The End Of Desire: A Rowan Gant Investigation (6 page)

“Really?” I returned with a nod. “My wife
will be glad to hear that. The story kind of spooked her a bit, you
know.”

“Yeah, you rite.”

Adrenalin instantly dumped into my system,
and my fatigue momentarily fled, along with anything I had that
might have resembled good sense. I should have turned and left
right then and there, but the impulse that had made me ask the
questions was stuck in overdrive, and it didn’t care what trouble I
might be making for myself. Instead I headed back in the direction
of the coffee counter, my sights set on the toy rack as the lie
took on another layer.

“F’get somethin’?” the man asked.

“Sort of,” I said over my shoulder. “I saw
something over here I think my kid would really like.”

T
rue to what the man at
the gas station had told me, the Southern Hospitality Motor Lodge
was just up the road. Its lighted sign became apparent shortly
after I pulled back onto the main thoroughfare, and within moments
I was swinging into the almost full parking lot. Once I found a
space and nosed my car into it, I shut off the lights, then the
engine, and proceeded to visually scan the front of the small
motel.

From the outside, it definitely fit the image
I had in my head as the kind of place Annalise would select for a
kill. It looked clean but far enough out of date to be a throwback
to the mid 1960’s, perhaps even earlier. I suspected the interior
decor would reflect that as well, even if it had been partially
updated at some point.

The office itself was located at the street
end of a single level building that extended for several units
before eventually connecting with an L-shaped two-story addition.
In the far corner where they joined, I could see a large yellow X
flapping gently across a room door. Unfortunately, this was
something that had become an all too familiar sight for me in
recent years, and I could almost certainly guarantee that the black
lettering on the bars of the wavering X spelled out CRIME SCENE -
DO NOT CROSS, or if not exactly that, something very close.

Before leaving the lot of the mini-mart, I
had ripped open the blister card containing the toy, pulled out the
thin, stamped metal badge, and tossed the rest into the garbage
receptacle near the payphone. Since it was positioned toward the
far end of the building, I hadn’t had to worry too much about the
attendant seeing me throw away the bulk of my recent purchase,
which I am betting would have raised a bit of suspicion.

Now that I was sitting here in the darkness,
I pulled my wallet from my back pocket and emptied it, save for my
driver’s license which I left in the display slot on one side. I
was counting on the fact that being a Missouri issue would make it
look different enough to appear like an official law enforcement
ID. The rest of the contents, credit cards, cash and the like, I
stuffed into my jacket pocket and zipped it closed.

Fumbling with the toy badge, I undid the pin
and forced it through the inner layer of my wallet opposite my
license, managing to stab myself in the fingertip twice while doing
so. Once I succeeded in finally getting the fake shield decently
positioned and secured, I simply sat back in my seat and stared at
it. Out here in the darkness, it looked pretty good—to an untrained
eye, maybe even like the real thing.

I practiced flipping the improvised ID case
open, giving a silent count, then snapping it back shut, trying to
instantly master what I’d seen Ben and the other cops I’d worked
with do so many times in the past. My big problem was that I was
going to need to look convincing but still only show the badge long
enough to create a belief that I was official. If I was asked to
let someone see it up close, I was in trouble.

If it weren’t for the fact that I was so
nervous, I might have considered trying to throw a little magick
behind the ruse. It was really all just the power of suggestion
combined with a bit of inner energy to create what, in the parlance
of WitchCraft, was called a glamour. In short, it was an illusion.
A way of making someone believe they were seeing something that
wasn’t really there. I actually had more than half the battle won
already, given the physical appearance of the toy. But, casting a
glamour involved affecting someone’s will, and while I wasn’t so
white-light as to have a problem with that, I did seem to be having
issues controlling my own will at the moment, much less someone
else’s. Applying magick to the situation just seemed like a very
bad idea, especially magick born of anxious energy. Of course,
everything about what I was planning to do fell smack into the
middle of the bad idea category, so it probably didn’t matter.

