“She can’t come with us?” I asked.
“We aren’t sure what we’re going to find.”
I waited for more, but the silence grew as the car shuddered past the eighth floor. I had put him on twelve, just off the elevator, because he seemed like the type to complain if he had to walk down to the end. I thought of the phone, which I’d shoved in the drawer at the sight of the cops and wondered if I should mention it to them.
“So… umm.. are you arresting this guy?”
“Nope. Just a wellness check.” The officer’s gaze landed on my flip flops, which were emerald green and had little palm trees between my first and second toe. They were the pair I kept behind the front desk and slipped on to save the ache in my legs. In the excitement of their arrival, I hadn’t thought to put on my work heels, which were still kicked off beside the credit card slips.
“My heels are behind the desk,” I explained. “I normally have them on.”
He shrugged as if he didn’t care, and I rubbed the key card to room 1206 against the front of my polyester skirt, grateful when the elevator doors opened.
“It’s to the right. Second or third door.”
We came to a stop outside the door, and I watched as the first officer put his ear to the door, listening. I moved a little closer, my ears perked. He rapped on the door with his fist three times, then waited, his head still close to the door, one hand resting on the butt of his gun. I stared at the gun and wondered if they planned on using it. Was Mr. Union violent? He hadn’t seemed so.
Another three raps and the officer looked at me. “Unlock the door, please.”
I moved forward quickly, inserting the card into the keypad and frowning when the lights turned red. “Just a second.” Muttering a curse under my breath, I pulled it out and inserted it back in, withdrawing it a little more smoothly this time. The lock hummed, then turned green. I twisted the handle, and the larger of the two officers put a hand on my shoulder, pulling me back.
“Stay here.”
I watched as they moved into the room, the door catching on the lip of the carpet, affording me a narrow view of the room. I saw the moment they paused, their attention on the bed. One glanced at me, then murmured something to the other. I sidled to the right, and focused in on the mirrored closet doors, inhaling sharply at the view it revealed.
James Union had taken off his socks and his shirt. He was sitting up in bed, a can of our $8 chocolate-covered peanuts open in his lap, his chin tucked against his neck, a bullet hole clean and crisp in the center of his forehead.
Shit.
I got off at eleven but stayed an extra fifteen minutes, my feet swinging as I perched on the plastic stool in the night auditor’s cubby and recounted the night. Marla snapped a piece of gum, her expression bored. “Happened before,” she drawled, holding down her finger on the printer’s queue button. “Room 419. Drug overdose. Everybody loves to die in a hotel.”
Did they? I couldn’t think of a worse place to die. Especially not this hotel. We only washed the comforters once a year. We had a horrific cockroach problem, one frequently mentioned on online reviews, and most of the rooms reeked of a sort of spoiled-milk scent.
“Go home,” Marla said, nodding at the clock. “You ain’t getting paid for this crap.”
I stood and remembered James Union’s phone, which I had hidden in the side pocket of my bag. “Alright. See you tomorrow.”
I wouldn’t be back tomorrow, but I didn’t know that yet. I walked out of the front doors and down the side of the building, my flip-flops flapping along the sidewalk, my heels tucked away in the cabinet of the employee break room where they stayed until someone stole or threw them out. I wouldn’t go back to that hotel until three years later, with documentary crews in toe, anxious to catch the humble and macabre root of my fame.
I listened to Ziggy Marley and ate two pop-tarts as I took the short way home, my doors locked and pedal heavy as I passed through the worst part of Hyde Park, then took the hard turn into my neighborhood. I found a parking spot two buildings over and weaved through the cars, brushing crumbs off the front of my uniform as I clutched my bag under one arm and scanned the lot for anyone who might pose a threat.
Everybody didn’t love to die in a hotel. One girl chose the 7-11 just outside of this parking lot. They found her with a Snickers bar in hand, the wrapper half off, a knife in her gut. Her purse was gone, and I didn’t know what she’d had in it, but I watched them tow her car, a decade-old clunker with bald tires, so it couldn’t be much. She’d probably died for the same amount of cash I had stuffed in the front pocket of my cheap blazer.
I made it to my building and jogged up the exterior stairs, realizing on the second flight that I wasn’t sure whether I’d locked my car. I paused, warring over whether to go back and mentally cataloging anything of value in it. My textbooks. A knock-off set of wireless earbuds. My leather jacket, stuffed half-under the front seat. I forged on.
I made it inside and trudged past my roommate, who nodded in greeting, her attention pinned to the TV, where a reality show diva shoveled fries into her mouth and moaned complaints about her hairdresser. I considered sharing the excitement of my night but didn’t have the energy for it. Pulling my door shut, I kicked off my flip flops and took James Union’s phone out of my bag. Curling into the pillows, I scrolled through more of his photos and then his messages, my interest in the dead man growing as I discovered his second family and the fireworks that had erupted that afternoon.
I fell asleep while reading his texts. My hair was unwashed, my makeup and uniform still on, and I didn’t know. I didn’t know that the scratch-off in my ratty purse was a winner, and I didn’t know that James Union’s second wife was in her minivan, driving over to kill his first wife.
5
#chaching
EMMA
The next morning, I stuffed a spoon heaped with corn flakes into my mouth and stared at my phone, scrolling through the article on James Union’s domino effect of death. Beside me, sat James’s phone, which I had decided to take to the police station as soon as I finished breakfast.
The article was lengthy and riddled with typos, but full of juice. The wife from the lobby had followed the police to the coroner's office to identify James’s body, then visited the Dollar General and purchased an extra-large box of garbage bags, a box of latex gloves, and a cheap knife set.
I’m dense; I realize that. When James Union checked into a hotel room with no luggage, didn’t negotiate the rate, then dropped his phone into the trash can, I should have picked up on it. But how did the Dollar General cashier not find black trash bags, a giant knife set, and latex gloves suspicious?
It was the cheapness of Christina Union that saved the San Diego wife’s life. When Christina tried to stab the second wife, she missed, and the knife hit the fridge door, the handle immediately popping loose of the blade. Wife #2 thought fast, picked up the toaster from the counter and whacked Christina over the head.
I guess grief does strange things to people. I chewed and clicked on a video link, watching as a newscaster spoke to Rick, my manager. I turned up the volume.
“Oh, my gawdddd.” Amy staggered into the kitchen with a pronounced limp. “Leg day yesterday was brutal. Please kill me if I ever mention box jumps ever again.”