I took the proffered seat and scanned the office a bit before speaking. Unlike the room out front, it bore every sign of being both modern and well taken care of—much like the woman sitting in front of me. Evelyn—or Eve—was dressed sharply, in a well-pressed, white, collared shirt that would have matched the woman’s suit coat hanging nearby if she had been wearing it. Not that I could blame her for leaving it off. Although the AC unit hanging in the window was humming merrily along, the room still wasn’t much cooler than outside.
“My name’s Hawke Decroux,” I said, pausing for a second as she didn’t look up. Based on the friendly demeanor I’d seen with the intern, it was possible I’d caught her while she was busy. Or she was a chronic multi-tasker.
“I was wondering if I could get some help with something,” I said, leaning back and putting one foot up on my knee, resting my staff across my leg.
“Uh-huh,” Eve said without looking up. “Hawke, needs a hand with something, got it. You here for a classified?”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “Actually, I wanted to ask for your help in an investigation I’m doing.”
“An investigation?” she asked, looking up at me, eyes stalling on my staff. “What kind of investigation?”
“I’m a shaman,” I said, shaking my staff slightly since her eyes were on it. “An Unusual. I’m here helping a friend of mine look into the chupacabra attacks.” One eyebrow rose, and she gave me a long nod.
“You’ve heard this story before,” I said, not surprised.
“Once or twice,” she agreed, eyes still glued to my staff. “The stick is new, though. Never had anyone claiming to be a shaman before.”
I smiled and reached inside myself, calling forth some of my internal magic and pushing it into my staff. Eve’s eyes widened in surprise as the grains in my staff lit up.
It’s amazing what a simple trick like that can do, I thought, letting go of my magic and returning my staff back to its simple, everyday look. For a moment Eve’s eyes stayed fixed on it, her jaw hanging slack in shock. Then she blinked, resetting herself to the more professional demeanor I’d seen earlier.
“All right,” she said. “I give. How’d you do that?”
“Easy,” I said with a shrug. “I’m a shaman. NSAU registered. If you don’t believe me, you’re welcome to check—”
“No, no, no,” she said, sitting back and folding her arms. “I believe you. At least for the moment. That trick with the staff is pretty neat, so I’ll bite. What do you want? A story?”
“No,” I said. “What I want is a little help.”
“Doing what exactly?” she asked.
“I need information,” I said. “You run the Weekly Dream, and with that you know a lot about the town and the people in it, right?”
“Right.” She gave me a curious look, like the conversation wasn’t going the way she’d expected. So I was probably on the right track.
I dropped my leg and leaned forward. “I was wondering if you could get me any reports of missing animals in the area.”
Eve frowned, her thick lips turning downward. “You mean over the last few years? If you want that, you’ll have to—”
“Go to the local library, I know,” I said, waving my hand as I cut her off. “No, I want to know when you guys get something new: missing animals, possible chupacabra attacks, anything like that.”
Her eyes darted towards something on the desk, and I took a gamble. “You already have one, don’t you?”
“Maybe,” she said, sitting back, her face stiff. “Why?”
“Because I want to track down that chupacabra,” I said, leaning forward again. “And to do that, I need to know where it’s going.”
“You can’t just ask around?”
I shook my head. “No, that’ll be too slow. Let me guess, you already have at least one report on your desk about a chupacabra attack more recent than the one a few days ago, right?” She didn’t bother to correct me, so I blazed ahead. “Maybe more than one, and a missing animal report, as well?” Again, no response.
“I need to know where these attacks are happening so I can figure out if there’s a pattern to them,” I said. “You’ve heard of Jacob Rocke? The guy looking into the cases that ended up in the hospital?”
“I have.”
I smiled. There was no way she’d missed that story if she was half the reporter I’d hoped. I pushed on, emboldened. “We’re partners in this, and he’s cut off the chupacabra’s initial feeding sources,” I said. “But they have to eat somehow, so if I can get information on possible attacks or missing animals, even if they aren’t related, then that could help us track this thing down.” I sat back, propping my staff up on my leg again, waiting for a response.
“You’re serious, aren’t you?” Eve asked after a moment. “I mean really serious. You actually think you’re going to catch this thing.” She let out a short laugh. “People are disappearing, your friend gets beat-up and left in a cave, and you’re determined to catch a chupacabra.”
“That’s what I came here to do,” I said, nodding. “Rocke getting beat up … Well, we’re both in the dark on that one.” I saw her hand twitch toward a pen and wondered whether what I said was going to end up in the next edition of the paper. “As far as David Jefferson disappearing, you probably know more on that than I do.”
“Oh, it’s not just Jefferson, anymore,” Eve said, shaking her head, her short, blonde pixie cut bouncing around her ears. “You didn’t hear? Someone else went missing last night.”
“What?”
“Yeah, older guy, in his fifties. Wife said he got up in the middle of the night to check on something, and when she woke up this morning he still wasn’t back. It’s a quiet search, but they haven’t found him yet.” She tilted her head to one side, eyes narrowing.
