27. Tracks

TWENTY-SEVEN

Tracks

Moran was at the motel before he was.

Rus parked next to his cruiser and angled out of his SUV with his laptop under his arm.

“Got the key?” he asked.

Moran, who’d walked to Rus, held out a key with one of those large, old-fashioned, diamond-shaped, plastic, motel keychains.

Rus took it but moved to the hood of his SUV, opened his laptop on it and hit a button so it would wake. He typed in his password.

The email came up.

He stabbed a finger at it to indicate to Moran he needed to read it.

Then he jogged to room seven.

He yanked off the crime scene tape.

He opened the door, walked in and used his elbow to flip on the overhead light.

Brittanie gone. Plastic gone. The bed was rumpled, but otherwise, the room looked ready to rent.

To Rus, it still felt like death.

He walked straight through to the bathroom.

Above the toilet, a window. Opaque glass.

It was closed.

It was a sash.

It was also plenty big enough for a man to fit through.

And a woman.

In fact, you could stand, take a piss, and look at that cloudy glass right in front of you, and you didn’t have to be as tall as Rus.

Which meant you could get in without a ladder, the bottom ledge maybe three inches above the back of the toilet.

I was instructed to keep my window unlocked so they could get in…

I park at the back and walk all the way around on the outside so I don’t have to go by that crime scene tape.

The Seattle team didn’t fuck around, there was fingerprint powder all around the frame of the window and all over the toilet.

He pivoted and nearly ran into Moran.

“Jace is gonna fucking lose his mind,” Moran gritted.

He had Rus’s laptop under his arm.

“Yep. That’s why he can’t know.”

Moran’s head jerked in surprise.

Rus pushed through the sheriff and walked back outside, beyond his SUV, and stood in the middle of the parking lot.

Making slow circles, he took everything in.

The motel was L-shaped. Lobby in front, fourteen rooms, swimming pool with high chain link fence surrounding it. The pool was to the side but closer to the front of the property, better to be seen by cars passing by.

The lobby and nine rooms down the long side, five rooms down the foot of the L. Open breezeway at the angle where there were vending machines and ice.

Rooms big enough for two parking spots in front of both.

Sign out front by the street, about twenty feet from the front edge of the fence to the pool.

There was another chain link fence that closed off the motel property from the open-nature, grass-scrub-and-boulder-filled lot beyond the pool to the side. The fence ran the length of the property and ended before the steep incline of the mountain that was the backdrop of the motel.

One entrance from the street to the property. It was wide.

No true reception area for a car. No overhang. You parked in one of the spots outside the lobby to check in.

But the concrete that covered all the property the hotel sat on, save a narrow rectangle of grass around the decking of the pool, ran across the front of the building too.

This was how Brad drove around back to park his vehicle without having to pass Brittanie’s door.

Moran had joined him, and Moran silently followed when Rus jogged to the front of the motel and stopped.

The desk clerk on duty was watching them through the panorama windows.

Rus ignored her.

The lobby was all windows, but the ones to the side of the building, which would be the back of the units, were covered with display units that had pamphlets for local attractions and businesses. Also obscuring the view, from what he could see, there was a bulletin board covered likely with advertisements and event announcements.

You couldn’t see out those windows.

In the dark, you might not think there was anything to see from what was on that other side.

All that shit there would also muffle noise coming from that direction.

There was no additional street entrance on that side and nothing but nature that led to the sheer wall of another very steep mountain about twenty yards out. And by nature, he meant it was more tall grass, scrub, brush, and big boulders. Impossible to drive through, even if you had an ATV. A tank couldn’t make it through that mess.

Rus walked slowly to stand looking down the side of the motel, which was the back of the units.

There was a vehicle-wide lane to the rear, but you’d have to drive in the street entrance and around the front of the motel to get to it. There was more chain link fencing lining the concrete down that side, closing it off from that vacant lot.

If a car came in, and it crossed the front by the lobby, especially at night, the desk clerk wouldn’t miss it.

He loped down the side of the motel, Moran with him, nothing there but the windows over the toilets to the rooms.

He stopped at what he knew was room seven, not only because he was counting, but also because there was a ledge from the roof protecting the building from the elements, and the black fingerprint powder was still visible around the outside of that window.

They’d be thorough. He knew it because he’d read the reports.

But…good.

He started jogging again, Moran with him.

They hit the back of the motel and stopped.

At the angle to the L, there was a door, now open, and he could hear the laundry machines going.

So, laundry, linens, supplies.

No other doors. But more bathroom windows. All the units had front entry only.

There was also parking back there. There were two cars parked. The maid and clerk.

Unless they were told to park back there, it seemed everyone was avoiding Brittanie’s room.

And this was probably where they did any unloading of supplies.

But you could drive around either the front or the side of the motel to get to it, easier access was around the front.

He turned his back to the motel and looked left and right.

The chain link fence went to the end of the concrete on either side.

No back fence.

Also no back road.

You entered the property from the street, and it was closed in at both sides.

And regardless of those pamphlets, you’d see a car enter, whether it went to the main parking lot, or around the side.

But there was no access to the property in the back. There was another very steep hill close to the edge and that was it.

Fuck.

He’d thought he had something.

