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The place is a mess. Stuff covers every inch of the closet-sized room. An assortment of clothes, shoes, and papers are draped across the flat, hard-looking bed that reaches both walls, and a lone T-shirt hangs from the plastic fan in the corner. And all of it is illuminated by the afternoon sunlight filtering through the cheesecloth curtain covering the room’s one window, which is bright enough to accentuate the dirty grout between the floor’s tiles.
It’s immediately clear that despite the similarities from the outside, these rooms are a far cry from the guest rooms back toward the beach.
“Wow, what a shithole,” I say, hoping Cass doesn’t realize how close I came to staying in one of these rooms. If Frederic hadn’t finally relented and given me a discount on my room in the Coral Bungalows, I would be out here in the resort’s designated Siberia. I try to ignore how much Lucy’s room reminds me of my mother’s trailer back in our small town outside Lexington. Add in a bunch of run-down shelves overflowing with worthless knickknacks and the thick stench of cigarette smoke that shrouds all my childhood memories, and it would be just like home.
“I actually stayed in one of these rooms the first few weeks I got to the island,” Cass says, “when I was deciding whether to live on Koh Sang permanently. Looks like they haven’t changed much.” Notes of nostalgia creep into her words, and for the second time in a matter of minutes, I try to hide my surprise. It’s clear Cass has money. Even living on a remote island filled with backpackers, she can’t hide that. It’s in the way she carries herself. I never would have guessed that she would have slummed it in one of these rooms.
An enormous travel backpack is perched near the door. As I bend down to look at it, I realize someone’s ripped it open at the seams, as though they lacked the patience to fiddle with the zipper. The backpack’s innards stream across the dirty floor tiles.
“Someone’s been in here,” Cass says softly. “I can’t imagine Lucy would leave her place in this condition.”
I nod, taking another look at the ripped seams, the discarded items flung about the room. Based on the very little I knew about Lucy, she didn’t seem the type to needlessly shred her belongings.
Someone seems to have been looking for something in here. Someone in a rush.
“Maybe we shouldn’t touch anything,” I think out loud. I’ve seen enough police procedurals to know that rubbing our fingerprints all over Lucy’s stuff could compromise an investigation.
Cass shakes her head. “The police aren’t going to change their minds.”
And I know she’s right. All they care about is Frederic’s money.
“Okay,” I say, resigned. “We better get started then.”
I told Cass that I wanted to find her parents’ contact information—and I do. But I’m also looking for anything that tells me who Lucy really was, why she came here. Anything to indicate why she may have been killed—or why she appeared so desperate to talk to me the other day. I spend a few minutes rifling through the clothes left in and around the backpack. A handful of T-shirts, a set of pajamas, one flip-flop—its partner likely strewn somewhere else in the room—three bikinis, and a pile of underwear and bras. Exactly what you’d expect.
“Find anything?” I ask Cass, who’s holding a handful of papers in her hand. Her expression is unreadable.
“These are all printouts of pages from the resort website,” she says finally, handing the pile to me.
I flip through them. The papers are filled with information on the different dive courses offered, the types of rooms, even the bio pages of the shop’s two dive instructors. Neil’s face is first, his smile wide, those freckled lips open. Cass stares up at me from the second page, decked out in a red staff shirt and a half-hearted smile, but there’s an air of discomfort in her eyes, as if she’d rather have been doing anything in that moment than getting her photo taken.
“Why would she have these?” Cass asks.
I shake my head in confusion and hand them back to her. I take the few short steps to the bathroom, leaving Cass staring at the papers as though they’re foreign objects.
The bathroom is no more than a toilet, sink, showerhead, and insufficiently sized floor drain, all hidden from the rest of the room by a mildewed blue curtain.
I start with the sink. The small cosmetics bag that teeters on its ledge is filled with typical inexpensive mascara, eye shadow, blush, and a tube of light pink lipstick.
I note a blue toothbrush on the left side of the sink and a towel hanging from a rack, still damp. As I scan the room, I spot something purple on the floor, discarded next to the small bin. I bend over and pick it up, my fingers brushing against the hard plastic, my mind working to understand what I’m holding.
Another toothbrush. Dark purple with white and lilac bristles. It was resting face down on the tiles, like it had been accidentally knocked off the sink. I look back at the blue toothbrush I spotted before. Why would Lucy need two?
I head out of the bathroom. “I found—”
But before I can say any another word, Cass grabs my hand, alarm in her eyes. She raises a finger to her mouth, urging me to be quiet.
I blink at her in confusion, and she points to the window before pulling me down so that we’re pressed to the floor, hidden by the bed.
I stay quiet for a moment, holding my breath as I hear the soft staccato of footsteps falling a few meters outside the door, barely muffled by the cheap plywood walls. We’ve kept the light off, and the room’s single window is obscured by a sheer curtain, but still my heart rate speeds up, goaded on by panic. I look over at Cass. If it weren’t for her, the person outside would have heard me and known we were in here.
She saved us from whoever’s out there.
“It can’t be housekeeping,” Cass breathes in my ear. “They only do the free rooms once a week, on Saturdays.”
I hold my breath as the footsteps come closer, until they sound as if they’re right outside the door.
And then they stop.