“Unless it’s related to chupacabras, I’m not interested,” I said. “Whatever’s going on with people disappearing, I’ve got no truck in it.”
“Even if it involved your friend?”
Her question made me hesitate. Maybe Rocke had just had been in the wrong place at the wrong time, the first of many. Maybe David Jefferson was sitting in a cave somewhere, tied to a chair, face bruised and bleeding and dying slowly of dehydration. Maybe the man who’d just disappeared was a few caves over, shaking himself out of a daze as he slowly cooked. I felt a shiver run down my spine.
“I take it from your expression that you hadn’t considered that.”
“No, I hadn’t,” I admitted, shaking my head. “But unless it involves Unusuals, it’s a job for local authorities. They can do their job. Rocke and I are just here for NSAU business.”
“I see.” It was plain from the skeptical look on her face that even if she did understand what I was saying, she didn’t wholeheartedly agree with it.
“I can ask about it,” I said, “and I’ll even see if the police want my help, but until then, I can’t just go digging around in their case. That’s the kind of thing vigilantes do, or that Unusual group out in California. I’ll let the police know my services are available, but I’m already working on a case of my own.”
“Catching a chupacabra.”
“Exactly. So what I would like is anything new you get on missing animals or possible attacks.”
“Anything?” she asked, her gaze flat.
I nodded. “Anything. I don’t even need details. I’ll check them out myself. Just give me an address, or a name if you have it.”
She frowned, but at the same time I could see the gears working behind her eyes. “And what do we get in return?”
“Aside from an exclusive story on the cryptozoological find of the century?”
“Presuming you catch it?” she asked, tilting her head towards me slightly.
“How about twenty bucks for every tip that we tie into the chupacabra. Cash, under the table.” I shifted my shoulder and made myself look comfortable. It was an old classic, but nothing greased the wheels of information like cold, hard c
ash.
“For who?” she asked, her eyes narrowing.
“For whoever you want to give it to. No questions asked. We get a good tip, I give you the money the next time I see you.”
“You know that you’re going to be getting a fair number of tips, depending on how far back you want to go, right?”
“I know,” I said, nodding. “That’s why we’ll pay you for the ones we think are related.”
“And you just want addresses?”
“And a name, if possible,” I said, giving her one last nod. A name would help things along quite a bit. Not in finding our chupacabra, necessarily, but in making first meetings with possible victims a little less abrupt. One thing I’d learned doing work with my clients back east was to always get a name to greet someone by.
Eve held out a moment longer, her lips pressed tightly together as if she was having a hard time deciding whether to take me up on my offer. But I knew better. I had her; I could sense it. She might try and stall for more money, but her mind had been made up. I’d played my cards, and come out ahead.
“All right,” she said with a nod. “We have a deal.” I grinned as she held out her hand. “Shake on it?”
I folded my hand around hers, pleased that I’d managed to come to a pretty decent deal. I’d only worked with newspaper people a few times before, but in every case, they’d been pretty reluctant to give up what they had. They were stubborn. It felt good to for once to come out—
“Just so you know, I would have done it for free,” Eve said as she let go of my hand. “But you were so eager to drop twenty bucks every time I got you something …” She gave me a wide grin, one that expressed exactly how I’d been feeling a moment earlier. That feeling was now so suddenly gone it might as well have been stolen.
Maybe I should have held out a little longer, I thought as I leaned back in my seat, Eve was still grinning as she pulled open one of her desk drawers. I heard her fingers running over rows of paper as she dug for something.
Or maybe I’m just an idiot.
Eve pulled a pair of newspapers out of her desk and tossed them towards me.
“What are these?” I asked as they landed in front of me.
“This and last week’s papers,” Eve said. “You’ll find the section on missing animals in back near the classifieds, page seven in both papers. There’s four in last week’s, three in the issue before that. I’m sure you’ll find something in there that’s a good lead, so you can pay me the next time you see me. The papers are on the house, I figure if even one of those stories is related, I’ve just made eighteen dollars. Now, how can I reach you if I have another tip?” she asked, a pen materializing in her hand and making a sharp click as she tapped it with her thumb.
Nope, nope, it’s not the first one, I thought as I sheepishly gave her my number, thanked her for the papers, and made my way out of the office. I’d been put over a barrel, and she hadn’t had to do a thing.
I walked out to my Rover, two newspapers that I could have paid a few bucks for under my arm.
I’m definitely just an idiot.
* * *
Although my next stop was technically the Silver Dreams Public Library, I made a quick detour to the convenience store next to the newspaper to pick up a few supplies as well and a couple of sandwiches. I managed to finish two of them on the way to the library, and I spent the next few minutes sitting in the parking lot eating the last of my lunch and glancing over the papers Eve had given me, my engine running to keep the AC going.
Most of the stories were fairly standard for a small city newspaper: Reports on local school activities and sporting events, businesses that were holding sales or opening new features soon, a small blurb on what movie was playing at the theater that week. One whole page was even devoted to “Retrospectives,” interviews with elderly members of the community about events from the city’s past.
