Chapter 25
“Jamie?” Anna’s throat was dry from the relentless heat. She waited but got no answer, the sun burning through the back of her T-shirt.
“Jamie?” she repeated. “It’s me. Anna.” His motel room door was cracked open, maybe for some air, but she couldn’t hear any movement from inside. “You awake?”
She knocked, then pushed the door a little. “I just went to Bonnie’s—” She stopped, staring into the gloomy room, knowing immediately that something was wrong. The bed was messy but empty, and in the quiet all she could hear was trickling water. Get out, her senses screamed at her. Run.
“Hello?” The door to the bathroom was half open and as she stepped forward, ignoring her own internal red-light warnings, she could see the linoleum inside was soaking and the bedroom carpet near the doorway was sodden, liquid spreading outward, the water still running over the edge of the tub.
As she got closer, the hum of the electric light was too loud, buzzing like an angry wasp.
The constant trickle of creeping water threatened to consume the room like a terrible fungus.
The sharp stench of shit and piss hung in the air.
She knew from all these things that there was nothing good to come from looking further, she was already sure of what she would find, but holding her breath, and on unsteady legs, she forced herself closer.
She saw Jamie’s bare feet on the wet bathroom floor, and as she came around the edge of the bed, her breath trapped in her chest, the rest of him came into view, sprawled naked and face down on the bedroom carpet, head turned sideways.
His eyes were open, staring at nothing, but his thin arm was stretched out as if he’d been reaching for something, and the old lace doily from the small bedside table was on the floor nearby.
She stepped backward, head spinning, her sweat suddenly ice-cold.
“Jamie?” she whispered, even though she knew he couldn’t answer.
He’d never be answering again. Despite black spots of panic forming in the corners of her vision, she fought the urge to run as far away from this room as she could and went through to the bathroom, up on her tiptoes so the water didn’t soak her shoes, trying not to think about whatever of Jamie’s bodily fluids might be in it, and turned off the faucets.
The water was cold. It had been running awhile.
She moved back carefully, seeing the needle and syringe on the soaked linoleum.
Had he found the lure of the drugs too strong?
In the terrifying silence, she stared at Jamie’s body.
What had he dragged himself out of the bath and across the floor for?
She looked again at the doily on the carpet.
Maybe he’d pulled something down from the table.
She crouched, revulsed by being so close to the corpse, and looked under the bed.
There, just an inch or so hidden, was his phone.
She carefully held it in front of his open eyes. It unlocked.
I ws right, An
She stared, her stomach in her mouth. I was right, Anna. She dropped the cell and gasped, getting to her feet and backing away, banging hard into the TV table, crumpling onto it, his words coming back to her. They’ll have murdered me to shut me up.
The syringe. If it hadn’t been Jamie OD’ing, then had the killer had come to finish what they’d started years ago?
Maybe the clown story was real. She needed to call the police.
She needed a cigarette. She needed to get out of this awful room.
She straightened up on unsteady legs, and as she turned toward the door and sunlight, she saw a small stack of his posters by the TV.
She grabbed them, stuffing them into her backpack alongside the stolen yearbooks, and headed for the daylight.
If the killer was still out there, then girls needed to be warned.
Outside, she fell into one of the chairs, gratefully sucking in the sticky air as if it were a cool mountain breeze, and waited until the heat consuming her became a shivering chill and her vision cleared.
She took several deep, shaky breaths before lighting a cigarette, needing to lose the ghost of the smell from inside, and then called 911.
She waited for the siren wail and pressed herself back into the chair, willing them to come quickly.