Back in the crappy motel that was the only one in the town, she met Bryan in the reception. He had arranged for them to talk in the breakfast hall, which had glass doors that could be closed, so they could talk in private, but also meant that the people in the reception could see if any of them did something. That was surprisingly considerate of him. Maybe he had already guessed that she was wary of strangers, or maybe he didn't fully trust her either.
"I suppose I can start by saying what I know. My wife is an investigative journalist. Her career was on a downward turn, and she chased a story to get it to swing up again. She was very secretive and didn't even tell me much about it. Only that it could be her big break. I didn't think much of it, as she has said that many times and it had never amounted to anything. She said she would go somewhere for the weekend, to investigate. I asked if she wanted me to come with her, but she said I couldn't, as I didn't have a ticket.
When she didn't come back on Sunday, I didn't worry at first. It has happened, sometimes, that she has stayed away longer than she expected. It took two weeks before I started to worry. That was also the time when I noticed that a large sum of money had been transferred from our joint account to an organization I knew nothing about. A quick search told me it was a medieval re-enactment group. Nothing was suspicious about it at first glance, but I suspected that this group was what my wife had gone to investigate. I tried to find a way to contact this group, but my emails went unanswered, and about a week later, every trace of them disappeared."
Nora nodded. That sounded much like what she had discovered.
"I contacted her workplace, and they had no additional information, but they allowed me to search through her desk for clues. There was nothing. Rita has been increasingly paranoid that her fellow journalists have been "stealing" her work and taking credit for it. I don't know how real that fear was, but the result is that nothing of what she suspected made it into writing on her desk.
After many months of waiting for a sign of life, I was finally allowed to take her work computer and get a specialist to unlock it. Sadly, there wasn't all that much on it, but I did find this list of names. When I looked them up, it turned out most of them are missing, some of them for years, others more recent at the time. The common thing is that they all went away for a weekend, then the next-of-kin got a message, most often stating that they got sick and had to go to a specialist hospital, but occasionally there were also some who had been caught doing something illegal and were arrested, or other similar stories. They were all designed so that the person wouldn't be able to contact them for a while. I suspect you have a similar story?"
Nora could only nod. Yes. A very similar story. How long had this been happening?
"I tried to go to the police with this, but they weren't interested. They think this is someone trying to make sense of a series of unrelated disappearances, like a conspiracy theory. But it all makes a little too much sense for me to dismiss this as yet another one of my wife's ideas. She didn't invent that list of names. The oldest is all the way back to the 1980's and I don't know if all of them truly are connected, but so many can't be a coincidence. Do you have some information I don't?"
Nora had to take a moment to collect herself.
"I only know about my best friend, Audrey, but I have a few other names that have also gone missing around the time the group was in the same area. She and I were supposed to go to this together, but I got food poisoning and had to cancel last minute. I encouraged her to go alone. Like you mentioned, I got the text messages that she got sick and had to be taken to a specialist hospital. It took months before I started looking into what hospital it could be, since I didn't hear from her. By the time I realized that there was no hospital, all traces of them had disappeared. I have traced them to many other locations since then, but they always move before I can get there."
"You were supposed to go there? How do you apply to do that?"
"I saw an ad online and was intrigued. I thought it would be exactly what my friend needed after she had lost her entire family in an accident only months before. It was expensive, but we thought it could be worth it. Just once, spending money on something we wanted, not thinking about the future. Audrey had some money left from the sale of the family farm and the life insurance. I spent from my life savings. Audrey has always been interested in history. She can spout facts about different eras of history like no one else, she knows more than many university students. But she's never been to a university, she couldn't afford it and didn't get any scholarships. This would be exactly what she needed.
Honestly, if I had gotten a message from her saying she had accepted an offer for a job at that place, I would have believed it. That would have been the perfect job for her. But instead, I got vague texts about getting sick and having to go to a specialist hospital. Nothing about how long, which hospital or anything about how the trip went, apart from getting sick. And nothing personal, or self-deprecating, like she would have said it. Still, it took many months before I started to worry. I was waiting for a text to say she was finally out of the hospital. If not that, then a letter, something to tell me any details. After 6 months, I tried to report her missing. But the police weren't interested. They said I didn't have any proof she wasn't in a hospital. If she was in a coma, she wouldn't be able to send a message. But I am her emergency contact. The hospital would have contacted me, if that were the scenario. I tried her insurance company, but they stonewalled me, saying they couldn't divulge patient information. After I had called them daily for months, one of them at least confirmed that they hadn't registered anything about Audrey for over a year. That's when I knew something was seriously wrong. But again, the police weren't interested.
"I've spent the years since then trying to find this group and in the process, I've found that Audrey is far from the only one who has gone missing in proximity to that group. I probably have some of the same names as you, or maybe a continuation of it. Is your wife named Katherine, or Rita?"
"It's Rita. How did you find out about her?"
"You filed a missing persons report. Those are public, though most of the details are not."
"Ah, of course. I'm just not used to others knowing about any of this. I got myself a PI license just to be able to access those databases, and even then I don't get access to the details, just minimal information."
"I'm not used to it either. I was afraid you were there to check if anyone was on their trail, when I first saw you."
"I feared much the same." Bryan said with a smile. "Now, the question is, what can we do? I mean, we can gather what we have and see if we can shed some light on some questions, but we are still only two people and neither of us have evidence the police will take seriously. Where are you from? Not here, I presume, since you have a room at this motel."
"I have a small apartment in a town just south of here. I only came up here for the long weekend. I knew I probably wouldn't find anything, but I had to try."
"I did find something the first few places I looked. I was hoping to find it again, across state lines, so I could take this to the FBI. In the first place I tracked them to, I found the remains of human bodies. Then again at the next location, though that one was missing a skull."
Dead? Nora had tried not to think about that, but it made sense. She had to hope that Audrey wasn't one of the dead ones though.
"Where? How many? Do you know their names?"
"Two. One female, one male. Unfortunately, it looked like both of them had been eaten by animals, so the police could only try with DNA. The male was a registered felon, a man known for a violent temper. I suspect that may be what killed him. I've spoken to his mother, his only living relative, and she had been told that he had been arrested, and thought he was in prison, unable to contact her."
Nora didn't want to hear the next, but she had to ask.
"And the woman?"
"A middle-aged woman, not registered, but they suspect it was someone from the nearby village who went missing a month before. Her name was Katherine, but it seems everyone called her Karen. She wasn't a pleasant woman, from what I heard. Her husband had just left her and taken their children with him. I tried to talk to him, but he wasn't interested. He said that anyone who took that woman away from this world did the world a favor. When I tried to explain about the others who were also missing, he simply closed the door on me."
"I think I tried to talk to him as well. He didn't answer the door and when I tried to call him, he just answered, "I am not associated with her anymore" and hung up. I didn't know she was dead."
"Sadly, the police there weren't interested either, they wrote it off as two people that had wandered out in the wilderness and died. That happens a few times every year, though most of them aren't buried like they were."
"You think if you find more dead people, you can get the federal government involved? Have you tried talking to them with what you have?"
"No, but if we combine it, we might have a story."