The Sun Down Motel

“I know.” I wrapped a blanket over my lap. Not all of the articles I’d pulled were about Viv; in fact, very few of them were. Her disappearance was a blip in the life of Fell, just another thing that happened in 1982. “Here’s what I don’t understand,” I said, picking up an article. Viv’s photo looked back at me from the page, a picture I hadn’t seen before. She was alone. Her shoulders were turned from the camera but she was looking back as if someone had called her name, her chin tilted down. The photo was slightly blurry, as if taken from a distance, but it was still clearly her. The other photos had been posed snapshots of Viv smiling, but in this picture her expression was serious, her mouth in a firm line, her brows slashes above her eyes, which were focused on something with deadly intensity. She wore a blue sweater with a handbag over her shoulder, and her bangs were flipped with a curling iron, her hair cut just above her shoulders. No matter how fuzzy the photo or how dated the hairstyle, Viv had been a pretty young woman. “The articles don’t mention a search for her. Literally nothing. It seems like the cops asked around, put a few articles in the paper, and didn’t try much else.”

“Maybe we should talk to cops,” Heather said. She held up a piece of paper. “This article quotes Edward Parey, chief of Fell PD. Let’s see if he’s still alive.”

“Do you think he would talk to us?” I asked her.

Heather shrugged as she typed. “Why not? We’re harmless. What does he think we’re going to do?”

“If he’s still alive, he’s probably retired. Maybe he doesn’t want to talk about old cases.”

“Or maybe he does. If I’d been chief of police, and I’d retired, I’d be bored out of my mind.” She clicked through a few pages. “Doesn’t look like he’s died. It would help if we knew someone who knew him, though.”

“Maybe Callum can help.”

Heather looked up at me, blank.

“The guy who helped me in the archives room today. I told you.”

“Oh, right. Another one of your men.”

I couldn’t help it; I laughed.

“Well, you have a lot of them,” Heather pointed out.

That made me laugh more. “I like that you don’t know how pathetic I am,” I told her. “I don’t think I talked to an actual, literal man in college. One of them might have spoken to me at a party and I nearly choked on my drink. Then I went home and read The Deathly Hallows again so I could tell myself that was why I was crying.”

“My God, we’re truly soul sisters,” Heather said. “Men are not my bailiwick.” At my carefully blank expression, she said, “Relax. Men are my bailiwick in theory. I just don’t like . . .” She moved her hands around, miming a bubble. “I don’t like anyone touching me. Anywhere, ever.”

“I get that,” I said.

“Carly, no one gets that. Not my parents, not boys, not shrinks. Not anyone.”

I thought again about the lineup of medications on our bathroom counter and said, “I do. Not wanting someone’s hands on you. I get it.”

There was a slow arc of seriousness for a long moment. She looked at me, and I could see she wanted to say something important. But in the end she didn’t, and she looked away with a small sigh.

And I wasn’t lying. I did get it. I thought about Callum MacRae, as nice as he was, and I got it. Then I thought about Nick Harkness, and my first thought was that I could picture wanting his hands on me. I could picture it easily, even though he’d never do it.

I smoothed the photocopied page in my lap and looked down at Viv again. At how alive and unrehearsed she was in this picture, like she was just going about her business instead of posing for a camera. And then it struck me that maybe she hadn’t even been aware this picture was taken. Like someone had taken it and she hadn’t seen.

I looked at the bottom of the picture and read: Photo by Marnie Mahoney.

Fell, New York

October 1982

VIV

Helen and Robert were at the Sun Down again. So was the green sedan that followed them. It was still there at seven in the morning; it had been there all night. It was raining and the sun was only a faint grayish tinge through the pour of water. Viv wondered how the man in the green sedan could get any good photos in this light.

Her shift was finished, so she shed her polyester vest and put on her coat. Sometimes Janice showed up to relieve her at seven, and sometimes she didn’t. Viv always left either way. There weren’t any real rules at the Sun Down.

There was no sign of Janice, so Viv locked the office door, though she left the neon sign on. She put her hood up to fend off the rain and took the path away from the parking lot, heading toward the pool. She circled the edge of the motel property, her feet in their sneakers splashing in the cold puddles. She trotted along the thin strand of trees that bordered Number Six Road and skirted to the back of the parking lot. By the time she approached the green sedan, from the other side of the motel, her feet were soaked and there was rain running down her neck.

The car was parked at the back edge of the parking lot, the same place as before, its right tires on the line where concrete met dirty gravel. The inside was dark, and in the rain Viv couldn’t see through the windows. She walked up to the front passenger side and knocked on the window.

A shadow moved inside the car, but nothing else happened. Obviously he wanted her to go away, so Viv bent at the waist and said loudly to the glass, “They’ll be out in ten minutes. They’re getting ready to leave right now.”

Another second of nothing, and then the shadow moved again and the window started to crank down. Viv caught a whiff of a smell that was surprisingly nice, like clean perfume. A woman’s voice said, “What the hell are you talking about?”

Viv stood frozen with surprise, but she recovered herself quickly. “The couple in room one-oh-nine,” she said. “That’s who you’re waiting for, isn’t it? You’re waiting to take pictures. You’ve been here all night.”

Silence from the car, then a breathed “Shit” that Viv could hear over the rain.

“They usually don’t stay this long,” Viv continued. “They leave by four, though you already know that. The man just called his wife to tell her he’s on his way home. She’ll come out any minute. She always leaves first.”

“Shit.” This one was louder. “Get in the back seat, for God’s sake. I’m trying to make a living here.”

Viv opened the back door and slid into the car. She pushed her hood back, dripping on the pleather, and looked at the woman in the front seat.

The woman turned in the driver’s seat and looked back at her. The other woman was black, slender, with natural hair in a short Afro. She looked to be in her late twenties. She was wearing a blouse in an understated floral print and neat jeans. She had no makeup and gold studs in her ears. If she was tired after being awake all night, her face showed no sign of it.