At one point it even dawned on me that some
of the most notorious serial rapists and killers in recent history
had used this very trick to gain the trust of their victims. This
type of musing wasn’t new to me. I’d had thoughts like it before.
In fact, I often wondered if my unfettered psychic connections to
both the victims, and at times the criminals themselves, were doing
irreparable damage to my psyche. This was, however, the first time
that such contemplation left me afraid that due to that possible
damage, I might be becoming just like them.

I sighed and tried to forget about the knot
of fear that my wandering brain had just created in my already
churning stomach. I had enough to worry about without tossing that
in on top of it.

The time had been pushing 3:45AM when I shut
off the car, and by now I was sure to have been sitting here for a
solid fifteen minutes, maybe even longer, prepping the phony badge
and trying to work up the courage to actually use it. I looked
across the lot at the office. It was dark except for the pink neon
glow of the NO VACANCY sign in the window. This wasn’t necessarily
a bad thing, and I hoped that it just might work to my
advantage.

I took one last sip of my coffee and
swallowed hard before settling it into the cup holder and getting
out of the vehicle. Though the temperature had been mild earlier,
and I am certain that it hadn’t suffered any significant change, I
felt a damp chill run the length of my spine. It hit me like a rush
of excitement in fact, and that worried me. However, I pressed on
across the quiet lot.

Arriving at the office door, I reached out
and gave it a tug, only to find that it was locked just as I had
hoped it would be. It would definitely increase my chances of being
able to pull this off if I could hang here in the shadows where the
darkness could obscure the telltale giveaways surrounding the
lie.

I hesitated for a moment, then reached up and
rapped my knuckles hard on the glass pane of the door. I waited as
thirty seconds stretched into one minute, and then that folded
itself into two. Seeing no movement inside, I hammered my fist
against the door again. This time a dim light switched on and was
visible through the doorway behind the small check-in desk. I stood
watching my reflection in the mirror on the back wall and waited. A
short moment later, a disheveled, middle-aged woman in a housecoat
appeared through the opening and squinted at me. Immediately
shooting me a disgusted look, she pointed at the glowing NO VACANCY
sign and started to turn.

I thumped the heel of my palm against the
door once again to get her attention then flipped open my wallet
and pressed it against the glass. Up until this point I could have
turned and walked away, no harm, no foul. But now I was committed,
and in the back of my head I was telling myself that was exactly
what I needed to be, committed—although my inner voice was using a
vastly different sense of the word.

The woman squinted at me again, and I watched
her closely as my heart raced. Her face sagged, and then her
posture seemed to relax somewhat as she started through the opening
and out around the desk. It then came to my attention that I was
holding my breath, so I let it out slowly and took in a fresh
lungful of air as I waited. She continued across the lobby toward
the door, and when she was within a few feet, I slowly pulled the
wallet away, flipped it shut and tucked it into my jacket
pocket.

A moment later the deadbolt clicked, and she
pushed the door open.

“How can I help you, officer?” she asked
through a tired yawn. While her voice was definitely cloaked with
the hallmark cadence of the region, her accent seemed to hail more
from the mid-South; therefore, she lacked the clipping of syllables
I’d learned to expect from natives of the area.

I felt a fresh chill traverse my spine, but
this time it wasn’t a sense of excitement. It was more a sense of
fear—but not for myself. I was afraid for her and the fact that she
had so willingly believed I was a cop without closer inspection of
my credentials. I tried my best not to let it show and instead
simply pasted on what I believed to be an official looking
expression.

“Sorry to disturb you, ma’am,” I launched
into my spiel. “My name is Gant, I’m a special investigations
consultant with the Major Case Squad in Saint Louis, Missouri.”

