Dead Silver

by Max Florschutz

  “Oh, I figured,” he said, his voice low. “Your type tends to stick together, causing trouble—”

  “Are you going to arrest me?” I asked, keeping my tone level. I was going to have words with someone later, although I wasn’t sure who yet. Right now, all I could do was try my best to avoid getting arrested and end the conversation. Maybe.

  “I’d like to,” Hanks said, giving me a withering glare that probably should have scared me. And it probably would have, if Hanks had even ranked on my list of Scariest Things I’d Ever Seen. I’d taken on an undead Horror with a fire axe once. Hanks wasn’t exactly on the same level. I was sensing some similarities in the “mindless-hatred” vibe, though.

  “Is there anything else I can help you with, sir?” I asked, keeping my voice as neutral as possible. I might not have been scared of the guy, but I still didn’t want to spend a day or two of my vacation sitting in whatever passed for a holding cell back at the station. That sounded like it would be less than enjoyable.

  For a moment, the sheriff just glared at me, and I could sense the divide happening behind his eyes. He wanted to arrest me. But he was also smart enough to know that unless he had a reasonable charge, I’d be out within a day or two and he’d have tied his own rope.

  “No,” he said at last, though his tone clearly said otherwise. “But I want you to stay in town until I get to the bottom of this, clear? Missing persons cases are hard enough without people skipping town.”

  “Missing person?” I asked, nodding. Just be relaxed. Don’t let your annoyance show. “I thought it you said it was a murder.”

  “Don’t get smart with me.”

  “Just making sure I had my facts right,” I said.

  “The only facts I want out of you are when and where you get in touch with your friend,” Hanks said, stabbing a finger at my face. I was pretty sure he’d never actually spoken to Rocke. That or he was enjoying his momentum. “So you let me know when he does, or I’ll make sure he takes you down with him.” Hanks spun on his heel without waiting for a response and marched back towards his car. Once again, I found myself wishing I knew enough about the local wildlife to entice a favor out of them.

  I stayed in the doorway, watching as the sheriff climbed back into his car and pulled out of the lot, putting just enough gas into the engine to kick loose gravel up against the side of my car. A moment later, he was heading down the road towards Silver Dreams.

  “How’d a guy like that get elected, anyway?” I muttered to myself as the cars vanished from sight.

  “He knows the right people.”

  I jumped in surprise at the voice.

  “Sorry,” Vanessa said as she walked up. “Didn’t mean to sneak up on you.”

  “No,” I said, shaking my head. “I was distracted. Don’t worry about it.” I hadn’t even noticed her coming out of the lobby, I’d been so fixated on the retreating sheriff’s car.

  “The apology’s mine,” she said, shaking her head as she came to a halt a few feet away. If she was bothered by my lack of a shirt, she wasn’t saying anything, though I did see her eyes linger on my chest for a moment. “I was the one who told that old jackass you were a friend of Rocke’s, right after I told him he’d need a warrant to get into Rocke’s room.”

  I shrugged. “It happens. Who’s he looking for anyway?”

  “David Jefferson.” The name sounded familiar to me for some reason, but I couldn’t place it. I shook my head and stepped back from the door, motioning for her to continue as I moved to my bags. “I guess he didn’t come home the other night, and word started getting around that he was missing.” She gave her shoulders a shrug. “They’ll probably find him out in the desert somewhere, drunk. It happens all the time. That or the Wraith’ll get him.”

  “Wraith?” I asked, my head snapping up from my luggage. I grabbed the first shirt I could find and stepped back to the door, pulling the cloth over my head. “What wraith?”

  Vanessa laughed. “It’s just an old story around here, something you hear growing up. It’s just what everyone uses as an explanation whenever someone goes missing.”

  “Like an urban legend?” I asked as I leaned against the doorframe once more.

  “I guess,” she said, shaking her head. “It was just some story we used to talk about as kids. Someone would go missing out in the desert, and we’d say that the ‘Wraith’ got them.” She made little quote marks with her hands.

