seventy-two

THE FIRST STARS IN THE EAST hung like fireflies pinned to black felt, the creeping night engulfing the forest. Brake lights illuminated the smoke from the fire. When Melissa turned onto the road to Coldwater, the sun was below the horizon. The eerie orange glow that stretched out across the sky made Melissa think of a demon’s hand clawing its way out of the pit. She shook off the thought.

In the back seat, Michael lay motionless. She kept one eye on the road and one to the rearview mirror, having seen too many low-budget horror films to trust the ropes that bound his bloodied limbs.

Her mind was still a wave of confusion.

Driving back to Coldwater was at least action. Movement. Progress.

She was doing something.

The town came into view, and she turned onto Main Street, past Gilly’s, and into the parking lot of the motel. The lights from the diner shone out into the dark several feet from the building. The motor lodge, tucked in the back of the parking lot, was dark, save for the thin neon glow of the vacancy sign in the office window.

Melissa pulled the car in sideways right in front of her door. She got out, opened her room, came back to the car, and when she was assured she was the only living thing in the parking lot, save for the body in the back seat, dragged Michael into the room.

She closed the door behind her, parked her car in a more conventional manner, and grabbed the gun case from under the seat. She looked at it, took a deep breath, and stepped out of the car.

Melissa then went back to her room, opened the door, and went inside.

Across the parking lot, on the side of Gilly’s, an orange glow fizzled into existence and then diminished. A puff of smoke, an extinguishing flash of a cigarette snuffed out on the side of the building, and Davis, who had observed the goings-on, went into the bar.

He entered the back room where Haywood held court. Clinton sat to his left, looking up at the television suspended in the corner of the room. Frank and Earl sat sheepishly to the right, their drinks on the table but every aspect of their bodies withdrawn in on themselves as if showing the world that they were not really part of the entourage. Davis stood, grabbed his bottle from the table, and took a swig. Then he set it down.

“I think I just saw Michael,” he said.

The air in the room was suddenly sucked out and all the men stared at Davis as if his next word would stab them all in the heart. Clinton clicked off the television with the remote on the table.

“Where? Outside?” Haywood asked.

“Yeah,” Davis said. “Could have been him. I saw that woman you said was his sister pull into the motel. She parked in front of her room, then dragged in a body from the back seat.”

“A body?”

“Pretty sure.”

Clinton looked over at Frank and Earl. “Tell ’em,” he said.

“Tell me what?” Haywood said.

“We saw her, driving out to Michael’s house,” Earl said. “On the way back to town, when you left us out there.”

“Did she stop and talk to you?”

“No,” Frank said.

“And you saw clearly, it was a body?” Haywood asked, turning his question back to Davis.

Davis nodded while taking another sip.

“Has to be him, then,” Clinton said.

“Has to,” Davis said.

Haywood stood and walked around the room. His mind was racing, trying to calculate his next move in this grand chess match. He knew where his adversary was, and quite possibly, he was incapacitated, maybe already dead. Yet Melissa had inserted herself right in the middle of the game. How was he going to get around her? If he barged in there, she would be a liability that he would have to take care of.

His determination and anger got the best of any rational thought. Michael was just across the parking lot. The end was in sight. He merely had to go over and get him, take him back up to Springer’s Grove, and do things the right way this time. If Melissa got in the way, then so be it.

“Let’s go get him,” Haywood said.

“We just going to bust in there?” Frank asked.

“Might as well add B&E on to everything else,” Earl said.

“If that really is Michael she dragged into that room,” Clinton said, “it might be best not to underestimate her. She could be on the other side of that door with a shotgun or something.”

“Or something,” Davis echoed.

“And she ain’t going to quietly open the door if we all barge over there,” Clinton said.

From the bar, Lila walked into the room with a serving tray and picked up some of the empty bottles. She looked casually at the motley crew around the table.

“You boys need anything else?”

Haywood looked at her with slow revelation.

“Actually, there is one thing,” he said.