“No idea.”
Rick flexed his fingers as he turned to look out the office’s front window. The view was a straight shot to Room Seven. There was no way he couldn’t have seen some odd behavior in the last two months. As he stared out the window, Rick said, “Detective Bishop, call dispatch. We need uniforms down here to search all the rooms.”
Bishop reached for his phone and punched in a few numbers. “How many cars you want?”
“Seven or eight.”
“Consider it done.”
“You really going to pull that shit?” the clerk growled.
“I am,” Rick said, facing him. Catching a hint of distress on the man’s face gave him a measure of satisfaction. “And we’re going to drag every one of your residents into the street. And then we’re coming back tomorrow night and the next. No one will want to stay here after I’m finished.”
The clerk tightened his jaw, accentuating sagging jowls. “Why you being such a dick?”
“Been a long day and I’m looking for a pound of flesh, I guess,” Rick said. “I’ll have ripped you a new one by the time we’re done here, if you don’t start offering me more information.”
Large, fatty cheeks paled. He sniffed. “Can’t tell you what I don’t know.”
“Better dig deep, pal. I don’t like getting jerked around even on a good day.” Bishop’s accent had grown thicker with fatigue. He sounded as if he’d just arrived from Boston.
The clerk sniffed and his face wrinkled as if he inhaled a foul odor. “Like I said, Tuttle moved in about two months ago. A couple of weeks ago, he brought in a hooker. I know because she has this loud laugh. She was cackling like a hen when they went into his room. But she didn’t stay long. Less than five minutes later and she slammed out of his room. She told him to fuck off. Looked pissed.”
“She got a name?” Rick asked.
The clerk moistened his lips. “I’m supposed to know a whore’s name?”
Rick cocked a brow. “You know every girl that works this block. Half have given you kickbacks or blow jobs.”
The clerk cursed. “Terry. Her first name is Terry. Don’t know her last name. Works down the street on the corner.”
“Why was she mad?”
“Hell if I know. Ask her yourself. You can find her pretty easy. She’s here several times a night. Wait an hour and you’ll see her. Tall, dark hair, and likes to wear lime green.”
“Call her.”
“What?”
“Call her. Tell her she’s got a client.”
“I don’t have her number.”
Rick smacked his hand on the counter. “Don’t fuck with me.”
The clerk looked as if he’d argue, but then imagining a dozen cops swarming in and out of the rooms, he reached for a flip phone. He dialed the number easily and told Terry that she had work waiting for her in Room Two.
The officers waited less than ten minutes before a woman pushed through the front door of the motel’s office. She wore a red wig, a lime-green tank top and skirt, and white cowboy boots. Thick blue makeup lined dull brown eyes and a wide swath of rouge added garish color to pale sunken cheeks.
When she spotted Rick and Bishop, she clearly smelled cops right off and turned to leave. “Shit.”
“We aren’t here to arrest you.” Rick reached the door before her. “Have a question about a john.”
Close up he smelled the blend of cheap perfume and booze. “Fuck me. I’m going to get the shit beat out of me if my pimp sees I’m talking to the cops.”
Rick didn’t move. “Answer quick and your pimp will never know. What can you tell me about Jonas Tuttle?”
“Who?”
“Room Seven,” the clerk said. “Smells like pizza.”
She thought for a second and then held up her hands, palms out. “That fucker’s crazy.”
“We hear you didn’t stay long,” Bishop said. “Why?”
She chewed gum, snapping it a few times. “Look, I don’t want him coming back and finding me. I don’t need that kind of trouble. Like I said, that fucker’s crazy.”
Rick rested his hands on his hips. “The guy overdosed in an alley a few days ago. He’s not going to bother you. Why was he a freak?”
“He’s dead?”
“That’s right. Dead.”
“Oh, well, when you put it that way.” She sniffed. “He paid me and I was on the bed ready to get down to business. Then he started calling me by another woman’s name, which ain’t that unusual. Shit, some guys call me Mommy.”
“Stick to it,” Rick said.
She hooked her finger in a beaded necklace and pulled it back and forth. “Well, he pulls out a set of handcuffs. Not the worst that’s ever happened. I tell him it costs extra and he says fine.”
“But . . .”
She glanced over her shoulder out the office window as if half-expecting to see him or her pimp. She lowered her voice a notch. “I’m reaching for the cuffs and he puts a gun to my head and asks me to beg for my life.”
Rick tapped a calloused index finger against the smooth leather of his belt, inches in front of his gun holster. Diane had been shot in the head. “That’s all he said?”
“He said, ‘Beg me, bitch, for your life.’” She hesitated. “‘Beg for your life.’ I won’t forget that too soon.”
“How’d you get away?”
“Fucker was nervous. Sweating like a pig. I could tell he hadn’t done anything like that before.” With a trembling hand she fished inside a pack of cigarettes tucked in the waistband of her skirt.
Rick watched as she raised a cigarette to her lips and lit it. “He was scared.”
She inhaled and blew out a lungful of smoke. “He was real scared. I was scared but I was also mad. He was gonna be my last score for the night and I thought, ‘Great, I’m gonna die here,’ when I was thinking I’d be home in thirty minutes and standing in a hot shower. I love hot showers. Shit. I fought back and he just about pissed in his pants. Big guy but no balls.”
“How did you get away?”