  “Does that happen often?”

  “Every few years, yeah,” she said, nodding. “The desert’s a dangerous place. You get high schoolers that wander off to get drunk, guys who go out looking for buried treasure or going camping and …” She gave another shrug. “So we just called it the ‘Wraith.’ Some guy goes missing on a camping trip? The Wraith got ‘em. It’s a bit small town, but what the hell, right? We are a small town.”

  She gave me an embarrassed smile. “Anyway, sorry again about Hanks.”

  I shrugged. “I needed to wake up anyway. Thanks all the same, though. Enjoy your day.”

  “Yeah,” she said, nodding and hiding a yawn behind her hand. “You, too.”

  * * *

  After I cleaned myself up for the morning, I got directions from Larry—once again back on duty—to the nearest place where I could find a decent breakfast. He directed me to a fairly decent mom-and-pop diner, the kind of place that made me feel like I’d somehow jumped twenty years into the past. There was even a jukebox in the corner, playing songs I hadn’t heard since I was in college. Still, the food was excellent and I was hungry, so I was more than willing to feel like a displaced time-traveler for a while.

  Breakfast also gave me some much-needed time to think. Rocke still hadn’t been in his room, nor was there any sign he’d been in his car. I was starting to get worried. He was a hard worker, the kind of guy who put his current job before all else, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t at least going to sleep. Or check his phone.

  And now that I knew someone else in town was missing, my mind was going all sorts of unpleasant places. What if Rocke hadn’t met me because someone else had gotten to him first? Surely he’d been even more suspicious of the strange animal killings than I was. Had he been digging and found something even more distressing? Something that was enough to get him … killed? I almost didn’t want to consider it.

  I speared another chunk of omelet on my fork, eyeing the long string of cheese stretching between it and my plate like a tasty, yellow spiderweb. Maybe I was getting ahead of myself. As easy as the connection was to make, there wasn’t much reason to jump from one missing person to Rocke.

  Unless he’d known this Jefferson guy, and they were both missing together.

  Which would make sense. Rocke had to have at least spoken to him. Otherwise, why would Hanks make the connection? Unless Hanks was just looking to the first Unusual he could find as a suspect. I didn’t want follow that line of thought, especially since he knew I was an Unusual now, but it would be worth keeping an eye out. If Hanks was biased enough against Unusuals to threaten me with arrest just for not giving him the answers he wanted, he probably wouldn’t hesitate to try and make any evidence line up against me, too.

  So much for a nice, relaxed vacation.

  Still, there was something that rang familiar about the name of the man that had gone missing, though I couldn’t place why I knew it. I just knew that I did.

  I scraped my plate clean without much fanfare, my mind miles from my meal as I tried to put together some sort of plan for the day. I’d been expecting Rocke to have turned up at some point, but it was looking more and more like that wasn’t going to happen. Which was a problem in and of itself, but one I wasn’t really sure how to rectify.

  This isn’t my line of expertise, I thought as I tapped my fork against the edge of my plate. I’m a shaman, not a spook. I’m only here to catch a chupacabra. I’d worked a missing person case before, but that was when a girl had disappeared into the woods, woods I was familiar with.


  Then again … I paused a moment. How different could it be, really? Rocke tracks stuff down all the time. I just need to think a bit more like he does and catch up with him. Simple, right?

  But where do I start? I wondered. Then I chuckled. Of course. There was only one answer if I were Rocke.

  I’d be working.

  * * *

  “Mr. Decroux, bienvenida!” Maria Salas said, swinging the door open wide. “Come in, come in!”

  “Call me Hawke, please,” I said, stepping into her home once more. “I was just stopping by to see if you’d had any more trouble.”

  “No, not since your friend put up that spell,” Mrs. Salas said with a smile as she walked further into the house. “Are you hungry? You look hungry. Have you eaten?”

  “I just ate, Mrs. Salas,” I said even as she trotted into the kitchen and opened the fridge. “Really. I was just wondering if you’d had any more chupacabra problems, or heard of any.”

