Missing Pages
Matthew Ryan Fischer
It had been three days since anyone
had heard from Donnie when Nestor landed in Jakarta. Over the next two days
Nestor followed the paper trail to room 219 at the Grandia hotel in Bandung.
There had been reports of a recent rash of fires breaking out all over the
city. Nestor suspected that Indonesia had its very own branch of the Arsonists
Guild and this firebrand had something to do with Donnie’s disappearance.
A month ago Nestor had been on his own
trail of a secret manuscript when it was lost to a rival. Donnie had sent a
card that said he caught a hint of a whiff of the scent of a trail and was
going to be in Jakarta and if Nestor could break free, he should join him
there. Donnie was a great librarian but a terrible tracker. Nestor wrote word
that he’d be there soon, but clearly Donnie hadn’t waited. Maybe he got lucky,
or maybe his skills had vastly improved. Nestor was impressed that Donnie had
found a trail in a foreign country and made his way through two cities. Still,
Nestor wished that his friend had waited. Whatever book was out there, it wasn’t
worth Donnie’s life.
Nestor had bribed his way into room
219. Donnie’s things were still there, or at least enough to make it seem as if
Nestor were the first one there. Clothes didn’t matter. Normal travel items
didn’t matter. Nestor was looking for papers. He needed something to track. He
found a pocket notepad with missing pages, and hidden in a pill case in a
drawer a scrap of a very old parchment specimen. That was interesting. The
scrap had elements of cloth pulp, and perhaps animal skin? Was that possible? Something
Arabic? Several hundred years old if nothing else.
What had Donnie found and why hide one
small piece? Where was the rest of it? Some ancient text that held too much power
and perhaps Donnie paid the ultimate price to hide it. If it was that
important, Nestor thought, then he should have gotten out of the country the
moment he had it.
The Sky Lounge Bar advertised three
beers for just over one hundred thousand rupiah. That couldn’t be right, he
thought and he tried to do the exchange rate again in his head. Three beers for
about six dollars? It reminded him of a life time ago when he was in college
and decided to invest, even if it was the cheap stuff they were serving.
There was rooftop swimming pool and
Nestor took his beers and settled in at outside table to think. There was a toy
truck left beside the pool some child had left behind. Someone’s vacation was
about to become a lot harder, thought Nestor. A disgruntled child would be no
fun.
The notepad was blank, but pages had
been ripped out. Nestor examined the paper, but found no indentation from
previous scripting. Donnie had been passing notes to someone, but if Donnie was
writing notes, Nestor thought, it was after the paper had been ripped from the
notepad. Where had they ended up and was there a way to track them?
The toy truck bugged Nestor. Something
in the back of his mind was trying to figure out the connection. Something left
behind. Something forgotten. Something that wasn’t supposed to be there. Something
about that truck was telling Nestor a clue he couldn’t quite figure out. Was
there something in the room that was left behind? Or that wasn’t normally
there? Something that would be obviously out of place...
A package of cigarettes! Donnie didn’t
smoke. But there was a pack in the trash. And a pack would contain a lot of
paper. Donnie was clever and could certainly hide a clue on a normal item that would
only look out of place to a close friend. Maybe he knew Nestor would be the one
to come looking.
Nester leapt from his seat and hurried
back to room 219. Two out of three beers went unfinished.
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