by David Clark
Jordan didn’t reply and sat back on the bed as Megan got up and headed to the bathroom. The first normal thought of the morning entered his head, and he picked up the phone to order room service. Coffee, two orange juices, a bagel, and a raspberry danish. Something that was a sort of habit when he and Megan traveled. The places Jordan stayed at when he traveled for work didn’t have such luxuries as room service. If you were a coffee drinker, you dealt with whatever they had in the lobby and the paper courtesy cups. Anything else came from a local diner, fast food spot, or truck stop. The latter was the better of the other two. Something about the short-order cooks in those places. They knew how to make anything taste good, even though he doubted anything they served was healthy. He hung up the phone and sat in silence again, thinking back over the events of the night. He could think of nothing else.
“Did we just...” Megan started to ask. She had emerged from the bathroom, but still stood in the column of light that shone from its door.
Jordan interrupted her question, “I ordered coffee and stuff. I think I am going to go pick it up. Save them the trip.” He staggered across the room to his bag and rummaged through it for a pair of shorts and t-shirt. He slipped both on and then his comfortable running shoes. Jordan may not be going out for a run this morning, but he was running from something. He left the room without so much as even a look in Megan’s direction.
The hall was quiet, except for the sound of the morning news escaping through a few doors. Those were obviously early risers or people that had some place to be. Probably businessmen, this was still a weekday. Each time he heard the distant sound, he was reminded of how Robert’s voice sounded the first time he heard it from behind him, distant and blocked by something. Almost like Robert was behind a door that he opened and walked through to join him on the bench.
The left side of the cerebrum is the center of all logical thought in the human brain. It is the human’s reasoning engine, and it had a voice that spent the last several hours screaming at Jordan. Unfortunately, the right side was a little louder, causing the left’s voice to be lost in a symphony of confusion and noise. It was only when the right took a breath that he heard the left side. The left reminded him that nothing that happened was logical. It couldn’t have really happened. That little voice was like a slap across that face to wake him up. A reminder that he was a smart, intelligent man, and this was just a dream run amuck. When the right had finished its inhale, it started again, creating the cloud of doubt that what he had experienced did indeed happen.
He took the elevator down, something he never did. Not out of an odd paranoia or fear, just part of his desire to stay fit. This morning, that little voice that reminded him of that wasn’t even allowed a chance at the microphone. He should have taken the stairs. Jordan always found that a run, workout, or any physical exertion helped clear his thinking. At the moment, it was anything but clear. When the doors opened, he stepped out and took one step toward where the restaurant was, but then pivoted in the other direction, which took him out to the pool. No one else was out there. Probably a combination of too early in the morning, and the chilly temperatures that sent a little shiver through Jordan. That forced him to keep walking, to escape the shadow of the building.
When he found the one table that had direct sunlight, he had a seat facing the light of the new day. The warmth threw off the chill the shadow had established, but there was still another chill left, and it had nothing to do with the weather. Jordan pulled out his cell phone and sat for a few moments staring at it before he unlocked the screen, scrolled through his contacts, and placed a call. By the second ring, he was second guessing his decision. He knew he would wake him up. At the third he thought about hanging up, but that was something he always hated when it happened to him. A voice answered it on the fourth. “Jordan, is everything okay?”
“Hey Orville. Yes, everything is fine.” Lied Jordan. “Sorry for waking you.”
“Nonsense. I am an early riser. Is this a personal, or a professional call?” Asked Orville Moon.
“Um, well... a little of both, I guess.” The wheels in Jordan’s head spun at light speed to figure out how to ask the question he needed to, but came up with nothing other than just ask. The danger in that? His predecessor might think he cracked under the pressure of the job. “I met someone,” Jordan said timidly. His body cringed at how that sounded when he spoke it.
“Really? I thought you and Megan had a future.”
Duh, of course, that would be what Orville thought he meant. Jordan decided to just bite the bullet and spill it. “No, not that. I met the man.”
There was silence on the other end of the call. Orville was normally a chatty person who was only silenced when surprised or shocked. This silence worried Jordan. “Orville?”
“Sorry. Were you out, or did he come to you in a dream?” The jovial tone of Orville’s voice was gone.
“I think I ran into him at a crime scene yesterday, and then he appeared in my dream last night.”
“I see. Still wearing those black suits and smoking?”
“Yes,” Jordan said. “What is he?”
“I have no clue. Not that I didn’t try to find out. What did he tell you?” Orville asked. His tone turned less serious and more conversational, but not his normal self yet.
“Well, he told me to call him Robert, for starters. He kind of made up that name for me. Said his job was Evil and that he wanted to introduce himself because we would run into one another a lot.”, reported Jordan.
“He was Walter to me. I always found that fit him. Did he give you the warning about crossing him?”, asked Orville.
“Yes.”
