sweep in, but there was nothing except the sound of his footfalls getting more and more distant until I heard the street door slam closed downstairs.
“I told you he’d never come for you.” I turned to see Marlowe standing behind me. In his expression there was some mixture of triumph and pity. He walked over to me and put a hand on my arm. My flesh went cold beneath his touch.
The tattoo that started on his left pectoral swept over his shoulder. It was covered in antibiotic ointment, the lines swollen and raised, the visible skin red. It must have been painful, but it didn’t seem to bother him.
I gave him the money and he put it in his pocket; there wasn’t even a question that I would give it to him. I nuzzled my face against his good arm so he couldn’t look into my eyes. He stroked the back of my head and neck. I rested my hands on the tight, narrow expanse of his waist.
“You don’t need anyone else, Ophelia,” he said. “You belong to me.”
36
In spite of the fact that Simon Briggs had checked in to the dilapidated Sunshine Motel less than forty-eight hours prior to his death, his space was already as filthy a mess as his car. Less than twenty-four hours after my disappearance and presumed death, Detective Harrison stood in the middle of Room 206 and surveyed the area. Fast-food wrappers were strewn across the carpet like flowers on a meadow, two pizza boxes gaped greasy and empty on the bed, beer cans lined up like soldiers in crooked rows on the windowsills. There was a litter of candy wrappers by the toilet, atop the latest issue of the Economist.
Detective Harrison hated a mess; just the thought of Briggs made him want to take a shower. But for someone so sloppy, Briggs was surprisingly professional with his collection of articles, his copious notes about me in my various incarnations, his lack of phone usage at the motel or any information that might identify his employer. Amid the detritus of the motel room, Harrison found the empty packaging of a disposable cell phone. The phone itself was nowhere to be found in the room, in the car, or on Briggs’s person. He trashed it, thought Harrison, or someone took it. Briggs probably didn’t realize that with the packaging the police might be able to subpoena the call records under new federal regulations. This would, however, be a major pain in the ass and could take weeks. Detective Harrison knew on an instinctive level that he didn’t have weeks, that he might not even have days, if he cared what happened to me.
He put on a pair of gloves and sifted through the wastepaper basket near the front door. He could feel the watchful eyes of the woman who headed the CSI team. She probably was wondering how badly he was going to screw up their scene.
“Relax, Claire,” he said without looking at her. “I’m being careful.”
“It’s your case, Detective,” she said. “You botch it, it’s your problem.”
He ignored her as he inspected the contents of the basket. Toward the bottom he found a piece of paper that had been crumbled into a tight ball. He noticed it because of the quality of the paper, a heavy, expensive piece of stock. He unfurled it carefully, smoothed it out on the carpet. There was a doodle, a stick figure holding what appeared to be a gun, some scribbling that looked like someone trying to get a pen to work, and a telephone number that Briggs had tried to black out with a marker but was still legible. Embossed in blue at the top of the page was a company name, Grief Intervention Services, and a website address, nomorefear.biz.
“Find something?” Claire asked.
“Just more garbage,” he said, crumpling the paper back up.
“That’s what you usually find in a trash can,” she said. She laughed at her own joke, and he gave her a smile he didn’t feel.
When she turned away from him, he stuck the paper in his pocket, pretended to pick through the waste can for a few more minutes.
After he’d finished with the room and left the technicians to do their trace-evidence collection, Detective Harrison turned his attention to the helpful young Indian couple who owned and operated the motel. The husband was a reed of a man with thick glasses, an unfortunately large nose, and a diminutive chin. The wife was a vision in a