Shaking my head, I turned and walked to the coroner, who was going through the motions of bagging and sealing items on the man. It was not the man’s gum he had in his mouth, nor the small Bible in his pocket that had my main interest, however, or that of the coroner’s. What I walked over to see, and what Tim Snyder the coroner was examining, was the small CD player that had been found in plain sight next to the senior citizen.
My feet crunched through the dry brittle grass that was covered with frost; it was nigh on winter time. “Well?” I asked. “You haven’t listened to it yet, have you?”
Snyder looked up at me from the ground where he was kneeling, and then stood up. In his forties, he’d seen many things in his career, but I could tell that this scene gave him interest. His piercing blue eyes looked at me, and he spoke carefully and calculated. “You know that would be going against the rules, Miss Fallows. It’s not part of my job.”
I shrugged. “But you’re curious.”
Snyder chuckled, then looked back down at the player with a distant look. “Aren’t we all?” He then proceeded to scratch at his thinning head of dark hair.
I switched my gaze to the small paper bags of evidence on the white grass, and with a drop in my stomach, I recognized the police signature on it. I nodded at the bags. “So where’s Wisher? He didn’t leave you to do the rest of the bagging by yourself, did he?”
With a sniff that left a small white cloud in the cold air, the coroner flicked his head in the direction of the police car on the curb. “He’s over there I think. He’s talking with some of the other agents. You should go and see what they’re all up to. You might be missing out on some things.”
Deciding to take his advice, I walked over to where the police car and FBI car were parked side by side. The young police agent, Jack Wisher, was busily talking to the head of my department. My colleague Asher Declan leaned against the hood of one of the cars, his hands on his scruffy chin, listening thoughtfully.
I walked up right as Wisher was saying “Just by looking at this scene, I can tell. This isn’t a random murder; we should highly consider bringing in a detective. The CD player decides it.”
Charlie McMahone, a black man with an Irish last name and who was the head of my department in the FBI agency, shook his shaven bald head. In a deep voice he said, “We don’t know anything; the CD player could have been in the man’s pocket, and it just fell out onto the ground during the struggle. The player wasn’t necessarily placed there, and we won’t know what happened for sure until we look for prints on the thing.”
Jack held back his frustration. “But-”
McMahone held up his hand. “I don’t know what’s gotten into you Wisher, but you’re usually not the one around here to jump to conclusions.” Here, my boss glanced at me and acknowledged my presence with a nod. “We’ll have it examined.”
Asher, finally breaking out of his thoughtful reverie, straightened and looked at the two men. “Heck, we’re all thinking it, I might as well say it out loud; Why don’t we just listen to it? It could tell us something.”
The young police agent glanced at him with irritation. “You know we can’t touch it. It would ruin the evidence and-”
“We can put gloves on! C’mon, Wisher, I know that even a pristine-clean officer like yourself wants to know what’s going on here. Why don’t we just listen to it?”
A silence hung in the air. Jack glanced nervously in the direction of the dead man and Snyder, while McMahone frowned thoughtfully at Asher. Finally, after some more silence, I decided to speak up. “I think I want to listen to that CD.”
There was another pause, during which Jack looked up at me with surprise, and stared me straight in the eyes. There was a slight softening in his face when he looked at me, but I ignored it. “Now.”
Jack slowly nodded, and so we all turned our attention to McMahone and watched his face with anticipation. Slowly, the tall man nodded, and rumbled an “Okay, let’s do this.” Eagerly, we all quickly snapped some rubber gloves on and walked over to Snyder. He already seemed to know what we were coming for, and solemnly handed over the CD player to McMahone. His huge dark hand took it, and with a slight bow to everyone around, he hit the play button. We all held our breath in the pregnant silence and suspense.
A golden-oldies song began to play.
We all sighed in disappointment, and Jack stared at the player in McMahone’s hand with disbelief. McMahone was frowning, and Asher just looked plain out confused. McMahone shook his head, then turned to Jack. “See? I told you, it’s just the old man’s music that was in his po-”
A terrible, blood-curdling scream rang out from the player. It would have kept going too, but McMahone dropped it to the ground in surprise, and it was knocked off. Jack, Asher and I had all jumped, and now we were all breathing hard. McMahone swallowed.
“That scream,” I began slowly, “Was it... Y’know. Was it-”
“-the man’s?” Asher looked up at me with his light brown eyes, than looked back down at the player. “I don’t know about you guys, but I’m pretty sure that’s what it was. Somebody recorded his screams while he was tortured. Probably over the songs that used to be on that old guy’s CD.”
“So what’s this the beginning of?” Jack said aloud, but he seemed to be more talking to himself.
McMahone slowly shook his head, and took a deep breath in through his nose. “I don’t know. But I don’t like it.”
And that began the phenomenon of the case that I will remember for the rest of my life.
