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I pulled into the Happy Days’ lot with tires squealing. A police cruiser was parked in front of the manager’s office. A man with a bloodied face leaned against the cruiser, giving a statement to a beefy uniformed cop with a bored look on his face.

I parked and got out with my dog. The uniform shot me a look that said not to interfere. I approached him anyway.

“I’m Jack Carpenter,” I said. “Detective Burrell sent me.”

“Who?” the uniform asked.

“Candace Burrell. She runs Missing Persons. With your permission, I’d like to case the place.”

The uniform scratched his chin. It was a known fact that the local police did not look for high IQs when fielding new hires. Occasionally, someone smart slipped through the cracks, but the majority of the officers were like the big lug standing before me.

“Well, okay. Just don’t touch anything,” the uniform said.

“I won’t,” I replied.

I did a quick tour of the grounds. The motel was an L-shaped building with a sagging roof line and window AC units. It was painted tropical pink, the color washed out by the sun. Twelve units faced the street, each with a car parked in front.

Something didn’t feel right. Normally when the cops were called to a disturbance at a motel, people came out of their units to see what was going on. Not here.

I walked around to the back of the motel. A dozen more units faced a retention pond. Each of these units had a car parked in front as well. I banged loudly on several doors, but no one answered.

Then it hit me what was going on. The Happy Days was a hooker hangout, or what cops called a hot-bed joint. It was against the law for motels to rent by the hour, but that hadn’t stopped the practice. There were streetwalkers in every one of these rooms, and they weren’t coming out unless the doors got knocked down.

One room did not have a vehicle parked in front. It was at the very end of the building, and its door was ajar. I rapped on the door frame.

“Anybody home?”

I pushed open the door with my toe. The interior was darkened, and I found the light switch on the wall, and flooded the interior. The room had a king-size bed and some junky pieces of furniture. I stared at the pieces of white rope tied to the bed frame that had been used to hold Sara Long captive.

My breath caught in my throat as I entered.

———

I quickly inspected the room. The TV was turned onto FOX, the volume a whisper. On the floor in front of the TV was an open box of Animal Crackers. I glanced inside the box without touching it. It was filled with crumbs.

The closet and under the bed revealed nothing. The garbage can by the door was more helpful. It contained take-out bags from Burger King and McDonald’s. I dumped the bags’ contents on the floor and unfolded the wrappers. Mouse and the giant seemed to exist on a diet of greasy hamburgers and french fries, while Sara continued to eat fish sandwiches.

I checked the bags for sales receipts. I was guessing that Mouse had purchased the meals from drive-throughs. Many fast-food restaurants employed call centers to process their drive-through orders, and these centers used hidden cameras to snap photos of the driver placing the order, along with the driver’s license plate number. If I was lucky, a receipt would lead me to the license for Mouse’s vehicle.

The bags did not contain any receipts. I cursed under my breath.

I inspected the bathroom last. It was the size of a phone booth, and just as inviting. The walls were peeling paint, and the shower stall looked like a science experiment gone bad.

Buster brushed past my leg, and stuck his head into the garbage pail beneath the sink. I pulled his head out of the pail, and found two items. The first was a cotton swab covered in blood, the second a plastic syringe with the needle still attached. The blood was fresh, and had not congealed. Every piece of information was helpful in an investigation, and this was no exception. Either Sara was being drugged, or one of her abductors was an IV