NaNoWriMo, Day Twenty-Two

While I normally put in a lot of  internal links to previous, related posts here, I won’t be doing that for what I hope will be thirty NaNoWriMo posts. If you have jumped into or stumbled onto this story in mid-adventure, there are plenty of other ways to navigate around the site to find previous installments. Actually doing so is left as an exercise to the student.

Some of you may be wondering, “Why did Paul put in that whole thing between Tom and Margaret as he was being kidnapped where Tom told her to give Jason a message about the “motorcycle” (nudge, nudge, wink, wink), and then never mention it again when Margaret’s trying to contact Jason and it should be a key secret code word that helps Jason trust Margaret enough to call her? Huh? What’s up with that?”

Exactly!! That’s what I said when I re-read a bit. It was a clever bit when I put it in, then I COMPLETELY FORGOT ABOUT IT. This is what happens in a “zeroth” draft. Once it’s all done, then I’ll go back through it all and one of the big things to get done will be to spot things like that and patch them up. Either re-write the scene where Margaret is trying to contact Jason, or take it out of the scene where Tom’s being kidnapped.

To paraphrase Bismark, writing early drafts, like making sausages and laws, might be something you wish to know as few details about as possible.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN (continued)

Once she was done at home, Margaret headed over to Tom’s hotel to see if somehow he had been released and wound up back there. She was really hoping to find him since it would make things so much simpler. When she pulled into the parking lot, the first thing she noticed was that his rental car was no longer parked where it had been yesterday.

That wasn’t a good sign, especially since she still had the keys to it in his backpack. She parked in the rear and then tried to open the stairwell door using Tom’s hotel room key. The electronic lock beeped and failed to open. She tried it again, just to make sure, and got the same response. Not wanting to try it a third time for fear that it would start tripping alarms, she grabbed the backpack walked around to the lobby.

There was a different front desk clerk on duty today. Margaret gave her a big smile and explained again how she was trying to return the backpack to Mr. Tiernan. Would she be kind enough to call his room and see if he was there?

“Sorry, it won’t do any good. He’s gone,” the woman said. “He called to check out a couple of hours ago.”

“I see,” replied Margaret, although she didn’t. “Do you know if he got the message that I still had this,” indicating the backpack, “and I was trying to get it back to him?”

“It doesn’t look like he ever picked up any notes, there’s still one here. He just called is to say that he had left before sunrise and wouldn’t be back. We were instructed to close out the bill and check him out.”

“Sure, I understand. Do you know if it was him calling or someone else calling for him? He had told me that he would be here another week.”

“It was a guy’s voice, said it was him, knew the room number, said he was gone. I don’t know that I would recognize his voice one way or the other. Housekeeping hasn’t said anything to me about lost and found, so I’d assume his stuff is all gone. It all seems routine. Is there a problem of some sort?”

“No, not a problem, I’m just trying to figure out how to get his stuff back to him. It should have been an easy thing but it’s turning into more of a hassle than I want to deal with. I just thought maybe he might have indicated where he was going or if he was going to be coming back, but it was just a shot in the dark. I guess I’ll just throw this stuff in my office and wait to see if he calls. Thanks.”

Walking back to her jeep, she went by the place where Tom’s car had been. There were no signs of anything unusual, no broken glass or signs that anything odd had happened. Margaret noticed a security camera discretely hidden on one of the parking lot light poles. Surely if the car had been towed away someone inside would have noticed and asked questions. Whoever had taken the car had to have done it quietly, but without the keys and without breaking in. Margaret took it as yet another sign of the technological skills and toys available to whoever was running this show.

She sent a quick email to Jason to update him on what she had found. She also mentioned the security camera in the parking lot, as well as the cameras in the hotel hallways and stairwells. One of the discussions they would have to have sooner rather than later would be what the rules of engagement were, if any.

Uncertain of what else she could check on or where else she could go, Margaret headed back to the hanger. As she was heading toward the highway she got stuck at a railroad crossing, the crossing guard arms lighting up and coming down just as a long freight train approached. As the engine got near, she heard the whistle sound a warning blast. Once it was past her, she heard it sound off again each time it got to a major street crossing through town.