  “No, nothing since yesterday,” she said, holding the fridge open. “The goats got a little restless last night, but my husband checked on them, and everything was fine. You can tell Mr. Rocke that his solution is working perfectly.”

  “I will when I see him,” I said, hoping it wouldn’t be long before I did. “Did he usually come by and check on things every day?”

  “What?” Mrs. Salas asked, finally shutting the fridge and moving toward the cupboards. “No, no. He came by several times, but only after something had happened.”

  “I see,” I said, nodding. Mrs. Salas opened one of the cupboards, then grabbed a glass and filled it with water. She passed it to me, and I took it without complaint. There were some battles that weren’t worth fighting, and this was one of them.

  “Do you know what he was doing when he wasn’t here?” I asked. It was a long shot, but at this point, it couldn’t hurt.

  Mrs. Salas shrugged. “Hunting the chupacabra, I suppose,” she said. “After all, we’re paying him to protect our animals, and he’s done that.”

  I nodded, already feeling like a fool for asking. “All right. Do you mind if I take a look out back again and see if there’s anything I didn’t notice before?”

  “Help yourself,” she said. “Did you make it to the other homes yesterday?”

  “Two of the families weren’t home,” I said, pausing to drain my cup and setting it on the counter. “But I spoke to Felix Bayou and he gave me some help. Your map was also very helpful. Thanks again for giving it to me. I’ll be using it again today when I try those other two places.”

  “Oh,” Mrs. Salas said, her face growing a little downcast. “That might not be such a good idea. At least, not for one of them.”

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “Well, I don’t know if you’ve heard, but Amanda’s husband is missing,” she said. My breath caught. “He never came back from work the other night.”

  Of course! That explained why Hanks had immediately gone after Rocke. There was a connection there. “David Jefferson” had been written on the map Mrs. Salas had given me.

  “I think I heard something about that,” I said, keeping my face neutral. “It’s a real shame. I hope they find him.”

  “So do I,” Mrs. Salas said with a sad shake of her head. “A lot of people disappear out here. Amanda’s such a nice young lady. It’d be a shame to be a widow at such a young age.”

  “Yeah,” I said, my mind only half on her words. “It would.” I looked up.

  “Anyway, I should get going.”

  “Oh, you’re not going to check the goats?”

  I shook my head. “If they’re fine, they’re fine. They seemed all right yesterday. Thanks for your help, Mrs. Salas. And for the water.”

  “Well, all right,” she said as I started to move towards the door. “Good luck, and don’t forget to tell Mr. Rocke gracias for me, okay?”

  “I will,” I said, giving her one last nod of thanks. “Have a nice day.”

  * * *

  “Hello?” the young woman who answered the door asked.

  “Hi,” I said, somewhat surprised at her age. She looked too old to be a daughter, unless Mrs. Jefferson was older than I’d thought. “Is Mrs. Jefferson home?”

  “That’s me,” the woman replied, and I backtracked my initial assumptions once again. The size and age of the home had led me to expect someone a bit older from, but the woman standing in front of me looked like she was fresh from a college campus, right down to the university t-shirt, blonde ponytail, and preppy voice.

  Well, I corrected. Probably usually preppy. She didn’t sound happy to see me. Then again, her husband was missing, so I couldn’t really blame her.

  “Who are you?” she asked, giving me a terse glare.

  “Sorry,” I said, shaking my head and extending my hand. She didn’t take it. “I’m Hawke Decroux.”

  “Hawk?” she said, a disbelieving tone in her voice. “Like the bird?”

  “Yeah, Decroux,” I said. “It’s French-Canadian.”

  “Right.” She gave me a piercing look, giving me a once over with her eyes before centering them on my staff. “What do you want?”

  “First, I wanted to offer my condolences on your husband’s disappearance—” I began.

