Face Value

5. Preparations

              Finding a space to park was surprisingly a bit more difficult than I had expected. I'd driven down to Jersey City and the parking lot at the little motel was filled with rusted pick-up trucks, rental cars and minivans. I passed one or two expensive convertibles: probably belonging to married men with six-figure salaries who came here to visit their mistresses.  A few pairs of suspicious eyes peeked out at me from the blinds of the individual rooms as I got out my car. This was obviously, as most cheap motels often become, a place of secrets and interactions that required complete anonymity. I've been to places like this before; I've busted down doors in similar establishments to make arrests but I've never stayed at one. I had no reason to. I had nothing and no reason to hide.

 Until now at least.

   The office was bland with pale grey walls and a few artificial plants. There were no security cameras that I could see. I half expected to find some portly man with greasy hair picking at his nose behind the reception desk. Instead there was a busty barbie doll with bottle platinum blond hair. The receptionist chewed her gum wildly, with her mouth making that annoying smacking sound. She didn't look up from the log-book to greet me until I was standing in front of the desk.  And when she did, her chewing stopped immediately and a grin stretched across her face that lit up her hazel eyes. Adjusting her tight buttoned blouse, purposefully exposing an indecent amount of cleavage she looked up at me and asked, "What can I do for you, sugar?"

    Lily, as I was able to see from the name tag on her shirt had a thick Southern accent but  I couldn't tell if it was genuine or something copied and pasted to give her the allusion of a Southern belle's charm. 

"I need a room," I responded. "Do you require I.D.?" I tried to hide my annoyance with her flaunting her sex appeal in front of me by smiling. As much as I hate having attention drawn to myself, I had made my peace with the fact that I was appealing to women. I wasn't offended by another women staring but I didn't care for them throwing themselves at me. I had only ever had eyes for my wife. Besides, I liked my women modest. 

"No darling." Lily flashed her less-than pearly-whites and lent forward, pressing her bosom against the granite counter top. "As long as you can pay, I don't need anything else. Its 40 bucks a night." She let her tongue flick across her red lips after she pronounced the single syllable of the word 'night'. 

"Great." I pulled out a hundred dollar bill and set it on the counter. Even if it was standard to get the personal information of everyone who stays in a room at this motel, the way she was looking at me said that she would be willing to make an exception on behalf. She didn't even take her eyes off of me as reached behind to get a room key. Her hand brushed mine when she handed it to me. 

      It made her particularly excited with I ran a hand through my hair out of habit to brush away the strands falling over my forehead. An involuntary sigh escaped her lips. "I'll  be staying for two nights," I told her, pushing the bill closer to her. " Don't send anyone to clean the room. I'll keep it tidy. Keep the change." If I was lucky, her little crush could be useful to me. 

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    Room 354 was just as drab as the reception's office with the same grey walls. The bed in the center of the room was a lumpy mattress covered in white sheets. A small television faced the bed. I placed the journal on the desk in the corner of the room. I always kept a change of clothing: dark wash jeans, a black t-shirt and socks, in a bag beneath the back seat of the car. I put those clothes in the drawer near the bed and took a seat on the small desk chair, checking the contents of the lock box. 

    I bought this a year ago to store the means to a contingency plan. Inside, there was $5,000 in cash, two spare clips for my Browning, the key to my safety deposit box in Jersey, a burner phone and my birth certificate and passport. Come to think of it, given my current circumstance, it was more than just a contingency plan, it was an escape plan. If I really wanted to, I could, if only for a small period of time, disappear. But I wasn't really looking to run away. I just needed to remain inconspicuous for a few days. 

  'But is less than 70 hours truly enough time,' my subconscious questioned. I'd solved homicide-abductions in less time in the past but that was when I had far more information to go on. This time I knew nothing. 

  'Who would want to hurt her?' I whispered to no one. Everyone loved Alice and she loved everyone. For as long as I'd known her, she had attributed her warm, gentle nature to her Italian heritage. Having grown up in such a large family with eight siblings, she learned from a very young age, what it meant to feel unconditional love and to reciprocate it. She never raised her voice, was physically incapable of be untruthfully for cruel... someone so pure didn't deserve this. I shuddered to think of what they were doing her even now as I sit here, unable to formulate a single thought, so scattered were my wits. If that filth on the video tape was anything indication, I was willing to bet that her abductors were capable of far worse. 

  'And moping won't help you find her,' the voice in my head chided. Determined to be productive, I began flipping through the journal pages.