The New Motel

By Tambler Wallace

The opening of a new motel in rural Oklahoma coincides with the disappearance of a local girl. An offhanded joke becomes a rumor and permanently links the event with the motel's reputation. The discovery of several bodies and one survivor in an abandoned bomb shelter proves to be a full-time challenge to the obnoxious new sheriff and his deputies. Their search for the killer(s) takes them across the state and rustles up a host of suspects, who eventually reunite in an unusual and unexpected way. The scope of the crimes grows and spreads, until the perpetrators run out of resources, both human and otherwise, for they are all eventually consumed. Forensics, sporadic witness accounts, good police work, hunches, and mistakes by the "untouchable" evildoer(s) eventually pile up to bring a violent end to one of the perps and the incarceration of...the rest. What begins as a father's disappointment snowballs into a life that bends rules, family loyalties, and genders as the struggle to please a parent morphs into a deviant and deadly lifestyle.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Nov 21, 2023
• ISBN: 9798889602255

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The New Motel

Tambler Wallace

Copyright © 2023 Tambler Wallace

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING

Conneaut Lake, PA

First originally published by Page Publishing 2023

ISBN 979-8-88960-233-0 (hc)

ISBN 979-8-88960-225-5 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

About the Author

Macey was suddenly conscious of light entering her left eye. Her right eye was blocked by the corner of a pillowcase. She was bewildered and a little afraid. It was as if she had been away—on hiatus from her life for a very long time. She recognized the objects she could see but was not familiar with the environment. Attempting to sit up or otherwise further orient herself proved undoable, as she couldn't budge a muscle. Even her eyes wouldn't rotate in their sockets. She could see straight ahead with a modicum of periphery, but they were physically paralyzed. Her eyelids were stuck half-open.

She was laying on her right side, and through the translucent, slumber glaze, she could make out her right arm bent, with her hand next to her face. Why can't I move? Not even my fingers… She had awoken to the sound of running water, and before she could identify anything else around her, she guessed it was a bathroom faucet. When some of the eye crud gave way, she was able to focus her lens a little, and she could make out a large television set and a cable box setting on a dresser. Not mine, she thought. Remote probably doesn't work, she surmised, and immediately wondered why that thought had crossed her mind. She's in a motel room, that's why. The sheet smelled of Bounce fabric softener, though this detail would subsequently be rinsed from her memory. The lighting was dull, and though no lamps were in her visual frame, it seemed as if they all had those yellow light bulbs that don't attract bugs. Another sound drifted faintly past her left ear, which was turned toward the ceiling—some kind of music she didn't recognize. So faint…distorted… What is that pole there? An IV stand?

Someone rolled her onto her back. Someone hung a small, clear bag on the IV stand. Someone picked up a Sharpie and marked the bag with a P. Someone opened a pregnancy test kit. Someone closed her eyes.

*****

Billy arrived in Texas at the age of fifteen to work the oil pipelines. He had a fake ID that showed him to be old enough to get a job, so he got on with a crew laying pipe around Odessa. He worked that gig for almost three years but then, seemingly on a lark, walked away from the job and drove the stolen Camaro back to Westvale to rejoin the family. He stayed at home about a year or so, but then things went bad between him and one of his sisters. Real bad.

*****

Leonard Hogue had been dead a few years. A gravel road, a bottle of Old Overholt rye whiskey, and a fumbled, lit cigar conspired to make a killer out of an oak tree. In the late nineties, when gun bans and property seizures were all the rage, he decided to hunker down, or at least prepare to. An underground lair—consisting of a giant plastic container with inadequate ventilation and no lighting, filled with guns and ammunition, boxes of freeze-dried food supplies, bottled water, batteries, and Sterno—was the sum of his survival effort. After the turn of the millennium, when armed Americans were no longer considered to be the biggest threat to America, he lost interest in hiding out from the government jackbooted thugs and decided instead to stand up to the attacking hordes invading from the south. He stocked up on more guns and ammunition.

The events of September 11, 2001, prompted him to rethink his survival needs. Gas masks were a good idea, so he thought, at least one per expected family member and select allies. Body armor, tactical holsters, and gun accessories were added to his doomsday inventory, and more MREs.

