Chapter Text
The three-year-old establishment is bright and vibrant, and the flicker of the motel sign’s fluorescents mirrors the pulse -the heart beat of anxiousness in this barren stretch of quiet town.
On the other side of the road sits Tinsley in his car. His eyes train to the image of a lit window of the only occupied room of the ‘5 Flames Motel’ - a yellow rectangle on the face of the motel’s wall.
The window starts to blur through his binoculars’ lenses. Faint taps on the roof of his car multiply to reveal itself to be pitter patters of rain. On his dashboard are loosely arranged documents detailing the missing persons case he is investigating. Cigarette ash dusts the sheets.
One Edgar B. Corkland, a missing fourteen-year-old boy last seen six months ago. Tinsley found a slither of a word about the sighting of the boy in this town. Edgar's suspected kidnapper, a Harold Summers, has managed to drop a trail that led Tinsley to him. Now on the verge of cornering Edgar’s whereabouts, Tinsley keeps his excitement barred by professional precision.
The suspect draws the curtains and Tinsley is left watching his shadow with a yellowed backdrop. Tinsley’s grip on the binoculars stay rigid as ever till a flurry of movement spikes the nerves in Tinsley’s body. The shadows of figures erratically pass the window and then halt all together when the light died. Tinsley retracts his head from the binoculars and looks pass the rain to see any movement on motel grounds. It is as if the motel turned desolate and empty of all life except for its sign’s light wavering through the rain like a candle struggling to stay alive.
Tinsley disregards the voice in his head screaming at him to stay in the car. Wary feet carry him across the wet road. He reaches the motel’s parking grounds when the room’s window is illuminated by yellow light. A figure of different stature than Harold’s walks slowly by the window and the lights go out once more. With great haste does Tinsley climb the fire escape stairs to the room to avoid detection.
He enters through the window with his pistol up ands sees the room with only the dim unsteady light from the outside.
The aftermath of domestic carnage has swept the room. Furniture scattered and flipped over. A few bottles of beer lay empty and recklessly arranged on the bedside table, one of them on its side right on the edge of the table dripping on the beige carpet. The only light of the suite comes from the bathroom with its door ajar. With caution in Tinsley’s steps, he enters the small bathroom. There he sees half of the curtain of the bathtub torn from is rod. It drapes over a lounging figure occupying the tub. The man’s left leg dangles over the rim of the porcelain –he’s fully clothed, shoes and all in a tub filled with diluted blood.
The shower head drips, the droplet creates a ripple in the fouled water. Tinsley pushes the curtain further to the side to reveal a sight that makes the detective jerk back in in horror and induce bile to rise up his throat.
A dislocated jaw, lacerations to the face, both eyes swollen to dark violet -clotted blood on a gaping and fracture exposed from under the scalp above the left temple. There are jagged holes in the man’s shirt that continue to ooze red.
Footsteps can be heard nearing the bathroom making Tinsley point his pistol towards the door.
Ricky Goldsworth emerges through the threshold rubbing a bloodied towel between his hands. Tinsley’s grip on the pistol falters.
Perhaps it was the sight of blood on Ricky or the sight of Ricky alone that jarred the detective. Having not seen the shorter man’s face in over six years. Goldsworth is less gaunt than remembered and has some of his mass more defined.
Ricky pauses at the sight of the weapon then continuous forward making Tinsley's hold of the gun sturdier.
“Hello to you too, Tinsley.”
Tinsley doesn’t move or speak. Stunned more by the sight of the years etched under Goldsworth’s eyes than the drying red splotches all over his shirt. A low groan takes Tinsley’s attention back to the scene before him.
The man in the tub was alive.
Tinsley crouches by the man he now figured to be Harold Summers and attempts to administer some form of aid.
The weight of a hand, Ricky’s hand on Tinsley’s shoulder makes him freeze.
