The Sun Down Motel

“Vivian,” Marnie said. “What the hell have you done?”

* * *

• • •

“What a mess,” Marnie said over and over again as they folded up the edges of the rug around Simon Hess’s body. “What a damn mess. You couldn’t do it in a way with less blood? Hit him over the head or something?”

Viv shook her head numbly, as if this question required an answer. She was still in shock over how quickly Marnie had adapted to the situation—and how in control she seemed to be. The entire night was seeming more and more like a crazy dream.

“Hold on, Viv,” Marnie said darkly, as if reading Viv’s mind. “No spacing out. What did he say to you?”

Viv felt tears sting her eyes, but she breathed deep and blinked them back. Her emotions were running wild, trying to get out of control. Panic, anger, hopelessness. “Everything,” she said to Marnie. “He told me everything.” She blinked harder, the body going blurry in her vision. “He thought he was in love with Betty. He kept saying she was his.”

Marnie was quiet for a second. “Somehow I doubt Betty agreed,” she said, her voice even. “Why bother telling a girl you love her when you can stuff her in your trunk instead? And the others?”

Viv shook her head. She couldn’t repeat the horrible things Simon Hess had said, not right now. A mistake. I wanted to know if I could do it again. She was so obviously alone.

“Damn,” Marnie said, again as if Viv had spoken.

“Why are you here so late?” Viv asked. “I thought you were done. Why did you come to the motel?”

“I heard about Tracy Waters. I had the radio on, and they said they found her body, and I thought . . .” Marnie looked down. “I knew it was him. We could have stopped it. I could have stopped it.”

“I tried,” Viv said. “I called the school. I wrote her parents. It wasn’t good enough. I failed.”

“At least you did something,” Marnie said. “Now I get to do something. Did you ever see Psycho?”

Viv felt her eyes go wide. “Are you saying I’m Norman Bates?”

Marnie said, “Go get the shower curtain from the bathroom.”

Viv did. They wrapped the rug in it, with Hess inside the rug. They were about to drag the entire package through the doorway when Marnie paused again.

“The knife is still in him with your fingerprints on it,” she said.

Viv swallowed. “Should I take it out?”

“Take it out and get rid of it.”

Viv put down her end of the shower curtain. Hess was curled in on himself, twisted to one side, his body undignified. She had to move him to get at the knife. It slid out easily, though the sound it made would haunt her for the rest of her life. Hess’s blood was cold now, and none of it spilled when she pulled out the blade.

“Wrap it in a towel,” Marnie said. “We’ll deal with it later.”

Viv carried the knife to the bathroom and wrapped it in one of the thin, rough hand towels. She would have to figure out where the spare towels were kept, and whether there were spare shower curtains. She was thinking like a murderer now. She put the knife in its towel on the shower curtain next to Hess.

“We need his keys,” Marnie said. She was good at this. “They’re probably in his pocket. And I’m not doing it.”

Viv gritted her teeth and bent to the body again. She had to touch it—touch him. Even after he was dead, touching Simon Hess made her recoil, as if she could smell all the dead girls on him, as if he’d reach up and put a hand on her that had beaten Betty Graham, that had pushed Cathy Caldwell into her car, that had strangled Victoria Lee and thrown her in the bushes. A hand that had stripped Tracy Waters and left her in a ditch after violating her.

Still, she patted his trousers, his skin ice-cold through the fabric, feeling his pockets. His keys were in the inside pocket of his jacket, and when she felt them she had to pull the lapel away from his shirt and put her fingers in the pocket. She could feel the soft, dead flesh of his chest, the pucker of a nipple. She grabbed the keys and yanked her hand back.

They checked through the open door. There was still no one in the parking lot.

It was hard work getting Hess down the corridor and the stairs, but Viv was ready now. She held up her half of the wrapped-up shower curtain as she and Marnie maneuvered it. Grunting and panting, they worked with the speed of the panicked. They carried him to the car, and Viv used Hess’s key to open the trunk. They dropped one end of the shower curtain and rolled him in, inside the rug. The knife tumbled out, hitting the bottom of the trunk.

“Put it in the back seat,” Marnie said. “We’ll dump it.”

Hess didn’t quite fit, and Viv had to push his feet in, tuck them under the edge of the trunk while Marnie folded up the shower curtain. Viv was reaching up to the trunk lid to close it when headlights swept across the parking lot.

Marnie swore and dropped the shower curtain. Viv slammed the trunk.

The car stopped and the headlights went out. A door slammed.

“Alma,” Viv said.

“Oh, Jesus,” Marnie whispered. “A cop.”

Alma approached them. She was alone, in uniform, one hand on her hip. She looked back and forth from Viv to Marnie.

“I know you,” she said to Marnie. “You’re one of the photographers we sometimes use.”

Marnie said nothing.

Alma looked at Viv again. She took in Viv’s disheveled appearance, her flushed face lined with cold sweat. “Vivian,” she said. Her voice was strangely flat, empty of its usual Alma confidence. “Tracy Waters is dead. We found her body early this morning.”

“I know,” Viv said.

“I think . . .” Alma looked away, closed her eyes for a second. She opened them and turned back to Viv and Marnie. “I think I was wrong. I think you might have been right when you came to me, but I didn’t listen. So I did something that I don’t normally do. When I heard they’d brought Tracy’s body in, I looked up Simon Hess’s phone number and called to see if he’d come to the station for an interview.”

Both women were silent. The only sound was the wind howling through the trees.

“He wasn’t home,” Alma said. “His wife said he’d gone out very early this morning, before six, and she hadn’t seen him since. She doesn’t know his schedule. She thinks he might be home tomorrow.”

She looked at the closed trunk. Viv felt her hands clench, felt cold sweat on her back and in her armpits.

“I would have called Simon Hess’s scheduling service, but they were closed for the day,” Alma said, still looking at the trunk. “I was going to call first thing in the morning to ask if they know where he is.”