DEATH (The Justice Cycle Book 1)

by J W Kiefer

  “I love you, my little bear.”

  Dana awoke, tears streaming down her cheeks. This was the third time tonight she had had the same dream, and on every occasion, she awoke weeping violently. Each time the dream became more and more vivid. What did it all mean? Nothing like this had ever happened to her before.

  She was covered in sweat, her covers kicked off the bed. She sat up with her head in her hands. What was happening to her? Was she losing her mind? The dreams were so vivid, it was as if she was reliving lost memories. But whose memories were they? They certainly weren’t hers. If she believed in reincarnation, she would attribute them to past lives, but she was a Christian and Christians did not believe in such New Age philosophies.

  “Get yourself together, girl.” She ran her hands down her face. “There has to be a logical explanation for this.”

  She was exhausted, almost as if she had just run a marathon. She hoped that this would be the last time tonight she would have the dream. She needed to get at least a few hours of uninterrupted sleep before work in the morning. Which was… She looked over at the clock and groaned. Five twenty-nine a.m., almost time to get ready for work. Five thirty. The alarm clicked on and chirped. She groaned again and slammed her hand down hard on the alarm clock, hitting the snooze button.

  But, no. If she fell back to sleep again, it would do her more harm than good. So she got up and started the day. At least she’d have time to make coffee before she had to take a shower. The thought of a cup of steaming hot java finally gave her the motivation she needed to extricate herself from her nice warm blankets and climb out of bed.

  She yawned, stretched, and groggily stumbled out of her room and into the hallway. As she walked, her hand gently brushed against her chest and she abruptly stopped. A surge of panic washed over her, and she stood frozen in place, too afraid to look down at her hand.

  When she finally mustered the strength to look down, her eyes went wide in horror, because what she saw dangling there was a small golden locket. The same small golden locket she had compulsively taken from the crime scene the day before. Her head swam with thoughts of losing her job, or worse, jail time. What had possessed her to remove evidence from a crime scene? In all her life, she’d never done anything so reckless and stupid.

  Calm down, girl, she told herself. After a couple deep breaths, she removed the locket from around her neck and examined it.

  The locket was small and circular, gold with a large red gem embedded in its center. She ran her fingers along the edges and felt raised markings. She tried to make out what they were; it looked like some kind of ancient writing. Upon further scrutiny, Dana discovered that there was a small button on the side of the locket fashioned in the shape of a tiny sword hilt.

  She pushed the button and the locket popped open. Inside was a photograph—faces she recognized. Unthinking, she threw the necklace across the hallway. It landed face upward against the wall, exposing the portrait of a middle-aged Asian man and two young children. The same man and children who had haunted her dreams.

  She took another deep breath and closed her eyes.

  Calm down. Get your head on straight and think rationally here. There is no way that the family in your dreams and the picture from the locket are the same people. Even if they are, you must have simply opened the locket before you went to bed and seen the picture. Right? There’s always a rational explanation for everything.

  Of course, she knew deep down in her gut that she had not even noticed the locket since she had pilfered it from the crime scene yesterday. She hadn’t opened it or even inspected it until now. Dread washed over her. If she had believed in such things, she would have sworn that the locket was either haunted or cursed.

  Come on, girl. You are a freaking police officer, for crying out loud. Pull yourself together. You know that there is no such thing as ghosts. Curses are just the stuff of fairy tales and children’s stories.

  With that, she gathered her courage and approached the small locket with the same careful caution that a trainer would use when facing a dangerous animal.

  She reached down and picked it up. At first, she was afraid to look at the picture and simply held the locket at arm’s length. Before long, however, her curiosity got the better of her and she drew the small piece of jewelry up to eye level so she could get a closer look at the small picture.

  Her heart thumped so hard, it felt like it would beat right out of her ribcage. This time she was certain it was the same family from her dream. There was no mistaking the faces of the two children. She had seen them murdered repeatedly in her nightmares last night.

  What the hell is going on?

  Grief, not fear, washed over her as she gazed on the faces that had been seared into her heart. Tears spilled down her cheeks as the overwhelming emotions from her nightmares came rushing back.

  She slid down the wall until she was sitting with her knees up against her chest. The locket dangled from her fingers. She buried her face in her legs and sobbed until all her grief was spent. What was happening to her? What the hell was happening to her?

  She knew she had to tell someone about the locket, but who? She could not trust the FBI investigator. He would probably lock her up and throw away the key. If she told anyone else on the force, it would put them in a compromising position, so that was out. Who else could she tell? There had to be someone.

  With a sudden clarity that caused her to shoot straight up, she knew exactly who she should go to for help. Jared, she could tell him anything. He’d had her back since they were young, and she knew that she could trust him with anything, no matter how serious.

  She put the locket back around her neck and returned to her normal morning routine. She was strangely calm as if the entire ordeal had never happened. In fact, she thought to herself, Maybe it really was nothing more than a dream. What was she worrying about, anyway? As she quickly got dressed and styled her hair for work, she did not notice the low, steady glow of the small gem at the center of the locket, nor that her eyes shared that very same red sheen.

