BURDEN OF AN ANCIENT OATH Read online

  “That doesn’t inspire much hope,” clearing my throat, I dropped into my leather chair.

  “No, it really doesn’t. But we’re still early on in this investigation—”

  “Sure, but there should have been something. A person doesn’t just disappear out of thin air,” I cut him off. “But maybe we’re not looking in the right places. I’ll have to have a chat with her and see.”

  “What are you thinking?” Aaron shrugged his shoulders. His wrinkled shirt billowed haphazardly with his humph.

  “I don’t know. You’ve done everything in one night that I planned on doing through the day. I’m stumped,” a sigh left my lips. “How about you head home, get some rest, and I’ll take it from here? I’ll go pay Marylin a visit and see if I can find something.”

  “I caught a couple hours of sleep here at the office,” Aaron said. “I’ll head home for a shower and be back before you know it.”

  Giving him a nod, Aaron rose from his seat and left.

  I spent the rest of the morning going through my notes and listening to the recorded conversation between myself and Marylin. There was nothing, not really. Lauren came in somewhere between eight and nine, bringing me a cup of coffee and a fresh box of Lucky Strikes. We spoke little, with her just as stumped as Aaron and me.

  Not wanting to waste much time on this case, I waited until 9:30 to arrange a meeting with Marylin Crossley. This strange name game was becoming problematic, and if we didn’t get to the bottom of it first, we’d never manage to get to the bottom of the case.

  Chapter 3

  Jack

  She lived outside the city, nestled between a dense overgrowth of trees and other white picket fence homes. There were no high walls out here—no safety measures barring neighborly protection and kindnesses. Her home was a Victorian-inspired double-story house, decorated in pastel blues and a darker shade for awnings.

  It was beautiful.

  Had I been much one to take a standalone, this might have been preferred over my simple, single-bedroom apartment. She waited for me on the front steps, beside a simple hedge path for the cars to drive along. In her hands were two cups of coffee.

  “Morning,” she said, descending the short staircase.

  “Apologies for bothering you this early,” I said, getting out of my car.

  “No need for apologies. I’d much rather you come knocking early in the morning than be found dead,” she snickered. But there was fear behind her words.

  “Of course,” I accepted the cup of coffee she held out. Dressed in a long, woolen bathrobe, Marylin Crossley stood. Her hair wet and wrapped in a towel, she showed no signs of care for her appearance. I liked that about her.

  “My husband’s inside doing his morning routine; I hope you don’t mind that we have our chat outside?”

  I sipped the coffee.

  “Not at all. Living in the city doesn’t give me much time to see the greenery of the world.” I looked around. The Crossley family garden was spectacular. Roses grew along the beds with an enormous Weeping Willow on either side of their home.

  “So, Detective Mercer…” she paused, “Jack, what is it that brings you here? Have you uncovered anything on the case?”

  “It depends on how you look at it,” I said, leaning against the door of my black Dodge Charger. “A member of my team spent the night looking into your name. It seems, apart from your date of birth, there’s little to nothing he could dig up. A man’s gotta wonder, Miss Crossley, how have you stayed hidden beneath the shrowd of social media for this long?”

  I looked her up and down. She gave no signs of discomfort or fear, simply a nod of her head.

  “That’s because my name isn’t Marylin Crossley,” she sighed. “I was born Jane Dench. At least, that’s what I believed up until recently. I use the term born loosely here, of course.”

  “What do you mean?” I cocked a brow, watching Jane shuffle for the box of thin cigarettes inside her gown pocket.

  “Well, after the letters began pouring in, I spoke with my parents. They’ve always been good people but wanted to spare the details of how I entered this world. I was adopted from a foster home a little while after my parents shunned me. They hid the secret because I was as much a daughter to them as their actual children.”

  “Why didn’t you bring this up earlier?” To think that she knew these details but didn’t mention them was an annoyance at the very least.

  “Because whoever’s sending these letters knows more about me than even I do. Or at least that part of my life from decades ago. I thought there was a chance you’d manage to find something on that name, something that I can use to know who my parents were, but more-so, find the reason I’m being targeted,” she replied, lighting her cigarette.

  I joined her.

  “We could’ve done that anyway,” I returned.

  “Yes, you could have. I know you could have. But I had a vision for how this would turn out, and I suppose it doesn’t always work out the way one would want,” she puffed on the cigarette, not inhaling the smoke. “But it took you a night to figure it out, so there’s no harm, no foul, right?”

  “Right,” I swallowed the rest of the coffee in two giant gulps. “But this does give us more to go on.”

  “How so?”

  “It means that we know they’re not after Jane Dench; they’re after a woman that’s long been dead to the world. The only question is, why?” I eyed the cigarette in my hand. The smoke trailed off in long strands before dissipating into the air around us.

  “Are there any other secrets you’ve been holding onto in hopes we could recover mysteries from your past?” the words left my lips without thinking. An accusation like that could’ve upset the weaker willed. But Jane shrugged it off without much thought.

  “No, I don’t believe I do. I know nothing about that time in my life. I wasn’t even a year old when the Dench family took me in. So, I’ve lived my life as one of them, in the outskirts of New York, blissfully ignorant to what I could have been,” she responded.

