Chapter Ethan
ETHAN
“We saw Ethan and Hunter heading to dinner five minutes before we heard Sarah talking with someone in her room.” Kyla had looked at Ethan. “Y’all stayed together that entire time, right?”
“Yes,” Ethan had said, which was the truth. Hunter hadn’t left his side since he’d returned from his smoke break, almost an hour before Sarah’s death. “You can ask Thomas. He was with us in the cafe from the minute we arrived.”
Kyla looked at Fernanda. “So you don’t have any reason to be afraid of going to search Stan’s room with Hunter. He couldn’t have killed Sarah. Neither of them could.”
Hunter had given Kyla a small smile at that.
He looked almost abashed. For his part, Ethan could only think of the fry cook at the diner in Turner and the smell of flesh swimming in hot grease.
Ethan wasn’t sure if anyone could ever be entirely safe from Hunter, but Kyla was correct about one thing: the man was one of the few people at the motel with a solid alibi.
Unlike others still here.
Hunter had said simply, “We meet back here, room four, at eleven thirty. No questions. Okay?”
Ethan had said, “Okay.”
Now, as Hunter and Fernanda stepped out of view, Ethan heard a strange sound rolling in from the desert. It wasn’t another SHRIEK, but a murmur. It sounded like a man was out there, talking to himself in the dark.
Kyla heard it too. “That almost sounds like Stanley.”
And then the generator stuttered, the lights flickered, and Ethan unlocked room 3 as fast as he could. “Get inside. Quick.”
Room 3 was laid out like all the others: a short back hallway, a bathroom to the right, the main room up ahead. The curtains on the room’s front window were open, giving Ethan an unobstructed view of the parking lot.
And there, in the moment’s half-light—in the eerie gloaming of mercury vapor as the lamps flicked back to full strength—Ethan saw a man standing at the parking lot’s far edge, watching him through the chevroned bars of the room’s window.
The man stood near the motel’s neon sign with his hat in his hand, looking for all the world like he’d wandered in off the road after a long day of travel.
Ethan couldn’t be certain, but in the weak half-light it almost looked like the man was wearing a suit.
A gray gabardine suit. The kind no one ever wore anymore.
The man was staring at Ethan. Straight at Ethan. He raised a hand in greeting, and Ethan saw that there was something wrong with his index finger. It was too short. It ended at the second knuckle.
The man’s face broke out in a tight, tight smile.
Be seeing you, Mister Cross.
The lights came up fully. The man dissipated like smoke on a breeze—here one second, gone the next. Ethan stared and stared and saw nothing in the parking lot but the deep treads Stan Holiday’s tires had made as they went slewing toward the road.
And yet Ethan would swear he could still hear the sound of the gabardine man’s tight smile hanging in the air, the teeth grinding together like stones.
“Did you see that?”
Kyla was too busy locking the back door. “See what?”
“Never mind.”
Turning her attention to the parking lot, she pointed out something so obvious Ethan had missed it entirely. “The lights are weaker than they were a second ago. The circle’s getting smaller.”
“Then let’s get busy.”
Ryan Phan hadn’t left much of a footprint in his room.
There wasn’t a single wrinkle in the coverlet.
The pillows looked undisturbed. A motorcycle helmet rested on the floor near the bed, next to a pair of leather saddlebags.
Ethan flipped on the nightstand’s lamp, toed the saddlebags.
He said, “I think Ryan was telling the truth before he died. He probably did sleep here, on the floor. These bags are situated just right for it.”
Kyla said, “Out of sight of the window. Whoever he was, he knew how to keep a low profile.”
The saddlebags were practically empty. One held a fistful of Mexican pesos, a large band of American cash, and a bag of Fritos with Spanish on the back.
The other saddlebag held an American passport, but it didn’t belong to Ryan Phan. An Asian man who vaguely resembled him stared back at Ethan from the photograph inside. The name on the passport was “Trent Ly.”
Ethan showed this to Kyla. “Do we think Ryan Phan’s name was actually Trent Ly?”
“Hardly. He must have gotten hold of the guy’s passport somehow.”
“Is that hard to do?”
Kyla took the passport, flipped to the stamps in the back. “There’s a whole network of documentation floating around if you know who to ask.”
Ethan considered this. “You worked at the steakhouse in Fort Stockton, right? You served dinner to Frank O’Shea and his whole crew. Had you ever heard of this Ryan guy?”
“No,” Kyla said. “But I’ve only lived around here for six months. The way Ryan was talking to Stanley, it sounded like they had ancient history.”
“Ryan said he was Penelope’s stepfather. Or he would have been, if he’d been able to marry Penelope’s mother. What did that mean? And could it have anything to do with Sarah Powers?”
“I know that Penelope’s mom died in a burglary a few years back.
At least, it went down as a burglary, but no one can think of anyone stupid enough to rob Frank’s goddaughter.
I guess the results were about the same.
Some goons broke into the house and killed Penelope’s mom and her sister and shot Penelope in her sleep.
It’s kind of a legend around town. A miracle, you know, that the girl survived.
She’s always been a little weird since.”
“God,” Ethan said. “That explains the scar on her forehead.”
“Exactly. But does it have anything to do with Sarah Powers?” Kyla shrugged.
“Sarah certainly seemed connected to everyone else around here. She and Penelope met at dinner one time, I remember that, but it was just for a few minutes while Penelope dropped by to see Stanley. But maybe Sarah and Penelope met other times. Maybe they connected somewhere else.”
