The Sans Souci Motel, built right on the beach in 1958, during the heyday of the little seaside amusement park, marked the south end of First Street. Its cinder block walls, bayside pool, and yellow sign with one palm tree reminded John of milkshakes and fries, 1950's Cadillacs the size of beached whales, and movies like American Graffiti. Its upstairs room on the very end with a big beachfront picture window cost more than the rest, but John took it anyway. Tonight, he had an excellent reason not to stay with Ma.
He trudged into the bathroom for a shower and to scrub and hang up his underwear; he hadn't expected to be here overnight. Tiny yellow tiles, ancient plumbing, and the cracked stopper that didn't quite fit the sink also said nineteen-fifties, in a different way from the exterior. John closed the shades early against the streetlight streaming in from the boardwalk and stretched out on one of the double beds.
As he drifted off, he found himself back in the gym at Duke in his team uniform, warming up for his most crucial game. An NBA scout would be in the stands; this was the time he most needed to play well.
The paralysis he felt in the dream had been real. What seemed so effortless in every other game was sheer torture now. He felt like a neophyte high school kid, a second too slow, in the wrong place at the wrong time. He didn't get booed, but every time he relived that game, asleep or awake, he found himself thinking it was a miracle.
He remembered now, even as he dreamed it, that he'd relived this game in dreams before, that he dreamed it a lot. Always, the terrible shame of performing so poorly—Coach hadn't even said anything, just averted his eyes and stopped himself from shaking his head—and that had made John feel even worse. That, and: What would Ma say?
Ma already had him on an NBA team, pulling down millions of dollars a year. Going home for breaks was weird. She'd stop baggers and cashiers in the supermarket to brag. "Oh, Joyce, this is my son, Johnnie," she'd say, putting an arm around him. "I was just telling her all about you, Sweetie, how you're headed for the NBA next year. Johnnie's going to buy me a car!" she'd say, while John stared down at the floor, hoping desperately to disappear somehow, even though he stood over six feet.
Then he was waking in discomfort and dread, tangled in damp, clammy bedsheets. Orange streetlight crept around the blinds and lit up the room, and he remembered. The beach. Clay's house. Bill Pride was dead.
His memory backtracked, half asleep, to that community college homicide investigation course with Pride. His experience and that of his buddies, riding patrol in Church Hill and Hillside Court, had been that detectives were sort of like bulls in suits. They charged in like every crime scene was Pamplona, scattering everyone to the periphery and barking orders: "Robin! You run the pad!" Some were less brusque, a few were friendly, and one or two were known for screaming the place down if you so much as parked your patrol unit in a manner that didn't suit them.
Pride had been a character from the moment he'd strode into the classroom and introduced himself. He'd memorized everyone's name by the second class, and he kept everyone alert with wry jokes and so many fascinating stories of homicide investigations that he'd have to cut them short and finish them after class in order not to fall behind the syllabus. He'd pace the aisles while he talked, trailing a faint scent of Rocky Patel cigars. Everything about the man was a cut above your average police detective: his physique, the red convertible BMW 325i he drove, his curly dark hair and moustache, his suits that would fit right in behind acres of polished cherry at a bank. The three young women in the class always fluttered as he passed.
John didn't normally hang around cop bars, but several of his classmates always went to Rosie Connolly's Pub after class, and kept inviting him to come. Toward the middle of the term they started gossiping about Pride at the pub, and the tales pulled John along. Bill Pride had gone to law school at UVA. The local public defenders hated calling him to the stand because he was meticulous and smart, his looks and manner appealed to the jury, and he never turned a hair. Tom Benteen, who'd been the first officer on the scene on a homicide Pride had worked, recounted, amid hoots of laughter, watching Pride make a total fool of the public defender when the case went to trial.
John had been thinking then about transferring out of patrol to crime prevention, trying to get on a detective squad. As he struggled out of bed, disentangling himself from his sweat-dampened sheets, he remembered realizing, with absolute certainty, that Pride's was the squad he'd wanted to work on one day. And one day, he did.
But now Bill Pride was dead.
