I went down the hallway toward the elevator, glancing over my shoulder every few steps. The carpet under my feet was orange and gold, a trippy diamond pattern that made my vision swirl and shapes loom menacingly in the shadows. I was out of breath by the time I reached Carl’s room, beady-eyed as a fox in a hunt. It took all my restraint not to pound on the door and scream for Carl to let me in. I knocked, a rapid, soft rhythm, whispering as loudly as I dared, “Carl? It’s Pamela.”
Carl came to the door sooner than I expected him to, his expression zombie-like and movements heavy and uncoordinated. He stumbled, trying to see around me out into the hallway, as though someone really had been chasing me, and I lost the last dregs of my composure. I practically lunged into the room and slammed the door behind us, drawing the lock chain tight on the track.
“I have your bag,” I said ludicrously. I patted the army-issue duffel resting against my outer thigh.
With sleep-slugged eyes, Carl looked me over. I’d noticed, of course, that although he’d fallen asleep in his pants, he wasn’t wearing a shirt, but with the door closed behind us, it was an oppressive fact. Carl was half-naked. I stared at my feet, over his shoulder, anywhere but his narrow, woolly torso. I was pleased to find that Carl’s room was remarkably neat. The covers were peeled back just where he’d been sleeping, and a bath towel was folded in half and left to dry on a hanging rack in the bathroom. My small weekender bag was hooked to the back of the desk chair. I crossed the room and went to swap them, and that was when I noticed two empty airplane-sized whiskey bottles in the trash can. I averted my eyes, not wanting Carl to know I’d seen that.
“What time is it?” Carl asked in a froggy voice, his throat sounding ragged and dried out from the whiskey. He put a fist to his mouth, coughing, and went into the bathroom for water.
“I realized something important,” I said, reddening, rather than answer that it was three a.m., “and I couldn’t get back to sleep.”
The tap went off and Carl appeared in the bathroom doorway, gulping from a glass. He drew a forearm across his mouth and motioned for me to go on.
“Gerald said he was the wrong guy to ask for information, and that we had to talk to the right one. It was like he was toying with us, giving us a riddle to solve. But maybe that’s because he had to, because he’s not free to say what he knows. And then I remembered—the sheriff’s plaque on his door. His name is Sheriff Dennis Wright.”
“The Wright guy,” Carl said, instantly revived and alert.
“I think the police in Colorado know something about where The Defendant was headed,” I said. “What if they saw what happened down in Florida and are purposely staying out of it? It’s bad enough that they let him get away again, but if he went and committed another horrible crime and it comes back to them? God”—I realized something truly upsetting—“they probably don’t even want him caught. This is blood on their hands.”
Carl leaned against the bathroom doorframe, arms strapped across his bare chest and a distant kind of excitement on his face. “If it’s true, it’s a career-making story.”
“How do we prove it, though?”
Carl brought a hand to his jawline, mottled with scruff, and thought a moment. “Tina has money, doesn’t she?”
“She does,” I said, and felt a stab of something, not quite anger, thinking about the adversarial conversation we’d had at dinner.
“I can’t be a part of anything like that,” Carl said. “But I’m speaking to the waitress tomorrow. Maybe you can drop me off, head back over to the jail…” He raised an eyebrow at me.
“And what?” I laughed. “Bribe the sheriff?”
“No. Stay away from the sheriff. But maybe a guard or someone would be willing to talk to you.”
I furrowed my brow, trying to picture myself doing something like that. “I don’t know that I have it in me to bribe someone.”
“Stop saying bribe, Pamela,” Carl said in a passionate way that made my toes curl in my ugly white sneakers. “It’s reward money for the truth.”
I felt an unexpected thrill rise up in me—reward money, I could see myself offering that to someone. “And whatever we bring you,” I said, “you’ll write about it?”
“I’d have to corroborate it myself,” Carl said. “But I could guarantee anonymity to anyone who spoke to me on the record.”
I nodded, working it through. “So, best-case scenario. We find out tomorrow that Colorado does know something about what happened in Florida. How long does it take to corroborate it with other sources, then actually write the piece?” I chewed on my thumbnail, knowing whatever the answer might be, it would not be soon enough to solve my predicament.