Strange Child by G. J. Daily

Author:G. J. Daily [Daily, G. J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-10-21T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nineteen

Officer Peter pulled into the parking lot of the Sunny Shores Motel in his glistening black Ford Raptor pickup truck and flipped open his notebook. This was the correct address.

He leaned over to his glove compartment and took out his badge and a matte black Gloc-9 pistol in a holster molded to the gun. Then he clipped the gun and badge onto his belt and walked up to a door with peeling wood paneling and fading yellow letters that read: OFFICE.

The office had brown carpet that smelled like urine, and a small bell sat on the counter next to a note that read: Ring for Service!

Ding! He clicked the bell and rested his hand on his pistol.

A narrow-eyed man came out from the back, missing three front teeth. He had several long, single hairs growing out from his chin where a beard should be, and a cigarette hung loosely from his lips. He squinted at the young officer. “Can I help you?”

“Do you know anything about a Susanne Wilkins?” Peter asked.

The man glanced down at Peter’s badge, then at his gun. He sniffed and pulled a long drag from his cigarette before dropping it into a Coke can on the desk behind the counter piled with a dozen cigarettes worth of ash. Peter wasn’t there on official business, but he knew it didn’t really matter. The badge carried weight, and the gun carried weight. Whoever he was questioning could decide for themselves which of the two they were most influenced by.

“She still owes two months’ rent,” the man replied.

Peter pulled his long, narrow black notebook out of his back pocket and opened it. “How long ago did she move out?”

The man lifted a thick green book up from behind the counter and flipped it open to a page marked with a black paperclip. Then he dug something out of his ear that he wiped on his trousers as he looked over his notes.

“September. That’s when we finally went in and cleared out their junk. But I hadn’t seen anyone but that girl of hers ‘round for at least a few weeks before that.”

“A girl?”

“Yeah. Her daughter, Sam…somethin’.”

“Sam…something?” Peter shook his head, waiting for more.

The man looked away for a moment, scratched his chin, and then replied: “Samantha, I think.”

Peter wrote “Samantha Wilkins” down in his notes. Samantha wasn’t the waitress’ name. It was Savannah. Sister maybe?

“Did she leave a forwarding address or anything?” he asked.

The man lifted an eyebrow in annoyance. “You think she’d skip out on two months’ rent and stop to leave an address?”

“Any idea if Susanne had more than one daughter?”

The man shrugged, “I don’t know.”

“What did this Samantha look like?” Peter asked.

“A real beauty. Long black hair, but I never saw her bringing any guys by or anything, which is what most of ‘em do. A non-stop line of guys comin’ and goin’. Not her. Always clean. Always polite.” Then his wandering gaze came back to the officer. “She’s not in some kinda trouble, is she?”

Peter ignored the question.

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