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The old part of town smelled like fish. Not like a nice seafood restaurant. More like a rotting pile of carcasses mixed with garbage. It felt like home, though. Before all the money poured into rejuvenating Cape Madre, this was all the charm the city could muster.
Credit card receipts implied that Emma Chu had rented a room on this side of the cape from the Shady Shark motel. If her friend hadn’t skipped town, this was Tommy’s best bet for finding her. He couldn’t be sure that they’d shared a room, but it was a reasonable guess.
Tommy pushed through the grimy glass door and stepped into a mildew crucible straight out of the seventies. A ripe-smelling, elderly woman named Bea sat behind the counter, as she had for as long as Tommy could remember. Always behind the counter. Always watching soap operas. Always in need of a shower.
Tommy rapped his knuckles on the desk next to the rusted bell. “Hey, Bea.”
Bea looked up from her ancient television and gave Tommy a toothless smile. He couldn’t remember her with teeth, but surely she’d had them when he was a kid, right?
“Detective Wallace. What brings you to the bad part of town?” Despite not having many teeth, her eyes still twinkled with the mischief of troublemaker. He thought maybe she was proud to live in the part of town without any police presence.
“I’m looking for info on a girl. Checked out a room here. Emma Chu.”
Bea rolled over to the other side of her cubby hole and flipped through an old logbook. There wasn’t a computer in sight, which seemed impossible with the volume of people that must have come through. Bea pulled some reading glasses from around her neck as she scanned the pages, running a wrinkled finger over the paper as she read, shaking her head with each miss.
“Ah!” she said, at last. “Here it is. Emma Chu. Room 223. She checked out this morning.”
Checked out? That didn’t make sense. Emma was unconscious in a hospital bed. “That can’t be right, Bea. She’s in the hospital.”
Bea shrugged. “I dunno. Didn’t talk to her. Maids must’ve found the keys in the room. That’s how they all check out these days.”
“Did she leave anything behind? Her clothes, bags? Anything?” Tommy asked.
“Not that I know of. Maids didn’t bring anything in to lost and found this morning.”
Tommy nodded and drummed his fingers on the counter, trying to figure out his next move. Clearly, he had found Emma’s friend, but why the sudden check out? And why take Emma’s stuff?
“Thanks, Bea. Do you know if she had anyone staying with her?”
Bea laughed. “Of course she did. These college kids never get a room for themselves. Can’t afford it.”
“Let me guess. You don’t take the names of roommates, do you?”
“Of course not. Not enough paper in the world for that. Sometimes they bunk up three to a bed.” Bea twisted her mouth up in thought, then took off her reading glasses. “Chu. Asian, right? I remember her checking in. Had another Asian girl with her. Cute little things.”
“Don’t suppose you caught a name?” Tommy asked even though he already knew the answer.
“Nah. I wouldn’t remember if they’d told me. You can try asking around. The kids like to mingle.”
The old door to door. Tommy hated bothering people on their vacation, but that was the job. The best he could do was start at the room next to Emma’s, hopefully cutting his search time down by zeroing in on the people most likely to have met her. With any luck, he could get the name of her friend and then hunt her down. Make sure she made it safely back to college.
“Thanks, Bea.”
Bea grunted and turned back to her soaps.
***
No one answered at room 221. The kids in room 222 had checked in late last night and hadn’t met any of their neighbors. Now Tommy stood in front of room 224. He said a silent prayer that this one would be the one, though prayer was a strong word. Tommy hadn’t been to church in decades, much to his mother’s chagrin.
He knocked on the door and immediately heard a commotion inside. The words were muffled but frantic as drawers slammed and beds creaked. Before long, a boy answered the door in only his boxers, long sandy hair covering one of his eyes.
“Hey, dude. What’s up?” he mumbled, clearly drunk or stoned. The smell of marijuana, latex, and ineffective air freshener wafted out of the room.
Tommy flashed his badge, which he’d thankfully remembered to bring this time. “Detective Wallace. Cape Madre police. I’m looking for someone and thought you might be able to help.”
The kid’s eyes widened as he glanced back behind him and started making hand gestures to someone else in the room. He turned back and opened the door wide. “Of course, officer. Come on in.”