John fiddled with the cord and the vertical blinds folded open. The beach lay deserted, glowing orange in the streetlights; the bay looked more like a black hole than a body of water, receding away into nothingness. The street lamps drowned out the stars. On the horizon, looking as if they floated in space, the lights on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel stretched from north to south, glowing like a row of yellow candles.
***
John stocked up with bottled water, a breakfast sandwich, and assorted snacks at the 7-11, and claimed a parking space at the marina by one hour after sunrise. It didn't offer a great view of First Street, but his trusty binoculars would make up for that. With any luck, Clay would go somewhere today, even if to just take his lady friend home.
Around ten a.m. Clay and his girl buzzed by in the black Mustang. John counted to ten and pulled out behind them. Clay dropped his girl off in a residential area close to Settlers Landing; then John followed him back to Pembroke, where he turned left on Old Buckroe Road toward the other great beach area in the city, Grandview. The twists and turns led John to Silver Isles Boulevard, where Clay turned right and pulled into the parking lot of an interior decorating concern that appeared to be out of business. Clay got out wearing jeans and a tank top undershirt. His lean physique and the heavy ripple of muscles under his sun-bronzed skin spoke of hours in the gym, or, quite possibly, steroid abuse.
The wooden door appeared to be unlocked; Clay just walked in. John parked a little down the street, got out, and approached the building at a diagonal. Fortunately, the shop's big picture window was on the shaded side of the building. John ducked behind a hedge at the edge of the parking lot and pulled out his binoculars.
Another man, a skinny youth, pale, with hair twisted into dreadlocks like bent, brittle straw, sat inside, near the door, with his back against the wall. As Clay entered, Dreadlocks got up, and the two spoke as Dreadlocks followed Clay into the room. The skinny kid had a five o'clock shadow. His shoulders bowed forward; dirty jeans and an undershirt hung from his body like canvas flapping loosely on a tent frame.
Clay produced a small package, and the young man pulled out a handful of crumpled bills. Clay tucked the package under one arm and smoothed and counted the bills.
Dreadlocks held both hands out and started talking fast. The glass and the distance muffled his words, but not his desperate gestures. Clay's brows rushed together and lowered; his jaw set. He threw the money to the floor.
Dreadlocks turned and ran for the door.
Clay dropped his package, sprinted, and caught up before the kid could reach the threshold. He grabbed the back of his undershirt, pulled him backwards, hauled him sideways, and slammed him against the wall. The back of the kid's head bounced like a tennis ball.
Clay pulled back and punched the kid in the face. Again, again, and again. Fury drove his heavily muscled arm. When blood sprayed across the wall, John turned away. He certainly couldn't intervene, and if he called Hampton PD now, he couldn't do what he'd come to do.
John palmed his pocket knife and hurried to Clay's Mustang. He gave one front tire a quick stab, then crawled around and slashed the other one.
He didn't stick around to watch the Mustang sink to its knees. He crawled past the window as fast as he could, then got up and hurried back to his rental car.
***
Back to the phone box to check on the security system. The phone line needed some quick surgery once again. At home, the phone companies had a terrible reputation for making customers wait for repairs. He only hoped the phone company here didn't show up before he was done.
He parked across the street again and traveled light this time; gloves, lock picks, and digital camera only. He checked his watch, resolving to be out of here in an hour this time.
Clay's contraband room turned out to be the size of a walk-in closet, paneled, with no windows. A desk occupied one corner, with a chair, computer, and monitor. A set of fireplace irons collected cobwebs in one corner. Clay kept a small filing cabinet along the right-hand wall. A large paper shredder completed the office.
John found one section of floor loose under the filing cabinet, which moved easily aside on wheels. The section flipped up with pressure on one side and lifted out. Inside, a gray metal safe with a combination lock looked up at him like an owl with one eye. John didn't know how to crack a combination lock. With regret, he put the fake panel and the file cabinet back in place.
He had better luck with the filing cabinet itself. This, too, was locked, but he was able to spring that with his lock picks.
He riffled though the files. Red folders contained the expected, and more than likely faked, accounting files from the tanning parlor business, and documents relating to the house—flood and property insurance, tax assessments. John skipped ahead to the green files, which contained handwritten records—people's names, amounts of money, dates. He shot pictures of these with his digital camera.