He was sure they’d come in through the window. Though, unless they left fingerprints, he couldn’t prove it.

He also couldn’t offer an explanation as to how they got on the property at all, because there were no witnesses who saw them there and it was impossible to enter the property in a vehicle without the desk clerk seeing, including being on break or away from the lobby, but noting the car parked in the lot.

Considering Brittanie checked in at around five thirty, depending on how long they were there, they might have had to evade the attention of three clerks—the evening clerk, the night clerk and/or the morning clerk. Not to mention other customers, all two of them, who had been contacted and interviewed and they hadn’t seen or heard a thing.

Though, none of those clerks or customers would have reason to see someone parked at the back by the vacant lots, nor would they see someone rounding the rear of the property and going down the side to the bathroom window.

And unless they got sloppy and his team lifted prints around the window, they’d left no trace.

You just couldn’t drive a car back there.

It wasn’t impossible that two people walked to the motel carrying a massive amount of plastic tarp, sex toys and a hammer.

But it was improbable someone did it without anyone seeing them.

They’d have to park somewhere close and walk the road, which was highly traversed. And how they’d navigate rounding the fence at the front without being seen by the clerk would be a miracle.

Unless you wanted to take your chances stumbling in the dark next to a mountain, or through one of two vacant lots strewn with boulders, and climb the fences at the sides.

But if Rus had a mess of plastic tarp, sex toys and a hammer, heading to a motel where he was going to torture and murder someone, he wouldn’t want to sprain his ankle stumbling through the dark or break his neck falling off a six-foot chain-link fence.

And chain link fences were noisy. If you climbed them, they clanked and banged. Maybe not enough to be heard by people in the motel, but these weren’t two cat burglars.

Nevertheless, they’d managed to evade being seen or heard by street traffic, employees and customers.

And with the town as interested in the murder as Misted Pines, a passerby seeing them would have reported it.

Even if they did come up from the back along the mountain, they’d probably need flashlights, and those would be seen too.

Bottom line, though, none of the reports shared evidence of vegetation, gravel, mud or dirt in or outside the room. And unless they took their shoes off outside the door and were careful to clean away any residue when they vacated, if they hoofed it there, they’d track at least some of that in.

He couldn’t see them dragging a vacuum or cleaning supplies with them either.

Maybe the lab would turn something up.

But until now, Rus would have sworn they got there in a vehicle.

Rus had halted, but Moran kept walking.

Rus watched as the man stopped beyond the concrete in the dirt. He stared at the ground, looked up the mountain, and then stared at the ground again.

He was as pissed as Rus that they hadn’t found the perp’s ingress and egress.

It wasn’t strictly necessary to know.

But when you were investigating a crime, everything you could learn was necessary to know.

More importantly, if you could gather convincing evidence to tell the story of how they did it, you could help the jury members raise their hands for a guilty verdict, or better, convince the perpetrators to plead it out.

He watched as Moran squatted, still staring at the ground.

The sheriff lifted his head and looked off into the distance.

He then turned to Rus in a way Rus went to where he was.

He saw it before he got close, something easily missed, unless you knew the only way it could be was right there.

This was why his team, who thought to print the outside of a bathroom window, and according to their report also inspected this area and saw no road, no easy access, and no immediate tracks, missed them.

It was a definitely a miss, they should have looked closer.

But it still wasn’t easy to see.

He saw it where the concrete ended, and a narrow area of gravel and mud began before the mountain started to ascend.

It was barely enough room to fit a vehicle.

But if they wanted it bad enough, went slow enough, it’d not only work, you could go without your lights because the motel lights would guide your way. Your car was dark, no one would see you from the street.

Or the motel.

Rus felt his heart start to pound.

“It was raining that night and had been raining off and on for a few days,” Moran said. “Including the day we found her and the day after.”

Yeah, it was.

That was why it was muddy enough, a vehicle left deep depressions that wouldn’t go away, even if there was more rain.

Because those motherfuckers were still right there.

You could barely see them. There were no tread marks anymore. Some of them had been completely washed away. They looked like grooves in the mud.

And they were.

Grooves made by car tires.

Rus turned his gaze where Moran had, and he saw, less than a quarter a mile away, another business.

It looked closed, but there was activity because it was under construction.

They started walking that way.

“Place used to be an Italian restaurant. They closed about a year ago. Now, believe someone’s opening an outdoor gear store there, sales and rentals,” Moran said.

“Mm-hmm.”

Rus’s eyes didn’t leave the tracks. They were broken, there were full yards where they’d been lost to the elements, but then they returned.

They led all the way to the back of the store.

The broken concrete around that property was lousy with dirt washed in from the rain, gravel, blown in pieces of litter and construction debris.

But there was a lot of dirt washed in from the rain.

And through it, car tire tracks, not construction vehicles, car tire tracks turned onto that back area that wasn’t actually a back lane, but it had served as one, and then those tracks returned to drive through that business.

“They came previously, unlocked the window, and rolled in from back here,” Moran deduced.

“Mm-hmm,” Rus agreed.

Rus stared at some men coming from inside the building and tossing some demolition materials in a dumpster.

Then, at the same time, he and Moran both turned and raced back to the motel, phones to their ears.