by David Clark
With his revolver up, he approached the edge where the hall opened to the kitchen. He stayed tight to the wall as he heard the sound of metal on metal. A pan on the burners of the stove. The familiar sound caused the gun to drop to waist level. His finger was nowhere near the trigger as he stepped into the opening, wearing only a pair of light blue boxers with a black standard issue 9mm dangling at the end of his arm.
“I made you an omelet,” Megan said. Her dark hair pulled back in a long ponytail thrown over her left shoulder. She was as he had seen her many times, though he wasn’t sure how many others had. His heart hoped there wasn’t a long list of others that had seen her looking like she had just woken up, and maybe washed her face. Her natural beauty didn’t need all the dark makeup and smokey eyeshadow she usually wore. He knew it was for her image she portrayed on the air, mostly. She loved the paranormal and the specter and image that went with it, so it was her, but he got to know the woman inside. The caring, warm and happy woman that often let her serious career-minded aspirations fall to the side, long enough to sit on the couch with him to watch a cheesy romance comedy while wearing one of his old sweatshirts. Occasionally though, her career aspirations covered all that up.
“What are you doing here?”, he asked.
“If that is the new bureau’s uniform, I approve,” she cocked her head to the side and studied him. “Well for you I do. I have seen some of the others you work with and well....No. They don’t have your abs, or those sparkling blue eyes.”
“I asked, what are you doing here?”. Jordan popped the clip out of his revolver, put the safety on and placed it on the counter before heading to the refrigerator to grab an energy drink while he waited for an answer. The order had now changed. Caffeine first, then shower.
Megan turned away from him and back to the pan. She lifted it and slid two omelets out on two plates she had staged next to her. She lowered the pan back to the burner and then turned it off. Her back stayed to him, but her head dipped slightly when she said, “I owe you-“
“You owe me nothing,” he shot back interrupting her.
“Look,” she said before exhaling loudly. “I am sorry. I know what I did was wrong, but-“
“No buts,” he interrupted her again. “Forget my career for a moment. This was an active investigation. You could have jeopardized it.”
She turned around and looked right at Jordan. He saw the confident and intense look in her green eyes. He had seen it before, mostly when she was on air. “There are buts. Now listen. Yes, I taped it before I knew he was in custody, but I didn’t add it to the show until I knew for sure he was, and that the symbols meant nothing to the case. It doesn’t air for another week anyways.” She walked over to him, her bare feet on the beige ceramic tile floor. One hand reached up around his neck and she pulled her body close to him. The other hand traced his muscular chest and down his side. A path it knew all too well.
Jordan had to fight his body’s impulse to wrap his arms around her. He wanted to stay strong on this point, but one arm betrayed him and wrapped around her shoulders, which only caused her to nuzzle in even closer, her head just under his chin. Whether she had really considered all that, or just got lucky with how things worked out, he had no way to know for sure. She had done this before, and now again. He knew this wouldn’t be the last time.
“Go get dressed and let’s eat before these get cold,” she said with a quick smack on his butt.
“Yeah, okay,” Jordan stammered as he headed down the hall to throw on a pair of shorts and a shirt.
“You know I am going to be in town for almost a month. The next two episodes are just a few hours drive from here,” Megan called down the hallway.
“That’s good.”
“Is it?”
Jordan knew she was fishing for something, but he avoided it. “Yep, I know you get tired traveling,” He walked back down the hallway wearing a black t-shirt with a gold “WF” from his old days at Wake Forest.
“I bet you do too,” she added. She had moved both plates to the coffee table in front of the couch. The flowers, she had already moved to the dining room which Jordan had converted into an office. It had a south-east facing window giving the flowers plenty of natural light, at least until late in the afternoon.
“That I do, but it is nice to be in the field and away from the stacks.” Jordan referred to the stack of files on the table and the multiple stacks of binder boxes on the floor around his workspace that were filled with cold cases that contained an oddity for him to look into. New boxes arrived all the time, adding to the source of hours upon hours of boredom he experienced. Reading a report where maybe one out of every couple hundred had something that he thought might have been paranormal was nothing like the real thing. Especially with his ability to sense the presence of anything out of the ordinary.
Jordan sat next to her and dug in. It was nice not eating something out of a Styrofoam container. “Look, you have to stop doing that. What I say to you is in complete confidence. Don’t make me stop talking to you,” he warned in between bites of the spinach and feta omelet she made with ingredients she had to have brought with her. It had been a while since Jordan was home, and he was pretty sure anything in the kitchen had gone bad.
“I know, and I am sorry. To be honest, nothing I reported is anything you guys didn’t discuss in the press conference. As far as anyone knows, I was there just like any other reporter.”
“You know what I mean,”
“Yea,” was all she said, but her tone spoke volumes. It was defeated and worried, and it tore at Jordan on the inside. He would never admit to her how much her claws were still in his heart, but he felt she kind of knew. He reached over and rubbed her knee. That contact seemed to make everything all better.
They talked about George Stephens and the few minutes Jordan spent with him while they finished breakfast. Jordan finished his second can of caffeine while Megan sipped on her coffee before rinsing the dishes and putting them in the dishwasher.
