There are stories that need to be told. There always are. Tanya had spent her whole life searching for some of them, tracking them down. Reporting, in some cases. Debunking others. It was all the same to her. The truth was in the story.

She’d grown up on stories. Long after her brothers stopped listening to their Gampa’s tall tales, long after they turned into sports-playing teens and responsible adults, she’d revisit the tales he told, pouring over her hastily transcribed versions in childish diaries, or listening to the later versions he told in the nursing home that she’d caught on tape, when his connection to the real world was as ephemeral as his grasp on the truth.

Tales of monsters and fairies, lovers and murderers, heroes and the villains who foiled their every plan. Never the same tale twice, always revised, revisited, polished to reveal a different side, a new facet of the truth.

But was it truth? Was any of it?

She’d gone from listening at Gampa’s knee to investigative journalism in an instant – one moment a child, the next graduating from Northwestern with a bachelor’s degree and a job offer from the Tribune. She spent years there, toiling as copygirl, then cub reporter, tracking down every lead. In the dusty print archives of the paper, on weekends and her rare days off, she traced other stories. Gampa’s stories. And always, the hotel.

The Lands’ End Hotel and Resort. Sometimes the Land’s End. Sometimes Land Send. Or Lan Descend. There wasn’t much mention of it in the voluminous archives of the paper, but what was there was confused. Tanya only knew it was the same hotel from the telltale twinge of excitement in her chest when she stumbled on another article, tucked in the last pages of the newspaper.

The madman’s killing spree that took out two innocents (later revealed to be not-so innocent indeed) before the gunman ended his own life got a bare bones mention on page 17, the hotel mentioned only in passing. But Tanya picked up on it.

Earlier, a mysterious drowning in the marshy woodlands, long before forensics had progressed to the science it was now, a showy setting for every other crime drama on TV. Tanya didn’t watch TV. She read the papers. And all the Trib had to say was that the cops were baffled by what seemed to be postmortem insect bites, vast and numerous. Drowning was the easier explanation. The victim had been found by a guest of the Land’s End.

The disappearance of Pulitzer Prize winning writer Neb Stuart, his posthumously published novel The Apple Orchard a critically acclaimed bestselling success, last seen at the hotel.

Tanya’d been tipped off by her friend Jasmine, the Trib’s music critic, to the liner notes on Wallis Garrity’s fourth CD, the last one before he left rock and roll for classical music. His song “In the Forest” alluded to the Lands’ End

And his acknowledgments mentioned the hotel in a rambling paragraph about influences and paintings, things lost and ladies loved.

Of course there was the body found in Room Six that time – that had even made the front page of the paper, but as the case dragged on, and an ID of the victim was never made, it fell to the back of the metro section before disappearing completely.

But no article even mentioned the man with the monocle. He was a cipher, from the moment she’d first seen him as a child and pointed him out to her Gampa, asking him who he was, she’d been intrigued. He was the figure that appeared in her dreams when she was drunk, and woke with vivid memories of unconscious enlightenment, lost the second she opened her eyes. He was the villain of her nightmares, the mysterious man in her visions. The question that needed an answer. He was who she combed the archives for, when an internet search proved impossible. How do you google a childhood memory?

On a microfiche of the oldest papers, she read of a duel between whores for a piece of property, and finally found him. A tintype, transferred to paper, saved on fiche, and pulled up decades later. A young man with a monocles, standing over a dead woman in a corset and crinoline, shaking the hand of a another dazed young women, dressed similarly. The caption read “The McGaa hands over the keys of The House of Mirrors to Miss Lacy.” Tanya printed out the picture at 200% resolution and stared at it under a magnifying glass. The McGaa. It was him – the old man in the monocle.

She scanned the dates. It was impossible, really. It couldn’t be him, he should have been long dead when she was a child. But she knew it. Knew it with a deadening certainty. This was the lead.

