by David Clark
SINFUL SILENCE
The Jordan Blake Paranormal Mysteries
David Clark
Table of Contents
Title Page
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The Adventure Continues...
While you are waiting....
1
Game Master Series
This book is dedicated to Gigi, our family’s companion for the last eleven years. She literally sat snuggled next to me through every word of this book, only pawing at the laptop a few times in protest. She gave her all to the family in the form of unconditional love. We were, are, touched by her in ways that shaped who we are and who we will be. You will never be forgotten.
1
Agent Jordan Blake arrived at the crime scene just after 3:30 in the morning. Not his favorite time of the day by a long shot. It had nothing to do with the hours of sleep he would now miss. He had already counted on less sleep than normal anyways having stayed up to finish watching a football game that was more than over by halftime. What always bothered him about this time of the morning was it was commonly referred to as the witching hour. Nothing good ever happened between the hours of 3:00 am and 4:00 am. If it had, he hadn’t seen any evidence of it. If he was up, he was always either at, or pulling up to a crime scene, much like the one he stood in front of now. After one more stretch and yawn he approached the sea of red and blue lights surrounded by yellow police line tape advising everyone “Do Not Cross”.
He approached the tape and weaved his way through the gathering of on-lookers that sirens and lights always brought out. It never mattered what time of the day, or night. Red and blue flashing lights always brought a crowd, like moths to a flame. Even in this rural neighborhood there was a sizable crowd. He dipped under the tape and a local officer sprinted toward him from across the front yard. His hand held up the whole time as if to use a special power to stop Jordan where he stood. Jordan continued walking forward and met the officer after a few more steps.
“This is a crime scene, get behind the tape,” the officer barked.
Jordan reached inside his coat pocket for his magic piece of tin that always put them back in their place. Law enforcement had a hierarchy. Sometimes you had to remind people of where they sat in it, even though outwardly you considered everyone part of the blue brotherhood. His hand pulled out the badge and flashed it at the officer. It was dark, and he squinted to look at it first, and then looked back up at Jordan. He didn’t move aside as most would have at this moment, so Jordan reinforced it. “FBI. I believe this is our scene.”
The officer pulled his flashlight off his belt and then blasted the badge with a beam of white light, then shone it in Jordan’s face before dropping it down, sending the beam into the ground. The officer gathered himself and puffed out his chest. “Care to try again, buddy?”
“FBI, do you have a problem officer,” now it was Jordan’s turn to squint as he read the name plate on the officer’s uniform. “Roberts?”
The flashlight once again blasted his badge with light and the officer pointed to something on it. He kept his light on the badge as Jordan turned it around to look. That was when Jordan saw what was causing all the commotion. He pulled the stick-on letter P off the badge revealing the B in FBI. Then he removed the picture of Casper the Friendly ghost that was taped over his own picture on his identification card. Being the one and only para-psychologist and demonologist in the Federal Bureau of Investigation meant he was the target of regular pranks. Jordan had lost track of how many times someone had messed with his badge. He had made a point to never let it out of his sight. Then he remembered he left it on the desk when he made a trip to the bathroom in the conference center they were using as a headquarters. With the number of agents there, the possible suspects for such tampering were numerous.
A reserved grin and stifled smirk accompanied the wave of a hand sending Jordan past the officer and the commotion out on the street. A straightened arm by the same officer pointed him down the hill to the left of the two-story farmhouse on the lot. The family that lived there stood out on the steps surrounded by agents from both the local office and the task force Jordan was assigned to. Agent Dawkins and Thomas were leading the questioning. Dawkins looked up from his notepad just long enough to wave and point Jordan in the same direction he was already heading. There was nothing in his expression that gave Jordan any inkling that he was behind the badge tampering.
The slope was steep, forcing Jordan to turn slightly and sidestep his way down. The combination of a warm day and cold night had produced a layer of dew that made footing a challenge, so Jordan kept one hand on the exposed exterior wall of the basement of what he now realized was a three-story house, with a basement built into the side of the hill. The windows on that level were dark, but that didn’t stop Jordan from using his light to get a look inside. It was a finished basement with a TV, and a large sectional couch in the center with a pool table behind it. A cave of sorts, one he wished to have some day. At the corner of the house, he saw the beams of dozens of flashlights moving around a barn a few hundred yards further down the hill side. The beam of his flashlight found a freshly trampled path through the dew moistened grass. Each step was a careful step, ensuring the light illuminated the area first before his foot impacted the ground. Jordan didn’t want to be the investigator that happened to step on a random drop of blood or other piece of crucial evidence.
As he approached the barn, he noted there was nothing particularly special about it. It was a typical red broad board barn with large doors on either end, and an opening above them to what was obviously a hay loft. A single light fixture above the door on the end closest to the house bathed the general area with light. From where Jordan was, he could see a large dirt path with areas of spilled hay leading from the door out into the darkness. A glance in its direction saw nothing more than a shadow of a fence in the moonlight. If this was a working farm, it was possible the pasture was beyond the fence, along with any livestock. Though, he didn’t hear any, or smell them. All he could smell was the wet grass.