Tommy tucked his badge away as he stepped inside and made the correction. “Detective.”
The boy looked down. “Right. Sorry. Detective.”
Tommy took in the room. The wood-paneled walls were old, the art was cheap, and the shag carpet had been worn bare in places. Two queen beds took up the bulk of the room. One of them hadn’t been slept in. A pretty, brown-haired girl sat in the other, wearing a t-shirt far too big for her with the covers pulled up to her waist. The boy grabbed a pair of shorts from the floor and stepped into them.
“This won’t take long.” Tommy had no interest in ruining their vacation. They could smoke MJ and bang the whole day away for all he cared. “Did either of you know the girls staying next door?”
“The Asian chicks?” the boy asked.
Tommy nodded. “Yep. Those are the ones.”
“Dude. Those girls are freaks, man.”
The timbre of his voice, and the curl of his lips, made it clear that freaks was a compliment. Tommy had finally found his room.
The girl from the bed turned towards Tommy, careful to keep herself covered. “Emma and Hannah. That’s their names. Brady and Justin have been hanging out with them a lot. With Hannah just last night.”
Tommy looked to the shirtless boy and wondered whether he was Brady or Justin. “Which one are you?”
The boy in the shorts laughed. “Oh, I’m Frank.”
The bathroom door creaked open and another guy walked into the room, stark naked, his man bits dangling.
“Oh crap. Sorry,” the naked boy said before quickly ducking back into the bathroom, returning moments later with a towel around his waist.
The bed girl motioned to the naked man. “That’s Brady.”
Tommy nodded. “Brady. I’m Detective Wallace. Wanted to ask you some questions about Emma and Hannah.”
A smile spread across his face briefly before he wiped it away. “Sucks what happened to Emma. Hannah was pretty beat up about it.”
“Do you know where Hannah is?” Tommy asked.
“She’s not in the room? When I came back here, her and Justin were headed out for food.”
“And what time was that?”
Brady shrugged. “I dunno. Three or so?”
The bed girl jumped in. “Closer to four.”
Tommy nodded, then brought out a notepad from his breast pocket and jotted down some notes. “And Justin’s staying here?”
Frank rejoined the conversation. “Yeah. I mean, not last night, obviously.”
Ok. So, Hannah checked out and Justin didn’t come back? Something seemed off, and Tommy’s instincts went into overdrive. If Hannah disappeared, his cop brain told him, then maybe Justin and Brady had done something to her. That was a leap, though. None of the evidence pointed to that yet, and it wasn’t even the reason he was there to begin with.
“I don’t suppose you know Hannah’s last name?”
“Hung,” Brady answered. Frank snickered.
The girl in the bed rolled her eyes. “It’s pronounced Wong, you dickhead. H-U-A-N-G.”
Tommy wrote it down, glad to finally have a name. With this, he could track her down in Dallas and find her parents if he needed to. Only once he’d confirmed that she hadn’t gone back home could he allow himself to worry about her whereabouts. Maybe Hannah was scared she would get in trouble, and so had skipped town. It didn’t explain Justin, but maybe he’d just met someone new at a pancake joint in the middle of the night. Cape Madre never slept during spring break.
He took a few more minutes to gather contact information for Brady, Frank, and bed girl — just in case he had any more questions for them later. They complied readily. Tommy wanted to believe that he had made them comfortable enough that they weren’t worried about the pot, but likely they were just too stupid to realize that he knew about it. Either way, he didn’t care.
Tommy handed a card over to Frank. “If you hear from Justin, have him give me a call.”
“Sure, dude.”
Tommy helped himself out of the room, his mind racing to put the pieces together. He was trying to solve a crime that hadn’t even been committed and reminded himself that the assignment was just to look into what had happened to Emma. There was no foul play. Just an unfortunate accident.
***
As Tommy walked across the parking lot of the Shady Shark, he scanned his eyes over the boats dotting the adjacent piers. Most prominent was the nearest ship, where a cat watched him lazily from the bow. Madre’s Mayhem it was called. The ship was old, rusted, and worn, well past its prime. Though large compared to its competitors, it was still a modest ship, capable of being manned by a crew of only one. On a hunch, Tommy changed his course and headed toward it.
