He looked normal enough. Well, except for those eyes.
“So you’re…how old?” I asked again politely as my temper started to brew.
“Does it matter how old I am? Your boss called me an alien. I’m not an alien,” he replied in a low, deadpan voice.
“I need a number. As you can see, I’m filling out a report and would appreciate your help,” I said with growing irritation in my voice.
“Okay, I’m fifty.”
Egad, I hate these spurious interrogation tasks. I was ten minutes from going home, I thought. “I’m going to need a few more details. As we seem to have gotten off on the wrong foot, maybe it’s best if we start over. What is your name?” I said, smiling.
“My name is Jacobs. Q. Jacobs.”
“Great, Mr. Jacobs. See, that was easy. Let me write that down here. What does the Q stand for?”
“Quartz.”
“Quartz? Okay, that’s unusual. May I address you as Quartz?”
“Sure, that’s fine.”
“Okay, Quartz. I’m going to need an address. Where do you live? Where are you from?”
“I was born in Cortropolis.”
“Cortropolis? Where is that? Is it in the States? Europe?”
“I don’t remember exactly. I haven’t been there since I was a child. It’s down near South America, Argentina, I think. I presently reside at 1010 North State Street, downtown.”
“Okay, you live at the plaza and are from South America, good enough. Where do you work?”
“I work at Storm and Shield Holdings.”
Grrr. Is this guy going to make me probe for every damned detail? I thought. “Please feel free to provide any additional details as we go. What do you do at Storm and Shield Holdings?”
“I’m a consultant.”
Oh for… “Really? No shit. Come on, Quartz, give me something to work with, or my boss is going to keep us here all night. Is that what you want?”
“No, I’m ready to go. I’m not an alien.”
Well, shit, I thought. Going to be a long night. There was a knock at the door. “Come in,” I said.
“Chief Borland wants to see you, Detective.”
“Great.” I half smiled as I rose from my chair. I headed toward the door. “Excuse me for a moment, Quartz,” I said. “Please don’t go anywhere.”
“Funny. I’m still cuffed to this chair, ya know.”
I glanced back at Quartz with a slight frown. “Like I said, stick around.”
***
“Chief, you wanted to see me? I haven’t gotten very far with the suspect you asked me to interview. I don’t think he’s an alien though. He’s got a driver’s license, Social Security number, and such.”
“Come in, Jack. Shut the door and take a seat.”
“Yes, sir,” I said as I entered the room and noticed the chief pacing about his tiny office. When the chief paced, it usually meant that he was in deep thought.
The chief stopped pacing and then turned to look at me as he spoke in his low, gravelly voice.
“What I’m about to say, Jack, is off the record.”
Whoa, I thought. I tried carefully, glancing around the room to see if there were any active cameras or recording devices. I decided not to look too hard, as he seemed dead serious.
“Yes, sir. Off the record.”
“He’s a suspect in the Jessica Frontage case. For clarification, I never suspected he was an illegal alien.”
“What are you saying?”
“I meant alien, as in not from Earth. I know it sounds crazy, but hear me out. Storm and Shield Holdings is a really old company with ties everywhere, and I mean everywhere. Several employees have unusually long backgrounds. One of them is over one hundred and twenty years old and doesn’t look a day over forty. And there’s these devices.” The chief opened a shoebox containing a few apparently heavy items. The box’s structure shifted around as its contents rolled from corner to corner.
I gave the chief a puzzled look. “Okay, Chief, I’ll do a deep dive of Storm and Shield. What’s got you rattled, boss? That suspect? What are you thinking?”
“I can’t pin it down yet, but be careful, Jack. I know how this sounds. Their eyes don’t look normal, and they all have four fingers on each hand. There’s something consistently different about them. No trace of family, no parents. It’s all too strange.” The chief resumed pacing about the office.
I’ve never seen the chief so agitated before, I thought.
“I’m placing you on a special assignment. Do not… "
The chief paused as he apparently decided to rephrase his statement.
“Please don’t tell anyone about this. If anything happens to me, I want you to report your findings discreetly to this woman. She’s in charge of a special team that investigates these sorts of things. They are onto something big, but they won’t share any details with us.”
The chief stepped toward me, and I took the business card and the shoebox from him and glanced at the name on the card.
Amanda Seward
Officer In Charge
Special Action Group
“That box contains evidence that I think will prove they’re aliens. Actual freakin’ aliens, Jack. I want you to take that box and do some research on the ball-looking thing in particular. Don’t use our lab. I want you to use the bureau’s lab downtown.”
I opened the box and looked inside. “Got it, sir. Weird. It looks like an orb from a science fiction movie…thing. It’s very heavy,” I said as I lifted the orb and then let it fall with a light thunk back into the box.
“Yes, it’s very strange. It’d be best if you didn’t mess with it here. It’s easily turned on, and it gets warm and blindingly bright immediately. I don’t want us to accidentally blow the place up.”
Noted, I thought sarcastically as I nodded at the chief and put the lid back onto the shoe box, firmly attaching it into place.
The chief stopped pacing and acted as though he’d had an epiphany. “I have to go and run down a lead. Contact me immediately if you find anything. I think time is precious in this investigation. The murder suspect you are interviewing, well, he’s one of those super-old employees of Storm and Shield Holdings. His prints were found at the murder scene and on the property in that box. A couple of months ago, I saw him get hit by a car with my own eyes. Not a glancing blow but a direct collision while he was crossing the street. POW! I saw the whole accident, so I pulled over and phoned emergency services. I stayed there until the EMTs took over. He was stable, so the EMTs took him to Southern General.”
The chief stopped then pivoted toward his desk to grab his car keys and continued, “I was curious, so the next day I went to check on him at the hospital. Son of a bitch was never admitted, never checked in.” He rubbed his temples in frustration and then continued, “The next day, I camped out in front of Storm and Shield, and sure as I’m telling you this story, he showed up for work promptly at 7:00 AM. Not a scratch. That got me looking at him and a couple of the other employees there. I pulled what I could find on their backgrounds and realized the company is really old. Lots of employees but no information about them. No social media, wedding announcements, none of the normal stuff. Sorry, I really need to run. Be careful, Jack. I should be back tomorrow so we can sync.”
And just like that, the chief opened his office door and walked out. I looked at the door swung wide open. I exhaled deeply as I looked down at the shoebox and pondered my next steps. Murder and aliens. Sheeez. Coffee. I definitely need coffee. I figured I’d grab a cup before I headed back to this Quartz guy.
With shoebox in hand, I went to find a cup of Joe.
