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With a deep sigh, I stand. I will head down to the front office to see who stayed in room nineteen, although I have a feeling there’s no paper trail.
But when I pick up the gun to tuck it away, I notice the nightstand drawer is half-open. I pull at it. It’s cheap and sticks and when I get it open, it jerks so hard whatever is inside rolls to the back.
Inside I find a bible. Standard. Beneath it, however, is an envelope. I take it out, slip my finger under the flap to unseal it. In it are two sheets of paper, one with charred edges that flake off on my fingers, the other a torn half-sheet.
Carefully, I unfold the one that looks like it was snatched out of a fire. It’s almost impossible to make out what it says, I’m holding less than half a page in my hand. The edges are black, what remains of the yellowed paper badly damaged. It looks like some sort of report. There’s nothing handwritten on it.
There is one thing, however, that makes me stop, that tells me this was left for me to find. Because I see a name I recognize. Evelyn Thomas. Thomas is my mother’s maiden name. In addition to that, I can just make out a watermark repeating throughout the damaged piece of paper.
What the hell would Thiago Avery or whoever is impersonating him have that has my mother’s name on it?
Nothing good.
I refold it, set it carefully on the nightstand, and look at the torn piece of paper. I know what it is instantly. I clench my teeth together in anger, an old pain burning my eyes.
It’s a torn off piece of the police report detailing the coroner’s findings after Alexia’s autopsy. I automatically scan the text I can recite by heart. I memorized it years ago. I wonder if this is the same sheet I kept with me for those five years I served the Commander. My secret torture worse than any other. My failure to keep her safe.
But this is only one paragraph of the pages-long report. One paragraph that has been especially selected. Is it to torment me? Again, not Thiago’s MO. The report doesn’t even start on a full sentence, as if the start of it was purposefully torn away.
…victim sustained several wounds from a sharp object, seven in total to the stomach and chest area. These were inflicted in a manner consistent with a right-handed perpetrator. Both hands of the victim were wounded, indicating the victim tried to shield herself from…
That’s where it ends.
This I don’t carefully refold. This I crush in the palm of my hand and shove into my pocket.
The vision of how I found her is still as vivid as if it was yesterday. How her father must have posed her after death. How can a father do that to his daughter? Spell out whore in her own blood along her torn apart stomach? Spread her legs to disgrace her in death?
I swallow hard. Before I left to kill her murderer, I made sure no one would find her in so degrading a position. In the madness of the moment, I tried to care for her, even knowing I was far too late.
I force a deep breath in to banish the image, the memories, and reach into the back of the drawer to get whatever it was that rolled back. My heart races as I wrap my hand around the objects and draw them out, and I don’t need to see them to know what they are. I’ve become very familiar with their texture. But I look anyway.
Three more blue stones. Three to match the one I found on that catwalk.
My gut tightens. The hair on the back of my neck stands on end.
I turn to look over my shoulder through the slight split between the curtains, but no one can be watching me. No one could see inside.
I turn back to the beads in my hand and from under my sleeve, see the few of mine that peek out. An exact match. But it doesn’t mean anything. Caius’s bracelet is intact. I saw it with my own eyes.
So, I tuck the beads into my pocket, put the burnt sheet of paper into its envelope and walk out of that room. I look around as I go toward the front office, taking in every model of car, every person I see, all the while feeling like I’m being watched.
A bell over the door chimes as I enter the front office. Someone is getting change for the laundry machine from the attendant, who can’t be more than seventeen. When the man leaves, I walk up to the counter.
The kid looks me over, confused. “You need a room?” I must not look like his usual clientele.
“No. Question for you. Who was staying in room nineteen?” I ask, taking my wallet and slipping some bills out, looking like I’m counting them.
“Oh. Um.” His gaze moves from the bills in my hand to his computer. “Aaron Anon,” he says. “Dude checks out tomorrow. Asked not to be disturbed.”
“Aaron Anon. That’s what his ID said?”
The kid flushes. “Might have forgot to check.”
“How did he pay?”
He hits a few buttons, although it’s for show. He and I both know the answer. “Cash.”
“What did he look like?”
