Hunting Zero

“You a cop?” the clerk interrupted.

Reid was quickly growing irritated. “No. I’m not a cop.” He wanted to add that he was the father of those two girls, but he stopped himself; he didn’t want this clerk to be able to identify him by any more than he already could.

“Look, bro, I don’t know nothin’ about teenage girls,” the clerk insisted. “What people do here is their business—”

“I just want to know when he was here. If you saw the two girls. I want the name that the man gave you. I want to know if he paid in cash or with a card. If it was a card, I want the last four digits of the number. And I want to know if he said anything at all, or if you overheard anything, that might tell me where he went from here.”

The clerk stared at him for a long moment, and then he let out a hoarse, raspy snicker. “My man, look around you. This ain’t the kind of place that takes names or credit cards or anything like that. This is the kind of place people rent rooms by the hour, if you know what I mean.”

Reid’s nostrils flared. He’d had just about enough of this nitwit. “There must be something, anything, you can tell me. When did they check in? When did they check out? What did he say to you?”

The clerk shot him a pointed stare. “What’s it worth to you? For fifty bucks I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”

Reid’s fury ignited like a fireball as he reached across the counter, grabbed the young clerk by the front of his T-shirt, and yanked him forward, almost off his feet. “You have no idea what you’re keeping me from,” he growled in the kid’s face, “or how far I’ll go to get it. You’re going to tell me what I want to know or you’ll be eating through a straw for the foreseeable future.”

The clerk put his hands up, his eyes wide as Reid shook him. “All right, man! All right! There’s a, uh, registry under the counter… let me grab it and I’ll look it up. I’ll tell you when they were here. Okay?”

Reid hissed a breath and released the young guy. He stumbled back, smoothed his T-shirt, and then reached for something unseen beneath the counter.

“Place like this,” the clerk said slowly, “the kind of people we get here… they value their privacy, if you know what I mean. They don’t care much for people snooping.” He took two slow steps back, withdrawing his right arm from underneath the counter… as it gripped the dark brown slide of a sawed-off twelve-gauge shotgun.

Reid sighed ruefully and shook his head. “You’re going to wish you hadn’t done that.” The clerk was wasting his time for the sake of protecting scumbags like Rais—not that he knew what Rais was involved in, but other sordid types, pimps and traffickers and the like.

“Go on back to the suburbs, man.” The barrel of the shotgun was pointed at center mass, but it was shaky. Reid got the impression that the kid had used it to threaten, but never actually fired it before.

He had no doubt that he had the faster draw on the clerk; he wouldn’t even hesitate to shoot him, in the shoulder or in the leg, if it meant getting what he needed. But he didn’t want to fire a shot. The report would be heard for a half mile in the industrial park. It might spook whatever guests were staying in the motel—might even prompt someone to call the police, and he didn’t need that attention.

Instead he took a different approach. “You sure that thing’s loaded?” he asked.

The clerk glanced down at the shotgun for a dubious second. In that moment, with his gaze averted, Reid planted a hand firmly on the counter and vaulted over it easily. At the same time he swung out his right leg and kicked the shotgun out of the clerk’s hands. As soon as his feet were on the ground he leaned forward and swung his elbow into the kid’s nose. A sharp gasp erupted from the clerk’s throat as blood flowed from both nostrils.

Then, just for good measure, Reid grabbed a fistful of filthy dreadlocks and slammed the guy’s face into the counter.

The clerk collapsed to the rough green carpet, moaning as he spat blood onto the floor from his nose and two cracked lips. He groaned and tried to get to his hands and knees. “You… oh, god… you broke my fuckin’ nose, man!”

Reid snapped up the shotgun. “That’s the least of your concerns right now.” He pressed the barrel into the dirty-blond dreadlocks.

The clerk immediately dropped to his stomach and whimpered. “Don’t… don’t kill me… please don’t… please… don’t kill me…”

“Give me your phone.”

