The Wayfair Motel was a two-story building wrapped in white aluminum siding. From a distance, it looked pleasant enough, but on closer inspection, it was hard to miss the cigarette butts and broken glass, the cracked asphalt, or the broken spindles on the second-story railing. The parking lot was full of minivans and other family cars. During fair week, the hotel did a brisk business with tourists, but during the rest of the year, few of its guests stayed overnight.
I parked in an open spot near the front office, ate the last of my pecan roll, and grabbed a fresh notepad from my glove box before stepping out of my old truck. Three uniformed officers stood near a pair of police cruisers parked in the fire lane at the far end of the building. A fourth officer strung yellow crime scene tape from the support poles that held the second story aloft.
A local man named Vic Conway owned the Wayfair Motel and surrounding businesses. He had sat on the County Council for almost two decades and even ran for a seat in the Missouri House of Representatives once. That was before my time, though. I only knew him as a dirty old man who owned a strip club, truck stop, and a cheap motel by the interstate.
The Wayfair was the crown jewel in Vic’s portfolio. Whether by design or happenstance, his businesses formed a cozy triangle for the young and desperate. Young women—some fourteen or fifteen years old—came from St. Louis and the surrounding areas to work the parking lot of the truck stop as prostitutes. Those industrious enough could earn upwards of a thousand bucks a night, half of which Vic took for protection.
When those girls turned eighteen, they got boob jobs and worked in the strip club. After their dancing shifts were over, many took clients to the Wayfair for paid trysts. Girls could earn good livings well into their late twenties, but once his employees got too old to dance or turn tricks, Vic hired them as maids for his hotel or clerks for his convenience store.
We had half a dozen active investigations into Vic’s activities, but none of them ever went anywhere. He had enough money to buy off most witnesses, and those he couldn’t buy disappeared. Sooner or later, he’d slip, and we’d put him in prison, but not today.
The uniformed officers perked up when they saw me. St. Augustine County had almost fifty sworn officers on staff, and we all knew each other well. Some of my colleagues had a gift for police work, but most didn’t. Everyone tried their best, though, which was all I could ask for.
“What have we got?” I asked, reaching into the inside pocket of my blazer for a pair of polypropylene gloves. I snapped them on and then took out my notepad. Nicole Bryant stepped forward. She was in her mid-forties and had brown hair pulled back from her face. At five-seven, I wasn’t tall, but I had at least three inches on her.
“Morning, Joe,” she said, reaching to her utility belt for her own notepad. “Dispatch received the phone call from the front desk at 6:43 this morning. A guest had returned home and found what he thought was blood on the ground. He contacted the front office, and they contacted us. Dave and I arrived at 7:09 and found what appeared to be blood spatter on the ground outside room 127. No one inside the room answered our knock. Fearing that we might have had someone hurt inside, we contacted the front office. The clerk let us in with his master key. Inside the room, a young woman lay on the floor. I felt her neck for a pulse and found nothing. I then stepped out. Nobody else has been inside, and nobody’s touched anything.”
Most of the time, they would have needed a search warrant to enter someone’s hotel room, but the blood and lack of response gave them exigent circumstances. It sounded like a good search. It also sounded as if they had protected the scene well.
“That’s good work. Nicky, call Harry. He’s supposed to be my second on this case. Tell him everything you told me and then tell him to get to the station. I need him to fill out an affidavit for a search warrant for the hotel room.”
She wrote the request down and nodded but then looked at me with her eyes narrowed.
“We still need a search warrant with a body on the ground?”
I nodded. “Yeah. You had exigent circumstances, which allowed you to go into the room, but there’s no murder scene exception to the Fourth Amendment.”
She nodded. “Learn something new every day. Anything else?”
“Yeah. Once you get in touch with Harrison, call Dr. Sheridan and tell him we’ve got a body and need his expertise. Once you’ve got that done, I need you to start a log book so we can keep the scene secure.”
I looked to the other officers. “Dave and Bill, I need you knocking on doors. We need to talk to as many guests as we can before they leave. If anybody heard or saw anything weird last night, tell me. I want to talk to them myself.”