“Good. Don’t!” Orville warned. “I did once and almost paid with my life. Luckily, he liked me and I calmed him down. I spent a good amount of time researching him and his origins. I even spoke to a few priests and others like us. None of them had seen him before, but they didn’t doubt his existence. One priest said many believe creatures create or inspire everything evil in the world, that humanity by nature starts out good. It is an outside influence that makes us bad. So, his story kind of fits. And, yes, you will run into him often. It is just part of our job. Like I said, don’t cross him. Just let him go about his business and you go about yours. I can’t urge that enough.”
The warning sent a new chill through Jordan’s essence. He thought his biggest danger in the job was the criminal element they chased. Now he had to contend with whatever Robert, Walter, was, and make sure he didn’t upset him, which Jordan had no clue what that really meant. “Why didn’t you warn me about this when I took the job?”
“If I had said anything, would you have believed...” a silence interrupted what Jordan could tell was a question by his predecessor and now mentor. “Maybe you would have. Anyone else would have thought I was nuts, but you with your background might have at least considered it. Sorry about that Jordan. I probably should have said something.”
Orville had given Jordan a handful of warnings and advice when he started. None of it was about paranormal or spectral beings. It was all about not letting the other agents, and what they say, get to him. His biggest morsel of advice was to trust his abilities and remember he belonged in the agency. After the first few months, Jordan knew why Orville had taken the time to give him those specific pieces of advice. The ridicule by other agents was beyond anything Jordan could have imagined. From names and jokes to full on pranks against him. That partially contributed to Jordan’s drive to show he belonged there as a normal agent. He made a note to himself to do the same for his replacement when he left or returned. Now Jordan needed to add something about the old creepy supernatural guy in black that you shouldn’t cross. “So, now what?”
“Nothing, Jordan. He is out there, and you will run into him. Just go on about your job and don’t interfere with his. If you happen to run into him while he is doing whatever it is he does, you just wait. As stupid as that sounds, it is the best advice I can give you. You s
tand there and wait your turn to do what you do. If you do that, everything will be fine. And, if you ever need to talk about him, I am here.”
“You can bet I am going to take you up on that offer,” Jordan said.
“Let me guess, you are still shaking with all your thoughts swimming in a sea of confusion?” Hearing a phrase like that was kind of calming to Jordan. It was such an Orville thing to say, and it reminded him he was there as a mentor.
“Yep.”
“Well, get used to it. It takes a while before seeing him doesn’t faze you.”
If Orville meant that as a comfort to Jordan, it fell flat. This was just one more detail of the job that made his more difficult than any of the other agents he worked with. “Thanks Orville.”
“Any time Jordan. I am always here for you. You and I are part of a pretty exclusive club.”
Probably the most exclusive club, just the two of them, thought Jordan. Again, that didn’t comfort him much, but at least he had someone he could talk to about it and hopefully get some advice. Orville was in this position for almost three decades. “Talk to you later,” Jordan said.
“Take care Jordan,” Orville said before the line disconnected.
Jordan put the phone away and walked back inside and back up to their room. This time he took the stairs to give his mind more time to process through things. He didn’t remember the food he said he was going to pick up until he opened the door. Luckily for him, it was already sitting on the table.
“Thought you were going down to save them the trip?”, asked Megan.
“Must have passed each other. You know how I like to take the stairs,” he explained, thankful that his ability to think on his feet once again bailed him out. There was no odd wink or smirk from Megan, so he knew she bought it.
16
Jordan immediately took a shower after returning to the room. Not that he had worked up a sweat taking the stairs. They were unheated and held on to the cold nighttime air. This was more of an act of avoidance. A fact that was obvious after the shower when he realized he hadn’t even taken the time to walk over to his bag to get a fresh change of clothes. He stood there a few moments and studied his face in the mirror. Was he just tired, or had the encounter aged him?
“Nice towel,” Megan said in a flirtatious tone.
Jordan just ignored that and headed for his bag. He wasn’t in the mood to think about modesty, and he was not sure it even existed between them. Megan had seen him nude many times, often sharing a shower.
“You okay?” she asked. Jordan turned his head to look at her seated at the table. Her hands were cradling her coffee. The flirtatious tone and twinkle in her eye she had when she commented on his towel was gone. Now there was a serious level of concern, like one you might use when asking a terminally ill patient if there is anything you can do.
“Yep, I am fine,” Jordan answered, each word short and to the point.
“We need to talk about it,” she said.
“Nope. We don’t. We both experienced it. We both know what it was. Let’s just leave it at that for now, okay?” Jordan stood there glaring at her in just his boxers.
“I’m not sure,” she reluctantly said.
