[DYH] Waiting for the Fuzz

Time: Day 3, Morning
Weather: Cloudy
Warnings: None
Characters: Francis York Morgan, Emily Wyatt

"Zach, if this hotel were any bigger, it could easily double as an airship hangar!"

York stretched his right arm out to the side, as far as he could to make up for the immobility of his left arm, still in its hospital sling. The lobby alone was enormous, and he could only guess at how many rooms must be making up this place. Still, he hadn't run into anyone since Emily had dropped him off (must have only been a few hours ago, too), and the thought of all those empty rooms was both sad and evocative. Kind of added to the atmosphere, though he still hadn't met the hotel owner, whom he was already imagining as some kind of wizened, bulging-eyed crone along the lines of Marty Feldman as Young Frankenstein's Igor.

<That would be quite a sight.> The voice in York's head turned sly. <We should check the registry to see if anyone's here named "Abby Normal".>

Why not? Emily wasn't here to take him to the Sheriff's department yet, and they might as well get pre-acquainted with any newcomers so as not to mistake them for regular townsfolk. York flipped open the heavy tome lying on the front desk and began to leaf through it, starting with the most recent arrivals and working up the list.

"Let's see what we have here... A 'Bradley Karrde Smith'. Look at that, Zach! We must have just missed him. And he's a doctor, too. I'm not overly fond of doctors, but it's hard to judge a man with three names... Plus, his handwriting is much neater than any doctor I've ever met."

Next was a Forrest Kaysen, room number unlisted. York felt a slight prickle in his fingertip as it moved over the unfamiliar scrawl, as if his hand had fallen asleep. He rubbed his fingers together, frowned, moved on to the next name...

"Room 164, David Young Henning... You know, I never got a chance to ask him what he was doing at the hopital last night," York pondered. "And with a young lady to boot. Although a better question might be, what is he doing in Greenvale in the first place? I thought he was still in Boston."

<And we're the only ones assigned to the Anna Graham case... Unless there's something Abraham didn't tell us.>

"I guess that's something we'll find out sooner or later. I'm not too worried about that guy. If he's here to get in our way, we'll just have to take evasive measures... No offense to him, but we're perfectly capable of handling this on our own. Now, where were we... Oh!"

York pointed excitedly. "Tamika Weir, room 57. That must be the red-headed loudmouth who saved us in the forest. I knew she was from out of town, knew it! Looks like she's been here for a while... Almost as long as this one, right here..."

He stopped. The last name on the page was from a few months ago, and rang distant, spidery bells in York's mind. Charlotte Jacobs, 213. Jacobs... It couldn't be...

<Vanessa Jacobs,> Zach supplied helpfully. <North Carolina, last year, or a couple years ago. She was in the RSP files they transferred from Henning. We were reading them on the way here, remember?>

York didn't answer. He had a brief flash of a crime scene photo, a woman slumped over a wooden desk with seed-scattered blood sprayed unnaturally across the top, and unconsciously put his hand over his chest. The eight plastic bags with their crimson cargo were still nestled in his suit pocket, waiting. He sighed and tapped the name, with all its uneasy implications.

"It's all a little too neat, Zach. No activity for months, and then suddenly this place becomes a tourist hotspot... Almost as soon as there's an inexplicable murder that may be related to the series of important cases we're working on. Incredible, what a few scribbles of ink on a piece of paper can tell you about the state of the world."

<And what exactly is it saying?>

York picked up the pen and carefully amended "FBI Special Agent" above his own name in the ledger, inspired by Dr. Bradley Karrde Smith. "It's saying that things are coming together, perhaps a little more quickly than we anticipated. Like that opening scene in the first Indiana Jones movie, where Harrison Ford is braving all those booby traps after stealing the idol. It's coming down fast, Zach... But we can't afford to lose our hat on the other side."