Murder For Love

So they did not drive on to Reno as "Starr Bright" had been led to believe they would. Might it have made a difference if they'd gone on to Reno?

Seemingly by impulse, Billy Ray Cobb turned in to the Paradise Motel on Route 80, one of numberless "bargain-rate" motels along the strip, just inside the Sparks city limits. "Starr Bright" could not have said, half-shutting her aching eyes, if she'd been here before. A salmon-colored imitation-Spanish-stucco single-story motel past its prime advertising bargain ROOMS & HONEYMOON SUITES! and HAPPY HOUR 4-8 P.M.! If "Starr Bright" was bitterly disappointed, smelling beforehand the insecticide-odor of the shabby room, she gave no outward sign; she was not that kind of girl.

With her ashy-blond hair and her strong-boned striking face and her long dancer's legs, "Starr Bright" was accustomed to the close scrutiny of men, and knew to keep her most mutinous thoughts to herself. Never to bare her teeth in a quick incandescent flash of anger, nor to frown, or grimace, bringing the fine white lines of her forehead into sharp visibility. Never to raise her thumbnail to her teeth like a desperately unhappy teenage girl and gnaw at the cuticle until she tasted blood.

While Mr. Cobb checked them into the Paradise Motel, "Starr Bright" strolled restlessly about the poolside area, an interior courtyard flanked by thin drooping palm trees that looked brittle as papier mâché. The kidney-shaped pool, in which several near-naked swimmers splashed, smelled sharply of chlorine. And there was the odor of insecticide pervading all. "Starr Bright" checked swiftly to see if she recognized anyone-if anyone recognized her-for, having been acquainted with so many men, over a period of years, she was always vigilant.

This evening, poolside at the Paradise Motel, Route 80, Sparks, Nevada, there appeared to be no one whom "Starr Bright" had reason to know, nor to be known by. Thank you, God.

Of the dozen or so guests in the courtyard, several, all but one of them fleshy young women, had placed themselves recklessly in the sun-visitors to the Southwest, obviously. Oily, gleaming bodies in scanty bathing suits, dreamy-shut eyes. Painted finger- and toenails like "Starr Bright's" own. There were pastel-bright drinks with melting ice cubes, empty beer and Perrier bottles accumulated on the wrought iron tables. From overhead amplifiers, rock-Muzak made the air vibrate, the pulse quicken. "Starr Bright" felt a wild impulse to dance. That erotic beat, the percussive rhythm, look at me, here I am, why are none of you looking at me?-here is "Starr Bright"! She was wearing a short, tight silky-black skirt that came barely to mid-thigh, and a gold lame halter top that fitted her breasts tightly, and her long blond smooth-shaven legs were bare, her bare feet in cork platform heels. A thin gold chain around her left ankle, a tiny gold heart dangling. Pierced earrings that fell in glittering cascades nearly to her shoulders, a half-dozen rainbow-colored bracelets tinkling on each arm. Crimson lips moist as if she were quick-breathing, feverish. And the glamorous dark glasses that hid bruises, or the shadow of bruises, beneath her eyes. Why will you not look at me? I am more beautiful than any of you.

"Starr Bright's" first celebrity was at the age of thirteen, when she'd won first prize in a young people's talent competition in Buffalo, New York. How many years ago: don't ask.

When they stop looking, and their eyes go through you, one of the older dancers at the club in Tahoe had told "Starr Bright," you're dead meat. So be thankful for the rude stares. Those pigs are money in the bank.

But no one seemed to notice "Starr Bright" at poolside. Which was God's sign, too, in its own way. Though "Starr Bright" could not have known at the time, just as she did not know, but would learn afterward from Nevada newspapers and TV, that Billy Ray Cobb was signing them into the Paradise Motel as "Mr. & Mrs. Elton Fly

Attention was in fact drawn to noisy-splashy activity in the pool. A voluptuous young woman in a tiny yellow bikini was squealing and kicking, hugging an inflated air-mattress striped like an American flag to her breasts, as a ta

It was at this point that Billy Ray Cobb caught up with her. A vexed little frown, pouty-sagging lips, his heavy-lidded eyes veined with red as, panting just slightly, he closed his fingers around "Starr Bright's" wrist. He said two things to her but afterward she would not be able to recall which he said first. One was "Wondered where you were, baby!" and the other was "Looks like the fun's already started, eh?"

Not in her scratched oxblood-leather Gucci overnight case but in her midnight-blue sequined purse with wallet, makeup supplies, designer condoms, and amphetamine and Valium tablets did "Starr Bright" carry her protection. A pearl-handled German-made stainless steel knife with a slender five-inch blade. Kept wrapped in tissue at the bottom of the purse, its razor-sharp blade untested. The knife was protection, not a weapon. Still less a concealed weapon. So far as she knew, the knife was not illegal in any of the several states in which "Starr Bright" had been a resident since acquiring it several years before. Protection after she'd been falsely arrested in a cocktail lounge of a Hyatt Regency Hotel in Houston, Texas, by two plainclothes vice-squad detectives who'd detained her for five hours during which time they'd forced her to commit upon their persons sex acts of a particularly repulsive nature. Never again will "Starr Bright" be humiliated, never again made to service pigs on any terms but my own.

That night, "Starr Bright" dreamt so strangely!-obsessively, with much anguish, of the air-mattress in the motel pool.

She had scarcely seen it, had virtually no impression of it except it was made of plastic, stripes the colors of the American flag red white and blue, about five feet long perhaps, not a child's but a grown-up's float, an object of salvation if one were in water over one's head, in danger of drowning. "Starr Bright" was not a capable swimmer, water frightened her, the eerie buoyancy that ca