The Sun Down Motel

I put my spoon in my soup—chicken noodle, I realized. “I just saw Simon Hess,” I said. “Except he’s dead.”

Viv took a swallow of her own soup. “Are you waiting for me to say it? Okay, I will. Simon Hess is very, very dead. I killed him in November 1982. I put a knife in his chest, and then I pulled it out and put it in his neck. Then I wrapped him in a rug, put him in the trunk of his own car, and left it in an abandoned barn.” She put her spoon in her soup again. “I did it because he was a serial killer who killed four women that I knew of. I did it because he admitted everything to me that night before I put the knife in the second time. I did it because if I hadn’t, he would have gone free and killed again. Most likely starting with me.”

I watched as she took another swallow of soup. “You’re so casual about it.”

“Because I’ve had thirty-five years to come to terms with it. You’re just figuring it out for the first time.” Viv pressed her napkin to her lips. “If you want to call the cops on me, I won’t stop you. I’ve had thirty-five years of freedom that I haven’t really enjoyed and that a lot of people will say I don’t deserve. I’m no danger to you, Carly.”

This was the strangest conversation I’d ever had. I didn’t know what to do, so I ate some soup. “You didn’t do it alone,” I said. “You had Marnie and Alma.”

“I did it alone,” Viv said.

I shook my head. “Marnie called me. She told me about the notebook in the candy machine. It was right where she said it was.”

“Are you sure that was Marnie?”

I stared at her. When I thought back, Marnie hadn’t actually identified herself. The call was from an unknown number. I had recognized her voice and assumed. And then Alma: Go meet her. It’s time.

Damn it. “That was you? Why?”

“I haven’t been an actress in a long time, but I can still do voices,” Viv said. “You’ve met Marnie. She pretends she isn’t a force of nature, but she is. Being her was the easiest way to get you to do something. Easier than doing it as me. There would be too much to explain if I’d told you who I really was. What I wanted was for you to find the notebook.”

“Why?”

“Because it explains why I did what I did. It’s all in there. Everything I found about Simon Hess and those murders.”

“That still doesn’t mean Marnie wasn’t involved that night,” I said.

“She wasn’t. There was just me. Only me.”

“Marnie took a photo of the dump site. I found it in her negatives.”

“Maybe someone used her camera.”

I gripped my spoon in frustration. “The phone records. They show that someone—you—made a call to the Fell PD that night. It would have gone through to Alma, the night duty officer. But those records were somehow never investigated.”

“I don’t know anything about the police investigation,” Viv said calmly, finishing her bowl. “I didn’t call the police that night. Maybe Mrs. Bailey did. She was passed out in her room, or so I thought. Maybe she woke up and heard something, but nothing came of it. Alma didn’t come to the motel that night, and neither did any other cop. At least, not before I left.”

“You were missing for four days before it was reported.” The pieces were coming together in my mind, all of them moving into place. “Your roommate reported it after she came home from a weekend away. But Marnie and Alma both knew you were gone.”

“No one knew I was gone. I killed Simon Hess, I dumped him, and I ran.”

“Alone?”

“Alone.”

No. No way would Viv, who was a hundred and ten pounds soaking wet, have been able to do everything alone—lift the body of a full-grown man into a trunk, clean up afterward, come up with the plan. Then she had to start a new life with no ID and no money. “Who are you now?” I asked her.

“Christine Fawcett,” Viv said. “I have a driver’s license and a birth certificate. I vote in every election. I picked Christine at random, but then Stephen King wrote that book, so I figured it was fate. And Fawcett is for Farrah Fawcett, who was my idol as a teenager.”

It struck me again how casual she was. But as she’d said, she’d had thirty-five years to get accustomed to being Christine. I hadn’t.

“You didn’t do it alone,” I insisted. It bothered me that I had come so far, was sitting across the table from the truth, and I still wasn’t getting it. “You need resources and money to start over. To get fake ID. To get a birth certificate. You weren’t a career criminal.”

“No, but Jamie Blaknik was.”

I knew the name. Alma had said he was at the Sun Down the night of the murder. “He was a pot dealer.”

“A pot dealer who knew a lot of the right kind of people, and knew how to keep his mouth shut.” Viv sat back in the booth, her eyes sad. “He died a long time ago, so nothing you do can hurt him.”

“You cared about him,” I said, seeing it in her face.

Viv glanced away, then nodded. “I asked a lot of him, but he never failed me. The cops questioned him as a suspect in my murder, but they couldn’t get anywhere with him. He kept my secret when he could have saved himself by turning me in. To the day he died, I knew I could never repay him. He’ll always be important to me.” The corner of her mouth quirked in the ghost of a smile. “Besides, a girl has to lose her virginity somewhere, right?”

I gaped at her. “Are we actually talking about this right now?”

Viv laughed softly, amused. It made her even more beautiful than she was before. “It may be a different time, but you remind me so much of me at that age. Smart, resourceful, and very, very square.”

“I am not square.” The words leapt out in my defense. “Wait a minute, no one even says square anymore. And we are not talking about this.”

“I got married once.” Viv sipped her coffee. “After Jamie. It lasted eleven months, and then he left me. He said he could never really know me, that I kept too much to myself. You’re always so far into your own head, where no one else can go. That’s what he said, and he wasn’t wrong. I liked him—loved him—but I can’t let anyone in. My life doesn’t work that way. It’s the sacrifice I made.” She looked at me speculatively. “You can choose differently, though. My sister’s girl. I think I can take some comfort in that. How did she die?”

“Cancer,” I said, my body aching all over again.

“It runs in the family, then. Get yourself screened, sweetheart.”