Dave nodded, but Bill looked a little uncertain.
“I’m supposed to be working the information booth at the fair this morning,” he said.
“Now you’re working a homicide,” I said. “Is that a problem?”
He blinked a few times and then straightened. “Shouldn’t we wait for the real detectives on this? Delgado and Martin will be taking over anyway, right?”
My cheeks grew warm, and I locked my eyes on his. Bill had at least four inches and fifty pounds on me, but he took a step back beneath my glare. I pushed my jacket back to expose the badge on my hip.
“Do you see my badge, Officer Wharton?”
He straightened. “Yeah, I can see your badge.”
“Does it look like the ones Detectives Martin and Delgado carry?”
He closed his eyes but said nothing. I repeated my question, so he crossed his arms and nodded.
“Yeah.”
“Good. I am a real detective, and this is my case. Do you have a problem with that?”
He tilted his head to the side. “It’s just that they handle the murder cases is all. I’m used to working with them. You’re a good detective on burglaries and thefts, but this is a murder. Have you ever worked a murder?”
“Stop talking,” I said. “I’m the detective assigned to this case. I earned it, and it’s mine. Do as I asked or go home. Your choice.”
He stood straighter. “Don’t get your panties in a bunch. I’m just trying to clarify everybody’s role on this.”
I nodded toward his cruiser. “Get out of my crime scene. You’re done for the day.”
“I’m doing my job, lady.”
“If you were doing your job, you’d be knocking on doors right now with Officer Skelton. You’re not, which means you’re wasting my time. Now get in your car, call Trisha, and ask her to send somebody who brought his big-boy pants to work today.”
He muttered something, so I took a step closer to him.
“Something you want to share?” I asked.
“I’ll talk to Travis about this,” he said. “You can’t just send me away like I’m some kind of naughty kid.”
“As the primary detective on the case, I can, and I am,” I said. “Now leave, or I’ll write you up for insubordination.”
He straightened to his full height and then looked down his nose at me. He was trying to be intimidating, but I didn’t plan to back down. After a few seconds of posturing, he got in his car and left, and I took a deep, relieved breath.
My department had over a dozen female officers, but I was the only female detective, and they had made me claw and fight my way to the position. I’d earned my badge the same way every other detective on staff had: I busted my ass. This was my job. I wouldn’t let some lazy asshole tell me how to do it.
Once Bill left, I looked to Officer Marcus Washington. He stood straight and nodded.
“Marcus, you’re going across the street. There are security cameras outside the truck stop and strip club. Find out whether any were pointed this way last night. Once you’ve done that, talk to the manager and any dancers you can find at Club Serenity. Ask them whether anybody saw something weird. They’re not going to talk to you, but we might get lucky. While you’re over there, if you find any prostitutes working the truck stop this early, detain them, call for backup, and then interview them to see whether they saw anything.”
He nodded and looked over his shoulder to the truck stop before looking at me again.
“Yes, ma’am.”
I looked at each of my officers.
“Everybody clear on what to do?”
Nicky said yes. The men nodded again.
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s get to it.”
I watched for a moment while my team shuffled off to do their tasks. Our officers weren’t perfect, but they did good work on most cases. St. Augustine didn’t get too many murders, and when we did, we had three experienced detectives on staff. I had assisted other detectives on four homicides, but this was my first murder as the primary officer.
A small part of me—the part I allowed everyone else to see—knew I had the experience and expertise to work the case. The other part of me—a far bigger part—was scared shitless.
I took a breath and did the same thing I did when I was a girl standing on the high-dive board for the first time: I jumped in.
I walked toward the room, taking pictures of the exterior door frame with my cell phone. Though we needed a search warrant to process the scene for fingerprints and other forensic information, I could still look around and take pictures now. Those things I found in plain sight, I could use in court. Anything else, I’d have to wait for a warrant.
I stepped over the blood in the doorway and walked inside. Aside from the blood, the room looked clean. Someone had rumpled the comforter near the foot of the bed, but it didn’t look as if anyone had slept in it. The victim’s body was near the bathroom, but I didn’t pay her much attention yet. She wasn’t going anywhere.
