The Violet Hour, page 14
*
Something was wrong.
Hoss’s eyes flew open and he stared into darkness. His heart was beating too fast in his chest, his mouth was dry, cold air erupted goosebumps over his body. Where the hell was he?
Three sharp bangs came from his right. He shot upright, reaching for his gun in the holdall at his feet. The motel room. That’s where he was, and his Smith & Wesson exactly where he had left it. He quietly racked the slide as he got up from the bed. Something tumbled and hit the floor. His phone.
The thump at the door came again.
Hoss snatched up the phone, holding down the power button while crossing the room away from the window, and pressed himself against the wall. The screen lit up as it came to life. He held it against his chest to dim the glare. If these were Ike’s boys come to get him, he should prepare for a bullet through the window or even the door at any second. He looked to the bathroom on his right. He couldn’t see from here, but remembered it had a long, narrow window above the sink, near the ceiling. It would be a tight squeeze, but if that was the only way out…
Another two thumps on the door.
Hoss glanced down at the phone. 3:17. He hit the keypad and tapped in 911. If something was about to happen he wanted to be sure backup was coming. Preferably before he took a bullet between the eyes or at least soon after so they could catch the bastards in the act. With his thumb hovering over the call symbol he inched closer to the door. It was one of those with a peephole. He knew how that went. He’d seen enough movies where the hapless victim raised his eye to the glass and got his brain shot out through the back of his head. Even saw the aftermath of such an incident for real when he worked for the state police. So he did the opposite. He crouched as he neared the door, listening, his focus on the curtains and the reflection of pale light that came through them to land on the wall above the bed. No shadows, no movement. He pressed his ear against the wood.
“Please,” a voice hissed.
Hoss jerked back, staring at the door as if he might see through the two-inch-thick wood to what was on the other side of it. And now the voice repeated, “Please, please, please…” A low but desperate pleading.
He straightened, taking his chance at the peephole. There was no gun muzzle waiting for him. Metaphorically perhaps, but not literally.
Placing the phone on the narrow table beneath the window, he brought the Smith & Wesson up and readjusted his grip, then reached down with his free hand to unlock the door and ease it open. His visitor immediately flew forward but he jammed his foot against the bottom of the door to stop it opening wider.
“Please,” she begged, eyes wide and damp with tears. “Please let me in. You’ve got to let me in.”
“Who’s with you?” he asked.
“What? No one. There’s no one. Just me. Please.”
She was filling the gap in the doorway, making it difficult for him to see past her.
“How do I know you’re not lying?” he demanded.
She gasped in frustration, frantically looked over her shoulder before once again pressing her face close to the narrow space between them. “Fucking please. You said you’d help, so fucking help.”
With the gun still in his hand Hoss moved behind the door, so that when she pushed against it, it stopped at his hip. As she squeezed herself through the gap, he grabbed hold of her arm, pulling her the rest of the way into the room then slamming the door shut again with his hip. He locked it and raised the gun to her head. Her palms went up instinctively.
“I’m alone. I swear,” she said, an unmistakable shake worrying both her voice and her hands.
Hoss stepped to the side of the window, hooked back the curtain with his finger and peered outside. In all directions the motel at this time of the morning was quiet, and there were no new vehicles other than the ones that had been there when he returned from Fabrizio’s last night. He let the curtain fall and flipped on the light. They both squinted against the intrusion. It took a couple of seconds for Hoss’s eyes to adjust.
“Oh my god,” he muttered, the gun sinking down to his side.
In front of him, Vivian Rosedale trembled all over. Her breath stuttered from her lips, pale skin was mottled. Black makeup streaked down her cheeks. Eyes were lost to a pool of tears as though she’d been crying for hours. But despite all that, Hoss could see the swelling above her left eye and the cut from which a dried line of blood ran down to her ear. She’d been hit. Badly hurt. But that wasn’t the worst of it. Because although Vivian still wore the same red dress and heels she had worn earlier that night, now the skirt was torn, and over the thin Lycra material at her chest and down to her stomach were large, palm-sized patches of a dark substance that, even in the poor light from the motel’s cheap energy-saving bulb, Hoss knew without any doubt was blood.