  Sixteen

  When Dana finally arrived at work, she found the entire precinct in a state of panic. Officers were scurrying about; the usual disciplined morning routine of the agency having given way to chaos. As soon as she walked through the entrance’s metal detectors, she was approached by a tall officer she didn’t know very well.

  “Detective Campbell?” the man asked, extending his hand.

  “Yes,” she said, shaking it firmly.

  “Sorry to bombard you, but Agent Johansson and Detective Caddret asked me to look out for you and to take you to them as soon as you arrived. Follow me, if you would.”

  That’s strange, she thought, following him off toward the stairs. Why would he take me to the stairs and not to one of the conference rooms?

  “Officer?”

  “Steveson.”

  “Officer Steveson, why are we going downstairs? If Jared and Agent Johansson are waiting for me, then wouldn’t they be somewhere on the first floor?”

  “Sorry, ma’am. I know this seems strange, but they are both down in the morgue.”

  Dana’s mind raced. She was certain that whatever had happened in the morgue was most likely the cause for all the commotion.

  The scene that Dana beheld when she walked through the doorway was like something out of a television crime drama. CSI techs could be found in every corner of the room, peering into all of the nooks and crannies with all the instruments and devices that they had in their respective toolboxes. She quickly spied Jared talking to Agent Johansson in one corner of the small room. Even with the two cups of coffee he was holding, he still managed to wave her over.

  “Glad you could make it work, sleepyhead.” Jared’s eyes were still bloodshot and swollen.

  Did he even sleep last night? she wondered.

  He handed her one of the coffee cups and took a long sip from the other. “It seems that there are many strange series of events happening here
in upstate New York.”

  “Is this strange occurrence why the science nerds are out in force this morning?” she asked curiously, blowing on her coffee.

  “A very keen deduction, my dear Watson,” he said with a wink. She smiled in spite of herself. It was good to see some of his normal playfulness returning. Of course, it was a horrible time for him to be joking, but Jared had bad timing in most things in life.

  “Okay, now that we have established that you have a dark sense of humor, what exactly happened last night that has everyone in the entire building so riled up?”

  Agent Johansson spoke first. “Well, it’s the strangest thing. You know that body we brought in yesterday? Well, it’s gone and gotten itself lost, right under the noses of an entire police precinct and the coroner’s office.”

  Dana stopped mid-sip and just stared at him. She glanced from Jared to Johansson. “You’re serious?”

  “As serious as the Bambino’s curse,” he replied. “Well, I guess more serious than that, since we kicked that curse to the curb in 2004.”

  “Wait. I mean, just how the heck is that even possible? Don’t we have cameras and a friggin’ security system? With all of the equipment we have here in this building, it’s just not possible.”

  “Well, sweetheart,” said Jared in his worst Humphrey Bogart impression, “apparently the universe doesn’t give a damn, because the corpse just simply vanished into thin air.”

  Dana rolled her eyes. “Just shut up already. And for the record, it was Clark Gable who said that, not Bogart.”

  He grinned as he took another long swig of his quickly cooling coffee. “Well, on a serious note, impossible or not, the body has simply vanished. We already checked the security cameras for the only time last night that Dr. Strayhand was out of this room and we found nothing.”

  “What do you mean by nothing?”

  “What he means by that, Detective,” replied Johansson, “is that nothing out of the ordinary is on the security camera footage. Nadda. Zilch… absolutely nothing. The tech guys are going over the video feed as we speak, but from what I could tell, there does not appear to be any tampering with the video. One minute the body is there and the next minute, abracadabra, it’s gone. Honestly, I’ve never seen anything like this in all of my years with the Bureau, and I have seen a lot of strange shit in my time. We may actually have a bona fide unsolvable mystery on our hands.”

  “I am still not buying this.” Dana frowned. “There has to be a rational explanation that we haven’t yet considered. I am sure after more careful examination we will be able to solve this mystery.”

  “Don’t think so,” Jared said. “I don’t know why, but I can’t shake the feeling that something supernatural has or is happening here.”

  “Seriously, Jared? Supernatural? Like angels and demons or whatever? Have you lost what’s left of your mind? You and I both know, and I am sure Agent Johansson here will attest, that there is always a rational explanation for everything. I may believe that God is real, but God didn’t come down from heaven just to take a dead body from a morgue. There has to be an explanation other than ghosts and demons.”

  “All I am saying is that it feels… strange to me. Otherworldly. And no, I don’t think God came down from heaven for this corpse, but I can’t shake the feeling that this whole situation is far more than it appears.”

  “I agree with Jared,” interjected Johansson. “But I also agree with you, Detective Campbell. There is more going on here than just your normal run-of-the-mill murder, but I do think that there is a rational explanation that we just haven’t stumbled across yet.”

  “Rational explanation or not, what does a body disappearing from the morgue have to do with this case?” Dana asked. “Has this happened before?”

  “Not to my knowledge. In fact, I can’t think of one instance where an entire body has simply up and disappeared. Well, not unless the mob was involved. Even in those cases, it was never a corpse that disappeared, but rather a live one. Of course, that body was most likely not going to stay alive for very long, if you get my drift.”

