The Daughters of Men

Chapter 16

A rusty old pickup truck parked in front of the motel. The driver, Caleb Warren, stepped out of the truck and walked to the main office, renting out a room for the week, paying for it in a series of wadded up bills. Driving his truck to his room, Caleb opened the door to his motel room and checked around before grabbing two big black duffle bags from the bed of his truck. Throwing the bags on one of the two beds in the motel room, he returned to his truck and grabbed a small black box from under the passenger's seat. Returning to his room, he closed the door and locked the deadbolt, quickly closing the curtains on the window and turning on his lamp.

Caleb then got to work; taking one of the duffle bags, he opened it up and grabbed a handful of files from inside. Opening each of them carefully, he looked at their contents before taking a bag of pins out of his pocket. With a mastered precision, he began to pin various things to the wall; a map of the United States went first, followed by a series of pictures, news articles, police notes and redacted government reports. After about twenty minutes, Caleb had finished, looking over his good work with a small bit of pride. Pulling out one final picture, the only one in a frame, he placed on the endtable between the two beds.

Laying down for a moment, Caleb looked at the picture in the frame, depicting a woman, smiling while wearing formal military garb, her hair shaved down almost to the scalp, her beautiful brown eyes peering from the picture as though she were about to pop out of the frame. Caleb smiled to himself as he looked at the picture.

Yawning, he got back to his feet and grabbed the second duffle bag, opening it up and grabbing from within a large black gun. Gently placing the gun on his bed, he then grabbed a tripod, putting it about three feet from the door. He then screwed the gun into place on top of the tripod, clicking a small button on the scope of the gun to enact the motion sensor.

Grabbing then his little black box, Caleb took a key that hung on a chain around his neck and used it to unlock the box. Opening it up, inside was a picture of the same woman as the frame photograph, although wallet-sized and depicting that woman in her wedding dress, with shoulder-length auburn hair. She was smiling, holding a bouquet of flowers that matched her dress. Caleb looked at the picture for a short time before placing it next to his frame. Then he pulled out a different picture, a standard-sized photograph of a group of people; sixteen individuals, all standing together dressed in formal attire. Some of the people were dressed in lab coats and some military garb and some still dressed in ordinary suits. Of the sixteen people, eleven of them had red X's drawn over them. Looking over the picture, remembering all of the instances where he had been introduced to those sixteen people, he sighed and placed it on the bed and grabbed out from the black box a small black flip phone.

Opening his phone, Caleb typed "murders in Baltimore" into his search engine. Up popped a number of various articles. The fifth one down was from a independent publisher, Caleb noticed, as opposed to a larger newsprint, titled 'Mysterious Murders Possibly Tied to Morrison'. Clicking the article, Caleb read through the piece.

"Last month, former mayor of Baltimore as well as a one-time member of the Cabinet for the President of the United States, J. K. Morrison, was found dead in his home by his wife early on a Sunday morning. Morrison, famed for his reforms in education on a large and small scale, as well as his hard-headed approach to opposing gay marriage, had many people split on how they felt about the straightforward politician. While he rooted himself in traditions of American past, he also strove for change in the areas of life he believed needed it most. Those who knew him described him as steadfast in his goals, never wavering nor doubting his own resolve. Even to those of us who knew him only through the media, we have a clear vision of what kind of man Morrison truly was. One of the more honest politicians, back in 2003, during a scandal which saw Morrison being accused of funneling funds leftover from his campaign to his own bank account, our then mayor pleaded guilty to all of it, repaying back the stolen money and serving a year-long tenure in jail, where he still worked as mayor from his cell. Unorthodox is one of the most constant words heard describing the late J. K. Morrison. The split public opinion on Morrison has garnered him a number of dedicated supporters and die hard protestors. The world was also equally unsure on how to react to the fifty seven year old's untimely death.