Tommy had a lot of fond memories of this area. It was one of his favorite places to hang out as a teenager. He’d stolen his first kiss hiding behind the Mayhem, and might have made it further if they hadn’t been caught. Of course, the Mayhem was prettier back then, with a clean white hull and ropes that didn’t look like they were about to snap.
He strode up to the wooden ramp to the ship and hollered, “Hey, Bark. You up there?”
A different cat, this one black as night, snaked around Tommy’s legs, rubbing dirty matted fur all over his suit pants. Tommy shook his leg in an attempt to shoo it away, but it persisted.
“He just wants some love, Detective,” came a gruff voice from above. “Won’t hurt you.”
Tommy’s allergies disagreed. “Got a few minutes?”
He went by “Bark” — a shortening of his last name— but one would be forgiven for thinking the name came from his wrinkled, leathery skin. Bark was bigger in Tommy’s head, but the old man had slimmed down over the years, slowly giving in to age and likely undiagnosed health issues. Still intimidating, though, just like he always had been. Tommy hadn’t forgiven him for interrupting that make-out session all those years ago.
Bark smiled and motioned up the ramp. “Of course, detective. Always time for the law.”
Tommy took that as permission to come aboard and trudged up the creaky ramp. On the main deck, he looked in horror at dozens of cats and reminded himself to double up on the allergy meds later. Bark hobbled over to a pair of folding chairs near the bow of the ship and motioned for Tommy to sit. Tommy chose to stand. Bark didn’t protest.
“I’m investigating the accident with that girl yesterday and wondered if you might be able to help me.”
“The Asian girl?” Bark asked rhetorically. “I heard about that. No one seemed to care when it happened to Joe.”
Shots fired. Tommy really couldn’t blame him. The locals always got short shrift around Cape Madre. Local taxes were nothing compared to the considerable influx of wealth that came from the tourists. It was a damn shame what had happened to Joe, and Tommy would have liked to have taken it more seriously, but his hands were tied. He couldn’t expect Bark to understand.
Without allowing Tommy to comment, Bark continued, “I was out at sea when that happened. I don’t know nothin’ about it.”
“Right.” Tommy motioned behind him towards the motel. “My question is actually about her friend. They were staying over there at the Shady Shark. Thought you might have seen them coming and going from up here.”
An emaciated, mangy cat jumped into Bark’s lap, begging for attention. Bark obliged before answering, “Yeah. I seen her. Whoring around with those boys. Saw her take two of’em into her room last night. Kids these days.”
“What about this morning?” Tommy asked, ignoring Bark’s social judgement. “Bea says she checked out. Did you see her leave?”
Bark stopped petting the cat to stroke the stubble on his chin. “That sounds right. Took her suitcases and left really early. Earlier than people should be awake, but I don’t sleep much these days.”
“Was a boy with her?” Tommy asked.
“Hmmm. I don’t think so. She either left’em there or they went back to their own rooms when I wasn’t lookin’, I reckon.”
At least the facts were aligning. For whatever the reason, Hannah had taken off. Tommy’s fears of foul play were clearly misplaced. Just a college kid reacting to a stressful situation. Most of the beach-goers hadn’t been paying attention when Emma had been attacked, but if the handful of eyewitnesses Tommy scrounged up were to be believed, it was no wonder that Hannah might be spooked. She probably wouldn’t even have new information.
“And what kind of car did she drive away in?” Tommy asked.
Bark looked towards the parking lot of the Shady Shark, taking a curiously long time to answer. He smiled. “You know, I don’t remember. This old brain, detective. It’s not what it used to be.”
Switching gears, Tommy asked, “What do you think this thing is, Bark? The thing that attacked Joe and this girl?”
Bark turned his gaze to the sea now, absent-mindedly stroking the bony feline in his lap. Tommy also shifted his own gaze, watching the waves gently roll in, wishing he could peer beneath the murky waters of the gulf coast to see what bizarre creatures lived below. Despite growing up on the beach, Tommy didn’t care much for the ocean. He knew how to swim, of course, but the depths disturbed him on a fundamental level. He preferred a swimming pool.
Bark’s gravelly voice rumbled a slow answer. “Something ancient, Detective. Something unbelievable.”