Several curious looks greeted him at the barn. Each agent outside moved in a systematic canvasing of the area. Their attention focused on the area of ground under the sweeping beam of their light. Jordan made sure to avoid that mass to avoid any contamination of the scene. In the darkness it was hard to see who was who and made finding the agent in charge almost impossible. Everyone wore the same dark navy blue jackets with the same three letters in yellow on their back.
After a quick search of body language, Jordan gave up and called out, “Lawson!”
To his left, “In here Jordan,” responded the head of their task force, from just inside the barn door. Jordan jogged to the door and in. What he saw didn’t match what he expected. It was all new and bright. None of the timbers of the open structure showed the discoloration that the passing of time applies. Even the smell of freshly cut wood was still in the air. What appeared to be an old barn on the outside was a new structure on the inside, which, if he had to guess, was less than a month or two old. Yellow tape encircled four posts. A forensics investigator st
ood outside the tape and took pictures of a spot on the floor in the middle of the taped off areas.
“What is it?”, Jordan asked as he walked over toward the task force lead investigator, Neal Lawson. The career FBI agent was the man the Director handpicked to run every high-profile interstate crime. So far this crime had touched seven states on the east coast and had now made its way into rural West Virginia.
Neal adjusted the navy blue cap with the gold FBI embroidered on the front, then took the large cigar out of his mouth. It wasn’t lit, it never was. He supposedly had a smoking problem decades ago. When he started with the agency, you could smoke in the office. From what Jordan had heard, everyone smoked then, and the office had a constant cloud just below the ceiling. Neal Lawson had given the habit up, but hadn’t given up the fixation. Now the cigar was just a fixture under the cookie duster mustache that hung over his wide smile. He turned his large athletic frame and pointed at a spot in the center of the barn. “You tell me. Is this another calling card from our friend?”
Jordan walked up to the tape and didn’t need to go beyond it to examine it further. He looked back over his shoulder at Neal and asked, “Are we sure this is even a crime scene? Has a body been found?”
“What?”, Neal asked, surprised. He joined Jordan at the tape.
“This is nothing,” Jordan said.
“How do you know?”
“It’s just a blood stain, not even a particularly fresh one. If you look around enough, you will probably find a wounded or dead animal.” Jordan pointed out the edges of the dark red stain on the yellow wood planked floor. “There is no shape, pattern, or design. The occult has structure.” Jordan backed away from the tape and asked again, “Has a body been found?”
“Not yet, but they are still searching.”
“What was the call?”
Neal explained, and inside Jordan’s head he was repeating word for word what Neal said. “The homeowner saw a strange and unexplained blood stain, and called in a tip like they said to do on television.”
Jordan’s hand cut him off before he told him what show. He knew, and this had been the fourth false alarm they were called out to, thanks to an overzealous viewer of what he considered a third rate tabloid show for this subject matter. Having a serial killer that worshiped the occult and left symbolic messages at every crime scene created sensationalized headlines and stories. “I would take a sample of it and call it quits. It’s not human.”
“You are probably right. The community is just so on edge.”
“I get it,” replied Jordan. He and the entire team did. That was why their hearts jumped every time their phones rang. Why each of them had their own files and spent hours looking over things with the team and by themselves to try to identify a suspect, or predict where they were heading. Even Jordan worked on this angle of it, though it wasn’t his specialty. He tried to help. He wanted to help. Anything to push his true skill and why he was really there to the back burner. He wanted to be looked at like a real agent.
Jordan, the agency’s only para-psychologist and demonologist, was part of a non-public admittance by the bureau in the late seventies that not everything they encountered had natural origins, or as the report to the Senate stated, ‘Not all cases the bureau faces in their jurisdiction can be explained through findings of evidence that will be commonly accepted.’ A nice and acceptable, way to admit the possibility that psychics, ghosts, demons, telekinesis, and many other things seasoned law enforcement officers would never discuss without laughing, actually existed. The internal report asked for a team of investigators, but there was no way the Director was going to ask for that. Just broaching the subject in black and white was embarrassing enough. The final request was for just one, and it wasn’t really a request. He had the right to hire who and what he felt was needed. He informed them out of courtesy knowing good and well that no one would ever really read that report. Jordan was now the third to hold this position. Its duties covered everything the agency didn’t want to admit to in public. His role on the task force sat on the fringe of those duties. He was to be the occult symbologist and help interpret what the messages left meant.
“Yeah, this is nothing. There is nothing ceremonial about this. Probably a field rat that was stuck in a trap or something. It’s not even that much,” reported Jordan.
“You sure?”