Other than a few handguns, rifles, shotguns, and matching ammunition strategically placed in the living quarters, all this stuff was stored in the bunker. The bunker no one knew about. Almost no one.

*****

Time for PE class, the lady in the nurse's getup announced. Soon you'll be an Olympic gymnast. From Soviet East Germany. She switched on the AbDominator, and the young girl's torso began slowly undulating. Yeah! That's how they do it. Or did. Electronically. Crunch that belly. Squeeze it. Work it. The boys like a little muscle tone, you know. She looked her subject over, head to toe. And so do I.

Blindfolded and restrained at the wrists and ankles, jumping jacks would not be part of the girl's regimen. The chemicals, so carefully measured and administered, would help prevent the captive from sprinting to freedom.

Maybe we'll work those thighs next. As she mulled the plausibility of that option, she gave a quick glance at the table next to her. The TASER and the defibrillator were both standing by. She had already removed the feeding tube and applied the CPAP mask that would remain in place until the first customer arrived the next morning. Before long, your nurse-slash-trainer will have you whipped into shape. She scanned the girl once more. Oh, I made sure your creepy brother won't be looking for you.

*****

The Landesburg Inn stands a couple of miles out of Westvale proper—though still considered inside the unincorporated city limits—on the two-lane state road heading to New Mexico. It is surrounded by a small forest, which isolates it from the edge of the dirt-road maze that entwined around the panhandle farms and rural estates that are not much more than oil leases and travel trailers. It is truly an oasis in a drive-through desert.

Gerald Landesburg opened his motor hotel with typical low-budget fanfare. Huge banners read, Now Open and Pay for 2 Nights—3rd Night is Free! and so forth. Seldom did anyone stay two nights. If not for the uninformed and adventurous, or the late-night, can't-drive-any-farther motorist, the new motel would have closed shortly after. Everyone knows what goes on up there had become the unofficial motto—perhaps an inadvertent beacon to those aforementioned adventurers. Gerald, however, was not discouraged because he had lived not far from there for many years and had watched as the traffic became more and more of a nuisance, both from the noise and from the increasing travel time from his house to wherever he needed to go. Instead of whining about the situation, he decided to capitalize on it.

Conveniently, Landesburg worked for the community as the planning commissioner, an unpaid position, alongside a handful of other conscientious residents who made up the local council. Instead of planning to widen the highway, he planned to change the zoning designation of a half-mile section of land adjacent to it, lifting the restriction on commercial use. This magnanimous decision allowed the affected property to be used for businesses, such as a motel. None of the council's restrictions were binding, but this band of busybodies carried themselves as if their word was gospel. Gerald built his new business on the property he owned in the middle of that half-mile stretch.

*****

Within a week of the Landesburg Inn's opening, word spread that Shirly Greene had disappeared. There was no town newspaper, so if you wanted to know anything of local origin, you went to the Guymon daily. Rarely had any news from Westvale and other points west made it into print, so any details about the disappearance were subject to paraphrasing and conjecture—not to mention misquotes and poorly applied synonyms. As one might expect, several versions of the event and its circumstances met in passing and layered haphazardly as they littered the streets like parade confetti.

Fred Jackson, a lifelong resident who had occasionally bought furniture from Shirly's dad, was sitting in his usual chair at his usual table, eating his usual breakfast at the Corner Café the morning the news drifted in the door. She's breaking in the new motel, he quipped in his normal booming voice. A few chuckles were heard around the room.

That's not nice, Fred, the widow Swanson said in a hushed tone. That's how rumors get started. Shirly's a nice young lady. I hope nothin' bad has happened to her.

Nothin' happens to anyone around here, the waitress lamented as she refilled coffee cups. She probably ran away to somewhere that things happen.

Well, we don't need this kind of excitement, the widow replied.

Now, I was just joking, Margie, Fred said at an atypically attenuated volume level. Fred, who was also widowed, had a nice, big house in town and a sizable farm a few miles outside the city limit. His primary—and only—crop was what was commonly known as subsidies. His labor and other farm expenses were, therefore, negligible, and his profit margin was excellent, but you never saw any of the crops he didn't grow on the grocery-store shelves. His income was more than sufficient to allow him ample time to sit in his usual chair at his usual table in the Corner Café pretty much all day, pretty much every day, speaking his unfiltered mind. At the end of each day, when they swept him out the door, he went to one of his three favorite beer joints, depending on which day it happened to be. His biweekly haircut and Wednesday night domino games supplied all the variety he needed in his life. Almost all.

