Stephen Gallagher - Valley of lights

I said, 'I'd like to see your registration cards for the last couple of days.' I showed him my ID as I said it. He seemed to shrink back nervously, as if I was suddenly giving off heat.

'Uh, listen,' he said, 'let me get the regular manager in on this one. I'm just relief…'

'No, you listen,' I said patiently. 'I'll start again. I want to see your registrations for the last couple of days. I'm looking for a white male, alone and without luggage, five-eleven, medium build, dark hair. He's kind of pale and wasted-looking, as if he's been lying around in the dark for a long time.' Which, of course, he had; I was describing the body in the business suit that I'd last seen slumped in a Paradise chair with urine stains down its pants, the one that had suddenly upped and walked out of County General within moments of Gilbert Mercado hitting the concrete. One of my details seemed to strike a spark with the clerk, and I said, 'You've seen him?'

'Kind of white like a slug?' he said.

'And probably no car. Is he in now?'

'No. He went out.'

'When did he arrive?'

He moved down the counter to an indexed carousel. 'Mid-evening,' he said, starting to check through, 'the night before last. Right at the end of my shift.' He pulled out a card, and passed it down the counter to me. 'He paid cash in advance. I saw a gold American Express card in his wallet, but he didn't use it.'

For the simple reason that it had been stolen, I was thinking. He'd taken it, along with most of the rest of a surgery chief's clothing, from a locker in the scrub facility right next to the Operating Rooms. According to the surgeon, he'd have about two hundred and fifty dollars in cash on him. When I heard that, I knew I'd taken up the wrong profession.

Bodysnatching, huh?

The card told me nothing; utterly anonymous handwriting, a name I'd never heard of, an out-of-state address that was probably false. I said, 'Let's go and take a look at his room, shall we?'

'Hey,' he began, 'I don't know,' but I said quietly, 'Come on. This could be serious,' and that swayed him.

We went out into the afternoon heat, which struck like a physical blow after the air-conditioned chill of the reception block. The Sunset Beach had been designed around a Hawaiian theme; I could remember when it had been the Waikiki Royal and, I think, the Honolulu before that. A couple of big transplanted palms, higher than the roof line, leaned over a kidney-shaped pool with a scattering of white metal tables and chairs around its edge; from the more expensive rooms you could walk straight out onto the green carpet, while the rest of them looked down from two sides.

'I assumed his bags were in the car,' the clerk said as we stepped through an iron gate to cross the pool enclosure. 'But if he didn't actually have a car…'

'Did he go out yesterday morning?'

'I don't know, I wasn't here. I saw him coming back, though. He was kind of weaving across under the lights, as if he'd been drinking.'

'Did you smell drink on him?'

'No sir. I wasn't going to get close enough to find out.'

The room was up on the second floor, reached by an outside balcony with a bamboo rail. The curtains were drawn, and there was a Do Not Disturb sign hanging on the doorknob. We ignored it.

I wasn't sure what I was going to find; at first it looked as if I was going to find nothing. The room didn't even look occupied, the bed unslept in. It had a deep-pile carpet and a color TV, quite a step up from the Paradise; I thought that perhaps he simply lived as well as he could on whatever money came his way, no saving and no planning, just taking it one day at a time.

There were no windows in the bathroom, but an extractor fan started to whirr as I turned on the light. Again everything was clean and untouched-looking but here there was a faint, sour smell of vomit in the air that the fan couldn't quite clear. No marks or stains on the toilet bowl.

From behind me the clerk said, puzzled, 'There are no towels here. There should be a full set.'

I looked around, and he was right. The little guest soaps were still in their wrappings, but the towel rail was empty. 'Maybe he used them,' I said.

'For what?'

But I didn't answer. I got down on my hands and knees to take a closer look at the wall behind the toilet. This was plain white plaster, not tile, and as such it wouldn't be easy to wipe clean; and there, sure enough, I found some faint red-brown splashes. Blood splashes, I'd have bet on it. They were so slight that you'd have to be looking in order even to notice them.

The tall skinny clerk was watching me, curious. Getting back to my feet, I said, 'Listen to me. I'm going to wait here until he gets back. I don't want anybody else to know about this, and I want you to keep out of his way. You're nervous, and it's going to show.'

'You're absolutely right I'm nervous. What did he do?'

'Credit card fraud,' I said, and saw him relax as surely as if someone had let some of the air out of him. Credit card fraud's a commonplace in the motel business, and suddenly wouldn't seem like any big mystery.

'So that's why he paid cash?' the clerk said. 'Because he knew you were after him?'

'That,' I conceded, 'and a few other things.'

He went back to his work, and I went down to the pool. There were plenty of tropical-style bushes around, but this wasn't amateur night; instead of skulking and drawing attention to myself, I picked out a lounger and angled it so that I'd be able to keep an eye on the target room without having to turn my head. Then, with a can of Doctor Pepper from the dispenser under the arch and a magazine that someone else had left lying around, I stretched out like any resident with an afternoon on his hands and nowhere in particular to go.

I was there for quite a while. I may even have dozed off at one point, because suddenly the sky was darkening and the pool area was floodlit and there was somebody in the water swimming circuits with strong, even strokes. It was some blond guy with a deep tan. Not the one I was looking for.

He came by about fifteen minutes later.

I heard the iron gate behind me, but I didn't turn. Moments later he was walking past, not ten feet away – closer than I'd have liked, but it gave me the chance for a good look at his back. The four hundred dollar jacket made me certain that this was him, even without having seen his face; it was right for the description, and wrong for someone so much in need of a haircut.

He went under the arch, and didn't reappear for a while. Two girls came out to join the blond guy, bringing with them a big radio which they set down by the poolside. They didn't get in, just sat and splashed their feet in the water. After a couple of minutes, I saw movement on the stairway up to the balcony; he was ascending now, and I realised what he'd been doing when I saw the flash of white under his arm as he turned to enter his room. He'd been into the laundry to get his towels from the washing machine. Must have been quite a job, getting the blood out of them.

I didn't want to be here when he came back, because I was sure that he'd know me. I left the court and went across the street to where I could lean on someone else's car and pretend that it was mine and that I was waiting for somebody. He came out after about ten minutes, and didn't even look my way. The guy whose car I was leaning on had left his door open and his keys in the ignition, so before I left it I took them out and hid them under his seat. Do people think we've got nothing better to do than to look for stolen vehicles?

I stayed with him, but well back. Now that I knew where he was basing himself, it would be better to lose him than to risk being recognised. He was taking his time; sometimes he'd stop before crossing the street, even if the light said Walk and there was no traffic around, and he'd kind of sniff the air as if he could read the currents in it. He reminded me of some kind of animal. It made my flesh go all crawly.