6
Megan left mid-way through Jordan’s third can of energy, and after her ninth apology, which was followed by a close embrace and a brief but not quick kiss. Between that apology and her departure, Jordan’s thoughts lingered on how warm and wonderful that kiss felt. Inside feelings churned wanting more. His mind may have been playing tricks on him, but with how abrupt her exit was after that shared moment, he thought there was a chance she felt it too. This was by far not the only time this had happened; it had happened more times than Jordan could count. Each time was the same.
A hot shower attempted to wake up the brain synapses that still wanted more sleep. The fragrance of Megan’s shampoo and how she looked standing in his kitchen in jean shorts and a white t-shirt consumed the ones already awake. He threw on a clean t-shirt and pair of shorts and took his familiar position at the dining room table behind the stack of folders. He reached down to his right where a box of energy drinks were and pulled out a bright orange can and popped the top as he raised it to his mouth. He took a quick sip from it and then placed it next to the laptop.
This was the start of his daily routine and system. He would drink one of those a day as he read through file after file. The fact that he was now working on his fourth today had his eyes darting around the room. Each file was read start to finish. If anything popped as needing further investigation, he placed it in a pile to his left. So far that pile only had 2 files in it. In a spreadsheet on his laptop, he would note the case number, what grabbed his attention, or if nothing did. That made it easy to keep track of what he had reviewed and what he hadn’t. The spreadsheet was at row 1,842. Most of those cases were decades old, with mysteries behind them that couldn’t be explained. Even his truth, he wouldn’t be able to explain. If they had modern day DNA technology back then, most of these wouldn’t be in his stack. He noted those in the spreadsheet as well to hand back to the cold case team. They took several of those cases a month back through the crime labs to see what they co
uld learn now. At the end of his day, he emailed a summary and packed up the cases he had reviewed to be shipped back. Those that he felt needed his additional review he kept. After he sent the summary email, he made the trek to throw away the energy drink can, to keep his workplace clean of trash.
The first file of the morning was more of the same. A missing person from 1982. Stephanie Lanners, an eighteen-year-old freshman at Perdue who disappeared the night before she was to come home for Thanksgiving. When she never arrived, her parents called the university police department who found her car in the dormitory parking lot. Her dorm room looked normal. The bed looked slept in. A pile of clean laundry still in the basket, and as the report noted, she was not packed up for the trip home. To Jordan, this meant what ever happened to her happened while she slept. The file was full of crime scene photographs, each of which Jordan gave their due attention. The quality of the photographs of the day meant the use of a magnifying lens and working to answer the question, was that smudge a detail or just age of the image.
Nothing here stood out. The pictures showed a normal dorm room that appeared to be waiting for its occupant to return from the bathroom down the hall. A review of the evidence log told Jordan why this case was in his pile. Item HX-0021, an unidentified fingerprint. The analyst’s opinion recorded may not be human.
“A non-human fingerprint. Let’s have a look,” Jordan said to no one as he flipped through the pages for the cellophane slide he expected to find. It wasn’t there, but there was a replication that resulted in an, “oh, come on,” exclaim. The single piece of yellowed paper had a photocopy of the cellophane slide. The edges of the slide created a visible outline. The quality was as grainy as every bigfoot picture he had ever seen taken by someone who just happened to be walking around the woods with a Polaroid and then sold it to one of those shows. Even with that poor quality, he could tell what it was. It was human, just not someone paying attention to trying to give a good print, which was not something most people thought about when they grabbed something with their hands. The bottom was clear, but from the middle up it smeared and curved up as the owner lifted their finger and slid or twisted it.
One non-human fingerprint, three unknown sounds heard by a neighbor, and two floating lights, which were lights hanging from extension cords in the victim's garage as clearly shown in the daytime crime scene pictures, led Jordan up to lunch. There was no such thing as a working lunch for him unless he was out in the field. Reviewing report after report was mind numbing, and he needed the sixty minute break with the news or Sports Center and a sandwich or some leftovers. Jordan understood why they had him going through the files, it was the responsibility of his predecessor and the one before him, which was the first person to occupy this post.
Jordan actually had a chance to meet him shortly after he accepted the position. Orville Moon. Odd was the only word Jordan could use to describe him. He still sported the red paisley vest and black umbrella that everyone said was his signature look. Combined with his mop of white hair, bifocals, and very direct English accent which others mocked. Jordan saw him as an old guy who spent his time walking around haunted locations performing experiments. It was his idea to pore over the cold cases for less than natural explanations. It was Orville who, as a consultant, helped solve a case and convinced the director they needed this very position. When he was hired, they gave him free rein to define the job responsibilities as he saw fit. When Jordan accepted it, he imagined cases after cases of investigating possible demonic and paranormal cases, or sitting across from folks that claimed to be psychic or telekinetic, or anything else that fell into his discipline of study. He had really hoped for more paranormal since he had a little something extra there. So far none of the stacks of paper had flown around his apartment, or tried to predict his future.