She moved quickly, grabbing her notebook and jacket, racing up to the newsroom to request an emergency leave. Her boss, baffled, watched Tanya race from his office like someone’d been shot, and she had an exclusive on the trigger. At home, she paid no attention to the clothes she threw in an overnight bag, just packed hastily, and threw the leather satchel in the passenger seat of her dusty Saab. Tires would have peeled if she had let her driving be affected by her enthusiasm. Still, on the highway, she floored it, and soon found her familiar way to the exit, and the country roads that lead to the hidden turnoff. She bumped up the potholed drive with heart pounding, and forced herself to stop and compose herself once she’d parked.

Maybe she was wrong. Maybe it was a mistake. Maybe, maybe…

She stepped into the lobby, and the light changed. Her heartbeat slowed, and she smiled at the girl behind the desk. Was hers a familiar face too? Anything was possible. Her engagement ring sparkled in the light as she smoothed down the register. “Yes? May I help you?”

Tanya gave a reporter’s smile, a friendly request for help, for information. “Yes, I need a room, please. For the night.”

The girl smiled back. “Certainly. Would you mind signing in?” She handed a pen to Tanya, who signed the register with a flourish, and handed over her credit card for the night’s deposit.

As the clerk turned to get a key, Tanya inquired, casually, “Tell me, does McGaa still work here?”

“McGaa?” The girl’s fingers caressed one key, then swiftly chose another as she repeated the name.

“Yes, an older gentleman. With a monocle.”

“Sorry,” she smiled, passing the key over the blotter to Tanya. “Don’t know who you mean. Your room’s on the ground floor, at the back of the house. Down the hall, take three rights, and you’ll see it in on your left.”

“Thanks.” Tanya took the key, her smile slipping from her face as she turned and walked down the hall. Was the girl lying? She thought the girl was lying. She passed a canvas signed Winters and a bronze bust of a man, the label tarnished, only the half-name Remi visible as she made the requisite turns and found her room. Tossing her bag on the bed, Tanya pulled open the curtains. The sun was setting over the marsh, dipping into twilight.

Deciding she’d ask the waiter, or find a bellboy when she went down for dinner, she resolved to wash her face and find the restaurant. She changed quickly, pulling on a long flowing skirt she couldn’t remember owning, let alone packing. With her notebook in her shoulder bag, Tanya pulled her door shut behind her, and wandered down the hall in the opposite direction from which she’d come.

There was a scent of spices in the air, and she was suddenly starved. Down another hall, up a short flight of stairs, she found the smell stronger. She turned a corner quickly, sure she’d be upon the restaurant, and found the hall ended only in a plain wooden door. Unlabeled.

Convinced what she searched for was on the other side, she tried the knob, which turned. The door opened, and a wave of heat, and laughter, and the smell of cheap whiskey poured over her, along with the tinny sounds of an out-of-tune upright piano. A silk-gloved hand pulled her through the doorway, her bag dropping behind her, and pushed her towards the bar. “Hurry up, girl! The McGaa ain’t one to wait on a whore.”

Tanya stopped, torn between outrage, excitement, and a frisson of fear. “Excuse me? What? Where?”

The blonde who’d nudged her, half-dressed in a soiled cotton undershirt, cheap red silk gloves, a tight corset, and a full skirt, shoved the door shut behind her and pushed her again. “Quit dallyin’, Tee. You don’t wanna make him mad. You know what happened to Mari.” She jutted her chin towards the end of the bar, and Tanya finally saw him.

Tall, slim, darkly dressed. Handsome and yet strikingly somber in the garish saloon. Suddenly, all that mattered was that she’d found him. Never mind where or -- god forbid -- when. “The McGaa,” she whispered.

He turned, and the monocle reflected the candlelight from the overhead chandelier. Tanya pushed through the crowd and was suddenly in front of him. “The McGaa,” she said again, and he took a cigar out of his teeth and nodded, acknowledging the greeting. “I hear you’re looking for me, girl. Congratulations. You found me.”

By ktbuffy

• Finders Keepers