“Yep,” he said. “Is there anything else? Need me to help with the search outside?” Jordan turned around, hoping to hear an okay and head out to blend in with the other agents and do some field work.
“Nah. They should be wrapping things up. They have been searching now for two hours. You’re probably right,” Neal admitted begrudgingly. “We just have to check everything, you know?”
“Yes, we do.”
Jordan walked out with Neal, who gave a quick, “Wrap it up. This is nothing,” order to the agents working through the weeds. Not a one had seen any sign of blood or anything living except for a few field mice that scurried off out of their light when a large booted foot disturbed their burrow. Jordan headed back up to the house, not taking the same amount of caution with his path he had before. His light was on his belt and both hands shoved in the front pockets of his pants. The pillow he left at the hotel called for his head to return.
The scene at the street was still chaotic. After the teams of agents packed up and left. The local officers were left to break down the scene. Any onlookers, and there were always onlookers, never cleared out until several minutes after the last officer was gone. There was a catalyst guaranteed to prolong the process and keep the crowd around longer, and that was the media. Jordan could see the lights of several remotes from halfway up the hill. Their presence wasn’t all that surprising, considering the focus on anything that even hinted at being related to the Runaway Occult Killer. The sensationalized name given to this case by the media weeks earlier. All three words were meant to drive fear and draw eyes to the television screen anytime there was an update.
As he passed by the local officers, he felt some were still snickering about the badge incident earlier. A matter that Jordan would get to the bottom of later. The buzz of the reports being filed for the early morning news programs filled the air. There was no point in going live at this time of the morning. Most of their audience was asleep, but a good portion would be up in the next few hours watching the morning news talk shows, which started in about three hours according to Jordan’s watch. He kept his head down and passed through the scene and under the yellow crime scene tape to keep a low profile. He intended to be back in the hotel and fast asleep before those shows started. What their reports said held no interest for him. Just speculation and opinion, he was sure. In this instance if they had reported the true facts, that this had nothing to do with the case, it wouldn’t take long for viewers to tune out. Jordan had seen it all before, the reports would say just enough to imply and hint, putting the viewer on the edge of their seat.
He passed under the yellow tape and walked into a cloud of perfume and the stinging smell of way too much aerosol hair spray. He turned his eyes to his left and saw what he expected. A girl, just out of college, who was assigned the overnight news desk, the dead zone job all newbies in the industry had to start with. She was out there with a single camera man. Even though the camera would only show her top half, she was still there in heels and a short skirt. What the camera would see is the overly perky bleach white smile framed inside her red lacquered lips. Two big brown eyes sat wide eyed and engaging on her face, all in another frame created by the expertly teased and frozen mound of blonde hair. She was either trying to be a candidate for Miss America or trying to take down the aging anchor at the station.
Jordan was about to glance to the other bank of lights to his left when a familiar voice made his spine cringe. “Agent Blake, can I have a minute?”
The light mounted on top of the camera danced as the person carrying it ran around cars and onlookers in an attempt to keep up with his assign
ed reporter, who Jordan knew would be sprinting in his direction. At times he pitied Charles. It can’t be easy lugging around his large and aging frame trying to keep up with her.
“Agent Blake, a moment?”, the voice called again. This time a lot closer than before. Too close. She was just behind him, and Jordan knew there was no way to avoid it.
Charles never gave him a chance to turn around. He had surprised Jordan in how quick he caught up with him and maneuvered to his side. The light and camera focused over Jordan’s shoulder on the true on-screen talent. Jordan’s face would just be in the edge of the shot, as a supporting cast member only.
He looked at Charles, who responded with a simple, “Hey.” Then the rotund camera man counted down from four.
Jordan knew the drill and turned before Charles Lindsey hit one. Standing there looking at the camera off to the side and not at Jordan, which he was fine with, was Megan Tolliver, America’s Medium, or so she called herself. That had been the name of her show, the aforementioned third rate show that had done more than its fair share to stir the public up into a frenzy. It started as just a local interest show and quickly found a home amongst the various paranormal adventure and investigative shows that dotted every cable channel after midnight.
“Hi, I am Megan Tolliver, America’s Medium, here with our friend Agent Jordan Blake at the scene of the latest Runaway Occult Killer attack. Agent Blake, what can you tell us about what happened here?”
Megan turned from the camera and looked at Jordan. Please don’t look me in the eyes, he quietly begged. Of course, he didn’t say it out loud, and she did just that. Those bright blue eyes that rivaled the turquoise waters of the Caribbean ripped right through him. They always had. Whether she really had any real medium abilities, he didn’t know. What was clear, she could always read him, and knew exactly how to work him.
“Nope,” was the only response he managed.
The microphone she held close to him dropped to her side, and the perky on camera expression faded into a pout. “Nope. Come on Jordan. Give me something. Was it him?” The microphone exploded back up close to his face, and as he saw her smile brighten, he felt the spotlight of Charles’ camera focus on him.