“I don’t… I don’t have one…”

Reid bent at the waist and quickly patted the guy down. He was being honest; he didn’t have a phone, but he did have a wallet. Reid flipped it open and checked the driver’s license.

“George.” Reid scoffed. The clerk didn’t look much like a George. “You got a car here, George?”

“I got, I got a dirt bike, p-parked out back…”

“Good enough. Here’s what’s going to happen, George. I’m taking your bike. You, you’re going to walk out of here. Or run, if you prefer. You’re going to go to the hospital and get your nose checked out. You’re going to tell them that you were sucker-punched in a bar. You’re not going to say a word about this place, or a word about me.” He leaned over and lowered his voice. “Because I’ve got a police scanner, George. And if I hear one mention, even one word of a man fitting my description, I’m going to come to…” He checked the ID again. “Apartment 121B on Cedar Road, and I’m going to bring your shotgun with me. You got all that?”

“I got it, I got it.” The clerk blubbered, blood and spittle hanging from his lips. “I got it, I promise I got it.”

“Now, the man with the girls. When were they here?”

“There was… was a guy, like you said, but I didn’t see no girls…”

“But you saw a man that fit that description?”

“Yes, yes. He was real serious. Barely said a word. Came last night, after dark, and paid for the night in cash…”

“When did he leave?”

“I don’t know! Sometime in the night. Left the door open, or else I wouldn’t have known he was gone…”

During the night? Reid’s heart sank. He had hoped, but hadn’t truly expected to find the girls at the motel—but he thought he was catching up. If they had a full day’s lead on him… they could be anywhere.

Reid dropped the wallet and stepped back, taking the shotgun barrel from the kid’s head. “Go.”

The clerk scooped up the wallet and ran through the dark doorway, tripping once and falling onto his hands before hurrying out into the night.

Reid ejected the cartridges from the shotgun, four of them in all, and stuffed them into a jacket pocket. He wasn’t actually going to take the gun with him; it was an illegal weapon by virtue of having its barrel and stock cut off, and likely unregistered even before its modifications. He wiped the shotgun clean of his prints before replacing it beneath the counter.

He didn’t need to invite trouble. He had enough as it was.

The police would arrive at any moment, but he couldn’t leave without something more to go on. He hurried back to the broken door of room 9 and searched again, this time not caring to replace anything or handle with care. He tore the pillows and sheets from the bed. He searched under the bed and chair. He pulled out the drawers of each shoddy nightstand and the bureau, but found nothing but an old Bible with a cracked spine. He fanned its pages and shook it out, just in case.

At every opportunity so far, Maya had left something behind on purpose. According to the clerk, the girls had spent most of a night here.

Reid hurried into the bathroom. It stank strongly of bleach as he checked the shower stall, the sink, the vanity with the cracked mirror. He opened the single small cabinet beneath the sink and found two spare rolls of toilet paper, a spray can of air freshener, and, curiously, a blue ballpoint pen.

Reid turned on the hot water in both the sink and the shower and closed the door to the tiny bathroom, letting it fill with steam. He inspected the mirror in the hopes that Maya had perhaps written an invisible message that would only show with condensation—but there was no message. Still nothing.

I’m missing something. She left a clue. I know she did.

Sirens wailed in the distance, floating to him through the open motel room door. The police were en route. He grunted in frustration and kicked at the toilet bowl with his boot, hard enough to chip the porcelain.

He looked down and blinked.

I should have seen that. Should have known.

Atop the toilet tank was a single hair, brown, long, with a white root still attached. He dropped to his hands and knees and found a few more scattered on the floor. They were Maya’s hair, tugged loose from her head on purpose—to give him a clue.

He lifted the lid from the back of the toilet.

Reid reached in and tugged loose the furled scrap of fabric that was looped into the flush lever’s chain. He unrolled it in his fingers, which began to tremble as soon as he recognized the familiar pattern of pineapples.

Sara.