The Unknown: Darkness Among Us #1

1 - Long Night Ahead

Once they got back to the station, Pam helped James too not only locate the room they had been assigned. But also to help him move the trunk down to the room at the same time.

Together, the two of them put the trunk down on the closest table to the entrance. Stopping for a moment to catch their breath, before turning to look at their new workspace.

The room they had been given, looked to have been completely forgotten about by the entire station above. Tables and chairs were covered in a thick layer of dust, that had accumulated over the years. Boxes and files were scattered throughout the room, cases left abandoned and forgotten. The clock on the wall had stopped ticking, at exactly 1:05. Even the posters that covered the walls and the moveable corkboard were out of date.

"Charming little place this", Pam stated, as she took a couple of steps forward, taking in every little detail that she could about the place.

"Punishments don't get much worse than this", she heard James complain from behind her, as he remained where he was and examined the room from afar. "I didn't even know this room existed".

"You, me and everyone else who works here", Pam replied as she ran a finger over one of the tables. Gaining a large clump of dust sitting at the tip of her index finger. "Before we get on with the task at hand. We should probably tidy up a little and make a place for us to work".

"I'm with you on that one... we may as well make it ours, who knows how long we'll be made to work down here".

They began by rounding up all of the old boxes and piling them up against the far wall. There were so many boxes filled to the brim with past cases, notes and other documents, that they had almost completely replaced the far wall with one made of nothing but cardboard boxes. They gathered together the lone files and random pieces of paper, placing them on the table next to the wall they had built.

Pam began to tear down the posters off the wall and the old corkboard. While James fixed the broken clock on the wall and retrieved cleaning chemicals from upstairs, using them to clean the tables and chairs of dirt.

"Do you have any idea what people were working on down here?", Pam asked as she picked up another file that had fallen under a table. The information on the cover showed that this case was at least sixty-years old and unsolved.

"I haven't got a clue", James responded. "But they seemed to have abandoned this room in a hurry... for some reason. No officer I know, would leave these old case file just lying around like this. Abandoned, unsolved... forgotten".

"Maybe this was once the cold case department", Pam suggested. "Budget cuts and the department was either closed or moved".

"If they were moved, they would have taken the files with them or at least put them away properly".

"The station has been having financial problems for years, maybe they rented out this room? It's out of the way, no one to interfere with the police above".

"Too risky having the public that close while we worked on sensitive cases", James pointed out. "If there was a reason why this room was closed down quickly. We aren't going to find it in old case files. We don't even know what department was working down here".

"You are probably right", Pam stated glumly, as she placed the newly found file with the rest of them. "On a less sad note, how about we actually get started on the work Graves has assigned us?".

"Let's find out what's really going on", James replied as he walked over to the trunk, with Pam coming to join him.

As the two detectives stood side by side looking down at the old leather case. Pam asked, "so... who's going to have the honour of opening this heavy thing?". She glanced over to look up at James, who didn't turn to meet her gaze.