3

I leaned forward toward the front seat and finally made out the contact name on her phone screen: Son.

"Son, how's work these days? You have no idea, that wife of yours is impossible! I can't control her anymore!"

Lester's mother shot me a bitter glare as she said it.

I held my breath, eyes locked on the phone.

At last, the voice on the other end spoke.

"Mom, don't worry about her. I've been doing fine, work's going smooth. Oh, right, Mom, that thing I told you about, did you take care of it yet? When can you wire the money over?"

The car went dead silent.

That voice was exactly the same as the one on the phone back at the police station.

Hoarse. Muffled.

That was not a sound a living man could make.

I snatched the phone away and pressed him. "Who are you! Lester never did anything to you. Why did you kill him!"

Lester's mother rammed her elbow into me and grabbed the phone back.

"What do you think you're doing! I'm talking to my son! Listen to him! My son is perfectly fine. What is all this nonsense you keep spouting?"

"Then ask him. Ask if he even knows who I am! He won't be able to answer!"

The dead voice came through the phone again.

"Honey, can you stop making a scene?"

"What's my name!"

The other end was silent for a long moment. "Nanette."

In that instant, every hair on my body stood on end.

"Mom, that's enough for now. Just wire the money over to me first."

The call ended, and Lester's mother beamed, all wrapped up in the money. I pinned my hand over the phone. "Can't you see he only wants to con money out of you!"

"You are unbelievable! My son asking for money, and that's a scam? Nanette, the things that come out of your mouth. You really should get your head checked!"

The man in the passenger seat turned his head. "Captain, should we bring her in for a psych evaluation?"

"No! Don't! There's nothing wrong with me! My husband is dead. We have to go find him! I'm even more sure now that he's dead! Please, drive faster!"

The car drove all the way to the inn where my husband had stayed on his business trip.

It was a remote mountain village, not even a paved road, just a dirt slope we had to climb.

My husband had told me about this inn before he left.

After he left, we lost all contact.

The moment we walked in, the front desk clerk came to greet us.

She wore a cool, breezy green dress, a big red flower pinned at her chest.

"Hello. We're police officers on a case. Three days ago, did a man named Lester Chavez check in here?"

The clerk looked over the badges and broke into a smile.

"Oh, you mean that pale, baby-faced young man, right? Ooh, full of vim and vigor, that one. Come with me."

My heart was in my throat.

The inn was old and run-down, pink calling cards stuffed under every door gap.

Lester's mother muttered, "When I see my son, I'm going to have him give you a real talking-to!"

The two officers behind me were murmuring too. "Captain, do you actually think this Lester is dead? I'm starting to feel like she just dragged us out here to catch a mistress."

"Real or not, we'll know once we find this Lester."

"So if we do find this Lester, does she have to come back to the station with us? After all this trouble, we'd have to hold her at least seven days, wouldn't we?"

After chatting a bit, the young officer raised his voice and pressed for information.

"Ma'am, have you seen Lester in the last few days?"

The clerk was gnawing on a pear, swaying as she walked ahead. "Huh? Now that you mention it, I really haven't seen him in a few days."

She spun around suddenly. "But before that, he took a girl out with him. The two of them went off somewhere. They should be back soon, right? Here, this is the room."

She handed over the key.

The two young officers went to open the door.

The key had barely turned in the lock when a rotten, sour stench hit us.

Lester's mother fanned the air under her nose. "What's that smell? Why does it reek so bad?"

The clerk tossed the pear core aside. "It's just spicy noodles. That room, they ate spicy noodles every single day. What about it?"

The two officers let out a breath, exchanged a glance, and nodded.

When the door was pushed open, what lay inside stunned every one of them…

4: 4

4

The whole room was stark white.

The bed was covered over completely with white cloth.

Not a speck of dust anywhere. Spotless past all reason.

The brown floorboards had been scrubbed until they threw back the light.

And yet, against all that neatness, this room was hideous.

The stench drove up into your nose, thick enough that even a trained officer bent double and threw up.

My mother-in-law's voice hit my ear first. “You cursed jinx! See that? My son came out here to work! You just had to say he was dead! If that's not putting a curse on him, then what is it!”

The front-desk clerk made a little sound and pushed past us into the room ahead of the rest.

The officers traded a glance, catching that something was off. “Ma'am, is something wrong here?”

The clerk retched out a mouthful at the doorway, wiped her mouth, and only then came shuffling over. “Everything's wrong! This isn't what our rooms look like at all. Forget it, I can't explain it to you. See for yourselves.”

With that, she pushed open the door beside it.

There was no one inside.

This was a private inn. The curtains, the bedding, all of it was that red-and-pink floral print.

The floor, long left uncared for, had gone over with a layer of caked grime.

“We've never had white sheets. And why does this room stink like that?”

My mother-in-law shot back, “Making a fuss over nothing! My son's a neat freak. So what if he bought some disposable sheets while he was out? Don't believe me? Ask her!”

I walked a circle around the room. The deeper in I went, the stronger the smell.

It was the heavy reek of blood.

But the room was bare, everything in plain sight, and even the one place a person could hide, under the bed, was empty.

I nodded along. “My husband really does have a bad case of that, he's a neat freak. But……I think I've found something.”

I pointed at the dip in the bathroom floor, and the officers all crowded in.

They wore white gloves, and one swiped a hand through the hollow.

The white glove came up crimson.

Blood.

“Seal the scene. Get forensics down here!”

“Yes, Captain!”

“Anyone not involved, please step outside and wait. We need to preserve the scene.”

My mother-in-law and I were herded out.

She lost her nerve on the spot.

“This, how is this possible? Didn't you people make a mistake? Nanette! It's all you, you and your jinx of a mouth! Look what you've done! Cursing your own man for no reason, you'll get what's coming to you!”

I didn't answer her.

I was still studying the layout of the inn.

Seeing if I could turn up any thread of a clue.

Behind me she kept up her frantic cursing.

Then she watched them string up the cordon tape, and her nerve broke completely.

“What does one drop of blood prove? Don't you go making a scene here. In the car, didn't you all hear me talking to my son? Ah! Right! I'll call my son right now and make him come straight back!”

“Once he's back, you'll believe me then, won't you?”

She pulled out her phone and fumbled clumsily through the numbers, straining to prove it to us.

She slapped the phone, held it up over her head, muttering, “What a dump. The signal's terrible! Ugh! There!”

The call went through.

An eerie buzzing came from inside the room.

She didn't notice, still fixed on the screen. “Why isn't he picking up?”

The officers and I stood at the doorway, eyes locked on that room.

“Bzzz……”

That muffled ringing was coming from inside the ceiling.