“Anybody staying in these campers?” Marino then asks.
“I rent ’em out. People don’t come with their own campers right now. It’s off-season for camping.”
“Anybody renting them now?”
“No. Nobody.”
In front of the motel, a chair with ripped upholstery has been placed near a Coke machine and pay phone. There are several cars in the lot, American-made, not new. A Granada, an LTD, a Firebird. There is no sign of whoever might own them.
“Who do you get this time of year?” I inquire.
“A mixture,” Kiffin goes on as we cross the parking lot to the south end of the building.
I scan wet asphalt.
“Folks who aren’t getting along. That’s a lot of it this time of year. People fussing and one or the other walks out or gets kicked out and needs a place to stay. Or people driving a long distance to visit family and need a place for the night. Or when the river floods like it did a couple months back, some people come here because I allow pets. And I get tourists.”
“People seeing Williamsburg and Jamestown?” I ask.
“A fair number of people here to see Jamestown. That’s picked up quite a bit since they started digging up the graves out there. Funny how people are.”[“_Toc37098924”]
CHAPTER 22
ROOM FOURTEEN IS ON THE FIRST LEVEL AT THE very end. Crime scene tape is a bright yellow ribbon across the door. The location is remote, at the edge of thick woods that buffer the motel from Route 5.
I am especially interested in any vegetation or debris that might be on the asphalt directly in front of the room, where rescuers would have dragged the body. I note dirt and bits of dead leaves and cigarette butts. I am wondering if the fragment of candy bar wrapper I found adhering to the dead man’s back came from inside the room or from out here in the parking lot. If it came from inside the room, that could mean the killer tracked it in, or it could mean that the killer walked through or close to the abandoned campsite at some point prior to the murder, unless the bit of paper had been inside the room for a while, perhaps tracked in by Kiffin herself when she came in to clean after the last guest checked out. Evidence is tricky. You always have to consider its origin and not draw conclusions based on where the evidence ended up. Fibers on a body, for example, might have been transferred from the
Killer, who picked them up from a carpet where they were deposited originally by someone who tracked them into a house after yet another individual left them on a car seat.
“Did he ask for a particular room?” I ask Kiffin as she goes through keys on the ring.
“Said he wanted something private. Fourteen didn’t have anybody on either side or above, so that’s what I gave him. What’d you do to your arm?”
“Slipped on ice.”
“Oh, that’s too bad. You got to wear that cast a long time?”
“Not much longer.”
“You get the sense he might have had anybody with him?” Marino asks her.
“Didn’t see anybody else.” She speaks tersely with Marino but is friendlier toward me. I feel her glancing at my face frequently and have the sinking feeling she has seen my photograph in the papers or on television. “What kind of doctor did you say you are?” she quizzes me.
“I’m a medical examiner.”
“Oh.” She brightens. “Like Quincy. Used to love that show. You remember that one where he could tell everything about a person from one bone?” She turns the key in the lock and opens the door and the air turns acrid with the dirty stench of fire. “I just thought that was the most amazing thing. Race, gender, even what he did for a living and how big he was, and exactly when and how he died, all from one little bone.” The door opens wide onto a scene that is as dark and filthy as a coal mine. “Can’t tell you how much this is going to cost me,” she says as we move past her and step inside. “Insurance won’t ever cover something like this. Never does. Damn insurance companies.”