Daria Morgendorffer set down her coffee mug and peered down at the mess of notes awaiting her on the diner table. No surface was left uncovered by the scattered arrangement of annotations, pictures, labels, and scribbled transcriptions. The facts, however, remained clouded, and the mere simplicity of it all prodded madly at her. Why does the Lawndale Sun-Herald always have to get on top of these types of capers? she wondered. And even worse, to pick me? She groaned with dismay. Now I feel guilty for eating them up in my adolescence. She took another swig of her very strong and very caffeine-laden black coffee. Eh, guilt gone.
She studied the papers another time. They painted a story shrouded in mystery: something was striking the heart of suburbia, and perhaps the hearts of its residents. "Strike" was such a strong word, though; it didn't seem as if the supposed victims were brutalized so much as they disappeared. No bodies, no bone fragments, no nothing. At this point, "thin air" did not even begin to adequately describe the situation. There were three victims in total: Sandi Griffin, Brittany Taylor, and Angela Li. At least who or whatever is doing this has exceptional taste, she thought with a smirk. Her conscience would have smacked her silly had utter puzzlement not done so first. What made it all the more befuddling was the fact that, firstly, all of the missing were last seen in the middle of the town. This was no Metalmouth working here, if there were anything; the forest was always at least twenty miles away from the site of last sighting. Secondly, all of this was revolving around one man's testimony.
A glossy photograph, marked with the man's name, Heinz Heilbronner, revealed his likeness; thickly creased wrinkles crossed in sweeping tangents from one thin white strand of hair to another. He looked rather old, almost definitely bordering on centenarian status. His eyes exuded a faded grey pallor, which seemed to contradict the wide grin on his face. If Daria hadn't known any better, she would have thought that he was crying for help inside. She didn't pay any mind to that at the moment. For now, the interpersonal connection was being saved for another one of her contacts, Jane Lane. Speaking of which, where was she? As the last person to see one victim, Sandi Griffin, alive, as well as to keep Daria sane, Jane was important, so long as coverage and staving off psychosis went. Fifteen minutes had passed since the time they had planned to meet, and she was never one to be fashionably late. Or for that matter, fashionable at all. Then again, the racecar drivers in Rally X were usually more responsible than Jane behind the wheel. She was probably being exposed to more middle fingers than a carpal tunnel specialist. With that in mind, Daria kept an avid ear to the door as she resumed poring over the flurry of information.
With Heilbronner's reputation, though, misinformation looked much more probable. Normally, men of his age shone brilliantly with the musky aura of experience and wisdom. He, on the other hand, proved to be a walking example of senility, so much so that to think of him as "walking" was easily an exaggeration. With his constant calls to 911, it came as a great wonder to imagine how the other emergencies got through, and more importantly, were responded to. He was always screaming about something, be it bones in the basement or mystic cults in the backyard or screaming mice. The screaming mice were his trademark; it was particularly common knowledge that on one fateful early morning, the fire department had to retrieve him from his roof. Retrieving the neighbors' sleep did not have as direct of a solution, sadly. One wondered if he, while seeking a nice, long, paranoia-driven talk with a stranger, mistook the 911 number for a 900 number. Daria took little pride in the fact that her higher-ups at the paper actually took the guy seriously. It was already enough of a presumption to assume a link between the vanishings, let alone trust a man who was essentially a cult leader without any followers.
4:30 P. M., the clock shouted. This is officially starting to get irritating, she thought as she pulled out her cell phone. With a few taps on the keypad, she punched in Jane's home number and waited. The incessant hum of the dial tone ruled over all for the next thirty seconds. Finally, the message popped up from the other end of the line: "Hello, Earthling. You have reached the Lane residence. Unless, of course, you're meaning to talk with most of them, in which case, you are SOL, good buddy." A call to her cell phone yielded similar results: "This is Jane Lane's answering machine. If you aren't Jane Lane, leave a message. If you are, it must be Tuesday." Daria ended the call with a click and sighed with relief. She was probably driving in her car. She bet that she wasn't picking up to avoid distraction. Yeah, that was it, to avoid distraction. She was just dead set on getting there, and completely and utterly safe by all conceivable and inconceivable senses of the word.
About two hours and five cups of coffee later, she stopped believing.