[Note to the Reader]
This is the final chapter connecting The Blonde in Room #3 and A Stranger This Way Comes. If you haven’t read Chapters One and Two of Three Nights at the End of the Road, go do that first. The truth is in the ledgers, but the resolution’s in the ride.
The dust had barely settled by the time the white 2000 Ford Crown Victoria Police Interceptor rolled down Main Street. It wasn’t fooling anyone— it still wore the posture of authority, the spotlight affixed, the antenna jutting like a question mark. Behind the wheel sat Marshall Gideon Trowbridge.
The Riviera man, now properly introduced as Blake Hollister—freelance investigative reporter for Texas Monthly and occasional contributor to the Stockton Telegram-Dispatch—had done all the legwork needed to present the facts to the feds for them to make arrests.
The car itself was a holdover from better days: Vibrant White Clearcoat over Medium Parchment upholstery, still sharp around the edges thanks to a Handling and Performance Package that gave the old girl some backbone—revised springs, stiffer stabilizer bars, and a V8 with just enough horsepower to pass judgment without breaking a sweat. The dash held a JVC stereo and a worn-out air freshener shaped like the state of Texas.
The trunk held more than a spare tire: manila folders stuffed with handwritten notes, Polaroids, photocopies of burner receipts, and a flash drive labeled “Santos Mendez: Deceased?”
Trowbridge parked across from the Grounds for Divorce. His windows were tinted by time, and his conscience was scratched thin from weeks of studying files that smelled more like pork rinds and potpourri than Pulitzers.
Inside the diner, Lucinda poured coffee for herself and Delgado, who was halfway through a molasses muffin. Rusty Hammer nursed a mug of black sludge and eyed Blake like a mechanic evaluating a foreign part.
“I need help confirming something,” the marshal said without preamble. “Something that smells like rot. Literally.”
Rusty set down his mug. “That better not be metaphorical rot. Last time I helped a lawman, I ended up quoted next to a picture of a dead possum.”
They followed Trowbridge out to the Vic and then, later that night, to the decrepit shed behind Bridges Funeral Home. The back entrance was loose. The lock had given up on its purpose. The smell hit them first: stale formaldehyde and something sweet, wrong, and lingering.
In a walk-in cooler behind a stack of empty caskets, they found the body of Santos Mendez. He looked better than he had any right to—preserved, tagged for a “Daryl Norwood” who didn’t exist.
Next to him: surgical tools, boxes labeled “specimens,” and a ledger in Cutter Bridges’ unmistakable cursive. The entries were clear: kidneys to Fresno. Corneas to New Jersey. One thigh—yes, one thigh—to a private collector in Reno.
“Jesus,” Delgado muttered. “He’s been parting him out like a ’68 Fury.”
Lucinda turned away. Rusty didn’t.
Cutter Bridges, owner of the god-awful Pontiac limousine, had been stiffed by Santos, accepting expired drink coupons and counterfeit lap dance tokens in trade for the car. Humiliated, Cutter embalmed Santos himself, figuring to recoup losses on the black market. “There’s a gold mine in innards,” he’d been heard muttering to Hank at the Lucky Lady Lounge more than once.
But that wasn’t the whole story.
Marshal Trowbridge laid it out over a chicken-fried steak the size of a trash can lid and a cup of hot Folgers back at the Grounds for Divorce.
The blonde in Room #3—Lenora Caldwell—was the estranged stepsister of Bambi Bobtail, one of the Scuttlebutt’s lesser-known but fiercely loyal Fallen Angels. Lenora had been helping Santos launder money skimmed from an illegal exotic pet and animal pelt ring that stretched down past Laredo. When Lenora grew uneasy and tried to back out, Santos threatened her. Days later, she turned up dead in Room #3.
