The Sun Down Motel

Viv couldn’t look away from him. This close, she could see the beginnings of stubble on his jaw and his neck. Five o’clock shadow, his mother had always called it when her father hadn’t shaved. Her parents were very far away now.

She was afraid, and yet she wasn’t. She’d been following him for weeks now. Part of her was ready.

“I’m going to call the police,” Viv said. “You killed Tracy.”

He didn’t flinch. “Who did you tell?”

She shook her head. “No one.”

“You told someone,” Simon Hess said. “The boy who called me on the phone just now, for example. You told him, did you not, when you asked him to lie to get me out of my room?”

He put emphasis on the word lie, as if that mattered. As if he were offended by dishonesty after what he’d done. He looked at her with a tinge of disgust, and Viv felt the anger flush hot in her own cheeks.

“You’re just angry because you got caught,” she said. “You thought no one would ever do it, but I did.”

“Wrong,” Hess spit back. “You haven’t caught me yet. I’m still standing here. Call the police if you want. What can you prove?”

“I saw you with her.” She was angry, so angry. “I saw you with Tracy. Watching her. Following her. Why did you do it?” The words were wild, unwise, but they came out of her anyway. They had been dammed up for too long. “She never did anything to you. None of them did. Why did you have to kill her? And why do you keep coming back here?”

Outside in the corridor, a door blew open with a loud bang. It was the door to the next room. Then something soft hit their closed door, one thud and then another. A palm.

“Help me,” came a woman’s voice from outside, raspy and hoarse. “Help me!”

Viv’s hands went cold. The voice was the most terrifying and the saddest thing she’d ever heard. It was the voice of someone who knew she was dying, that after a long fight it was going to be over. That she would never win.

“Help me!” the voice screamed hoarsely, the palm hitting the door again, weaker this time.

Viv looked at Simon Hess and saw that he had a dreamy smile on his face. “Betty,” he said. “That’s why I come here. Because she’s here. I can’t . . . I go as long as I can without seeing her, but I always have to come back.”

Outside, the voice sobbed. “Help me. Please. Please.”

She sounded like that, Viv thought, when he did whatever he did to her.

What does violated mean?

“She was in my trunk,” Hess said, his voice a calm counterpoint to Betty’s screaming. “I thought she’d be quiet, but that was a mistake. She wasn’t quiet at all.” He shook his head. “I never made that mistake again. I learned my lesson. They aren’t quiet when you want them to be.”

Viv thought of the Betty she’d seen in the photo, calm and confident. A teacher. Spinster was the word the papers had used, even though she was only twenty-four when she died. “Why Betty?” she asked Hess.

“I loved her,” Hess replied. “I’ve never loved anything in my life, but I loved Betty. I just had to make her see.”

Betty screamed again, her palms pounding on the door, and Hess smiled. Betty had sounded like that in his trunk. She’d screamed like that, pounded on the trunk lid like that. To Hess, it was a lullaby. Her stomach twisted and she thought she was going to be sick.

She walked toward the door. She had to brush past him to do it, but he didn’t move. She tried not to recoil as she got near him.

“What are you doing?” Hess asked.

“Letting her in,” Viv said. She put her hand on the doorknob—it was ice-cold, so cold it almost burned her fingers—and wrenched it. The door opened and the cold, wet wind blew in. There was no one in the corridor.

She looked at the outside of the door. There were bloody palm prints on the cracking paint. Viv opened her hand and placed her palm over one of the prints, feeling the cold blood against her skin. It’s almost like it’s real, she thought crazily. Her palm fit perfectly over the print on the door.

Run, Betty had told her, standing in front of her windshield while Viv crouched in the car. Run.

She could run now. She had the door open. She had no doubt Hess would chase her; he might even win. He was older than her, less agile, but he was a hunter who had chased down his prey many times. Maybe she’d never know how many times. He’d chase her down, and then she’d be the next one on his list.

He had the same thought. “Do you think you’re going somewhere?” he asked calmly, even though she stood in an open doorway, ready to run.

She could do it. Get down the stairs, get in her car. Drive away from this place, from this killer. Tell the authorities.

What good would it do?

Nothing would happen. No one would believe her. Simon Hess would seem like a reasonable, law-abiding person who was falsely accused by a crazy girl. And it would start all over again.

Or he would kill her, and he’d get away with it. Again.

She stepped back from the doorway and turned around to face him. “No,” she said. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Three things happened.

All of the lights, including the sign, went out and everything went dark.

Betty screamed.

And Viv pulled the knife from her sweatshirt, slid it from its holster, and sank it into Simon Hess’s chest.

Fell, New York

November 1982

VIV



   It was surprisingly hard. Putting a knife in a man’s chest was like pushing it through thick cardboard, the blade punching through cloth and muscle. But the hunting knife was sharp, and Viv was full of adrenaline. She felt numb and strong and outside of her own body. She felt terrified and pure.

The wind howled through the open door, and footsteps ran past in the dark, heading for the stairs. “You got him!” the little boy’s voice cried out. “You got him!”

She could see nothing in the darkness. She heard a deep, gasping breath from Simon Hess, the sound of his footstep as he backed away. She let go of the knife handle and left it stuck in his chest as he moved. This isn’t happening, she thought wildly. It isn’t real.

All of the doors in the corridor were open now, and she could hear them banging. She blinked in the darkness, unsure whether she should step forward or retreat. There was a thump in the empty air of the room, then another, harder one. Simon Hess hitting the floor.

He was still breathing. She could hear it. Heavy, shaking, slow breaths. He might stop, Viv thought. He might die. Here, now. She didn’t want that yet. She stepped forward into the blackness, following the sound of his breathing. She knelt on the floor and crawled toward it, her eyes adjusting so she could barely see the shapes of her hands.