In The Dark

One

• • •

Pineford was never a good place to hide something.

Only a few secrets were kept well enough for Tammy Harlan, the town's very own gossip girl, not to know about them.

Somehow, the young secretary was always aware of everybody's doings. With her jet black hair, always held up in a tight bun to keep it out her face; her big dark brown eyes, hiding their usual mischievous glint behind a pair of cat eyes glasses; and that round face, with features that resembled more the ones of a kid than of a grown woman, Tammy was smart in ways many men did not yet understand. She just knew everything; from common knowledge, like the names of the newlywed that just moved into the house at the end of the street, to some big, juicy gossip, such as Dr. Thomas and the new nurse's late night outgoings, Tammy was always aware of everything happening in her town. 

June 26th of 1957 started like any other day: the faint smell of freshly-made coffee lingered at Pineford's Police Department, as usual, Tammy sat in her desk with papers, pens and pencils sprawled all along the wooden table in her distinctive mess; the continuos typing on writing machines and the scratching of pencil on paper mixed perfectly with the hush whispers of the younger girls in the coffee room, creating a somewhat arhythmic beat that Tammy could only .

She was too occupied catching bits of information from the three different conversations occurring around her to notice the young man coming her way with a couple of yellow files under his arm. "Good morning, Tamara, got anything for me?"

"Morning, sir." She replied, frantically looking for some archives on her desk "Detective Mclarens left a couple of hours ago to inspect the scene of a new case. He said you might be interested and left you a small report." her hands kept roaming around the desk, dropping files, pens, clips and other sorts of stationary to the floor, until she came upon the green file she had left under her cup of coffee. "Here it is!"

Roy Nelson took the file from her hands, trying to avoid the coffee stains covering it, and started examining the contents of the report inside it, "A man found to bodies near the lake this morning." The Special Agent left the report aside and rummaged through the pockets of his black dressing pants, easily finding the small notepad he always kept with him. "Those would be five deaths in almost three months. It think now it's safe to say something odd is happening."

"We've had a couple weird cases through the years," the secretary admitted, "but I've never seen anything like this."

Roy nodded in agreement before he finished reading the small amount of information filling the report: Paul Jacobs, a retired mechanic, had discovered two bodies near the lake while walking his dog that morning. He had ran to the closest public phone to call the police as soon as he notice both men were dead; while on the phone with Mclarens, he said the bodies were hidden between a couple of bushes and claimed that there didn't seem to be any traces of blood in the area around them. Mclarens wrote 9:37 as the hour of the call, and by 9:45 he had left to join mr. Jacobs in the crime scene; it had been almost three hours since his departure, and Mclarens was still nowhere to be seen.

"There's not much I can do right now," he said while quickly glancing at the watch on his wrist, "hopefully detective Mclarens will be here when I get back from lunch. I'm sure he'll fill me in the details of this case then."

"If he comes around before you're back, I'll let him know you want to talk to him, sir."

"Thank you, Mrs. Harlan." The blond man gave a smile to his secretary as he gathered all his files and walked around her desk to get into his office, where he left all the papers he carried on the dark wooden table in the middle of the room.

Roy paced around his office for a couple of minutes, making sure everything was in order and nothing was left in his to-do list before he could go to lunch. Once he had mentally revised, for the third time, that every task on his list for that morning had been checked in, he grabbed his large brown coat from the hanger near his office's door, along with that day's newspaper, walked out of his office, locking the door on his way out, and flashed the brunette secretary a smile before leaving the station, "I'll see you later, Tammy."