7.3
The Antlers Motel is just as Walker remembers it from his unfortunately extended stay there. The lobby still smells like mothballs, with the same furniture and decor that probably hasn’t been updated since the late 80s. The complimentary coffee display looks virtually untouched. Even the woman standing behind the desk in the lobby looks familiar, but then again, most bored motel clerks tend to be interchangeable. Her eyes go wide as Walker whips out his DPR badge, letting her get enough of a look at it to see it’s obviously important and governmental.
“Are you from the FBI?” the desk clerk asks, her voice hushed, almost reverently so. She looks only old enough to be in college, or just out of it, with an eyebrow piercing and a short, uneven haircut she obviously did on her own. The tarnished name tag pinned to her shirt reads ROSEMARY.
“Yes,” Walker says. It’s not technically a lie, not in the broad sense - most DPR agents are authorized, and even trained, to present themselves as FBI or Defense Department agents to civilians. It saves people with absolutely no knowledge of the supernatural from having to ask a lot of stupid questions, and then get a memory wipe. “Have you seen a woman around, kind of on the short side, long black hair pulled up in a ponytail? She might have been with one or two others. They probably checked in yesterday, or last night, and checked out earlier this morning.”
Rosemary is nodding in recognition even before Walker finishes talking. “Yeah, I saw her. Her and her friends checked out a couple hours ago.”
“Did she say anything about where they were going?” Landis asks, speaking up for probably the first time since they left the apartment complex. He’s on the other side of the small lobby, inspecting a crooked painting of some deer drinking from a stream.
“Nope,” Rosemary says. “She didn’t really say a lot. Just gave me the keys and left. I figured she was in a hurry.” She lowers her voice again, looking intently at Walker. “Is she…you know, a criminal? Are you tracking her down because she’s a serial killer or something?”
“Something like that,” Walker says.
“Is there any way you could let us into the room she was in?” Landis asks. He makes his way back over to the desk, standing just beside Walker. Rosemary seems to have just accepted that he’s also an FBI agent, even though he has no badge, and is wearing what Walker is pretty sure is his work uniform for the diner. “It hasn’t been cleaned yet or anything, right?”
“Uh - no, no, I don’t think so.” Rosemary spins around in her chair, studying the rack of cubbies behind her and eventually unhooking a key from one. She puts it down on the desk between her and Walker. Room 112. “Are you gonna need to tape it off or something?”
“Nah,” Walker says, taking the key. “We’ll be quick.”
“And we’ll bring the key back when we’re done,” Landis adds.
Rosemary nods, looking appreciative. “I’ll tell the cleaners to leave it alone until you come back.”
“Thanks,” Landis says. He flashes Rosemary a smile, holding the lobby door open for Walker as they leave.
Walker grunts noncommittally in gratitude, letting the door swing shut behind him with a heavy thud, and falls into step beside Landis, searching for Room 112. He still has his doubts about investigating Jenny’s motel room. She works like a machine - there won’t be anything left behind for them to find. Nothing that she doesn’t want to be found, anyway. If she’s decided to really dedicate herself to fucking with them, maybe she’ll have left a few items of no consequence, or red herrings that will lead them in the complete opposite direction. But knowing Jenny, the place will be wiped clean.
Or she trapped it somehow, Walker thinks grimly. But she’d have no way to know that we’d be coming here, and she probably wouldn’t want to risk killing any of the motel workers. Not her style.
Then again, he has no idea about her traveling companions. That’s what worries him the most, because for as long as Walker has known her, Jenny has always preferred to work alone. So either there was something about this job she didn’t think she could complete on her own, or, more likely, someone’s paying double because they really want Austin to get wherever he’s being taken. Walker doesn’t feel great about that, but he feels even worse having absolutely no information about Jenny’s backup - no descriptions, no M.O.s, absolutely nothing.
“Walker,” Landis says abruptly. Walker blinks, snapping back into the present and realizing that Landis is, in fact, standing at a door several yards behind him. He probably would have walked a full lap around the building, or right into the woods, if Landis hadn’t stopped him.
“Are you okay?” Landis asks, as Walker joins him in front of the door to Room 112. “You seem, uh, distracted.”
“I’m fine,” Walker snaps. He shoves the key into the lock on the doorknob and twists, pushing the door and letting it swing inwards, revealing the dark motel room. “Stay out here until I make sure it’s safe.”
He still doesn’t like the idea of bringing Landis along with him. Landis is barely a DPR agent - might not even end up being one at all, depending on what Jacob ultimately decides to do with him. The only reason Landis is even affiliated with the DPR is because Austin called in a favor. He doesn’t have training, or useful powers, or anything, and he’s certainly not equipped to take on a handful of hired mercenaries. At some point, Landis is going to become dead weight, and Walker knows he’ll have to pick up the slack.
