The Sun Down Motel

She pulled away from the curb and drove slowly forward, her wipers going in the rain. “What if they’re right?” Viv asked her. “What if these girls all got killed by different men for different reasons?”

“Then we don’t have a killer in Fell,” Marnie said. “We have more than one. Which one gives you the best odds, honey?”

* * *

• • •

The jogging path where Victoria Lee was murdered was nearly dark in the rain, the last dead leaves drooping wetly from the trees, the ground thick with soaked mulch. The entrance was off a side street, blocked by a small guardrail that everyone obviously stepped over. There was no sign.

“Victoria’s house is that way,” Marnie said, pointing to a row of the backs of houses visible on a rise behind a line of fence. “She would have come around the end of the road and up the street here toward the trail.”

“This is wide open,” Viv commented, looking around. “Anyone could have walked by.”

“Not that day,” Marnie said. “It was raining, just like it is today. A thunderstorm, actually. No one uses the path in the rain.”

Viv swung her leg over the guardrail and walked onto the jogging path, her hood up, the rain soaking the fabric. “She went running in the rain.”

“After an argument.” Marnie followed Viv over the guardrail. She didn’t bother with the fiction of a hood; she just got wet, let the water run down the jacket she wore. “She didn’t get far. Her body was found about thirty feet down the path.”

The sound of the rain was quieter under the trees, hushed in the thick carpet of brush along the path. Water dripped and trickled onto Viv’s forehead, and her shoes squelched in the mud. She pushed her hood back and looked around. It was like a cathedral in here, dark and silent and scary. You couldn’t see the place where the trees cleared and the yards and houses beyond, even though it wasn’t far away. Standing here felt like being in a forest that went for miles. “Where does the path lead?” she asked Marnie.

“It runs just over a mile. It’s old city land that was supposed to be used for a railroad that was never built. That was probably a century ago. The land sat for a long time while the city argued over it, and in the end they just left it, because it’s long and narrow and they can’t use it for much else. In the meantime the people who live around here made a path. It ends just behind the Bank and Trust building on Eastern Road.”

Viv walked farther down the path. “The newspapers didn’t say that Victoria was an athlete,” she said. They’d only said that Victoria got in a lot of trouble in school, as if that might be a reason her boyfriend had grabbed her and strangled her. As if somehow she deserved it. They didn’t say it outright, but Viv could read it between the lines—any girl could. If you’re bad, if you’re slutty, this could happen to you. Even the articles about saintly, married Cathy Caldwell speculated whether her killer could be a secret boyfriend. Sneak around behind your husband’s back, and this could happen to you. Viv wondered what the newspapers would say if Helen the cheating wife died.

“She wasn’t a runner,” Marnie said. “She was just trying to keep slim. You know, for all those guys she supposedly dated.”

So a girl no one had really liked had come down this path, running in the rain because she was angry and needed to move. Viv left the path and fought her way through the brush, which was wet and darkened the knees of her jeans. Her shoes were hopelessly wet now, her socks soaked through.

He did it quick, she thought. Victoria was running, angry. She wasn’t sweet or pliant. He’d have to physically jump her, grab her, stop her. Get her on the ground. Get her quiet. His hand over her mouth, on her throat. Maybe he had a knife or a gun.

Would Victoria have fought? She could have at least tried to scream—there were houses not far away, including her own. There was a good chance there were people in hearing range. All it would have taken was one scream.

But if the man who grabbed her was her boyfriend, someone familiar, would she have screamed?

Viv turned in a circle, the thoughts going inescapably through her mind: What would I have done? Because this could have been her, storming out of the house at eighteen after a fight with her mother. Or leaving work. Doing what women did every day.

It could still be her now. It could be her tomorrow, or the next day, or the next. It could be Marnie, it could be Helen. It could be Viv’s sister back home in Illinois. This was the reality: It wasn’t just these girls. It could always, always be her or someone she knew.

She looked back at the path. Would I scream? She didn’t think so. She would have been so terrified, so horribly afraid, that she would have done whatever the man said. Don’t speak. Don’t make a sound. Come over here. Lie down. And when he heard someone coming and put his hands on her neck, it would all be over.

“You think the boyfriend didn’t do it?” Marnie called to her from the path.

“I don’t know,” Viv answered honestly. “It’s like you said. If he did it, then there’s more than one killer in Fell.”

“You’re ignoring the possibility that he did Betty Graham and Cathy Caldwell. Maybe it’s Victoria’s boyfriend who is the serial killer.”

Viv closed her eyes as water dripped through the trees. It was possible, she had to admit. The timeline worked. “So he started with strange women, then killed his girlfriend.”

“And he hasn’t killed anyone since. Because the cops caught the right man.”

The rain was cold on Viv’s skin, but she welcomed it. She felt hot, her blood pumping hard. “Victoria was eighteen when she was killed. Was her boyfriend older?”

“He was twenty.”

“Still, it puts him in high school when Betty was killed. He would have had to pull off posing as a salesman.”

“If the salesman actually did it. Which no one knows.”

It was possible. Victoria’s boyfriend could have spent years as a monster in secret, killing a teacher and a young mother before he was twenty. Viv kept her eyes closed. “You don’t think that’s true,” she said to Marnie. “If you did, you wouldn’t have brought me to all of these places. You think there’s a killer still on the loose.”

Marnie was quiet for a minute. “All I know is I’d like to leave this damn jogging path. It’s giving me the creeps.”

Viv opened her eyes again and walked farther into the brush. It was true—this was likely a fool’s errand. Victoria’s killer was in prison. There was no mystery here. Except there was. How did Victoria’s boyfriend know where she was? She wasn’t an athlete or even a habitual runner. Why had he come here to this place? If he jumped her at the beginning of the path, was he waiting for her? If so, how did he know where she would go?