Page 33 of The Vacancy In Room 10

“Eddie’s ID is a guy who kind of looks like him—he could pass for this guy if nobody knew any better. But Eduardo Bacco from Alberta, Canada, is dead. And Victor Becerra is the real Eddie.”

“So he...” Callum says, then stops. Maybe not wanting to say it out loud—that the body on the office floor is really named Victor, and he kept the identities of his victims, and all the talk about danger and cartel is now a very real thing.

Callum types in the rest of the names on the remaining IDs. Ronald Hardin, Jimmy Diaz, Albert Bashir... All dead. All attached to lengthy stories about unsolved murder, drug-related crimes, known ties to cartel, or low-level dealers.

A sharp bark of shocked laughter escapes my lips. We most certainly fucked with the wrong guy. “So we’re basically dead then,” I say, leaning my hands on the desk and hanging my head, trying to breathe.

We both leap at the sound of the dead man’s phone ringing. I look down at the glowing screen buzzing across the coffee table. “Blocked number,” I say, and we both just stare at it until it stops.

A car horn honks outside on the street. I hold my chest, feeling like I might literally have a heart attack from the stress of it all. I peek through the front curtains and see a black car with tinted windows parked across the street, then the phone rings again.

“Don’t touch it,” Callum whispers.

“Why the fuck would I touch it?” I spit back.

The phone stops. We don’t move. It rings one last time, and when it finally stops, the car screeches away from the curb and disappears.

I collapse onto the couch. “We’re dead.”

“I mean...” Callum says. “Eddie, Victor—whatever his name is, he doesn’t do this alone. I guess, yeah. If the news shows you—us...attached to...whatever it might be, self-defense, an accident, manslaughter, it doesn’t really matter. We killed what looks to be one of their head honchos. This is...fucking bad. But I mean what choice do we have? I don’t know. I guess we do call the police. What the fuck else can we do?”

“How do we explain the massive gap between the time of death and calling the cops? They can figure that shit out, ya know,” I say, and then I feel a tap at my heel and see a stream of blood that has made its way across the floor, pooling around my flip-flop. “Oh, God,” I whimper. I hop up and sit on the desk, kicking off both of my shoes. “Oooh God.”

“Okay, calm down,” Callum says. “We need to stay levelheaded here. I’m telling you. The police will learn who he is and believe you when you say you panicked and saw his IDs and didn’t know what to do—I’m not really worried about getting arrested. I’m worried about...”

“Retaliation,” I finish his sentence.

“A thousand percent worse than jail,” he says.

I imagine myself asleep in bed one night while a figure in black silently picks the window lock and slips into my room, slitting my throat in one sweeping motion, ear to ear, before dropping my body into a storage container full of sodium hydroxide...and in a matter of hours, I’m liquefied into the consistency of mineral oil and dumped into the Rio Grande. What have I done, what have I done?

“Okay,” I say. “What if we don’t call the police?”

I can hear more people arriving at the pool deck outside as dusk sets in—kids are shouting to one another, the distinct throaty laugh of Babs floats over the hum of chatter, the dog in 119 barks. The aroma of grilled onions is heavy in the air. We’re both expected to be out there.

“God, I mean... I know. I know what you’re saying, but I just don’t think we can do that. We’re not...we don’t have the slightest idea how to...do something like that. Shit. No. It’s too... I don’t even know anymore. I thought of that, too, for a second, but now I don’t know.”

“He’s an absolute fucking monster, right?” I say, and Callum nods. “So maybe we’re not doing such a terrible thing if we just...don’t tell anyone.” Even as I say it, I want to take it back and call the police and reverse time and never have seen him hurt his wife and never have interfered and never have agreed to move to this shit-fuck hellhole to begin with.

“His wife has to be in on it. Rosa. She must be a part of this,” he says, sitting up straight and looking again at the ID of Eduardo Bacco. He types the name into the computer again and scrolls some stories.

“Eduardo Bacco was murdered just over five years ago, so if Victor has been using his identity since then, and he married Rosa around four years ago...what are the odds that she knows who he is? What he does? Does she think he’s Eddie—totally oblivious, or should we be worried about her, too?” he asks, then pushes the chair away from the desk and leans his head back and runs his hands over his face. For a moment, I think he might cry again, but then he stands abruptly and faces the window. He peeks out the blinds on the poolside of the room and looks at the party forming on the deck.

“I don’t think she knows. She has a kid to protect. I don’t think she’s in on it,” I start to say, then shift gears. “It doesn’t matter because she’ll never know.”

“It might matter,” he says. “Does she know he was coming in here? Does she know what you were going to do?”

“No. No. He was leaving—he was heading out for two weeks. He was about to leave. Oh, my God. Right. He was leaving...on the road. Nobody will miss him for a while. We have time, I mean not two weeks, but a couple days before it will start to be questioned, right?” I say, but I don’t even really know what I’m saying.

Neither of us speak for several minutes. Our minds both reeling, rationalizing, playing the tape forward.

“This is fucking crazy,” Callum finally mutters.

“We can’t just sit here like this. We’re expected out there, and...people will start to notice the blinds closed and door locked. It will look suspicious. We have to do something,” I say. I feel the panic rising again like a wave in my chest.

“We call the police, Cass,” he says and then he adds, “Right?” with doubt in his voice. “Shit. I don’t know. Shit.” He lets out a growl of frustration.

I just start talking without knowing really what I’m doing. “We wipe off his phone and put it in his truck. It won’t be odd that his phone records show it pinging here, of course, and he was getting a ride, so it won’t be odd that his truck stays here while he’s gone.”

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