I found the classifieds section right where Eve had told me it’d be, but finished my sandwich at the same time. Mindful of the price of fuel, I folded the paper back up and shut off my Rover.
The library was a fairly modern structure on the inside, despite the aged look of its exterior. The air was crisp and cool, but not cool enough that you’d feel chilly after a few minutes. I could see a row of computers sitting along one wall, partially blocked from view by row after row of bookshelves.
A quick question to a librarian sent me towards the back of the library, away from the shinier trappings of the modern world and into a realm populated most frequently by desperate students looking for absolute peace and privacy, either for studying or a clandestine meeting with their significant others. The ceiling was lower, the lighting a little less vivid, and the sounds of clicking keyboards from the front muted by the thick rows of books. In other words, it was the perfect periodicals section.
To be fair, I probably could have found at least a few years’ worth of archives online and shaved a few minutes off my search, but I knew that most of what I was looking for would be further back than the online archives extended, at least in providing details. I’d already pulled up most of what I could find online on my laptop a few days earlier, and that hadn’t provided much beyond dates. But since I had those …
No one was around, so no one questioned my claiming one of the two tables for myself. I pulled my map out of my pocket and began unfolding it, pressing the creases out with my thumb. Completely unfolded, the map covered the whole table and a little extra, and after a quick look around to make sure that I was completely alone, I pulled the other table up alongside the first, giving myself someplace to put the rest of my stuff.
That done, I pulled out the colored markers I’d acquired at the convenience store and picked out a few, bright, clear colors distinct from the markings already on the map. I set them off to one side, and brought out my phone.
It wasn’t as nice as Rocke’s—in fact it barely even qualified as a smart phone—but I’d chosen it for its durability, not capability. But it could access the Internet. A few minutes of careful typing later, and I was back at some of the wiki pages I’d read a few days ago, including the one that contained a timeline of each reported chupacabra attack in the US, both verified and unverified. I had no idea who used their free time to put together a page like that, but I was grateful they had.
It didn’t take much work to find the first mention of Silver Dreams on the list. Apparently news of this latest outbreak hadn’t made its way to the page yet, because the date next to the town’s name was 1998. Which was good enough for me. I set my phone down and made my way down the nearby aisles of periodicals. Moments later I was back, a heavy banker’s box clutched in one hand. I set the box down on the table, picked up my phone, and moved to the next date: 1982. Another trip to shelves.
Eventually, I reached the point where there were no longer any of the newspapers for me to collect, and I set my phone aside. I could always ask the librarians if there were any older records stored somewhere, but for now, the five or six boxes I’d collected would work. I picked a marker at random, grabbed the most recent box of newspapers, and wrote the year on the edge of my map. Then, I pulled the first newspaper from the box and carefully started flipping through it.
The age of the paper made things a bit tedious, as did the ever-changing article layout of the paper. I was forced me to work my way carefully from page to page, scanning each one. Each newspaper wasn’t exactly long—after all, the town wasn’t that big and most of the time there wasn’t much news—but there were still fifty-two papers to a box, each one taking me at least a minute to scan through. I must have glanced through ten or twelve before I had my first hit: A local woman whose chickens had been found drained of blood. I found the address on my map, circled it, stamped it with the month, and moved on.
As the pile of papers grew and the decades slipped by, other articles began to catch my attention as well, most notably the amount of missing persons reports that piled up. Vanessa hadn’t been kidding about the Wra
ith’s supposed body count. My attention began to split, and I found myself going back to some of the earlier articles, surprised by how many people the desert had claimed over the years.
I’d completely lost track of time by the time one of the librarians informed me that the library was closing. Thankfully, I’d been replacing each paper in its proper place as I’d finished reading it, so the announcement wasn’t coupled with the sense of annoyance I would have no doubt received had I left them spread them across the section. I saw her glance down at my carefully constructed map with a curious eye, but she didn’t say anything as I packed up my materials and put the newspaper boxes back where I’d found them. My search hadn’t made it to the earliest decade, but I was already fairly certain it didn’t matter much.
My lunch still sat in my stomach, probably a result of the low amount of physical exertion I’d performed in the last few hours, so I put off dinner for the time being and made my way to the hospital. If Rocke was awake and I could make my way past the hovering shield of nurses, I could share my findings with him. If not, I’d head back to my apartment and go over what I’d found.
A familiar face looked up from behind the nurse’s station as I walked into the hospital, and I smiled as she gave me a little wave.
“Hawke … Decraw, right?” she asked as I walked up. “Mr. Rocke’s buddy.”
“Decroux, actually,” I said, smiling to let her know that I was all right with her error. “Ellera, right?” I said, her last name slipping my mind completely.
“Yeah,” she said with a nod. “Ellera Akinyemi. How’s business?”
“Busy,” I said, leaning my staff against the counter. “Spent all day investigating a few leads and doing research.”
“Oh?” she said, cocking one eyebrow and keeping her eyes on me even as her hands continued to work. “Anything interesting?”
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