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more along the lines of seedy in a quaint, un-redecorated
sense—things like outdated, mismatched furniture and paint or
wallpaper that hadn’t been in style for over twenty years. But, the
important point was that they were clean. They definitely weren’t
anything on the order of the squalid hole where I had taken up
temporary residence.
    There was a gut feeling I had about Annalise,
or maybe it was her alter ego, Miranda, for all I knew. Perhaps
both. It was the product of an ethereal connection I’d made at the
second Saint Louis crime scene, and all I could say was that I had
picked up an impression. That impression had now formed itself into
a theory. To me, it seemed she saw herself as above such a place as
the Airline Courts. In fact, I was dead certain she perceived
herself as above most everything and everyone.
    Even so, she still picked motels well known
for clandestine meetings of a sexual nature for her kills. There
could be a handful of logical reasons for this, not the least of
which was the fact that she could almost count on absolute privacy,
given the nature of the business. But, logic wasn’t what drove a
serial killer. Something the experts liked to call a stressor was
the motivational culprit.
    So, while the logical reasons may well be
factors, if my feeling was correct, she was choosing them for an
altogether different, and very specific reason—that being
nostalgia. My guess was that, in typical serial killer form, she
was attempting to recreate something from her past, possibly even
her first kill.
    The question that remained for me was which
one of them was responsible? Based on the period of the motels, it
almost had to be an event in Annalise’s life, since everything so
far indicated Miranda had been dead for better than a century and a
half. But then, why was Miranda seizing on it?
    Of course, that was just another part of the
big, scary puzzle.
    I’m sure my theory wasn’t new. The FBI
profilers had more than likely come up with the very same idea, or
something close. However, mine was based on observation and a quick
brush with the Twilight Zone ,
as my friend would say. So, when all was said and done, I had no
credentials to back it up; therefore, it was really just a mental
stab in the dark. Still, it was all I had to work with, and right
or wrong, it narrowed down my possibilities
significantly.
    Or, so I thought.
    That last assessment changed the moment I
pulled into a combination gas station/mini-mart and thumbed through
the hotel listings in a tattered phone book. Even after discounting
all lodging that was obviously upscale or I knew to be a reasonably
respectable chain that didn’t fit the image I had kludged together,
there was an exorbitant number of local motels that I didn’t know
enough about to confidently exclude. In fact, I gave up on my
cursory count when I hit 50 and there were still more to go.
    What started out in my head as a promising
slip up by Ben had now turned into a daunting task that my
exhausted brain wasn’t at all interested in tackling. It then
crossed my mind that my friend hadn’t actually slipped up. He
probably already knew how overwhelming it would be.
    Of course, even if the list had only been a
dozen or so locations as I had hoped, I still had yet to figure out
how I was going to determine which one actually was the scene of
the homicide. Calling the numbers and asking if they’d recently had
a murder in one of their rooms didn’t present itself as a terribly
attractive or even productive option. Nor did driving to each one
and hoping for a psychic impression to tell me when I’d arrived
where I needed to be. Given the way my head already felt, I
probably wouldn’t be aware of one if it happened anyway.
    I still had an option though. Ben had told me
they didn’t run a story in the paper, but I wasn’t entirely sure I
believed him. He could have been lying, which was something he was
more than willing to do if he felt it was in the best