I had considered using an alias but figured I
would just stumble over it if I did. Considering the amount of
deception I was forcing myself to engage in all at once, I thought
keeping it simple would be my best course of action. Besides, if I
did this correctly, I could get away with a majority of planned
misdirection and only a little actual falsehood. In fact, so far I
hadn’t lied so much as tested the elasticity of a not quite current
truth. I was, in fact, a consultant to the MCS, just not lately.
Splitting hairs, I know, but I was trying to work within a scheme
that would keep my anxiety at bay, otherwise I knew I would never
be able to pull this off.

“I’d love to help you, hun, but cop or no, I
still don’t have a vacancy.”

“Actually, ma’am, I’m here on official
business,” I continued. “There was a homicide here last week,
correct?”

“Yes, and I’ve been paying for it ever
since,” she grumbled. “Fortunately, it hasn’t kept the Feds from
renting the rooms.”

“So I see,” I acknowledged, pointing toward
the neon sign. “Well, the reason I’m here is to look over the
scene.”

She cocked her head then asked, “But I
thought you said you were from Missouri, hun?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I replied with a nod. “I can’t
really get into any details other than to say we have a couple of
cases in Saint Louis that appear to be related to this one.”

“Like maybe a serial killer, you mean?” she
pressed.

“I really couldn’t speculate about that,” I
replied, shrugging as I shook my head. “I’m just here to look at
the crime scene.”

She reached up with her free hand and rubbed
her eyes, then shot a quick glance at her watch. Looking back to my
face, she asked, “This couldn’t wait until morning?”

“I know.” I shook my head apologetically.
“But the lieutenant sent me down here for a quick look. I just got
in a little while ago and drove straight here. My flight back home
leaves at ten so I only have a few hours.”

“They don’t give you much time to work, do
they?”

“That’s just how it happens sometimes.”

“All right then, hun,” she said. “Let me get
my shoes, and I’ll take you on down to the room.”

“You know,” I offered. “I’ve really disturbed
you way too much already. If you just want to give me the key, I’ll
go have a look and then drop it back through the mail slot when I’m
done. That way you can get back to bed.”

“Okay,” she said, giving me a quick nod. It
sounded almost as if there was a note of relief in her voice. “Let
me get it for you.”

She turned and headed back around the
check-in desk, rummaged beneath it for a moment, then returned to
the door with a key that was attached to a bright red,
diamond-shaped piece of plastic, which was emblazoned with a large
number 7.

Handing it to me, she pushed the door open a
little farther and pointed down the length of the building. She
stifled a yawn then said, “Room seven. All the way down in the
corner, hun. Can’t miss it with that damn tape up.”

My face must have betrayed the sudden
flutter in my stomach as I took the key. Room 7 had been the
ongoing theme with Miranda. It was the number on the doors where
both Hobbes and Wentworth were killed in Saint Louis. And, it had
even been the room at the no-tell palace where Felicity had taken a
potential victim when under the
Lwa’s
control.

“Something wrong, hun?” the woman asked.

“N…no,” I half stammered, catching myself and
quickly trying to come up with a plausible excuse for my sudden
reticence. “I was just thinking that seven wasn’t such a lucky
number for the victim.”

“That’s a fact,” she replied with a shallow
nod. “Odd enough he specifically asked for it too.”

I wasn’t surprised by the comment. The desk
clerk where Wentworth was murdered had said the same thing. He had
explicitly requested room 7.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “Odd that it was even
available. When I called down here it took forever to find some
place with a vacancy.”

The words were out of my mouth before I even
realized what I was saying. I had just managed to contradict my
entire fabrication with a single slip of the tongue. A fresh spasm
hit my stomach, but I tried to ignore it and nonchalantly turn my
head toward the distant room in hopes that I could hide any
expression it might involuntarily evoke.

A second later I sighed then turned back to
her and said, “I’m sorry. I’ve really kept you long enough,
ma’am.”

If she had noticed my slip-up, there was
nothing in her face that said as much. She simply pointed to the
mail slot in the door and replied, “It’s no problem, hun. You can
just drop the key in here when you’re finished.”