Chapter 17
Hoss pulled on his clothes, checked the parking lot out the window for the tenth time, then took the wooden chair that was pushed under the table and propped it beneath the door handle as an added measure. Not exactly foolproof, and useless against a shotgun, but it was about all he had. Next he grabbed a blanket from the closet and hooked it over the curtain rail so that it provided an extra layer of privacy. He switched on the bedside lamp, turned the ceiling light off. Then he tried again with Vivian.
He had got her to sit, at least. She was perched on the edge of the bed. But other than that, she hadn’t moved and certainly hadn’t spoken apart from to tell him the blood wasn’t hers. It was like she was somewhere caught between shock and hysteria. A tremble rippled through her body and fingers. He had tried to get her to take the fur coat off, but that was off the cards – she wouldn’t let him anywhere near her to help, and didn’t even seem to want to touch any part of herself. He’d poured her a glass of water, wishing he had something stronger, but as yet she’d paid no attention to it. And so until she could explain what had happened, he was left with coming up with scenarios for himself, none of them good and almost all of them involving his turning up in her life the way he had. If he hadn’t, would she still be sipping cocktails and massaging Ike’s ego at Fabrizio’s right now?
“Where’s your phone, Vivian?” he asked her.
She stared at the floor a long moment before reaching into her coat pocket.
“Shit,” he muttered, seeing it was switched on. “We need to destroy it.”
Her eyes came up to his.
“Let me have it. I’ll destroy it. And then we need to get out of here.”
He held out his hand but her expression was blank. She had stopped crying for now, but this silence wasn’t helpful.
“Let me put it another way. Will someone be looking for you, Vivian?”
Tears brimmed in her eyes that he took as affirmative. He stepped closer, palm still outstretched. She looked at the phone, before lifting it for him to take. When he had it, he slipped on his jacket and reached for his keys.
“Okay, listen, here’s what we’ll do. I’m going to drive this a couple of miles down the road and get rid of it. I won’t be long. You stay here with the door locked. Don’t open it to anyone. I’ll leave you my gun—”
“No!” She leapt up from the bed.
“I’ll be twenty minutes max.”
“Please,” she begged. Her skin was gray, hand reaching for her mouth, and before he could respond she was rushing into the bathroom, the door slamming behind her. The paper-thin partition between them wasn’t enough to muffle her violent retching.
Hoss threw the keys to the bed and dropped his weight back against the wall.
“Jesus, Jimmy,” he muttered to himself, rubbing his hand over his face. Well, he had to blame someone for this. Whatever this was. He might not know yet what had gone on but he could take a decent stab at it. He imagined her father would too, though her father’s response would be a little different to whatever his was going to be. He looked down at the pink-sequined phone in his hand and fought the urge to switch it off. If he did, its signal would ping in the area. As soon as they were out of here he’d destroy it somewhere on the highway.
Vivian emerged from the bathroom, wiping her fingers over her mouth and not looking at him as she rested her shoulder against the door frame. She had lost three inches by kicking off her heels, and now seemed considerably less than her nineteen years, even with the black ink staining her youthful skin. Hoss felt a pang in his chest at the sight of her. If her father could see her this way, he’d break open the weapons cabinet and to hell with the price on his head.
“Did anyone follow you here?” he asked.
With her eyes on the floor still, she shook her head. “I got a cab. But I was careful.”
“You’re certain of that?”
She caught his eye only briefly, then nodded. “I had him drop me at the drive-through taco place. Then made sure he was gone before I walked the rest of the way here.”
It was the most she’d said so far. Progress.
