Sarah entered the Spiral with her briefcase full of all the information she found on Maria de Rossi. First off, she needed a drink and headed straight for the Old Man.
"Good evening," she said, trying to be as polite as possible, "could I have a Coke, please?" and while she waited, Sarah kept glancing to the door.
Jacque walked into the Spiral. He was wearing a shabby blue windbreaker over a thick grey sweater and pair of faded blue jeans, completed with his black gym bag that he seemed to be always carrying. The latest in fashion circa 1985.
He wasn't feeling that well, in fact he felt nauseated- it felt like a heavy fat had clung to his heart. It was a feeling that made itself known when he woke up at around four in the morning and continued through the Nafilah salah. Even at noon when he took the "medicine" it conferred none of its euphoria. It seemed that the potency of the junk too was replaced with the damned feeling. He was stirred to say the least.
He smiled when he saw Sara, she was one of the only friendly faces he had seen in a while. He walked to the bar and said, "I hope I'm not late Miss Quin. Now what was it you were saying about this Rossi girl?"
Sarah looks sideways as Jacque entered and took a seat near her.
"No, not at all. I've only just got here myself," she says. "Found some hopeful information although rather than repeat myself, let's wait a little longer for Nicole, ok?"
Sarah smiled as Nicole joined them but said nothing, not really used to wasting words. Instead, she opened the briefcase and sarted to remove sheets of paper.
"I spent several nights trawling through the internet for anything to do with Maria de Rossi. Her Facebook account and home address was easy but it took several nights before I began to hit gold. It seems that Maria was estranged from her parents, fleeing to Sacramento for an unknown reason. The blog pinned in the basement seemed to be her reaching out to someone, someone also unknown."
Quinn took a breath, flicking through the final pages before bringing up the information on Maria's parents. "Ah, here we are. Obviously worried, Maria's parents, Carlo and Ada, came to town looking for their daughter, even placing a plea at St. Mark's, a local church. The night she disappeared, Maria left a message with them, begging for them to come and save her." Sarah holds up a small scrap of paper, proud of her work. "Here is the hotel they are both staying at along with contact details."
"Shit, she's nice looking girl too. I dunno in a town like this? It could be possible that she was just swallowed up by some of the more, uh, normal causes rather than creatures or whatever." Jacque felt a ping of guilt after he said that, his mind wandered to that time where he and a couple of André's thugs kidnapped that dope runner's sister. "Then again this photo's weird and we might as well try to help her folks. I vote to go talk to them, see if they can shed a little more light onto Maria."
"I was thinking along the same lines," Sarah replies, scanning the papers and agrreing with Jacque. "However, it makes me curious as to why St. Marks? Just a coincidence perhaps?"
"They could be religious." Nicole posed.
"It couldn't hurt to peek within and see if any one's still looking." She muses aloud a moment.
"I wonder why she fled here in the first place. Couldn't hurt to run the parents' names down and see if this could be pressure on them. I've heard of zealous collectors of the criminal variety dabbling in that."
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