Mystery Noir

Mawaska Part 1

I used to simply be a private investigator.

After my PhD in psychology had led me to working for the FBI until I was completely fed up with the misogynistic bro culture and ego fights, I had taken up a career in investigating things for people with enough money to pay for them. Or people who had cases that pulled at my heart strings enough that I financed the investigation for them.

Most of it was people suspecting that their spouses were cheating on them, but sometimes it was missing persons that the police didn't have the ability or desire to solve. Having a couple happy endings where I found runaways, broke up human tracking rings or rescued people from bad relationships led to a lot of cases where there weren't happy endings. A couple cults that long lost children would not leave and a few dead bodies starts eating at your soul.

So I was almost relieved to stumble across a team of people who dealt with things that weren't normal. After a case crossed over into their realm, I began to expand my practice and these days it seems as if most of the people who come my way want me to look into the paranormal. I don't advertise that I do it and I don't seek them out, I know the teams of people who are 'aware' don't like competition and my more 'normal' clients wouldn't pay me to follow their wayward husbands if they knew I also tracked vampires and ghosts. Despite not searching these cases out, they seem to fall into my lap, and I have found a remarkable ability to deal with most of the shit that has been thrown my way.

Like today, sitting at a coffee shop, sipping on an extra caffeinated cold dessert coffee in a cup, I finished up my quasi-report for my last client, adding photos and my opinions that her husband was actually going to play squash when he said he was. I had followed the guy for weeks and every time I had reported in that the only time he was alone with someone else was the male change room of the squash court, she had given me more money and asked me to continue. I had even paid a couple men to go into the change room, to the same report. Mr. Squash was just showering and changing and his friend was doing the same thing, separately.

Despite the ridiculously good money I had made, I had been happy when I received another email, asking me to come to this little idyllic town to investigate disappearances that "weren't the normal kind". I had reservations about the claim that the person contracting me was actually a concerned parent. The tone of their correspondence had sat wrong in ways I couldn't quite identify, but they had paid my initial contracting fee without hesitation and it was an excuse to say no to the next extension from Mrs Squash.

As far as I could find out from the information, it seemed to be either a rogue set of werewolves hunting down tourists, or making a pack with said tourists and not letting them leave. Cops claimed there wasn't any evidence of foul play and that the people had just left town, though none of those missing had ever made it to their next destination. Werewolves were on my mind because the dates of disappearance seemed to follow a typical hunting schedule of every thirty or so days.

The door to the shop opened, letting out a chime of a bell, which was immediately stifled by the new customer reaching up to still its movement. I raised a brow as I took in the form of the massive man, who nearly had to duck to walk in the door and appeared to broad in the shoulders to walk through straight on.

"Still won't get rid of that, Chel?" He grinned easily enough as he let the now silent bell go, stepping through the door and holding it for his slimmer companion.

Both had the supernatural set of good looks that set off my warning bells. Supernaturals, unless they were supposed to be ugly, were usually beautiful. Even if they weren't born that way, it was almost like a really interesting way to get plastic surgery. Get bitten by a vampire or werewolf and you were suddenly your most beautiful self. And your metabolism would be so outstanding that you would be all muscle and no fat. But they were dressed relatively nicely and appeared to have bathed recently, which was abnormal for feral werewolves. And non-ferals generally stayed within societal norms of not eating people.