That was a feeling Jordan shared, and seeing her almost cower back away from him, broke him even further. He took a deep breath and gathered himself. Avoiding the topic forever wasn’t a possibility. That was a true statement, not only with Megan who never let anything go, but anyone else in the world. This was one of those kind of shared experiences that needed to be discussed or acknowledged. That was when it hit Jordan. He couldn’t avoid it forever, but he could hit the pause button on it until he knew how to handle it better. “Look, we do need to talk about it, just not now. We can later.” He pulled on a t-shirt and shorts and grabbed a danish from the tray. “I just need some time,” Jordan calmly explained, and watched her for acceptance.
She took a sip of her coffee, and he wasn’t sure if that was a sign of acceptance or not, but he would take it.
“So where are we on our investigation?”, he asked as he took the seat across from her.
“Well,” Megan started reluctantly. She put her coffee cup down and grabbed the notes she made the night before. “I thought we just had a bunch of random numbers, but then after you fell asleep I hit something. It’s maybe nothing.” She handed him the notes. “The bottom three numbers.”
Jordan looked them over, and then asked, ”Are you sure? How recent?”
“Very,” Megan said. The hesitation was gone from her voice. Jordan hoped the thought of what they had experienced overnight was now out of her mind. It was still there in his, but a little further toward the back. “The most recent just 2 months ago.”
What Megan’s notes told him was three of the last five numbers belonged to girls that were missing. Each number led Megan to the girls’ social media accounts where their families had posted the missing posters. The most recent one was two months ago, and the oldest had been missing just under seven. All were under twenty five. The fact that Sharon had those numbers written on pieces of paper she had hidden under her bed was beyond interesting. It was a burning sign. Unfortunately, he didn’t know what it was telling him yet.
Megan opened her laptop and brought up one of their pages while Jordan sat and stared at the notes. It was something he did. Not that it ever yielded any results. He saw others do it, so he copied their action. No matter how much he stared at a piece of evidence, nothing came to him. It was always while he was in the shower, out for a run, or on the toilet when the big breakthrough came.
Jordan looked up at the screen and saw an incredibly attractive blonde with blue eyes. She had long hair that ran down to the small of her back, and long legs that she didn’t hesitate to show off in every picture she showed. The page flipped to a raven haired Hispanic girl that was a knock-out with green eyes, and again, long legs that were shown in every picture. When the page flipped for the third time, he expected to find long legs again, and he did. This time they belonged to a redhead with brown eyes who appeared to have mastered the smokey eye makeup look that was popular among the teen and twenty something scene.
“That is Jennifer Tate, Maria Monroe, and Beth Ryan. Maria has only been missing for seven weeks.”
What Jordan would give to login to work just once to look up their cases, but he knew all access was monitored and reviewed, and everyone in the agency knew who he was and would wonder why he was looking. Not that anyone would really question or raise an issue, but he didn’t know for sure, and didn’t want to test how strict the data access policies were. Plus, that wasn’t the only way to dig for information. There was the old fashioned way, what they used to call gum shoeing it. It would just take time, and time wasn’t something they had a lot of. He needed a starting point. If he talked to their families, they might tell the local cops someone came around asking a bunch of questions. Jordan knew that would raise their interest for sure and probably put him on top of the list of suspects. Then he realized Sharon gave them the starting point. There had to be a connection between those notes and the phone. Or so he hoped. They might be completely unrelated, but it was all he had to go on. He needed to know more about who was at the end of those other numbers. That was the next stop on this journey.
Without a word to Megan, he pulled out his personal laptop and started doing what she had done the night before with the numbers he found on the phone. Megan slid around and sat next to him, watching him search the first few. None of which came up with anything but matches to part numbers for refrigerator water filters and apparently winning lottery numbers from 1998. After the sixth big fat nothing, Megan announced she was taking a shower and sashayed toward the bathroom. Jordan kept typing number after number. Each time, nothing. Not even some of those bait and switch people finders that make you think you hit a match, but have to pay to find out the real details. Jordan had seen this before. They were all burner phones. Which dashed much of what was left of his hope.
Nothing linked them to a specific business. Jordan knew it was time to do some additional, and old fashioned digging. He went over and sat on the side of the bed and picked up the phone from the nightstand. It sat on his lap while he thought about the next few moves. Not knowing who was on the other end of the phone was a concern. If it was just a business of some kind, no big deal. They probably receive hundreds of calls every day. The bigger concern was if this was something more shady, and this number is only called by those involved in whatever else they did. The call could tip them off, if he wasn’t ready for it. Using the hotel phone would help put a layer of protection between his and Megan’s identity and whoever was on the other side.
His plan was simple. If it was a business, just say it was a wrong number. If it wasn’t, do the same. Hanging up quickly would be suspicious. Jordan felt a little embarrassed he hadn’t come up with anything better that didn’t seem like a skit out of a television detective show, but it was what it was, and he started dialing the first number. On the second ring the voice of a professional woman answered, “Good Morning, Senator Robert Timmons’ office. How can I help you?”