“It should be around here,” he said, stopping in yet another nameless row. The shelves here were piled high with plastic bins, some looking like they were ready to topple over.
“How can you tell?” she asked, curious.
“Case numbers. Everything is organized by year and department. This entire floor is police evidence—agencies across the state send their storage here. This section is Pickleweed. There it is.”
He pointed at a large, dusty plastic bin that said Brown, Mitchell, AMUR on the side. AMUR stood for aggravated murder. The bin was perched, precariously, high on the shelf above them, next to other murder boxes.
“Do you mind getting it for me?” she asked, smiling. “You’re a bit taller than me.”
The joke—almost everyone was taller than her—seemed to go over his head.
“Sure. Gosh, sorry.”
He put his penlight in his pocket and pulled the big box down, looking surprised at how light it was. Ruby wasn’t surprised: When they opened the lid, the stale air rising, all the evidence from the court exhibit boxes that should have been stowed safely inside was gone. There was only one lonely plastic bundle on the bottom, still wrapped in police tape from the station house.
“I’d like to take that,” she said.
“You’ll have to sign for it,” he said.
By the time she got back up to the top, to the bright flag of day, she had sweated through her shirt without even being aware of it.
Ruby left the vaults, driving down the country roads. She wasn’t far from where Betty Dubois had gone missing. She needed to find a VCR machine. No one seemed to have them anymore.
She passed an old-fashioned roadside motel, the bent metal sign on the roof spotted with bugs and rust. The sign saidthe pickleweed motel. She slowed and turned back, pulling into the nearly empty lot.
There was only the suggestion of air-conditioning in the motel office. The woman inside looked so much like the pictures of Betty Dubois that Ruby almost dropped her bag. The woman had the same square bone structure, the same bright eyes. She wore a little plastic name tag that saidownerand under that,willa.
Behind the woman was a shelf of old movies on VHS:The LionKing,Aladdin,Snow White. Next to that shelf was another one with a curtain with an X on it, no doubt hiding movies of a more risqué nature.
“Are those movies for rent?” Ruby asked.
“You get one free movie a night,” the lady said. “Costs you two bucks each to rent more.” She looked over Ruby, in her sweaty work blouse and loose black trousers, and said nothing about the X-rated movies.
“Do all the rooms have VCR machines?” Ruby asked.
“The TVs come with them,” Willa said, pointing at her own small television, behind the counter, with a VHS tape slot at the bottom. Ruby nodded. She remembered having one of those herself some years back.
She paid for the room, Willa leaning over to fill in her name on the handwritten log she kept under the counter. Ruby caught a scent that brought back a wave of memories.
“What’s that nice smell?”
The owner looked pleased. “It’s my motel soaps. You can’t get them anymore.”
She passed over a room key that said 11.
“That’s it. I remember...” Ruby’s voice faded.
The owner looked up and saw the pain in Ruby’s eyes. They held this gaze for a long moment, until the owner looked away.
There was a silence.
“Would you like to pick out your movie now?” Willa asked.
There was a window in the back of the motel room, opening to the buzz of the cicadas. A thick tangle of woods greeted Ruby. It was early afternoon. Her stomach growled, and she reminded herself to eat soon.
She washed her hands with a bar of that soap, caressing it tenderly, then sniffing it. There were tears in her eyes. She dried her hands onthe stiff towel, and went to her bag, on the bed. She set the bundle on the bed, with its thin coverlet.
Carefully, she sliced open the package.