*****

There was only one man in Shirly's life: her father. At sixteen, she had only recently been allowed to date but hadn't actually been on one, yet. She had asked for permission one evening at dinner, when they'd almost finished the main course. Her friend, Marla, had a second date planned with her new boyfriend, Rodney, and asked if Shirly wanted to join them at the movies. Not wanting to be a tagalong, she requested clearance in advance in case her friend had plans to fix her up for the evening. The request drew a hard look from Shirly's older sister, a stare Shirly refused to meet.

You like boys? her aunt asked from the seat next to Shirly's big sister. Huh.

Shirly's dad looked at her then at his sister, who was exchanging curious gazes with his oldest daughter, then at each of the faces of the others at the table. No further opinions or reactions were expressed, so he finished chewing and swallowing then reluctantly answered, Sure.

No such fix-up plans came to pass, to Shirly's mild disappointment. So with no boyfriend, husband, or even brother to suspect, her father, Will Greene, became the sole focus of the sheriff's department's investigation.

Sheriff Underwood himself knocked on Mr. Greene's door three days after the girl was reported missing. Have you heard from your daughter? were the first words out of the sheriff's mouth, not Hello, how are you holding up? I'm the sheriff, or whatnot. When Will answered with a shake of his head, Underwood continued with, Have you told us everything, Mr. Greene?

Only the Lord knows everything, Will countered. And we haven't spoken lately.

That was not the answer the sheriff had driven all the way out there for, but he decided to forego the strong-arm approach for the time being. He had other problems to contend with at the time, so he farmed the harassment out to his deputies. Hound him 'til he breaks was the sheriff's standing order, despite having not a splinter of evidence. Despite the hounding, Will never broke.

The community banded together for the obligatory, pointless mass search, carried out by everyone in the area with time on their hands who wanted to feel good about themselves. The operation centered on the missing girl's own residence. Since Greene Acres wasn't an active farm but rather a fallow piece of land handed down from Will's grandfather, the Good Samaritans didn't have to worry about stomping down any crops or getting wet from irrigation systems. All they wound up watching for—and finding—was horse poop. Will wasn't industrious enough to grow subsidies, so he let one of his neighbors graze his horses on whatever unplanted and unfertilized pasture happened to rise up within his fences.

Why aren't you helping with the search, Mr. Greene? The young television reporter from Tulsa seemed sincerely curious rather than accusatory.

First, if you think I haven't combed every inch of territory I can think of where she might be, you're an idiot. Second, if I'm the one who walks out there and finds her now, I'll be convicted before that worthless sheriff can finish patting himself on the back. Besides, someone has to be in here by the phone to answer the ransom call. With that, Will went in his front door and slammed it loudly behind him. No ransom call ever came.

After two days of shoulder-to-shoulder socializing in the sun and eating sandwiches and drinking iced tea donated by the Corner Café, the searchers threw up their hands and decided that Will had hidden the body better than they had imagined.

Will Greene's choice of adjectives when responding to the newsman did not endear him to the county's chief lawman, so when Shirly didn't resurface within a couple of weeks, the local detective's schedule was cleared, and he started nosing around. Prior to Will's televised interview, Sheriff Underwood hadn't seen the need to do any more than have his deputies follow Will's every move, including tailing him around town and wherever else Will felt like leading them.

He'll return to the scene of the crime, Underwood predicted. They always do.

Recently, the sheriff had locked his only detective into shadowing the sheriff's own wife, whom his mistress suspected of cuckolding him, which she was. For whatever reason, Mrs. Underwood never got caught either. After Will's broadcast insult, the sheriff took the Shirly Greene case personally. He gave his detective the new assignment.

