The Sun Down Motel

“Victoria’s case is being reinvestigated,” said the voice on the other end. “They’ve pulled all the evidence and are going over it again. Including reexamining her clothes for traces of the killer’s DNA.”

I turned and started walking back to my car. “Don’t tell me how you know that,” I said to Alma Trent.

“Don’t worry, I won’t,” Alma said. “I managed to make a few friends on the force over the course of thirty years, despite my personality. That’s all I’ll say.”

“If they can pull scheduling records, it will help. Viv’s notebook says that Hess was scheduled on Victoria’s street the month she died.”

“I know. I’ve read the notebook.”

“Not recently,” I said. The notebook was mine now; I’d kept it. By now I’d read it a hundred times. “Have you called Marnie and told her?”

“I have no idea who you’re talking about.”

“Of course you did,” I said as if she hadn’t answered. “You called her first, before me.”

“The name sounds familiar, but I can’t say I place it. You’re thinking of someone else.”

“Tell her I said hello.”

“I would if I knew who you mean.”

I sighed. “You know, one of these days you’re going to have to trust me.”

“This is as trusting as I get,” Alma said. “I’m just a retired cop who takes an interest in the Vivian Delaney case. Call it a hobby, or maybe nostalgia for the early eighties. Where are you? I can hear wind.”

“On Number Six Road, watching the Sun Down get bulldozed into oblivion.”

“Is that so,” Alma said in her no-nonsense tone. “Do you feel good about that or bad?”

“Neither,” I replied. “Both. Can I ask you something?”

“You can always ask, Carly.” Which meant that she wouldn’t always answer.

“Victoria’s boyfriend was originally convicted of her murder. But his case was reopened and overturned. I looked it up, and it turns out that it all started when the boyfriend got a new lawyer in 1987. Do you know anything about that? I mean, something must have changed. There must have been some kind of tip that encouraged him to seek a new trial.”

“I don’t know any lawyers,” Alma said.

Right. Of course. Except she knew for certain that the wrong man had been convicted, and that the right man was dead in the trunk of a car. “Here’s the other interesting thing,” I said. “Right after Tracy’s murder, a homeless man was arrested because he tried to turn in her backpack. Everyone assumed he must be her killer. But the case was thrown out because it was circumstantial. And the reason he went free was because he had a good lawyer.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes. That’s kind of strange, isn’t it? A homeless drifter who has a really good lawyer? It sounds like something someone would help out with if they knew for sure that the man was innocent.”

“I wouldn’t know. Like I say, lawyers aren’t my thing.”

I sighed. I liked Alma, but it was impossible to be friends with her. Heather was more my style. “I took pictures of the Sun Down being demolished on my phone. I think Viv would like to see them the next time I visit her.”

“I hear they’re giving her medical treatment in prison while she awaits trial,” Alma said.

My heart squeezed. Despite everything, Viv was my aunt. “They’re giving her chemo, but they don’t know if it will work.”

Viv had cancer again. She was going to either die of it or spend the rest of her life in prison. Maybe both.

Maybe neither.

Either way, there was nothing more I could do.

Did I feel good about that, or bad? It depended on the day, on my mood, on whether I felt anger at what Viv had put my mother through or the ache of missing family or admiration at some of the things she’d done. There were times I felt all three at once. This was going to take time—time that Viv, maybe, didn’t have.

“She beat it once,” Alma said. “She can beat it again. She can beat anything.”

“Jeez,” I said. “It almost sounds like you know her.”

“I don’t, of course, but she sounds like an interesting lady. Tell her I’d like to meet her someday.”

I rolled my eyes. “Whatever.”

“It’s cold out on Number Six Road. Do you want to come by for a coffee? I don’t care what time it is. I’m a night owl.”

“Me, too,” I said, “but I’m not coming today. I have plans.”

“Is that so,” Alma said again. “It’s about time.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means have fun,” she said, and hung up.

* * *

• • •

Nick was wearing jeans and a black sweater. He had shaved and he smelled soapy. He had long ago moved into an apartment in a third-floor walkup, a small place that was sparse and masculine and somehow homey. He had started a partnership with an old high school friend in a renovation company, and he ran two renovation crews in town. Maybe some of the business came because he was notorious, but not all of it did. When Nick put his mind to something, he could do anything he wanted.

“I want to study criminology,” I said to him as we ate a late-night dinner at a Thai place downtown. “I can start in the spring, get credits over the summer before I enroll for the fall.”

He lowered his chopsticks. The restaurant lighting was dim, making his dark hair and his shadowed cheekbones almost stupidly gorgeous. I couldn’t decide if I liked him better with his insomnia stubble or without.

“Are you sure about that?” he asked me.

“Yes.” I poked at my pad thai noodles. “I think I’d be good at it. Do you?”

He looked at me for a long moment. “I think you’d be brilliant at it,” he said, his voice dead serious. “I think the world of criminology isn’t ready for you. Not even a little.”

I felt my cheeks heat as I dropped my gaze to my plate. “You just earned yourself another date, mister.”

“I have to earn them? This is like our tenth.”

“No, it’s our ninth. The time we ran into each other by mistake at CVS doesn’t count.”

“I’m counting it.”

“I was in sweats,” I protested. “I had a cold. Not a date.”