Bambi put the pieces together the way only a grieving stripper with a thirst for vengeance could. She poisoned Santos’s tequila, taking away his ability to fight back. And then, in a final touch of poetic justice, strangled him with her own rhinestone-studded G-string. Cutter didn’t need much persuading—he already had the cooler. They staged a disappearance, dumped his truck in the stock tank, and vanished like a summer monsoon.
Cutter, never one who’d found success with the ladies, was beside himself with his newly found love interest. For her part, Bambi appreciated a man who could handle big jobs—and help her with her makeup. Cutter’s talents at the funeral home went beyond just embalming.
Their trail went cold near Las Cruces. No arrests were ever made. One witness reported seeing a suspicious vehicle resembling a 1972 Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight with window curtains and South Dakota plates. It was either them or a Mennonite wedding party.
As for Brother Bob, Trowbridge had receipts. Turns out, the Reverend had been funneling Scuttlebutt proceeds through a fake Meals on Wheels ministry. The only thing it ever delivered was justification.
Bob cut a deal. Community service, no jail time. He had to give up any claim to federal aid, though he kept his sermon catalog, poster rights, and the lucrative mail-order prayer handkerchief business that funded his lifestyle.
Mayor Goodman wasn’t so lucky—or maybe he was, depending on your perspective. Charged with money laundering, obstruction, and conspiracy, he denied everything. Most figured he’d never be convicted. Fewer thought he’d see a day behind bars. The Scuttlebutt continued operating under new management, but its new slogan—“No G-strings, No Secrets”—never caught on. The time he spent with some of the Fallen Angels after hours was completely ignored by his constituents. Only Mrs. Goodman was negatively affected. And she wasn’t talking.
Weeks passed. The news cycle moved on, but the town didn’t. Fort Stockton was never built for closure. It was built for endurance.
Late one night, under a starswept sky west of town, Lucinda lay beside Delgado in the cramped but clean bed of his Airstream. Outside, coyotes barked at nothing. Inside, the soft hum of the fridge and the lingering scent of frozen margaritas, Herbal Essence shampoo, and moist, satisfied skin filled the air.
“You think any of it would’ve happened different,” Lucinda whispered, “if this state had adopted school vouchers earlier? Could we have staved off the consequences of our own fallibility?”
Delgado pulled her closer. “Lucinda, I don’t even think the PTA could’ve saved that mess.”
They stared at the arched, maple-plywood-covered ceiling.
“I mean,” she said, “vengeful strippers, tax-fraud clergy, a dead exotic pet dealer embalmed in a shed—it’s all just so much.”
“And what about poor ol’ Leon?” Delgado murmured softly, sipping what remained of his third bottle of Dos Equis. “The poor guy was infatuated with a blonde, then a suitcase full of cash, and then a souped-up Mustang. In the end, he wound up right back where he started—behind the front desk of the Naughty Pine, putting a glass to the wall to live vicariously through other people’s fantasies.”
The air seemed to quit moving, the humidity bogging it down like Santos Mendez’s Ford F-650 in the stock tank. Attempting to stay cool, Lucinda pulled the sheet off, her smooth white skin contrasting with Delgado’s.
“Do you think Cutter Bridges and Bambi will ever be brought to justice?” she asked, draping one leg over his torso and running her fingers through the dark, coarse hair on his chest, braiding it into little swirls.
“I think Bambi and Cutter Bridges are justice,” Delgado noted. “Maybe the only kind left nowadays. But still not enough to ever put Mayor Goodman where he belongs.”
They both laughed. Quietly. Like survivors.
Somewhere down the highway, a white Crown Vic took a sharp turn off the blacktop and into memory, its rearview mirror full of ghosts.
3 responses to “THREE NIGHTS AT THE END OF THE ROAD, Part 3: Last Rites”
My head is spinning. Biggest surprise to me what is Brother Bob was doing. Maybe he thought he had a get out of jail free card being of the cloth. Just goes to show we’re all sinners.
I still kinda feel like I walked into the middle of this story….
Yup. Kinda like the farm kid whose daddy told him to go sit in the corner of the silo…