  “And your parents, they don’t know—”

  “No, they don’t know anything about what happened there. And if they did, they’ve not given me anything more, either,” Jane cut me off before I could finish my question.

  “Miss Dench, thank you for your time and hospitality,” I handed the empty cup back to her. “And don’t worry. We’ll get to the bottom of this, one way or another. If anything else comes up, you’ve got my details.”

  “Thank you, Jack,” Jane said, giving a brief smile. Behind it, I could see the pain in her eyes that we’d made no movement forward on the case.

  But that was the nature of the game, I supposed. Sometimes things didn’t work out as they were meant to, and toiling on for a better tomorrow was the only option.

  Chapter 4

  Jack

  “How was your meeting with miss Crossley?” Lauren asked the second I stepped through the door. She was on her feet, a sweet smile on her face, ready for any news.

  Aaron Hart sat at his desk, spinning on his chair to drop into the conversation.

  “It went… well,” I replied, pausing briefly while contemplating my words. “Turns out, miss Crossley is actually a woman named Jane Dench.”

  “What?” Aaron cocked a brow.

  “She was adopted by a well-to-do family somewhere in her youth. That’s why the name Marianne Crossley doesn’t come up anywhere. No one knows about her birth parents and no one knows why she could be targeted by whoever’s after her. So, it was a dead-end, apart from what we learned, I guess,” I shrugged my shoulders, dropping my coat off them.

  Throwing it onto the coat rack, accompanied by my black fedora, I started for the kitchenette behind Lauren’s desk.

  “And why didn’t she tell us this before?” Lauren asked, tucking a few stray strands of her red hair behind one ear.

  “I can’t help but think she was hoping we’d be able to find something about her parents. If we could find anyth
ing on the Crossley name, there’d be something to look for, right? She didn’t want to muddy the water.”

  “But she wasted time,” Aaron replied. “A whole night wasted because we weren’t looking in the right places.”

  “Weren’t we? Whoever’s going after Jane knows that her parents were named Crossley, right? What stones could we have uncovered by having a name tethered…” I stopped, realizing the answer. “You could have looked up who adopted her and from where.”

  “Exactly,” Aaron spun around in his chair, immediately typing away at his keyboard. “Now, it’ll take time, but if I followed this avenue last night instead of today, I could have found something by now.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s the hand we were dealt. Jane Dench is afraid and knows just as much as we do about her family. We can’t really hold anything against her for not telling us,” I said, looking over to Lauren.

  She shrugged her shoulders as if to say I don’t know, before dropping back into her chair.

  “The real question is, why is someone threatening her to begin with?” I continued, pouring myself a glass of orange juice. “Marilyn Crossley barely existed in this world before she was adopted, so it can’t be anything directed at her. So, it’s gotta have something to do with her parents. But how bad could they have screwed up to put their daughter in a life or death situation?”

  “You never know, maybe they didn’t screw up before, but they’re still screwing up and pissing people off,” Aaron replied.

  He had a point. Pulling my box of cigarettes from my pants pocket, slotting one between my lips, I made my way over to the visitor’s seating area, close enough for both Lauren and Aaron to continue chatting about it all. After a lengthy sip of orange juice, nearly cleaning the thin glass out and lighting my smoke, I continued on.

  “If we follow that path, it leads nowhere, though.”

  “How do you figure?” Aaron asked, turning back to face me.

  “Let’s say it’s drugs… they got into something with some real bad people, a cartel even… what reason would they have to threaten Jane Dench with these letters? The family didn’t care enough to keep her, so why would they save her life now? It’s an easy out both ways,” I said, kicking my feet up on the coffee table.

  Aaron didn’t speak, but the look of understanding in his eyes was enough.

  “A man’s got to believe it’s much worse than we initially expected. This isn’t just some random encounter with a stranger looking for trouble or kids pulling a prank on new homeowners, either. Whoever’s chasing after Jane Dench knows more about her than we do, and that’s a problem.”

  “I’ll get in touch with Jane and find out more about where she was adopted from. The sooner we get ahead of this thing, the better chance we have of saving Jane from whoever’s chasing her,” Aaron replied, spinning around again.

  Chapter 5

  Jack

  While I waited for any news back from Aaron, I found myself in a slump. There was nothing to go by but a bunch of letters left by a madman, threatening Jane’s life. Knowing that there wasn’t much else to do but wait, I decided the best place to do it was outside Jane’s house.

  Knowing that the letters arrived sporadically, faster in the beginning and slower the more time ticked on, I had to hope I’d catch a glimpse of the man who threatened Jane. I spent the better part of two days there, scoping the place out and catching funny glances from passersby.

  But it was on the third day that someone finally came out from one of the homes, somewhere around lunchtime. He held a baseball bat in one hand and his phone in the other. From the way he held it, I could see he was recording.

  He walked around the car, taking my number plates down before making his way to the driver’s door. I rolled down my window, knowing he was just a concerned citizen looking to help out around the neighborhood. It was a simple gesture like this that I both admired and found absolutely foolish. This guy, dressed in his jeans and Pink Floyd t-shirt, was putting himself in danger. Sure, he might’ve chased away a potential threat, but he could’ve gotten himself killed.

