Grace
“This place comes alive at night, doesn’t it . . .” Noah murmurs, his blue eyes rolling over the row of cars parked on either side of the lot. A few people linger outside—leaning against windowsills while puffing on cigarettes; pacing along the shadowy sidewalks, their phones pressed to their ear. From somewhere within, a television blares the news and raucous laughter carries, serving as an ill mask to the other, more carnal sounds that thin walls can’t keep in.
“I’m ready when you are.” I hit send on the text to Kristian, telling him to meet us here and why. I’m assuming that he’ll come and fast, once he watches the video Noah just forwarded to him.
“Hold on.” Noah reaches over, his sinewy arm sliding between my legs to find the gun box from beneath my seat. I watch quietly while he fits it into his ankle holster, adjusting his jeans to fit over the top. “With what’s been going on lately—”
“The hookers are scary, I get it.” I climb out of my seat with a smile, not feeling as brave as I let on, because I know that Noah’s not thinking about the blonde girl up ahead, in her skimpy black dress and her crimson lips. And I know he’s not too worried about the two guys down by the corner of buildings Two and Three, who are doing a terrible job of hiding the exchange of some weekend recreational drugs for money.
It’s the dirty cops who have gotten away with corruption and murder for fourteen years that have him strapping a gun to his body anytime we leave the house.
The ones who probably would have gotten away with it for the rest of their lives, had it not been for us.
I meet up with Noah at the front of his Cherokee. “How fast will Kristian get here, do you think?”
“Pretty damn fast.” He loops an arm around my waist and holds me close as we walk along the sidewalk of Building One, both our gazes on the exact spot where the drug bust went down.
And where my father watched.
He was barely a shadow in the camera, and yet my heart filled with longing all the same. So many years stolen from me, all because my father was a good man, driven to do the right thing.
I push that ache aside. “It had to be taken from over here.” I hold up my phone, the video open and paused, and keep going—past Room 116, which is dark inside and, I’m assuming, in no shape for rental after the FBI tore it apart—until I’ve found the exact angle, at the window of Room 201. “It was taken from here.”
Noah steps in beside me to survey the angle. “Lower . . .” He takes my phone and crouches down, until my phone very nearly sits on the windowsill. “Here. The camera had to be sitting on the sill. Maybe on the inside. That’s why it was so steady. That’s why Mantis didn’t notice it.”
“So, someone renting this room that night just happened to have a camcorder, and just happened to tape the bust?”
“Having a video camera in a place like this isn’t the surprising part.” Noah gives me a knowing look. “But you’re right, something doesn’t add up. How’d your dad get it?”
I stand. “Maybe whoever was renting here knew that my father was a—” I let out a yelp of surprise when I look up to find that same man from the other day standing in the window, his face inches away from the glass.
Staring at me.
Noah stands to his full height and levels the guy with his own stare, one full of warning.
But the man—I’m guessing in his late sixties—doesn’t seem the least bit fazed.
“He was here that first day we came, when Klein was here,” I whisper, my gaze drifting over the wiry, old black man. He’s wearing the same brown trousers and rumpled shirt that he was wearing that day as well.
And . . .
“Oh my God.” I restart the video from my phone.
He’s wearing basically the same thing as the mysterious man talking to my father was wearing.
“Noah . . . this man was there that night.” I hold my phone to the glass, to where the man can see it clearly.
Chocolate-brown eyes shift to the screen, watching for two . . . three . . . four beats, before drifting back to me. And then he nods ever so subtly, almost to himself, and vanishes into the darkness of the room.
I’m about to slam my fist on the door when it opens.
“Who are you?”
He inhales deeply through his nostrils. “My name is Isaac. And you are Gracie May Wilkes.”
Hearing my full name roll off the tongue of this man—a complete stranger—makes my stomach flip. “How do you know that?”
“Because your father told me.” He jerks his head, indicating that we should follow him.
With a look back at Noah, we trail the old man into the motel room. His apartment, it would seem, based on the everyday clutter. The standard furniture has been replaced with a twin bed in the corner, a worn brown Barcalounger across from a contrastingly new small flat-screen TV, and a small table with two chairs, currently housing stacks of newspapers. Magazines sit on a side table, and dirty dishes are piled neatly by the sink. The air is stale, a faint scent of body odor lingering.
“I wondered when you’d find your way here.” Isaac moves slowly as he clears the papers away to allow us a place to sit.
“You knew Abraham Wilkes?” Noah asks for me, because I can’t seem to form words.
“I talked to him here and there. He was comin’ here every day, lookin’ for someone—”
“Betsy.” I finally find my tongue. “He was looking for her.”
“Lookin’. But not findin’. He’d just missed her by a few days, if I recall.”
“She was staying here?”
“Yes, ma’am. She was here. And then she was gone. Kept an eye out for her, but . . . never saw hair nor hide of her again.”
“Did you take the video of the drug bust?”
“I did. Right from that very spot over there. But it seems you’ve already figured that out.” He sighs as he eases himself into his lounge chair. “I’d been having trouble with vandals bustin’ into that vending machine. I wanted to catch ’em red-handed and I needed one of those things to do it. What do you call them again? Those . . .” His hand waves aimlessly in front of himself, as if the answer is in the air.
“A camcorder?”
“Camcorder. Yes. Can’t keep up with all this technology.” He chuckles as my gaze roams the room again, to the flat screen, and the laptop on the corner desk. “That’s all my son’s doing. He brings this stuff over for me every once in a while. God only knows which trucks they fall out the back from, but I don’t ask questions anymore. Anyway, he brought one of those fancy new camcorders and set it up right over there, by the window. Stacked some books to get it the right height. Taught me how to turn it on before I went to bed, and that was that.
“Well, I was tinkering with it over dinner and I guess I set it to record earlier than usual. I went out to do a few last jobs for the day. That’s when I ran into your dad, out in the parking lot. And then the cavalry came in after that guy. Didn’t realize I’d caught the whole thing on tape until later that night when I went to turn it on, only to find it already running. And I sure didn’t realize exactly what I’d caught until I replayed it.” He waggles his brow. “So I did what I thought was right, and I gave the video to your dad, the next time he came ’round.”
“When was that?” Noah asks.
“A few days before he died.”
I share a glance with Noah. “Have you watched the news lately?”
Isaac leans forward, resting his bony elbows on his knees, leveling me with those wise eyes. “Girl, I’ve known your daddy was innocent from the night he died.”
Something in his tone makes my heart flip. “How?”
“Because he was set up.” He says it so matter-of-factly.
“And how do you know that?” I ask, my voice barely a whisper. “Did you see someone do it?” Did Mantis scare him from speaking?