“Are you ready to tell me what happened?” he tried, but her gaze drifted to the floor. And when she added nothing more, he took that as her answer. He sighed and pushed himself up from the wall. Hauling his holdall onto the bed, he rummaged through it, pulled out his toiletry bag, gray sweatpants and a thick pair of socks. Then he picked his hoody up from the carpet and shook it out.
“It’s not clean, but it’ll have to do,” he said.
Vivian stepped out of his way as he took everything into the bathroom, pulled the shower curtain aside to turn on the faucet and spun the temperature dial from blue to red. When he turned back, she was watching him.
“There’s shower gel, shampoo and spray in the bag,” he said. “Take what you need. The blue towel on the rail is mine, use that one. But be quick. Once you’re done we’ll get out of here.”
She looked nervous. And defeated. Like she didn’t know who to trust anymore, and anyway what did that matter when she was fast running out of choices. Hoss stepped past her and crossed the room to the wastepaper bin by the desk. He unhooked the plastic bag inside and held it out to her.
“Put your jacket, dress and shoes in here. Go on, take it.” He shook the bag, and slowly she raised her hand. “I’ll sit right here outside this door the whole time, okay? You’ll be perfectly safe. But the sooner we leave, the better. Do you understand, Vivian?”
Her gaze had drifted through him as he spoke, but at the sound of her name she snapped her attention back.
“Do you understand?” he repeated.
She nodded. With the bag clutched in her fingers like a lifeline, she stepped back into the bathroom.
“Don’t lock the door,” he added, and she shot him an accusing glare over her shoulder that for some reason made him turn away. He waved his hand in her direction. “In case you pass out or something. You look like you’re in shock.” He mumbled the last part as he picked up his gun from the side table and returned to crouch to the floor outside the bathroom, his back to the wall.
She closed the door with a soft click, and after a few moments he heard the splash of water as she washed. He kept his eye on a strip of light from the window reflecting on the wall at the other side of the room. If trouble was coming, he wanted to be in with a chance of meeting it head on. But no shadow crossed the strip of light, and if there was any sound of movement outside, it was lost to the noise of the shower and the hum of hot water being dragged through the pipes. Hoss rested his elbows on his knees, his hands gripped in position on the Smith & Wesson, and didn’t dare shift his focus from that light from outside. He was still sitting like that when Vivian emerged from the bathroom several minutes later.
She came into the room with the towel hung over her arm, his toiletry bag and the plastic bag with her dress, jacket and heels held close to her chest. His clothes were huge on her. She had rolled up the bottom of the sweatpants to her ankles, and done the same with the cuffs of the hoody at her wrists. There were dark, damp patches over the gray hood where her hair lay wet and curling. Her face was free of the black makeup, the cut above her eye weeping fresh blood, and the rest of the skin around her eyes and cheeks was puffy and red.
Hoss got up from the floor and took everything from her. He packed the towel into the holdall, then unzipped the toiletry bag. “Here,” he said, reaching in to take out a dry washcloth. “Put this on your eye.”
She touched her fingers to the cut while taking the cloth from him with her other hand. She still wasn’t talking, but she wasn’t crying either and she seemed to have stopped shaking. That was good. Because they needed to get going. They’d already been here too long.
After he had packed up the room and checked it was clear outside, he left the motel key on the side table and the door unlocked. With one hand on the gun in his waistband beneath his jacket, and his other arm around Vivian, ready to throw her to the ground if a gunshot came out of the dark, he walked her the short distance to the car. Once she was in the passenger seat, he went to the trunk, threw the holdall in, closed the trunk, returned to the driver’s side, got in, closed the door. All calm, nothing rushed, no furtive glances to the camera positioned at the motel entrance to his left, the one recording his every move. Bad enough it would have captured Vivian’s frantic arrival earlier, now the least he could do was try to keep a lid on it. Nothing to see here. Just a young woman who’d shown up at his door after a bad night, and here he was doing the right thing – taking care of her, getting her home safe.
