Ain't Talkin'

Roche knew little of the Corporation. Few people who were not employed by the Corporation itself did. It was a company that unlike any other, spanned the distance between worlds. It crossed between the distance of the white. How the branches kept in contact or moved goods from one plane to the other was anyone’s guess, the inner dealings of the Corporation were secretive.

That wasn’t to say that the man’s missing son was an anomaly. It was known that the Corporation often outsourced work here and there, but that being said, those who took contracts for the Corporation were seldom made aware of the true nature of their work. It was never in someone’s best interest to dig any deeper than absolutely necessary.

Roche spent the remainder of that night doing what he did best, gathering information. He asked around at the saloons and dive bars that littered the back streets of Parmiskus. Idle questions here and there, never anything direct enough to arouse suspicion, just a leading query that meant nothing by itself followed by a stale acknowledgement.

A younger man by the name of Alex Markus had disappeared two nights ago. Nothing out of the ordinary, people were known to come and go for days at a time. They’d binge, move on or hole up all alone for one reason or another at a moments notice. But this Alex, up and gone without a trace, poof. No note, no trail, no one asked to water his plants, just gone. Still not the strangest of occurrences, but that wasn’t the point.

A few more questions led Roche to the apartment. Second story in an old brick warehouse, converted loft space above a seedy clothing store on a back street. Door unlocked, but closed. Table in the main room askew, but not turned over. Bed unmade. Toiletries left behind in the restroom, winder in the bedroom open to the elements, littered dust and debris piling up in one corner.

All together nothing extraordinarily unusual. A missing young man, a disheveled apartment, a distraught parent.

Roche stood in the middle of the apartment, struck a match and lit a cigarette, tipped his hat back from his eyes and inhaled deeply. What was missing?

The room breathed in the way that old rooms do. Memories sinking through it like porridge water in a sieve. There it was.

Roche’s coat billowed out around his hips as he made his way to the entrance, a thick iron door on a slider, normally bolted from the inside. Outside the door the hallway was bare, the apartment was at the end of the hallway. Across the hall was an empty apartment, the door stood open. Roche let himself in.

The room inside was empty and abrasive. It stank of disrepair, and mold. Roche took a pen-sized flashlight from his jacket and flicked it on, still puffing on the cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth.

Aiming the beam of light downward he scanned around with his eyes, rubbing the three days of stubble on his chin with his thumb.

Dust, footprints and scuffs in the detritus on the floor.

There it was.

Thin layer of dust on the back, a hole punched in the corner, and there it was.

A playing card.

Strangely out of place.

This was where the captors had waited for Alex Markus to come home, and they’d waited long enough that they must have gotten bored. One of them, assuming there had been more than one, and that seemed likely, was a card player. Stood to reason if he’d defaulted to playing with cards to kill time. Solitaire?

The playing card, a jack of hearts, had a hole punched out of one corner. Common trend for saloons and casinos to keep players from keeping old decks and sleeving cards to cheat with. The recycled decks were thrown out or given away, but not before they put a hole in each card to weed out sleight of hand.

Few casinos in this area had the wherewithal or the disposable income to purchase new decks like this ad nauseam. That left a few choices. Roche tired. This type of detective work was a strong suit of his, but it wasn’t his favorite past time. The hunter was a hunter, and he preferred the strong arm approach to playing pick me up any day.

Roche snubbed his cigarette on the brick wall, folded the card and slid it into his pocket and left the apartment building behind him.

Outside the night was lit only by a lone working streetlight in a chemical orange glow. Sand and dust blew in strange patterns down the street.

The trail was alive, and Roche was a hunter.