  “Morning,” he said.

  “Afternoon,” I replied.

  He checked his watch. “Right, I suppose it is. What brings you out to these parts, sir?”

  “Nothing much,” I said. Though I’d be happy to go with this, I wasn’t going to give in too easily.

  “It’s just, I’ve seen this car parked here every day now. It’s a nice car, but having someone sit in it all the time, watching that house,” he pointed towards Jane’s gate. “Seems a little suspicious, don’t you think?”

  “You’re not wrong,” I replied, remaining otherwise completely oblivious. This was my first interaction with anyone in days, except for Lauren and Aaron. What harm could having a little fun do?

  “Well, look, sir, I’m not looking for any trouble—”

  “The baseball bat says otherwise,” I cut him off. “And I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that you were just about to say but.”

  “Yes, yes, I was.”

  “Then I should ask you what seems to be the problem here? A man can’t enjoy the scenery?” I snickered.

  “I guess I can’t rightly stop you from parking here, no. But a man’s gotta wonder what’s going on when someone in a fancy car parks himself out in the street watching a house. Isn’t that considered casing a place?” he lifted the camera up to catch my face.

  He seemed nervous. His striking blue eyes holding fears and doubts that coming outside maybe wasn’t the best idea.

  Good, I thought. If anything, this would teach him not to approach strangers in the middle of the street.

  “You could probably call it casing a place, that was to say I’d want to rob the house. But if I was a criminal, I don’t think I’d make it so obvious by sitting in a flashy car that’s bound to draw attention. I’d be inclined to drive something older with a smaller engine, and definitely a popular vehicle that no one would look twice at. Again, if I was casing the place, I also wouldn’t park under the same tree every day. Especially not in front of the same house, where someone’s bound to see me from their windows. I also wouldn’t be here for six hours, either. I’d make short stops at certain times throughout the day, maybe the morning, to find the routine and when the house is empty. Then the afternoon to see if anyone’s back, maybe the kids from school. Finally, I’d put a lot more time into it at night. Of course, most of these would be on foot, making it look like I live in the area not to draw any attention to myself. I’d probably leave my car parked down the street in that strip mall for the hour or so that I’m out. They’ll think I’m shopping, and no one would look twice at a car parked in a strip mall, even if it comes six times a day,” I replied, adjusting in my seat and reaching for the box of cigarettes.

  What was once a dream of quitting was quickly becoming a bad habit of smoking triple the amount of half-cigarettes in a day.

  The man set the end of the baseball bat against the ground, looking up and down the street. The hand holding the cellphone pointed in a few key locations as if trying to follow what I was saying.

  “That does seem like a better plan than sitting out here in the open. But I gotta ask, what are you doing here then?” He locked the phone and put it away in his pocket.

  “I’m a detective,” drawing my badge, I showed it to him. “More a private investigator, really, but who’s here to argue semantics? I’m watching out for potential threats on the inhabitants of that house over there. I don’t suppose you’d know anything about them?”

  “No, sir, I can’t say I do,” he ran a hand through his curly beach blonde hair. “Is there something I should be aware of? Something involving the street and all?”

  There was a slight quiver in his voice—an almost panic, even.

  “No. It’s an isolated event,” without knowing much about the case, it was all I could say. But I really didn’t think it would extend further out to anyone else.

  “Okay, good. Well, if you need a c
up of coffee or a bathroom break, you feel free to come knocking on my door, sir.”

  “Thanks for the kindness,” I replied. He spent another moment dawdling outside my car before stepping away once more.

  I spent the rest of the day outside the car, looking over every now and then, only to find the man standing in his window, watching me. Noticing me looking at him, he gave me a thumbs up. I chuckled, turning back and looking on down the street.

  ~

  Hours passed with little happening. I listened to my recorder, trying to scour information while looking down the road. I hydrated and ate a snack I bought at the corner store while looking down the road. I smoked half a box of cigarettes, near filling my ashtray while looking down the road.

  The sheer mundanity of it was getting to me. The first day was the easiest, with a glimmer of hope that something might come from this. But the more time spent out here, the more I realized that I was chasing a pipe dream. The thought crossed my mind that whoever was doing this recognized my car and waited for me to leave before delivering another letter.

  If that was the case, I was glad to be there—a threatening force, ever-watching.

  But as I closed in on late afternoon, when I was just about ready to call it a day, a blue Chevy Impala pulled up to Jane Dench’s driveway. It stopped at the side of the road and a man dressed in a cheap mailman’s outfit got out. The car caught my attention because of its lack of number plates, and when the man emerged, I knew it was my man.

  He was short, fat, and had a patchy beard that barely covered any of his face at all. He wore a pair of John Lennon glasses and held nothing but a single letter. He walked over to the mailbox, sliding it in, and without delivering another scrap of mail to anyone else down the street, returned to his car.

  I considered getting out and speaking with him, but he was out and in his car within seconds. If he caught wind of me, that would’ve been even shorter. The best approach was to chase behind and catch him off guard. He couldn’t have known there was an open case against him, so I still had the element of surprise.