The Diner

Chapter 2-1

Chapter 2

“He can’t have just vanished off the face of the earth,” John grumbled early the following morning as he walked out to the car. He had already called Mrs. Dunn. She had heard nothing from her husband and was past frantic and into full-blown panic.

“Maggie,” he said, keeping his voice low and calm, “do you have someone who can come stay with you right now?”

“Yes. My…our daughter is on her way. She should be here late this morning. I don’t know what good it will do but she insisted.”

“Good. Having someone to…”

“If you say talk to—” she replied angrily. She quickly apologized. “I know you’re right. Please, please find him.”

“I’m doing my best,” he told her. “The second I find out anything you’ll be the first to know.”

The moment he got to his office he began sending out the word he needed people for search parties. He would have done so the previous evening if he hadn’t known it was almost impossible to safely scour the mountains around the town in the pitch dark. A few of the townsmen who knew what was going on had volunteered to go anyway. They eventually agreed not to when he pointed out he didn’t want to be looking for them, too, if they got lost or managed to fall into one of the old mineshafts that dotted the area.

“I think half the town has turned out,” Pat, one of John’s deputies, said half an hour later as they surveyed the throng of men and women standing at the bottom of the town hall steps.

“At least,” John agreed. He was about to issue instructions and break the people into groups of three or four when Dan, another of his deputies, beckoned to him.

“We finally found his car,” Dan told him. “It was parked behind Ms. Miller’s house. Before you get any ideas, she’s been out of town for the last week visiting family, according to her next door neighbor.”

John managed a smile. “It might have been interesting if she was home and he was just spending the night with her. Not good, but it would have solved our problem.”

“And Maggie would have killed him the moment he walked in the door.”

“There is that.”

John returned to the group, relaying the news about the mayor’s car. Then, as much as possible, he made certain each small group of searchers contained one person who had brought along a dog. “You are to stay with your teams,” he cautioned them. “As I told some of you last night, I don’t want to be searching for anyone other than Mayor Dunn.”

Somberly, the groups took off, each one heading for their designated area outside of town.

“I think the tourists are finding this all quite exciting,” John muttered as he watched a group of them talking among themselves. When one of them approached him, asking if there was anything they could do to help, he revised his opinion. He thanked him for offering, explaining that what held true for the searchers was doubly true for them. “You don’t know the area. Sending you off could put you in danger.”

The man looked disappointed but said he understood before going back to tell the others.

“I guess there’s something to be said for the innate goodness of people after all,” John said with a smile. His smile faded as he watched some of the high school students he’d talked to the previous afternoon. They were doing as he’d asked, moving down the streets, tacking flyers with a picture of the mayor to light poles, and stopping any tourists they met to ask if they remembered seeing him the day before. John figured the chances of that were nil, but if any of the tourists had spent the night at the hotel or the bed-and-breakfast, it was still a possibility.

“I guess we should get our butts in gear too,” he told the three deputies who were coming with him. The rest would run their usual patrols, while he and his team began checking any vacant buildings and homes. “As much as I hate the idea, we don’t know why he disappeared. If, God forbid, someone was responsible for it, he could be a prisoner or a dead body in one of the empty buildings.”

* * * *

With the permission of their respective bosses, Noah and Cody had joined in the search for the mayor. The team they were with was responsible for checking the north side of Spirit River from the top of the falls down to where it went under the bridge, a quarter of a mile from the Irish Rose, and entered the town proper.

“I really, really hope we don’t find him,” Cody said as he studied the rocks along the side of the falls. “I mean…”

“I know what you meant,” Noah assured him. “We want him found, but alive. Not here or at the bottom of the falls, torn to shreds by the rocks.”

“Exactly.” Cody shivered.

They continued their trek, moving slowly; afraid they could miss something if they didn’t. At one point a shout was heard over the roar of the water. They turned in unison to look back at one of the two other men on the team. He was kneeling on a rock, peering down into the water. A moment later he stood, shaking his head and waving them on.

“False alarm,” Cody said with a sigh of relief.

Noah nodded, glancing toward the top of the falls. “Who the hell is he?” he asked, pointing up. “I saw him there yesterday.”

“No clue,” Cody responded. “Never saw him before that I know of. What’s with the hat? It makes him look like something out of Solomon Kane or Indiana Jones.”

“Except he’s not wearing a longcoat, or whatever it’s called, if he’s going for the Kane look.”

As they watched, the man turned abruptly, stepping off the rocks onto dry land, and vanished into the trees.

“Just like he did yesterday. There one minute, gone the next.”

“He really is a vampire hunter and he staked Mayor Dunn then took him up there and threw him over the falls,” Cody said with a grin. “Naw. The mayor goes out in the daylight. Scratch that thought.”

Noah chuckled. “You, my friend, have some strange ideas. I guess we’d better get back to looking for him and pray we don’t find his body.”