  “So, this is an entirely unique occurrence then?” Jared asked.

  “Yeah, I would have to say so, but ‘occurrence’ is putting it mildly. If this had happened in New Mexico or Nevada, I would simply chalk it up to aliens, but we are nowhere near Area 51.”

  “Really?” Jared asked excitedly. “Is Area 51 an actual thing?”

  “Of course not, I was just joshing ya. Everyone bites at that, though.”

  “All right, enough jokes, we need to get back on track here. What did the coroner say when he was interviewed?” said Dana. She was still exhausted from not sleeping, and the time that the two men were wasting was starting to get on her nerves.

  “The doctor saw nothing,” Jared replied. “He stated that somewhere around one or one thirty in the morning, he got hungry and decided to go to the break room for a snack. He said he was there for around fifteen minutes, and upon returning to the examination room, he found the body missing. He immediately reported the incident to the officers on duty, which then went about treating the lab as a crime scene. As you already know, up to this point the investigation has turned up nothing.”

  Johansson said, “The real question in all of this is not just how, but why? Why this particular body? The coroner did have time to examine the body before it disappeared and the wounds on the man are not consistent with the same type of weapon that killed the other victims. The murder weapon usually preferred by the Stalker, and the one that killed the other two victims, was a large serrated hunting knife. This one, however, is clean and seems to be made from something more precise, like a surgical instrument. That being said, out of all of the victims that this bastard has left in his wake, what makes this one special?”

  “Other than the victim being killed by a completely different type of weapon,” commented Jared, “he is a man and not a woman. That’s not usual for the Stalker. Maybe the man was killed because he stumbled on the Stalker killing the girl. A case of wrong place wrong time.”

  Johansson nodded.

  An officer walked up and handed Dana some paperwork. She casually looked it over as she listened to Jared and Johansson talk. After reading it, she knew one more thing that made the missing corpse special. “Well, actually there is another thing that makes him stand out,” she said, handing Jared the papers. “Out of the three victims we have here, he is the only one that could not be identified.”

  “You mean we couldn’t verify his name or where he lives?” Jared asked.

  “I mean, that upon investigating him, we found nothing. As far as we can gather, he has never been arrested for a crime and his fingerprints are not on file in any database we have access to. He has no birth certificate that we can locate, and no one has come forward yet looking for a missing person of his description. Agent Johansson may have access to more information than us, but as far as our investigators are concerned, he’s a ghost.”

  “That is strange,” said Johansson. “It is possible that he’s from another country. I’ll run him through the agency’s database and let you know what I come up with. Most likely he is a foreigner who is not registered with any local agencies. Honestly, I would not worry about it. It may be strange, but I am sure we will find a rational explanation for the disappearance.”

  Dana scrunched up her forehead slightly and squinted her eyes. “If you say so, but I have been a cop for a long time, and I have never heard of a body disappearing from a morgue.”

  He shrugged her concerns off with a smile. “True, but this guy was probably just some immigrant who was at the wrong place, wrong time. Don’t worry, though. I will look into it and let you know if I find anything.”

  Dana was still unconvinced, but she let it go for now. As she thought, her hand gently brushed up against her chest, and it took everything in her not to freeze in panic when she felt the small locket underneath her shirt. Instantly the events from this morning and the night befor
e rushed back to her and she balked visibly.

  “You okay, Detective?” Agent Johansson asked curiously. “You seem like you are about to lose your coffee.”

  Dana composed herself quickly and physically waved away Johansson’s concern. “I’m fine. Just tired, is all. I didn’t sleep well last night, and I think I just need something a bit stronger than coffee to get me fully going today. I will be fine, but I do need to go over a few things with my partner here before we get the day started.”

  “Okay…” Johansson replied. “Well, I have to go make a few calls and go over a few emails, anyway. I will be forwarding whatever your tech geeks found to my people in NYC, and I’ll bring you both up to speed as soon as I do.”

  Jared also was unconvinced, and he watched her with concern as Johansson walked away, already talking loudly on his phone. He noticed that Dana was absentmindedly playing with something through her shirt and he wondered about it.

  “You good, partner?” he asked. “I know how you act when you are overtired, and you are not that grouchy yet. In fact, you are not even as mean as usual.”

  “Well, if you want, I can be even more of a bitch,” Dana snapped, her hand never leaving the place on her shirt.

  “Whoa,” responded Jared, putting his hands up. “Dang, Dana, I’m just concerned. You are visibly shaken by something and it has me worried. I know this case has taken its toll on you, but I can tell that something else has gotten under your skin. Honestly, I haven’t seen you this shaken up in years.”

  Dana sighed. “I need to talk to you about something, but it has to be in private. I think it may have something to do with the murders, and it has me… spooked, for lack of a better word.”

  “All right,” he said. “Let’s get out of here and go to the coffee shop around the corner. That should be private enough and you can tell me this big secret of yours there.”

  “I never said anything about a secret.”

  “You don’t have to,” he replied with a smirk. “As I said, I know you and I can tell when you have something you need to get off your chest.”