Stink Burleson told the investigator that he heard someone at the Corner Café say something about seeing Shirly over at the new motel. Heard the words with my own two ears. Burleson was adamant, though he couldn't remember the exact words. Neither could Stink seem to recall just who had said it, but his wife was certain she remembered hearing the exact same thing, whatever that thing was. That's when the new motel's shady reputation was spawned.

*****

Surf… God, I love that sound… Guess I fell asleep on the beach…again… Another Corona nap… Gonna have to go in the waves pretty soon… I can hold it for a couple more minutes… This feels so good… Macey's thought stream paused. I don't hear seagulls… She drew a sudden deep breath, one that filled her lungs so completely and luxuriously she wished every breath she took was just like it. Ooh! Dead fish… The pungent aroma crept into her nostrils. I don't remember driving to Galveston…

The surf Macey heard was blood rushing back into her brain. The odor wasn't dead fish. It was Melinda Souther. Macey gasped again and wet herself.

*****

Not long after sunset, John Allan's twin foxhounds started baying as if they'd been violated with pine-cone suppositories. John had just started watching a Ghost Files episode he had TiVo-ed the night before, and jumped as if he'd been violated with a pine-cone suppository.

What the fuck, dudes? he shouted after opening the back door.

John heard a distant hum then a rumble—maybe a pickup—following the trail back from the ridgeline between his kit-log home and the Hogue house. He listened intently between barks.

Shut the fuck up! We'll go coon huntin' in the mornyana!

John assumed his English-bred tricolors understood gringo-Spanish the way he spoke it. That didn't quell the disturbance, and the pups' veracity persuaded him to see what was up. After all, even they knew that you hunt raccoons at night, not in the morning. Looking around from the yard provided him no inkling as to the stimulus for the relentless howling, so he went back into the house and grabbed his big flashlight and his .38 special, figuring that would be sufficient to neutralize a mountain lion should he encounter one. As he strapped on the gun belt, he considered the weapon's potential efficacy against a wild hog. All I have to do is outrun one of these dogs. The one with the gunshot wound, hehe. That's sick. John latched the twin leash on the boys and opened the gate to the game fence. Only surgery would repair the ensuing damage to his rotator cuff. They came to a stop about three quarters of a mile away, across rain-etched gullies, through random vegetation, and around and between whatever else lay in the shortest distance between point A, his yard, and point B, the thicket beyond the ridge, well onto the Hogue ranch. Vee and Too—named after the nearly identical V and II markings on their left ears—were now whimpering and scratching at something in the brush. John bent over in intense pain. He was holding his right side with his right hand and his right shoulder with his left hand. All three of them were panting. What they had discovered wasn't a mountain lion nor a wild hog.

*****

I can't fucking move… I can't see… Are my eyes even open? I'm breathing… That's good… I can smell… Wish I couldn't… I can feel…sort of… I can taste—blood? Not good… Macey heard commotion above her. Dogs? Something moved, slid, banged. First, starlight, then Maglite cut through the gloom. She found out she could see. She could see dead people.

*****

Liz isn't her mom, the lady from a neighboring farm told the plainclothes cop, speaking of Mr. Greene's common-law wife. She ain't none of them's mom, she continued. Who knows who their mom is?

Despite this interrogation and that of other neighbors and potential witnesses around the countryside, not much was learned about the reclusive, though friendly, family. No complaints had ever been filed with any county agency by or about any of the Greenes.

I see him or her once in a while around town—grocery store and such—but they pretty much stay to themselves. Seem like nice folks, though. The neighbor lady thought for a moment and then added, Sweet girls. Good students, from what I hear. Have you checked out that new motel? I've heard bad things go on there.

The sheriff's department's chief investigator passed the concerns about the new motel on to the sheriff. It seemed as good a lead as any, so the investigation changed direction, and the focus of the deputies' harassment followed along behind. The sheriff's vision had entered a new tunnel—for now.

People enjoy mysteries in books, movies, and television shows, but civilized society abhors them, especially when the inherent uncertainty causes it to question its own safety and security. The intense scrutiny being poured upon the Landesburg Inn flushed out no more clues as to the whereabouts and fate of the missing Greene girl nor to any potential perpetrator. The locals needed a measure of closure, whatever that might mean, and had therefore come to the same conclusion as the lazy old sheriff: The girl's daddy did it. No serial killer or axe murderer was afoot in the community, so case closed, pending Will Greene's anticipated arrest, conviction, and incarceration. Now they could all sleep soundly at night. Right?

