The Bone Yard by Jefferson Bass

Author:Jefferson Bass [Bass, Jefferson]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi, pdf
Tags: cookie429, Extratorrents, Kat
ISBN: 9780061807046
Amazon: 0061807044
Publisher: Harper
Published: 2012-03-27T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 15

The Twilight Motor Court was well named; I suspected the sun had set on its glory days—if indeed there had ever been glory days—decades ago. The motel consisted of seven cinder-block bungalows, which might have been new and clean in the 1950s, but which now ranged from seedy to crumbling. The two that sat farthest from the road were roofless and windowless. Mine, number three, seemed intact, but the ridgeline of the roof sagged, the paint on the trim was peeling, and the bottom of the door sported a wooden fringe where the outer layer of veneer was peeling and splintering. An ancient air conditioner in the side wall rasped and clattered, its wobbly fan grazing the cooling vanes at random intervals.

Given the complexity created by the revelation of the cemetery—given the shit storm that was brewing, as Vickery put it—he and Angie had decided we should stay nearby, eliminating the two-hour round-trip to and from Tallahassee. The nearest place to stay—the only place to stay that was within a half hour of the school site—was the Twilight.

As I wriggled the reluctant key into the lock, the knob rattled in my hand. I twisted gingerly, half expecting it to come off. It didn’t, but once the door scraped open, I almost wished it had. The room was dank and musty, a few degrees cooler than the outdoors but even more humid, and my eyes and nose began to itch at once from the onslaught of mold spores. The floor was upholstered with shag carpet—an unfortunate “update” from the 1970s, I guessed—that was pea green with reddish-brown stains . . . or maybe reddish-brown with pea-green stains. The sagging double bed was topped with a polyester bedspread of similar vintage, color, and contamination, and I shuddered to think what biological stains might fluoresce under the glow of an alternate light source. Suddenly I felt nostalgic for the Hotel Duval, with its peaceful neutrals, its glowing ceiling bubbles, and its luminous waitresses.

A seething, spattering sound emanated from the bathroom. I found the light switch and flipped it; a dim, bare bulb in the ceiling revealed a hissing faucet in the porcelain sink and a dribbling shower in a cracked fiberglass bathtub, another “update” added twenty or thirty years before. Both fixtures were streaked and stained with rust, as was the toilet. I leaned down and twisted the knobs on the bathtub. The shower’s dribble doubled in volume, but lacked the pressure required to form an actual spray.

My cell phone rang, causing me to jump. The number was Angie’s.

“Hey there,” I answered. “Welcome to the Bates Motel. Watch out for the guy with the butcher knife.”

“One difference between this and Psycho,” she said. “The bathroom in Psycho actually had a shower curtain.”

“You can have my shower curtain. I sure don’t need it. Have you checked the water pressure?”

There was a pause, and I heard gurgling in the background. “I see what you mean. This’ll make it hard to rinse off the soap.”

“You’ve

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