A Cold Heart

Yet, here he was playing Daytona 500. Was the guy that arrogant?

Stahl’s mental meanderings were cut short when the Expedition made an abrupt right turn off the highway, into the parking lot of a white-board, blue-shuttered motel. The Sea Arms.

Caught off guard, Stahl continued another quarter mile, pulled over to the shoulder, turned around, and drove back.

Parking on the beach side of PCH, he studied the Sea Arms.

Two-storied, Cape Coddish building, behind an open parking lot. No rear property, the motel was nestled against the mountains. The usual AAA endorsement, a pink neon VACANCY sign on a tall pole.

Six units on each floor, the manager’s office down below to the right.

Thirteen cars in the lot, including the Expedition. Twelve occupants, plus the manager.

A. Gordon Shull, lucky boy that he was, had snagged the last empty room.

Stahl lost it.

Falling asleep in his car. Rudely awakened by a rap on the window. Blinding light in his eyes.

He opened the window and a voice barked, “Let’s see some ID.”

Stahl’s hand had moved instinctively toward the holstered 9 mm. concealed under his car coat, but fortunately his brain kicked in once he saw the robocop countenance of a highway patrolman.

Eventually everything was cleared up, and the CHP guy sped away in his cruiser.

Stahl sat there, humiliated. How long had he been out? Three-forty A.M. meant nearly half an hour.

The ocean roared in his head. The beach sky was full of stars; the sea was ash gray speckled with pinpoints of gold.

Eleven vehicles in the lot. Shull’s Expedition, one of them.

Stahl got out, took in a headful of salt air, stretched, cursed his stupidity, got back in the car, resumed watching.

At 4:20 A.M., A. Gordon Shull stepped out of a downstairs unit. Alone, no blonde. Carrying his black leather jacket over his shoulder, rubbing his eyes. He got in the Expedition, swung out of the lot, and made a quick, illegal left turn across the highway, crossing a set of double-yellows. Speeding off back to the city. Where was CHP when you needed them?

Quick decision time: follow the bastard or check on the blonde?

Did the blonde fit Shull’s pattern? Some kind of artistic type? A would-be actress? Did that qualify? Or maybe she was a dancer. Those legs.

Shull had already done a dancer. Would he repeat himself?

The one in Boston had been a ballerina. This one looked more like the lap-dance type. Enough kill variety?

He goes in with her, comes out without her. Meaning the room could be a pretty sight.

Stahl drove across the highway, straight into the Sea Arms lot. Parked at the far end, wanting to examine the spot where the Expedition had stood.

Nothing but a grease stain. Stahl walked up to Unit Five, knocked on the sea blue door, got no answer, tried the knob. Locked.

A louder knock- thunderous in the early-morning calm- brought no response, and Stahl glanced at the manager’s office. Lights out. Should he wake the manager up and get a key, or pull off a do-it-yourself? The lock was a mediocre dead bolt, and his kit was back in the car. He could always say he’d found the door open.

He assessed his options, talking to himself in the stilted self-justification of courtroom cop-speak.

A serial murder suspect entered with a female companion and remained at the site for… an hour and fifty-two minutes before departing alone. I initially attempted to gain entry by knocking, and when I received no answer after a significant lapse in time, I felt the situation demanded…

The sea blue door opened.

The blonde stood there in her red crop top and ragged, tight jeans. Zipper half-up, the faintest swell of belly above pink lace panties. Low-slung thong panties; several platinum pubic hairs strayed above the elastic.

She blinked, staggered, looked at the spot where the Expedition had stood, then at Stahl.

Several beats of the rolling tide caressed the morning. The air was cold and wet and smelled of driftwood.

Stahl said, “Miss-”

The blonde wore no makeup, was bleary-eyed, her hair stiff as a bird’s nest, the way sprayed hair got when you slept on it.

Tear streaks striped her perfect cheekbones.

Not as hard a face as Stahl had thought- cleansed of greasepaint, she looked younger. Vulnerable.

“Who the hell are you?” she demanded in a voice that could’ve dissolved rust from a rain gutter.

So much for vulnerability.

Stahl showed her his badge and pushed his way in.

Despite the beach location, the Sea Arms was just another tacky motel and the room was just another moldy, by-the-day cell. Cottage-cheese ceiling, rumpled double bed with a U-pay vibrator hookup, woodite end tables, plastic lamps bolted down. A small-screen TV bolted to the wall was topped by a chart of movies by the hour, at least half of them X-rated. A mud brown carpet was marred by indelible stains.

Stahl spotted white grains on the nightstand. A folded piece of stiff paper- the coke chute. A crumpled Kleenex stiffened by snot.

Kyra Montego knew Stahl had seen the dope leavings, but she pretended to be oblivious.

“I don’t understand,” she said, tight butt perched on the edge of the bed. Zipper all the way up, now. Her bra was slung over a chair, and her nipples pushed through the red top.

She fooled with her hair, had little success organizing the wild yellow thatch.

Stahl said, “The man you were with-”

“It wasn’t like that,” said Montego.

Kyra Montego. No way that was on her birth certificate.

Stahl asked her for ID and she said, “What gives you the right? You’re implying I’m a hooker or something, and that’s bullshit- you have no right.”

“I need to know your real name, ma’am.”

“You need a warrant!”

Everyone watched too much TV.

Stahl took her purse off the dresser, found three joints in a plastic baggie and placed them on the bed next to her. A long blond hair curled atop a crushed pillow.

“Hey,” she said.

He removed her wallet, found her license.

Katherine Jean Magary, address in Van Nuys, a three-digit apartment number that said she lived in a huge complex.

“Katherine Magary’s a fine name,” he said.

“You think?” she said. “My agent said it’s too clumsy.”

“Film agent?”

“I wish. I’m a dancer- yeah, the kind you think, but I’ve also done legit theater, so don’t go assuming anything about my morals.”

“I don’t think it’s too clumsy,” said Stahl.

She stared at him and her eyes softened- big, moist irises, deep brown, almost black. Somehow they went okay with the white-blond hair.

“You really think?”

“I do.” Stahl replaced the wallet in the purse. Put the joints back, too.

Magary/Montego arched her back and flipped her hair and said, “You’re cool.”

He talked to her for twenty minutes, but after five, he believed her.

She’d never seen Shull before, had drunk too much (wink, wink), Shull had seemed cute. Masculine. Fu

“His clothes?” said Stahl.

“His jacket was Gucci.” Magary/Montego smiled. “I managed a peek at the label.”

Stahl smiled back in a way that told her that had been clever and kept her talking.

Shull had spun her a good yarn, telling her he was a professor of art and a landscape painter, had exhibited all over the world, was represented by galleries in New York and Santa Fe.