There was a brown leather purse stamped with gold rosettes on a table near the front window. A brass buckle on the side of the bag identified it as a Louis Vuitton. If it was real, it would have cost more than I made in a month.
I snapped pictures of the purse with my cell phone before crossing the room. There was a black Tumi suitcase on the dresser beside the television. Whoever the victim was, she had liked expensive things.
Since I was already deep into the room, I looked at the body next. She lay on her belly with long black hair covering her face. Her skin—at least so far as I could see it—was caramel colored, and she looked young. She wore gray yoga pants and a loose-fitting turquoise shirt. By her clothes, she could have just come from the gym, or maybe she was getting ready for a relaxing night inside.
There was a large exit wound on her back. About a year ago, the sheriff and I had worked a homicide in which a man shot his neighbor with a .45-caliber full metal jacket round at about four feet. The entrance wound on the victim’s forehead was about the size of a dime, but the exit wound on the back of his skull was the size of a golf ball. Whatever hit my victim here was larger. This wasn’t a handgun; it was a rifle, and a damn big one. Somebody should have heard it go off.
Aside from the blood, her shirt looked clean. A shot at point-blank range would have left powder marks, but I couldn’t see any.
I left the body and focused on the table by the front window. I could think of two scenarios to explain what I had seen. In the first, the shooter hid outside in the parking lot with a rifle until the victim opened her door. The moment he saw her, he opened fire. He then crossed the parking lot while carrying his rifle, dragged the victim inside, and then shut the door to hide the body.
In the second scenario—the one I found more likely—we had two murderers. The first murderer knocked on the door and then ducked. When the victim opened the door, the second murderer opened fire. The first murderer then dragged the victim inside and shut the door behind him.
However it happened, we’d have ample forensic evidence. Unfortunately, I doubted we could use it. A hotel room wasn’t a public space, but even if we could find a usable fingerprint or hair that placed a suspect at the scene, he could claim he had been in that room weeks ago. It was a seedy motel, and I doubted the maids got on their hands and knees to scrub the place down between guests.
We’d collect as much evidence as we could, but this investigation wouldn’t come down to forensics. We’d have to find our shooter the old-fashioned way: We’d comb through our victim’s life to find out who wanted her dead, we’d talk to everyone within a two-block radius to see whether they saw anything, and then we’d use forensic evidence to bolster our case in court.
And it all started with our victim.
I unzipped her purse and caught a whiff of marijuana. Inside, she had a glass pipe and several vacuum-sealed bags full of dope. It was more weed than a recreational user would have. Her wallet was near the bottom, so I pulled it out and put the purse down.
Then I saw the victim’s picture on her driver’s license, and my heart skipped a beat. My legs felt weak, but I didn’t let myself sit down.
I hadn’t seen this woman in twelve years, but I had thought about her often. She and I had lived together in a foster home in Chesterfield, Missouri, until her death. The police had never found her body, but they’d charged our foster father with her murder.
I palmed the ID card and backed out of the room, my heart thudding in my chest. Once I reached the parking lot, I called my boss.
“Hey, Travis, it’s Joe Court. I’m at the Wayfair Motel with the body. I need you to come out here. The victim’s dead.”
Travis paused for a moment but then spoke slowly. “I know the victim is dead. That’s why I sent you out there.”
“No, Travis, you’re not hearing me. The victim is dead. I’m looking at her ID right now. It’s a fake. It says her name is Kiera Williams, but this is Megan Young.”
Again, Travis paused. “That can’t be right. Megan Young died twelve years ago.”
“Yeah, but no one found her body. I think we now know why.”
For a third time, Travis paused before speaking. “I’m on my way. I hope you’re wrong.”
“Me, too.”
I hung up and stepped outside the crime scene tape. Several hotel guests had already woken up and left, but most were still in their rooms. It seemed like a peaceful morning, but that would change. If I was right, news vans from every TV station, radio station, and newspaper in St. Louis and the surrounding area would descend on that parking lot like locusts.
Because if that was Megan Young in that room, and if she had died last night, my boss and his former partner had sent a man to prison twelve years ago for a murder that never happened.
This would be bad.