He moved ahead to a number of yellow folders. Here he found corporation papers and tax records for a completely different business. When he'd visited the SCC earlier, he hadn't known to look for this one. The company name was "Sheer Elegance" and it was listed as an escort service. Hampton Vice might have some lowdown on it; John made a mental note to call after he got home and ask. John replaced the files and closed the drawer, taking care to replace Clay's bits of clear tape exactly as he had found them. It was tough—clear tape and rubber gloves didn't mix.
He opened the second drawer. Here he found several purple folders. In the first one, labeled "A-M", large color glossies showed, in varying degrees of closeup, several people purchasing illegal drugs. The sellers conveniently had their backs to the camera, and none of them had Clay's blond waves. The buyers were different ages and races. Male and female, black and white, one man who looked Hispanic, but all appeared well-dressed and looked well-to-do. John saw dime bags, blow, and various types of pills changing hands.
He picked up the next folder and flipped through those pictures. The familiarity of one man's posture, his dark, curly hair, his moustache, the cut of his suit all registered before John even realized he knew the face. It was Bill Pride. John stared at the pictures.
It had to be someone else—but it wasn't. He looked from detail to detail. Those were even Pride's sunglasses. Sarge had often joked about cop haircuts and cop sunglasses, and vowed never to wear either one. John had a pair something like these.
He turned the eight-by-ten facedown over Clay's computer keyboard, wishing there was a window in here. Anything to look at but this.
How could he have not gotten even a whiff that something was going on? Could he really be that dumb?
He checked his watch; he had to force himself to snap out of it. He figured he had fifteen minutes, maybe. There was no sense bothering with the computer. He had neither the time nor the passwords. He replaced the purple files—he had no desire to see any more—and started on the desk.
The lower drawers contained an assortment of junk—wires, computer cables, one old Microsoft manual stuffed in the back of one drawer, yellow with age. Right side top drawer: CD's, marked with things like "SE-2010" and "S-2008". John pulled open the top drawer. He cleared off a stapler, paper clips, and a couple of rubber bands, and took out a manila folder. Inside were several more eight-by-ten glossies.
These were beautiful, obviously professionally done. A gaunt-faced young girl in pale makeup, except for her startling dark brows, posed in paisley, with big flowers at her throat and in her long, white-blond hair. John blinked. It took him a minute to realize it was Julie Samuels in a blond wig. "Vogue.com" read the caption.
John flipped slowly through the pictures. Here was Julie's hair salon ad. Here was Julie posing in a white bikini on a beach. One page was torn out of a magazine: Julie, whippet-thin, standing in wicked black stiletto heels and a red-and-black striped dress with a shockingly low back, half-turned and looking impishly over one shoulder. John squinted at the margin: British Vogue, December of last year. Next was a partial nude—Julie reclining, a jewel against black velvet, a river of copper hair raining down, one long leg bent at the knee. A fluttering filmy drape covered the naughty bits.
A few more beach photos followed. John studied each one, trying to think how he was going to approach working with Mike on this one. Clearly Clay was Little's prostitution angle, and it was all tied in with the stuff on the net.
He went back to the second beach photo. This one looked snapped on the fly before the model was ready. Julie appeared from the waist up, convulsed with laughter, hair flowing behind her in the wind, covering her smile with one hand.
John looked more closely at her hand. She wore a big silver bracelet with two green turquoise rocks, the kind with a large flat plate for engraving.
Recognition made his guts plummet to the floor as if he'd swallowed a boulder. He'd seen that bracelet before, and he didn't need to squint to find out what it said. Just after he'd gotten back to work, Pride's personal effects had finally been released, and John was elected to take them to Pride's mother because he had met her once. He'd found a silver bracelet with those two big green turquoise rocks in it, in the box of stuff from Pride's desk. He'd assumed it had been from a girlfriend. It had looked just like that one, and the engraving on it read: Julie.
***Thank you for reading. If you enjoyed the chapter, don't forget to vote for it! (votes always help!)