The Sun Down Motel
He wouldn’t do something today. Would he?
Panicked, Viv circled back to the street where she’d first seen the girl, parking where she’d parked before. She got out and walked past the house in front of which the girl had been getting on her bike. Did she live here? Was she visiting here? Or had she only stopped briefly while riding her bike down the street, on her way from somewhere else?
Viv wrote the address in her notebook, then walked back to her car and waited, watching. It was now nearly four o’clock in the afternoon; she should be exhausted. But she was wide awake, her blood pounding shrilly in her veins.
The traveling salesman was following his next victim. She was sure of it.
The question was, what was she going to do?
Fell, New York
November 2017
CARLY
The house on German Street was at least sixty years old, a post–World War II bungalow with white wood siding and a roof of dark green shingles. This was a residential street in downtown Fell, a few blocks from Fell College in one direction and the huge Duane Reade in the other. In this small knot of streets, everything had been tried at one point or another: low-rise rental apartment buildings, corner stores, laundromats, a small medical building advertising physiotherapists and massage. In between these were the small houses like this one, the remnants of the original neighborhood that had been picked apart over the decades. This one was well kept, with hostas planted along the front and in the shade beneath the large trees, a fall wreath of woven branches hanging on the door.
There was a car in the driveway. That was a good sign, because Heather and I were dropping in unexpectedly.
“You’re up for this?” I asked Heather for the third time.
She gave me a thumbs-up, and we got out of the car.
We could hear the doorbell chime through the door. After a minute the door opened and a woman appeared. She was black, in her fifties, with gray hair cropped close to her head. She wore a black sweater, black leggings, and white slippers.
Her eyes narrowed at us suspiciously. “Help you?”
“Mrs. Clark?” I said. “I’m Carly Kirk. We talked on the phone.”
“The girl asking me about the photograph,” Marnie said. “I already told you I have nothing to say.”
“This is my friend Heather,” I said. “We just have a few questions. We’ll be quick, I promise.”
Marnie leaned on the door frame, still not stepping aside. “You’re persistent.”
“Vivian was my aunt,” I said. “They never found her body.”
Marnie looked away. Then she looked from me to Heather and back again. “Fine. I don’t know how I can help, but you get a few minutes. My husband is home in half an hour.”
She led us into the front living room, a well-lived-in space with a sofa, an easy chair, and a big TV. A shelf of photos showed Marnie, her husband, and two kids, a son and a daughter, both of them grown. Heather and I sat on the sofa and Marnie took the easy chair. She didn’t offer us a drink.
“Listen,” she said. “I told you that photo was just something I got paid for. I don’t know anything about your aunt disappearing all those years ago.”
Heather pulled a printout of the article about Vivian from her pocket and unfolded it. There was Marnie’s photo, Vivian with her lovely face and curled hairdo, her head turned and her expression serious. “Do you remember taking this?” Heather asked her.
Marnie glanced at it and shook her head. “I was a freelance photographer in those days. I shot anything that would pay. I took pictures of houses for real estate agents. I did portraits. I worked for the cops a few times, taking shots of burglary scenes.” She put her hands on the arms of the easy chair. “When I met my husband, I took a job with the studio that worked for the school board. I did class photos. It didn’t pay a whole lot, but the hours were easy and I had my son on the way. I couldn’t run around taking pictures at all hours anymore.”
“You said on the phone you’ve lived in Fell all your life,” I said.
“That’s right.”
“Do you know the Sun Down Motel?”
Marnie shrugged. “I suppose.”
“Here’s the thing,” Heather said. “I took this photo and enlarged it. You see this in the corner here.” She pointed to the corner of the photo of Vivian. “When the picture is enlarged, that’s a number—actually, it’s two numbers, a one and a zero. Like the numbers on the front of a motel room door.” She pulled out her phone. “So I went to the Sun Down and looked at their room numbers. The rooms on the bottom level all start with a one, and the rooms on the upper level all start with a two. And the door numbers look exactly like the numbers in your picture.”
Marnie had gone still, her gaze flat. “What exactly are you saying?”
“The Sun Down hasn’t changed its door numbers since it opened,” I said. “This picture”—I pointed to the photo of Viv—“the one you took, was taken at the Sun Down Motel. Do you remember why you were taking pictures there?”
Marnie barely glanced at the photo. She shook her head. “What do you think is going to come from this?” she asked, looking from me to Heather and back. “Nancy Drew One and Nancy Drew Two. Do you think you’re going to catch a murderer? Tackle him down and tie his hands while the other one calls 911? Do you think some photo pulled out of a thirty-five-year-old newspaper is going to be the smoking gun? Real life doesn’t work that way. I’ve seen enough of it to know. Gone is gone, like I told you on the phone. I look at you two and wonder if I was ever as young as you are. And you know, I don’t think I ever was.”
Her dark brown eyes looked at mine, and I held her gaze. We locked there for a long second.
“You took pictures at the Sun Down in 1982,” I said. “Tell me why.”
Still she held my gaze, and then she sighed. Her shoulders sagged a little. “I took a side job for a lawyer. Following his client’s wife. I followed her around and took pictures for evidence. She was cheating on him, just like he thought, and she met the other man at the Sun Down. So the pictures I took were not exactly for public use.” She leaned back in her chair. “That job paid me a hundred and seventy-five dollars, and I paid the utility bill for almost a year with it. I was on my own back then, paying for myself. I needed the money.”
I felt a tickle of excitement in the back of my mind. “What was the client’s name?” I asked.
“Bannister, but it was thirty-five years ago. They might both be dead by now, for all I know.”
“So you were taking pictures at the Sun Down while Vivian was there. Did you ever talk to her?” I asked.