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DEPUTY LEWIS AND I drove back to the motel in his police cruiser. I sat in the back. We didn’t have to go far. Maybe ten minutes. He drove with the light bar off. There was no rush in getting me to the motel.
He hadn’t spoken until we came to a traffic light. It was one of those times when the light turned red for us, and we were the only car on the road. After we stopped at the light, Lewis reached up and adjusted his mirror. I saw his eyes in the reflection. The light shone red across the top of his face.
He said, “Ya saved my friend’s life, but ya’re the reason that he got shot in the first place. I reckon that I owe ya some justice for that, but I can’t do nothing to ya—the sheriff said so. But that don’t mean I can’t tell ya that I don’t like ya.”
He spoke without an accent but still managed to slur his speech in a kind of backwoods sort of way just like Gemson. Maybe that was how he had gotten the job in the first place like he came off as the smart one.
I asked, “Do a lot of backwoods justice here?”
He said, “When the situation requires it. We’ve been known to take a bad guy out into the woods and teach him a lesson before we book him.”
“You abuse your prisoners?”
“We don’t hurt anyone who ain’t got it coming. And sometimes prisoners like to try to run. We gotta teach them a lesson.”
“So why are you telling me this?”
He asked, “Maybe ya want me to pull over before we get to the motel? Maybe ya want to try to run?”
I said, “Sheriff told you to drive me to the motel. I’m not a prisoner. You’re escorting me like I’m a VIP. Kind of like a chauffeur.”
He scowled in the mirror and stared back at me and then said, “Ya may think that ya aren’t a prisoner, but ya’ll end up back behind bars soon enough. I’d bet my badge on it.”
I stayed quiet.
He asked, “So ya wanna get it over with now? I’ll pull over, and we can get out and settle this.”
I said, “You pull over, and only one of us is getting back in the car. The other is going to need that medical chopper to come back for him.”
Lewis paused. He almost said something, but the light turned green, and he continued on to the motel.
We stayed quiet the rest of the way.
The motel was dark and quiet. The parking lot was half full. The cars were silent and still. A family of raccoons rustled through a dumpster in the next parking lot over.
Lewis stopped the car in the parking lot to let me out.
He said, “Get out. I’ll be sitting in the car. Sheriff’s orders.”
I paused.
He said, “What? Do ya need me to check your room for ya? Are you scared?”
I ignored him. I reached into my pocket and pulled out Gemson’s cell phone. I tossed it on the back bench. I didn’t bother to explain, just got out of the car and shut the door behind me. Not hard. I didn’t want to slam it. I wanted him to know that his remarks hadn’t affected me, which they hadn’t.
I went to room fourteen. I had left Matlind there the night before. I only hoped that he had stayed put and waited for me to return like I’d asked.
I knocked. No answer.
I knocked again—hard. No answer.
I reached down and grabbed the handle and twisted the knob and pushed the door open. The room was dark. I flipped on the light. The room was empty. No sign that Matlind had ever slept there. The bed was remade as though it had never been slept in. The only thing left in the room that didn’t belong was my phone charger. It was still plugged into the wall.
I left the room, left the door open, and checked next door. Maybe Matlind had returned to his own room to wait with his own stuff. Maybe he needed to shower and needed his own belongings.
The doorframe was still shattered, and it would probably stay that way for weeks. Judging by the state that the motel had been in, I doubted that the owner got around to fixing things in a prompt manner.
A dim light shone through the cracks between the curtains and the splinters of the door. I pushed the door open. It creaked, and more splintered wood fell from the top of the frame. The light that dimly lit the room was from the bathroom. And the reason why Matlind had not answered me was because he was dead.
His body lay flat across the bed. His arms were twisted out and away from him. The fingers on his left hand reached out to me like he wanted me to take his hand and follow him. A Beretta Px4 Storm weighed down the tip of his index finger. It had a black, rubbery look to it and lay on the bed like a snake, coiled and waiting for action. The smell of gunpowder lingered in the air. At the top of the bed and partially on the wall were dried stains—part blood, part brain, and part skull fragments.
Matlind had blown his brains out.
He had woken up and found that I had abandoned him, too. He had set his hopes on me, and I had let him down. First, his wife vanished, and then I did.
He took his own life.