Forgotten Witness by Rebecca Forster

over a trail of broken glass that lead to a liquor store where a glassy-eyed clerk watched television.
    To her left, in the shadows of a storefront, a pile of trash moved. Josie glanced toward it expecting a cat to dash away. Instead, she found herself looking at the craggy face of an old woman. A knit hat was pulled low over her brow and her bottom lip was pulled up over toothless gums. The woman didn’t blink and Josie passed, painfully aware of the imbalance of life. She could not right all wrongs anymore than Ambrose Patriota could.
    Behind her the woman rolled over again in the dark, disappearing herself. Josie pulled her collar tighter. She turned the corner and saw The Robert Lee Hotel a block ahead. The neon sign atop the building needed repair but other than that it didn’t look too bad at all.
    Then she opened the door.
     
    ***
     
    Initially, Josie didn’t notice any one thing about the place because she was overwhelmed by the general sense of decay.
    The lobby was impressively large and at one time had been majestic. Above her, two meticulously crafted barrel vaults came together at right angles to form a groined ceiling. Once that ceiling had been covered in gold leaf to catch the light of the huge chandelier that had lit both whore and ambassador as they made their way down the grand staircase. Now the gilt was flaked and spotty like a fancy manicure picked down to chips. The chandelier was missing crystal fobs and candle bulbs and what was left hadn’t been cleaned in a decade. Instead of sipping Vodka Gimlets at the bar on her left, two men in pajamas were taking slugs out of a bottle while they sat next to a piano that probably hadn’t been played since the Eisenhower era.
    Josie went the other way, treading on wall-to-wall carpet that was threadbare in patches and in others intact enough to see that there had once been a floral pattern of pink mums on a brown background. This path led her to the front desk that had been built to accommodate a crowd of guests. Those crowds had stopped coming long ago. She ran her gloved hand along it as she peered behind. There were no computer consoles which she found interesting since the hotel had a website. There was an open pack of gum, a stack of magazines, the remains of take-out Chinese, and some towels that didn’t look all that fresh. At the far end, there was an office. The window was covered with mini blinds. Three of the slats had been bent at the ends and the middle ones sagged as if someone had worn them down, constantly peering out, hoping to spy a guest. Light flickered behind the blinds in the predictable pattern of a television. Unable to tell if there was anyone in there or not, Josie leaned over the counter and hauled a huge ledger up and over.
    Five people had checked in that day and two had already checked out. None of them were Ian Francis. She flipped the page back. Two days earlier business was stellar. Twenty people had signed in over the weekend. She scanned the names. Half of the signatures were illegible and the others were easily dismissed simply by their length and fancifulness. She flipped back another page and her eyes were caught by the name Frances but this was a first name and the signature was sprawling. Nowhere did she see an example of the cramped, bizarre writing she had in her possession.
    Josie turned the pages again and ran her finger down all the names once more. Bingo. There was an entry for a guest with a last name of Francis. The initial was A. She had missed it the first time around.
    “You want to check in?”
    Not quite startled, just surprised to find anyone in the place with enough energy to call her out, Josie looked up. A man of medium height and maximum girth had propped himself up in the doorway between the lobby and the office. He wore a button down shirt and pinstriped pants. The pleats fanned out under the weight of his stomach. There was a nod to propriety in the shape of a black knit necktie improperly