Then again, if Landis’s performance in the duel in Hell was any indication, he’s more than capable of holding his own against people who outmatch him in every conceivable way. Walker lingers on the thought for a moment, staring inside the motel room. Okay, well, maybe he’s not as useless after all. Still, this would go so much faster if I was on my own.
“You think it’s a trap?” Landis asks, also peering inside the room.
“I don’t know what I think it is yet,” Walker says.
“Jeremy could -”
“No offense,” Walker says, “but I sort of trust my own judgement more than your friend who I can’t even see. Will you just let me handle it?”
Landis makes a noise of dissent, but hangs back regardless. Walker steps inside the motel room and flips on the light. Nothing happens - well, the light turns on, but aside from that nothing happens. For all intents and purposes, Room 112 looks just like the room Walker stayed in when he was living at the Antlers Motel, but with two beds instead of one. The furniture is all where it should be, the TV off, the bathroom door wide open. There’s even been an attempt made to straighten up the beds before leaving, the pillows arranged neatly and the covers pulled up into place.
“See anything?” Landis asks.
“Not yet,” Walker says. “Hang on a sec.”
He laces his fingers together and stretches his arms out in front of him at a downwards angle, cracking his knuckles. It’s been a while since he did anything truly fancy with his powers, but it’s sort of like riding a bicycle. The training is already ingrained into him. All he really has to do is flex the right muscle.
Rolling his head from side to side, cracking his neck, Walker casts his powers out over the room like a net, enfolding each piece of furniture within it. There’s a slight mental strain - nothing more than an itch, really - as he extends his grasp to more and more individual objects. First the television and the heavy desk lamps, then easy things: the bed sheets, the pillows, the cushion on the small armchair tucked into one corner. The drawers are the hardest - making sure they pull out, not float up, takes a little bit of finesse.
Once he’s satisfied with the range of items under his control, Walker gives them all the most gentle tug he can muster. He hears Landis gasp behind him as everything, simultaneously, drifts out of place. And it is pretty cool. From an outsider’s perspective, Walker imagines that it looks like someone suddenly turned the gravity off inside the motel room. The beds are about a foot off the ground, pillows and sheets bobbing above them, close to the ceiling. The desk and its chairs wobble in midair, drawers sliding forwards with heavy, wooden sounds. But still, aside from the floating, nothing looks booby trapped or out of the ordinary.
“Okay,” Walker says, “you can come in. See if you can find anything that looks off.”
He can hear Landis enter the room behind him, then the sound of the door closing, and the chain lock being slid shut. Probably a good idea. If any of the staff saw this, we’d have a lot of explaining to do.
Landis steps around him, kneeling to look under the beds. “How long can you keep that up for?”
“A while,” Walker says. With a bigger room, this trick might be harder, but he’s feeling barely any side effects right now. It’s possible that he’d get fatigued after about an hour or so, but he doubts they’ll be sticking around that long. “See anything?”
“No.” Landis gets back on his feet. “How’d you learn to do that?”
“Department training,” Walker says. “It was a pain. Check the drawers, will you?”
Landis checks the desk drawers, and comes up empty, then wanders over to the nightstand in between the two beds, and the small drawer where motels usually keep their Bibles. His eyes widen, and he fishes inside, coming up with a folded sheet of printer paper and three small, laminated cards.
IDs? Walker yanks one out of Landis’s hand without even thinking twice about it, catching it as it zips towards him. It’s a driver’s license. Walker adjusts his glasses and examines the picture on the card, a vaguely familiar man with patchy facial hair and a nose ring. I’ve seen him before, somewhere. Where do I know him from?
“I’ve got Vera Collins and Glen Burke,” Landis says, examining the two cards in his hands. “Both Antlers residents.”
“Bryan Henley,” Walker reads off of the ID he grabbed, glancing up at Landis. “Ring any bells?”
Landis’s eyebrows furrow. “Yeah, actually - Austin’s coworker. When I called the library, his boss said that Bryan never showed up to work, and Austin was supposed to take his shift.”
“Shit,” Walker says. “Well, he’s dead. Dunno about those other people, but since their IDs are here…”
“Yeah, probably dead,” Landis agrees.
“What’s with the paper?” Walker asks, unceremoniously dropping everything else in the room as he joins Landis next to the nightstand. The floor shakes a little as the heavier pieces of furniture come down, and Landis jumps at the sudden, cacophonous noise.
“No idea,” he says, tentatively opening the paper and smoothing it out against the top of the nightstand. There isn’t much on it - a basic, grainy map with a route traced on it, probably printed off of a website. The route starts in Antlers and ends outside of town, in a city Walker recognizes as being four or five hours away. And underneath the map - a note, in loose, bubbly handwriting that most certainly doesn’t belong to Jenny.
Don’t let our trip home get too boring. Catch us if you can! :) - H + O