Something that had been bothering her since last night finally clicked in her head. It had been close to 2:00 AM when she had been spooked by the cats in her parking lot. They had all fled just as the two train whistles sounded and Jason had told her that the invisible object had vanished at that same instant.

But there shouldn’t have been any train whistles. The first one came from the direction of town, where she was now. But for years the city had fought with the train companies over the noise of the train whistles in the middle of the night. They had reached a compromise with the trains agreeing to not blow their whistles between 10:00 PM and 6:00 AM, and the city footing the bill for some more elaborate and technologically advanced crossing gates so that the trains wouldn’t be required by law to blow the whistles.

In addition, the train schedules through town were so precise you could set your watch by them. Everyone in town knew when the trains came through and managed critical trips around them. There were no trains that should have been on those tracks in town last night at 2:00 AM. Margaret couldn’t remember the last time she had seen an unscheduled freight coming through.

Finally, there was the sound of the second train whistle, the high pitched one off in the northeast. She had been too spooked by the insane, zombie cats to react to it, but that whistle came from a direction where there weren’t supposed to be any trains. Ever. Except that in that direction were the “abandoned” train tracks she and Tom had seen running right by the compound. The ones she thought were abandoned, but Tom and Josh thought were in use. The ones Josh had found to be hidden in all of the maps and photos out there.

Since everyone was still stopped waiting for the train to pass, Margaret pulled out her phone and sent a quick message to Josh about the significance of the trains and their whistles in the night. As she hit “send” and looked to see if the end of the train was in sight yet, a woman walked up to her passenger door and rapped on the window.

Margaret was startled. The woman was not anyone she recognized, but she also wasn’t Ellen. There wasn’t any reason to panic, at least not yet. Plus, with a train in front of her and cars behind and next to her, she wasn’t going anywhere. The woman was looking at her expectantly, so Ellen waved for her to open the door so she could see what she wanted.

To Margaret’s surprise, the woman took this as an invitation to get in. She quickly slid into the passenger seat and closed the door behind her.

“We have very little time,” the strange woman said. “You’re Margaret Locke, the balloon pilot, correct?”

“What?” asked Margaret, confused and suddenly wishing that she still carried her old military sidearm in the car with her. “I don’t know what…”

“I’m trying to help you and your friend, Tom,” the woman said calmly but quickly. “You’re the pilot from his flight two days ago, correct?”

“Yes, I’m Margaret Locke and I was Tom’s balloon pilot. It was just a sightseeing tour so he could…”

“Save it, we both know that’s bullshit. I live at that place out in the desert. They’ve got him there. Don’t worry, he’s fine. They’re going to let him see his aunt. She’s out there too. I don’t know what will happen to him after that, I guess it depends on him. But I don’t think that they’ll hurt him, that’s not the way it works. At least, I’ve never seen them do anything like that. So don’t do anything stupid like going to the police or trying to ‘rescue’ him. It will just make a real mess. I don’t’ know what they would do if that happens.”

“I wasn’t going to the police and all by myself I’m not breaking in or rescuing anyone. Who are ‘they’? Can you tell me what the hell is going on?”

“No, I can’t. I’ve got to go, they don’t know that I’m meeting with you and I don’t want to know what they would do if they found out.” She started to open the door and get back out.

“Wait!” called Margaret. “Who are you? How can I get in touch with you if I need to?”

The woman stood outside of the jeep and stopped shutting the door. “If necessary, I’ll get in touch with you. I’m Morrison.” With that, she shut the door and walked back through the cars to the sidewalk.

Margaret desperately wanted to follow her or at least see where she went, but Morrison disappeared behind a truck just as the last cars of the train passed and the gates lifted. With a couple dozen cars lined up behind her, Margaret had no choice but to drive forward. She tried to find a place to do a U-turn, but there were cars backed up in the opposite direction for two blocks. By the time Margaret got back to the tracks, there was no sign of Morrison at all.