The hand travels up, brushes itself behind Tinsley’s ear and combs through his hair with the same tenderness expressed and felt all those years ago. Tinsley’s eyes are fixed on the all too conspicuous crack in the battered man’s skull when Ricky speaks again. “Some way to meet you again, huh?”
Tinsley wraps his necktie around Harold’s slit wrist rather pathetically with clumsy yet mechanical fingers.
“What have you done?” Tinsley barely whispers and Ricky doesn’t utter a word. Ricky’s hand retracts from Tinsley’s head leaving the hair faintly smelling of iron and copper.
Ricky bends down and with the most delicate of voice, he whispers in to Tinsley’s ear,
“I think you should leave.”
Tinsley could only glare at Goldsworth and watch him place the sullied towel on the rack. With cold calmness, Ricky undoes his belt and releases it from his trousers.
Tinsley is frozen in place. His joints only unhinge when Ricky wraps the belt around Harold’s throat with a hold of remarkable efficiency that had no ounce of aggression or oddly enough, malice.
Before Tinsley could make sense of anything, he lunges at Ricky, intent to incapacitate him. Ricky laughs as if he has encountered a punch line of a light joke. He revels the sensation of fists around his collar pressing his head and back into cold tiles with a force attempting to indent Ricky into the wall’s concrete.
“Oh ho ho! What’s this?” Ricky chuckles “I remember when you much preferred me to be the handsy one.”
“What the fuck is all this?!”
Ricky gives the face of a dumbfounded child, his eyes surveying the interior of the bathroom, purposefully scanning every corner and leaving the bathtub last.
“Oh, that?” Ricky mocks at the fading Harold. Tinsley slams and jostles Ricky into the wall.
“Woah there, Tinsley. You never showed that you liked it this rough when we used to fu-”
“Shut. Up." growls Tinsley.
Ricky raises his hands in mock surrender letting them snake up from Tinsley’s forearm then to his crooked collar.
“You know” Ricky now pats dust off Tinsley’s shoulders,“Edgar B. Corkland is dead.”
Tinsley’s face falls before contorting into rage. Ricky nonchalantly brushes a lock of hair off of Tinsley’s forehead. “You need a haircut, Tinsley” Ricky’s eyes don’t leave Tinsley’s hair, indifferent yet sharp.
“You should have seen sweet little Edgar after dear old Harold was finished with him. Even kept souvenirs.”
Tinsley’s jaw clenches when he takes a quick glance down at Harold slipping in and out of consciousness. Tinsley’s grip on Ricky loosens but limply hang onto the fabric. Ricky takes Tinsley’s hand with familiar gentleness and pushes them away. Tinsley takes a step back to let Goldsworth pass.
Tinsley stays in place, rigid with every muscle taut and clenched. His eyes are still cast on the tile floor when he hears grunts and frantic sloshing from the tub. He leaves the bathroom with slouched shoulders and without looking back he solemnly closes the door behind him.
Tinsley stays magnetised to the only window of the suite. A small dining table set by the window was decorated with pictures spilling out a suitcase. Tinsley glances down no more than two seconds before clenching his jaws with disgust and remorse in his eyes. Harold’s souvenirs lay out on the wood of the table in likeness to a grotesque collage. A series of photographs that are very condemning in Harold’s part detail the fate of the young Edgar Corkland.
Tinsley directs his strained eyes to look out to see the motel sign that continues its erratic pulse. He hears the sink momentarily run before Ricky steps out the bathroom. Ricky perches a clean hand that smelled of cheap soap on Tinsley’s nape.
“Don’t!” Tinsley snaps “Don’t fucking touch me!” he fumes as he lurches away from Ricky.
A tinge of regret pricks at Tinsley’s heart when he sees Ricky’s face but dismisses it as quickly as it came. Ricky rebounds, stuffs his hands in his trouser pockets and offers a wary Tinsley a smile.
“Have coffee with me.” Ricky softly says as he looks down to the photos on the table then to the window. Tinsley follows Ricky’s line of sight.
Dawn has broken.