car look empty.

After a few seconds she dared a peek through the window. The salesman—Simon Hess—was standing in the driveway where she had just been, looking back and forth up the street. He was still wearing the pants and rolled-up dress shirt he’d been wearing in the kitchen. His gaze hit her car and passed over it, seeing it empty. Viv held her breath.

He turned back to his own car, circled it. He looked in the passenger window and opened the passenger door. He picked up the stack of papers.

Did I put them back in the right place? Did I?

He stared at the stack for a long time. Too long. Thinking, Viv knew. Trying to pin down what wasn’t quite right. Trying to think of who had been in his car in his driveway—the passenger door had thunked shut when she closed it, she knew that, and now she knew he’d heard it. He was trying to put this together with the strange phone call. Trying to think of who it could be.

Slowly he put the papers back in the car and closed the door again. He turned and walked around the side of the house, disappearing.

Viv straightened quickly, turned on her car, and drove away. Her hands were slick and icy on the wheel.

Her mind raced. The salesman would see her footprints in the soft dirt of the garden at the side of the house: slim tennis-shoe prints. He would know it was either a boy or a girl who had been snooping at his house, not a large man. He’d figure a teenager. Viv’s shoes were white unisex tennis shoes, and technically they could belong to a teenage boy. The salesman was more likely to believe a boy prowler rather than a girl.

That would work to her advantage—if the daughter didn’t give her away.

She didn’t think the daughter would give her away.

Still, the phone call had been from a woman. He would be suspicious, on his guard. Wondering what someone wanted from him. Because he knew, now, that someone wanted something.

I am hunting the hunter, and he suspects it.

The game is on.

She was afraid. Terrified, actually. But she was just starting.

Now she needed her next move.

Fell, New York

November 2017

CARLY



   The Internet was a gold mine of information on Cathy Caldwell. Whereas I’d spent months subsisting on the few paragraphs I could find about my aunt Viv, Cathy Caldwell was a whole different ball game. Cathy Caldwell was famous.

She hadn’t always been famous. My first search for her name brought up a list of articles from the last few years—true-crime blogs, a podcast, and a Reddit thread with dozens of posts. Google showed me a photo, a 1970s color snapshot of a pretty woman with sandy brown hair standing in a sunlit back yard somewhere, smiling with a small baby on her hip. She was wearing short shorts and a turquoise halter top, her face a little blurry the way old snapshots always are from the days of film cameras with manual focus. The picture looked like the kind that was stuck in those old photo albums with plastic film that you smoothed over each page.

“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me about Cathy Caldwell,” I said to Heather as I sat glued to my laptop after we got back from talking to Jenny Summers.

I was half joking, but Heather answered me seriously. “I told you we have a lot of dead girls in Fell.”

“You weren’t kidding. What was the other name she said? Victoria something?”

“Lee.” Heather was standing in the kitchen, like she’d gone in there for something and then forgot what it was. She zipped the collar of her zip-up hoodie all the way up her neck, as if she was cold. She looked blankly at the closed door of the fridge. “That one was solved, and then it wasn’t.”

I frowned at her, though she wasn’t looking at me. “What does that mean?”

“Her boyfriend was convicted, and then it was overturned a few years later. He was proven innocent.”