Ethan followed Kyla to room 3’s bathroom. A little pyramid of rolled towels rested on the vanity, an untouched bar of soap.
Something nagged at Ethan. “So Stanley really was having a lot of dinners with Sarah Powers?”
Kyla glanced at him. “I wasn’t lying. She’d been coming at least once a week.”
“Since when?”
“About six weeks, I guess.”
Ethan opened his mouth, hesitated.
Hunter had turned up in Ellersby six weeks ago.
“Did these dinners seem… romantic?” Ethan finally said. “Back in the office, Ryan made it sound like Stanley was in love with Sarah.”
“I’ve served dinner to a lot of lovebirds. I’m inclined to believe Stanley’s version of the story.”
“That Sarah Powers was working for the outfit?”
“Yes. But doing what, I have no idea.”
Ethan and Kyla stepped out of the bathroom.
Ethan heaved up the room’s mattress, stripped the sheets, found nothing concealed underneath.
Studying the dresser, the pattern of the carpet, the carving of the furniture, Ethan was struck again with just how outdated everything at the motel was, and yet how it was in such good condition.
He flipped on the nightstand’s lamp, turned it off. Even the way the switch clicked felt unlike any of the electronics he’d grown up with.
Yet for some reason it felt almost familiar.
Ethan said, “So Sarah’s dinners with Stanley were business. Meaning Sarah was telling the truth about being here, at the motel, on a mission for Frank.”
“I think so, yes.”
“She said she was doing research for him. Any idea what sort of research the outfit would need done?”
“Beats the shit out of me. I don’t know if you’ve figured it out yet, but Frank’s a thug.
Guns. Drugs. People. He moves things across the border and sells them down the river.
Sarah also mentioned something about a being a teacher, but I have no fucking clue what kind of classes Frank O’Shea would want to take. ”
“I wonder what her field was.”
“And why it would bring her way out here.” Kyla pulled out all the drawers of the dresser, the nightstand, tugged open the door of the armoire. “Maybe it was something to do with the mountain. Like a geologist or something?”
Or the motel, Ethan thought. That brief sight of the man he’d imagined in the parking lot a moment ago—the man in the gray gabardine suit—made Ethan remember the diner in Turner. The story he’d been told there.
Nine empty rooms.
Twelve cold beds.
“Were there…” Ethan faltered, almost afraid to hear the answer to what he was about to ask. “Were there any legends about this place, back in Fort Stockton?”
Kyla said, “Legends? About the Brake Inn Motel? Not that I ever heard. But again, I’ve only been there since August. Why?”
Ethan didn’t know where to begin. “I was just wondering. What about the other motel Ryan mentioned in the office? The Terra Vista? He said that Stanley had a secret about that place.”
“The Terra Vista? It’s a hot sheet place. Stanley takes girls over there plenty. He roughs them up.”
Ethan stared at her. “You say that really casually.”
“He pays them well and he’s the second-biggest cheese in town.
People don’t really talk about it, but it’s hardly a secret.
If that’s what Ryan was going to say in the office, it wasn’t much of a bombshell.
Everyone knows Stanley’s beat up girls in the past. He put his ex-wife in the hospital.
But most men are bastards. It doesn’t mean that he killed Sarah. ”
“Doesn’t mean he wouldn’t have some practice, though.”
Kyla shrugged. “Frank’s outfit is dirty, but it’s loyal to its operators.
If Sarah was working for them, Stanley wouldn’t have treated her like a piece of merchandise he could slap around.
He could have killed her, sure, but if he did, then he just pulled down her pants to make it look like rape.
They’re bastards, Frank and Stanley both, but one time a freelancer having dinner gave me a slap on the ass.
Frank had his hand broken in twelve places, and I don’t even work for those guys. ”
“I don’t know how you lasted so long around people like that.”
“I kept my head down.”
The pair were silent a moment, surveying the room. It was clear there was nothing here to get excited about. Whoever Ryan Phan was, what exactly he’d been doing between the time he arrived at the motel and the moment Tabitha started screaming, he hadn’t left any trace of it here.
And even though it hadn’t felt like more than a few minutes since they stepped inside, the time was already 10:35.
Kyla said, “You feel like ripping up the carpet?”
“No. But something’s been nagging at me all night.”
“Care to share?”
Ethan didn’t quite know where to begin. The moment Sarah Powers had walked into the office, Hunter’s face had betrayed a rare moment of genuine surprise.
Surprise and recognition and unease. Hunter’s face had closed up tight again in a second, his eyes had hardened, but whatever the man might say to the contrary, Ethan was still certain Hunter had met Sarah Powers at least once in his life.
And he hadn’t been happy to see her here now.
But he hadn’t killed her. Sarah had been alive at seven thirty, and Hunter had been in the cafe with Ethan. So if he hadn’t killed her, maybe this flash of recognition didn’t really matter.
Instead, Ethan told Kyla the same thing he told Hunter when they first got to their room: “Sarah Powers lied about knowing my mother. That story she told about her car breaking down out east and Mom fixing it up for a song—it was all bull. The failing fan motors she talked about were happening to GMCs at that time, not Fords. Even if Sarah did have a broken fan engine and even if she had to come to Mom’s shop, those repairs aren’t quick and they aren’t cheap, however much Mom liked to run a fair deal. ”
“But then how did Sarah recognize you?”
Ethan held in a shiver. “I’ve been trying to figure that out for ages.”