The day ended with another twenty-two cases reviewed. Some he felt they shoved in his pile just to avoid having to say they had nothing on the case. He boxed those twenty-two cases up to ship them back to be filed in the cold case archives, and emailed his summary to Todd Classen, his supervisor, just as he had each day. The only other email he sent was a request for the interview tapes for Christopher Lynn, case AC-0104 from 1978. According to his sent folder, this was the ninth request for these tapes from the archive. The other eight had yet to be responded to. Of all the cases he reviewed, this is one that got his attention. They accused him of killing his neighbors by just thinking about it. He confessed in a voice not of his own, in a language that he, nor any of the FBI linguists, spoke. According to the evidence log, the interrogation was taped, and stored in the archives.
Jordan shut his work laptop down and took the now empty orange energy drink can to the garbage can in the kitchen. His hand reached for his cell phone, but lingered over it while his mind debated on whether to call and ask Megan out to dinner or not. He wanted to, but also didn’t. This was a constant battle inside. He wanted her around, but knew if there was no true future for them, he would never be able to break that connection if she was. Nothing was more confusing to him, or frustrating than her.
The phone vibrated, sending his hand recoiling away from it. Megan joked often that she could read his mind. She did claim to be a medium, which he didn’t know if she was, or what else she could do. It vibrated again, and Jordan grabbed it and answered, “Jordan Blake.”
“Hey Jordan, have you rested up?”, Todd Classen asked.
“Kind of. I got a little sleep after I got in,” he said.
“Those task force assignments can be a real grind. Going from town to town. Staying on edge the whole time, waiting for the other shoe to fall. They always exhaust me, mentally and physically. This one was a big one, and Neal said you did a great job. You should think about taking a few days off to just recharge.”
That sounded like a great idea to Jordan. It had been a few months since he had last taken a day off. The grind of the file review and the three weeks on the task force were taking a toll. He was drained.
He had forgotten what it felt like to just do nothing for a day, “Thanks Todd. I might do that.”
Jordan started to suggest doing that this Thursday and Friday when Todd interrupted him, “You really should, but not yet. I need you to go check something out. It’s probably nothing, and before you reminded me, yes, I did say that about the Runaway Occult Killer assignment. My bad. I need you to look into one thing first. Just a fly up, take a look, and report back kind of thing. I just emailed you the details.”
“Okay, where am I going?,” Jordan asked.
“Richmond, Virginia. The flight details are in the email. Just fly up. Take a look. See if you see or sense anything, then report and come back home. Its as simple as that. This is not our investigation. We have been asked to advise only at this point.”
“Advise?”, Jordan asked. There are many ways the FBI advises local authorities. Evidence processing. Subject tracking when they cross state and even international borders. He was sure there were more detailed instructions in the email, but was curious now.
“They found a body of a young woman just outside of Richmond. Three different Medical Examiners haven’t been able to find the cause of death, so they are stuck and need to figure out if this was a natural death, suicide, or homicide. One of the M.E.s was one of ours. He was asked to advise first. Now he has asked for you. He said something just doesn’t feel right.”
7
“How was the flight agent Blake?”
“It was fine,” Jordan answered as he walked out of the Richmond International Airport with Deputy Thomas Wright. Overall, the flight was fine, nice, and short, but there was a problem. It left Savannah just before five in the morning, meaning he had to be there before four, adding to his already exhausted state. He used the opportunity of the three hour flight to submit the suggested two days off. It would be in Todd’s inbox when he arrived at work.
The drive to the coroner’s office was a long and arduous dozen miles. The deputy was a chatterbox, goin
g on about this and that in what was obviously an effort to try to impress the federal agent in his presence. “We must have hit 73 going down route 14 until he finally wiped out. When the truck came to rest, I rushed up, ignoring my own safety and thinking only of the public, broke out the window with my flashlight and dragged him out. I had him cuffed in three seconds flat.”
Jordan grunted his approval. If only the deputy knew what Jordan really was, he wouldn’t be trying that hard, and would probably give Jordan the familiar questioning and suspicious looks. There was no point in ruining the deputy’s excitement.
“Then we had a robbery at the SnackShop. You know the type. One of those national brands that shut down, but someone decided to open their own in the old building. While everyone else was taking statements, I put my investigative hat on and went and checked the security footage...”
Jordan felt an unbearable urge to yawn. An act that would probably draw the ire of his driver. So being the big federal officer in the car, he played it smooth and turned his head to look out the passenger side window. As he watched the trees fly by on Interstate-64, he let the yawn escape. Deputy Thomas was busy chasing a green station wagon in his mind when they pulled into the parking lot of North 5th and up to the entrance of the Virginia Department Forensic Sciences. He wasn’t sure if the deputy was done with the story when he opened the door and said, “Thanks for the ride officer.”
“Anytime,” he said before the door closed.
Jordan walked in and up to the security desk where he showed his identification. This time, it hadn’t been adulterated by any prank loving coworkers. The security guard who seemed as enthusiastic as Jordan felt, signed him in and pointed down the hall with a halfhearted smile. Signs helped him maneuver through the green walled white tile floored hallways. A typical decorating style for every government building he had ever been in.