  “Save it,” she snapped. “I don’t need sympathy from strangers. Now tell me what you want or just get out.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, feeling a little flustered. I didn’t blame her for how she was feeling, but I could tell that getting anything useful out of her might be tricky. “I was actually here because of that.”

  “What, did you kidnap him?” she asked, rolling her eyes at me as she slumped against the doorframe.

  “No, no,” I said quickly. Her eyes narrowed, and I held up my hands, hoping to stave off an outburst. “I’m friends with Jacob Rocke, the spook?” Her mouth was already open, and I could almost see the sharp words sitting coiled there, waiting to strike like venomous snakes. “He’s been missing since the other night. I don’t know what he was doing out here but—”

  “He was telling us why our dog was dead,” she said, her voice and expression flat. “Aside from that and a few crazy ideas that would have gotten my husband fired, he didn’t do anything else.”

  “Can I ask you something?” I said. There was a flash of heat in her face, but then she slumped, resigning herself to whatever I had in store for her. “What was he asking your husband about that you didn’t approve of?”

  She let out a loud sigh, coupled with a glare that for a moment made me wonder if she was going to slam the door in my face. Then she shook her head, and folded her arms across her chest. “Your buddy found out that David worked at the mine,” she said, her tone clearly indication that she was only telling me to be at least somewhat congenial.

  “He wanted David to help him sneak into some of the old tunnels. Apparently he had an idea that the chippa-thingy, or whatever it is, was nesting down there.”

  I let her butchering of the name slide, more concerned with giving myself a mental pat on the back. Rocke had been going for the old mineshafts. I’d been on the right track after all. But …

  “Why did he need your husband to help him?” I asked, voicing my thought.

  “Because David’s the company’s chief geologist,” she said. “Your friend had already asked Henderson if he could take and look and gotten turned down. He wanted David to sneak him onto company property and help identify some places where this thing could be nesting.” It was obvious what she thought of the idea.

  “Did he?” I asked. I saw her twitch.

  “He’d better not have. He told your friend no, and then I told him no, just in case he got any ideas about talking David into it.”

  “I see,” I said, rubbing my thumb and forefinger against my chin. It was an old habit, one I’d been tempted to break until I realized that people saw it as a sign of wisdom or something because of my heritage. I would have been insulted by it, except that I didn’t care that much. Besides, the wise
r my clients took me for, the more I could get away with charging. Money sure isn’t everything, but I like to eat well. “Did you mention this to the sheriff?”

  “Are you out of your mind?” she said, giving me a look that said she’d already chosen an answer. “Why would I?” She stared at me, and I fumbled for an answer when it became apparent that she was waiting for me to speak.

  “I can’t say,” I said, shaking my head. “Why wouldn’t you?”

  “Right, you’re not from around here,” she said, shaking her head. “Look, it’s not something anyone talks about, but everyone knows Henderson and Hanks are close friends.”

  “Henderson? He runs the mine, right?” I asked, checking to make sure I had the name correctly attributed in my head.

  “Yeah, owner and head of the company,” she said, nodding. “He’s buddies with Hanks, gives him a load of support every time elections come around. My husband needs his job, Mr. Decroux. If Henderson heard that he’d even been considering getting your friend into the mines, they’d fire him.”

  “Right,” I said, still rubbing my chin. “I won’t mention anything about your husband if I run into Henderson, then.”

  “I’d appreciate that,” she said, her tone dry.

  “If I might ask,” I said, earning another glare, “do you have any ideas where your husband might be?”

  Her angry look almost set me back, but then I noticed the quiver in her lower lip and the way her eyes were blinking rapidly. She was putting on a strong front, but it was dangerously close to cracking. And I was the one who was cracking it.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, shaking my head. “It’s none of my business. I’ll—”

  “No,” she said, her voice coming out in a quick shudder. Then her shoulders stiffened. “No,” she said again. “You said your friend is missing, too?”

  “Yes, he is,” I said. “He was supposed to meet me yesterday when I arrived, but he didn’t show up. No one’s seen him since the night before.”

  “How well do you know him?”