One day, Will understood that Shirly wasn't coming home. Perhaps the Lord had broken his silence. When he realized no one wanted his fine, handmade furniture or greenhouse-grown herbs and spices anymore, Will packed up his other two daughters and common-law wife and moved away. None of the locals seemed to know or care where they had gone. They were just glad he was gone.

*****

On behalf of Gerald Landesburg and his lodging enterprise, a state court eventually issued an indefinite injunction against the county sheriff's department because whenever another girl from the tristate area disappeared, without William Greene around to take the blame, the deputies would again ransack the Landesburg Inn top to bottom. The searches included all the guest rooms and storerooms, and the customers and employees were grilled thoroughly and repeatedly, all because of some loudmouthed, old-timer's joke. When no evidence was found, again and again, the owner sought and finally received the welcomed state-issued relief from the sheriff's harassment. Gerald, however, got no respite from the rumor mill.

*****

Four dead, one seriously wounded—injured—whatever. Also enough firepower to conquer Canada, the radio squawked.

Sheriff Joaquin Sans asked, Can we get in there quick with an ambulance, or truck, or do we need a chopper?

Chopper now, truck after. Rough getting up here. No real road anymore. Meat wagon too, I suppose, Deputy Hector Rodriguez responded.

I'll get the bird on the way from OKC. EMS will make a run anyway. Just in case. Seal off as big a perimeter as you can. I'll send the ME and forensics in ASAP. I'll wake up the day shift and get some lights out there. We'll light that hillside up like a movie set, Sans assured his deputy. Canada? That wouldn't take much…

*****

The margins were already razor thin, Ray Jenschke said to the last customer loitering at the Corner Café one evening. My cook's moving to the big city and taking her son. Can't have a restaurant with just an owner and a waitress. Ray sat in the dining room, with his feet up on one of his tables, sipping sweet iced tea.

I'm sure you can find replacements for a cook and a busboy, the longtime patron encouraged him.

"Pfft. Not for what I pay. Like I said, margins are thin. When there is a margin, Ray clarified. The search sandwiches put me under. I didn't expect so many selfless volunteers when I made the offer to feed them. Had to go far and wide for fresh ingredients, and pay a premium to get 'em trucked in here."

Free with their time, but not with their tender.

Zackly. You ought to be a poet or some such. But yeah, no cash contributions from the tri-county community. Ray set down the glass, which now contained only ice.

Let me get you some more tea, Ray. Fred Jackson stood and went behind the counter. So what's your plan? You got one?

Not really. I'm thinkin' it's a good time to change vocations. I was a cop over in Boise City before I gave that up and came here. Kind of miss it. This kidnap thing—or whatever it is—got me jonesin' for something more exciting. Maybe they could use another experienced flatfoot around here.

Fred returned with the tea pitcher and a folded piece of paper. He set both of them on the table. No PD in WV, Ray, he said, abbreviating the town's name. He picked the pitcher back up and refilled Ray's tea glass.

County's not rich either, Ray concurred. I'm sure they wouldn't pay shit if they could even hire right now. Oh well. I could just uproot and go east. He sipped the freshly poured beverage and picked up the folded slip of paper, which had Mr. Jenschke written on it.

That was on the counter next to the register, Fred explained.

Ray unfolded it and read. Scratch the waitress. Seems she doesn't feel safe on the streets in this crime-ridden cesspool. Too much excitement, I suppose. Ray got up and went to the cabinet next to the pantry. He returned with a sixteen by twenty-inch dry-erase whiteboard, already written on. Hang this on the door on your way out, will you, Fred? He handed the sign to his most loyal customer and went back into the kitchen.

*****

Jason Sanders got into the Texas oil patch at eighteen—almost nineteen—years of age. He caught on pretty quick and seemed to his new coworkers that he was more experienced than he led on. Within a year, he was supervising a survey crew. Within two years, he managed an entire section of the project. Three years on the pipeline was starting to feel like enough.

On his rare days off, he didn't stick around but, instead, headed back home. On one such day