“Let’s make a little more headway before we stop,” he said. “I know a place on the way.”
Charlie rolled her head over toward him. “On the way where?” She looked curious, he thought, but not suspicious.
“On the way to the best day of your life,” he said and winked.
She snorted a little and rolled her head back toward the window, grinning. “Yeehaw.”
“There’s something you need to know,” he said, his tone somber. “You’ll be hearing about it in town. Just heard it myself at the gas station while you were asleep.”
Charlie yawned and stretched her long arms and pressed them against the ceiling. “Oh yeah?”
“A girl in town was killed last night.”
She looked at him fast. “What girl?”
There was alarm in her eyes. A pulse at her throat.
“No one knows yet,” he said. “But they tell me it was monstrous.”
“Oh my god,” she said and slumped back into her seat. “Damn. What else did they say? Was she a little kid, or . . . ?”
“They didn’t say, just a girl, strangled to death.”
Charlie’s hand went to her neck. She shook her head, anxious. “We should go back, don’t you think? It feels wrong to go out at a time like this.”
“Hell no,” he said. “That’s exactly why we should get outta Dodge. I’m keeping you close until they catch him—or her.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
An electronic cow mooed as Kit opened the door to the reception office of the Big Sky Motel. In the dark and dusty space, the smell of microwaved popcorn and canine flatulence was so thick she had to breathe through her mouth. The managers had the same salt-and-pepper hair cut short, same soft cookie shape with thick necks and sloped shoulders. They stood side by side, so close they looked connected at the arms. The woman’s main distinction was a heavily made-up face, with peacock shadow swiped over her lids and coral gloss on her lips. A balding, geriatric poodle on a dingy cushion wheezed in its sleep.
“Welcome to the Big Sky Motel,” she said in a monotone. Between them sat a nameplate, which read bert and mabel schulweiser, owners.
“Hi there, I need some help,” Kit said. “Either of you seen a Manny Romero?” Her voice was dry around his name.
They stared at her, still as a painting.
For once, she wished she were more of a people person. Manny, she thought, darkly, would have these two eating out of his hand.
“I’m looking for a missing person. I think she’s been kidnapped.”
Mabel shifted slightly away from Bert and pouted her lips out as she considered this request. “Missing person, eh?” she asked, betraying her curiosity. Her painted eyebrows pushed toward her scalp. She elbowed Bert. “Did you hear that, Bertie? A kidnapping.”
Bert indulged no one with a response.
Kit unfolded the sheet of Charlie’s school pictures and pushed it across the counter. “Ever seen this girl?”
Bert kept his eyes on Kit. Mabel lifted the glasses hanging around her neck and inspected the photos.
“No, I don’t believe I have. Is she the kidnapped girl?”
Kit bristled at Charlie being talked about, even though she knew she needed these people’s help. “Can I just look at your registry for a second?”
Mabel glanced at her husband, who had not varied his position in the slightest.
“No’m,” he said. “Those records is private.” Mabel looked around the room as if searching for a way to help, keep her hands in the intrigue. Kit knew if there was a way in, it would be through Mabel.
“Curious if y’all had any drifters coming through,” Kit said. “Maybe someone didn’t seem quite right?”
“Ma’am, we’re a roadside motel,” Mabel said. “All of ’em are drifters, no one seems quite right.”
“Ever see a guy come in here with bright blue eyes, tall—”
Mabel clapped her hands together and looked like she had just won something.
“Oh, yes! The handsome fella, oh, he was—”
Bert hissed a reproach, stepped in front of his wife and crossed his arms. “We don’t know nothing, and if we did, we wouldn’t tell ya without a signed warrant.” His voice was surprisingly deep. Mabel mashed her sticky lips together and squinted, as if it pained her not to divulge what she knew.
“Look, it’s my daughter,” Kit said, pissed as hell and ready to drag him outside by the scruff.
“We ain’t seen her,” Bert said and set his shotgun on the counter.
Mabel let herself come around the desk and handed Kit a pen and paper. “Will you leave a number in case we do?”
Angry tears came as Kit scribbled her phone number, not that she’d be home to answer a call.
She blew out the reception door and tucked around the corner until she was sure the owners weren’t watching her. Then she went to the long train of rooms and pressed her ear to the first of twelve doors, straining for a voice, some sound of people stirring. At each room she listened and tried to see between the curtains, most of which were drawn shut. Inside one, a woman with curly red hair lay sleeping under a pile of sheets; in another a man sat on the edge of the bed in an undershirt, drinking from a can and smoking a butt. When she got to the eleventh room, she saw on the ground in front of the door a smudge of yellow. She knelt down and dragged her finger through the crystalline powder and shards of yellow candy. It looked like Manny’s favorite lemon drops crushed underfoot. She licked her finger. Intensely sour and sweet.
Kit hurled herself against the door three times until she felt the frame begin to splinter, then kicked as hard as she could and stumbled into the dark, cold room. She spun around, disoriented and unarmed. It smelled of him, not fresh, but it was there. Lemon and the unnamable scent that was just Manny. The room was neat the way he liked it. Hospital corners on the bed and windows polished to a sheen. She went to the bathroom, opened the closet. There were no clothes or toiletries, and no sign of Charlie. He’d checked out.
As her body shook with wasted adrenaline, her mind filled with unwanted images of Charlie, gasping against the weight of those hands, her thin arms and legs flailing until they fell around her. She began to feel dizzy and her chest knotted. She sucked at a full breath, but her airway had shut, as if it were she who was being strangled. She staggered toward the door and opened it, and in the expanse, she was able to inhale. She could not abide this helpless feeling, like her hands were tied to her feet. What was she supposed to do? She couldn’t do this alone. Even with Doc on the hunt, it wasn’t enough. She needed more bodies looking for Charlie.