With the same measured movements, he started the engine, backed out of the space and rolled the car up to the exit. Only when they were out on the road did he press his boot to the gas, and only when they reached the highway did he let his shoulders relax and his alert level dropped down a notch.
The roads were empty, and there had been no headlights reflected in his mirrors since they left the motel. The clock on the dash had it at 4:06. It was still dark and the sky was blue-black and eerie. Dawn would come soon, but there was no knowing exactly when, or what the next day would bring, or what the hell Hoss planned to do now. All he knew was that he was heading east, homeward-bound. The rest he’d have to figure out on the way.
When he was ten miles outside of Palmrey, Hoss brought the Focus to a rest area on the roadside. He got out, took Vivian’s cell phone from the holdall in the trunk, crushed it under his boot, then picked up the pieces to throw in the trash can. Back in the car he pulled onto the empty highway and they continued their journey.
Beside him his passenger was silent. She’d been that way since the motel but he didn’t think it was shock anymore. If it had been at all. Because after emerging from the motel bathroom, there had been an air of something else about her he couldn’t put his finger on. She hadn’t cried again, didn’t even look like crying; instead, her features were resolute, her dark eyes staring straight ahead through the windshield. The only giveaway to her ordeal was the cut over her eye and the paleness of her skin. Perhaps she had done all her crying in the shower and there was nothing left. Or perhaps there was something else going on behind those eyes, something Hoss didn’t dare speculate about.
Another ten miles down the road they stopped at a gas station to refuel. He locked the car when he went inside to pay, and when he came back out it was with a coffee in each hand.
“Get some sugar inside you,” he said, dropping the drinks into the cup holders and taking a handful of sugar sachets and candy bars from his jacket pocket. She looked at the candy he dropped in her lap with disinterest at first, but when he bit into his own she followed suit. Hoss took one sip from his coffee then started the car and left the gas station, getting back onto the highway as the sky brightened.
The road grew steadily busier. No longer just the occasional semi on a night-time run, but workers heading out for the early shift. And with each passing minute, and each passing mile that took them closer to Pinefort, Hoss considered his next move. Taking Vivian to the apartment was out of the question now that Busta hadn’t left for the rig as he was supposed to have done. Plus he didn’t have the energy to concoct some story and have Vivian play along with it too. Even if he could fool Busta, there’d be no fooling Fletcher. So if not the apartment, then where? Another motel, more expense? And for how long? Just because Vivian was here with him right now, had sought his help, didn’t mean she’d had a change of heart and would happily skip off with Daddy into the sunset. Then there was good old Daddy himself – how would he react if he found out his baby had rocked up at Hoss’s door in the state she had? He wouldn’t care too much for the details, he’d go out there like a battle-weary, trigger-drunk soldier with nothing else to lose. Or worse, expect Hoss to do it for him. And that’s before Hoss even knew what exactly had gone on yet.
Hoss peered at his passenger. He had turned up the heater in the car thinking maybe she’d put her head back, catch some shut-eye. But she was still sitting upright, arms folded across her chest, staring out the windshield. He thought about asking her now – what went on last night, what was he driving her away from that she was so readily letting him take her? But sensing his gaze on her, she turned to him with a question of her own.
“Why are you doing all this for me?” she asked, voice quiet but firm, no sign of the trembling that had overtaken her earlier.
Good question, Hoss thought. Why was he doing this? To get Jimmy off his back, would be one reason. But he wasn’t sure that was entirely it. If anything, whatever this was, whatever had gone on, he was only getting himself in deeper by playing a part in it – an accessory to the crime, whatever the hell the crime was. So why, then? Why, before they left the motel, didn’t he insist she tell him what had happened to her?
Vivian watched him, waiting for an answer. Hoss tightened his grip on the steering wheel and caught sight of the thin white scar over his left wrist. Trapped – that’s what he’d been with Evertson. Trapped in a room with death the only exit. Fear doesn’t even come close to describing how that felt. It was bigger than fear, greater than terror. Except it wasn’t death that scared him. It was helplessness.
