Mystery Noir

Mawaska Part 3

The night was uneventful, no howling wolves scratching at my door or storms rattling the windows. The hotel room was modern and well kept, meaning that I was able to pick up a meal from the attached bar and eat in my room while I scanned my emails. I stared long and hard at the one that had brought me to this town, though I already knew that it was a dummy address that went nowhere.

I would have to hack into the email server to find out the IP address and trace it, which wasn't completely out of the question, but for now I just stared at the attached missing person's flyers, made by various well-meaning parents.

Then I frowned as I realized that none of the flyers stated the people disappeared from this location. That it was the email itself that stated in boldface words: "All missing persons, plus countless others, were last heard of in Mawaska."

It didn't make sense for someone to pay me to go on a wild goose chase. It was far too in-depth for Mr. Squash Player to have devised this plan, hoping that it would get me off his tail so he could start having trysts with his lover once more. No one else had any vested interest in distracting me, so why send me to Mawaska to look for these missing people, if there wasn't some truth in the matter?

But if it were true, where would they have gotten the information from? Social media?

I pulled up the list of names once more and began to search out the individuals beyond the description of their clothing and vehicles. A cursory search of the Facebook pages, most of which were open to the public, trailed off from posting before they had allegedly left on road trips.

In fact, the more I scrolled on the pages, the more I was struck by the various decline of posting, over a long period of time before the posts from friends, concerned about where they were, started popping up.

None of them posted about going for drives, despite previous history within their profiles and other social media showing that it was a frequent occurrence to update on most of their activity, like all people nowadays. All their activity just petered out and then stopped. And a few weeks later, friends would start asking where they were and why they hadn't responded to calls or texts or messages for a couple days.

I pondered that as I closed my computer and tucked myself into bed, after checking to make sure that all the bolts were locking the door and my windows were locked, despite being on the third floor. My window wasn't facing the street, and I was thankful that it gave me a view of the nook I had parked my bike in down in the back parking lot. Almost as grateful as I was that I had not seen the idiots' truck around the hotel either. I don't know if there was another place to stay in town or if Todd and Luke could even afford a hotel, but if they weren't staying here, I would hopefully not run into them as often.

Regardless, for whatever reason, it was one of the best night's sleep I'd had in a while and I was dead to the world until a knock on the door had me blinking in the sunshine that was peeking through the curtains.

I hesitated, grabbing my folding knife from under my pillow as I listened for whatever had woken me up. I could hear birds chirping happily outside and the smell of breakfast wafting in from somewhere. I found my scowl easing, it was relatively hard to remain on guard when all you smelled was coffee and bacon.

There were another two knocks on the door and a soft voice called out. "Ma'am?"

I didn't recognize the voice, but I rolled out of bed, ensuring my tank top and boxers were settled enough on my body to cover anything indecent as I approached the door. Looking through the spy hole, I saw one of the hotel employees, standing there, holding a large room service tray.

With a frown, I unlocked one of the bolts, pulling the door open the crack the security bar allowed. I was rewarded with an enthusiastic smile and almost felt bad for my half-asleep scowl. "What?"