The Elaine Investigates index page.
©1 January 2025 Levite
http://themediadesk
1.
In Suffolk County, New York, at the Eastern end of Long Island traditional county wide police matters are, in most cases, handled by the County Police. Other matters fall under the Sheriff's Department, such as running the Correctional Facilities, most issues involving the security of County Owned property, and, as you've seen, most personnel issues, and now, anything out of the ordinary that involves something in the county that nobody else wants to handle.
And then when I walked into the office on a Monday Morning, I was met by one of the County Police's Deputy Commissioners, Mr. Jacob Wickham, who was standing outside my office.
"Good morning Detective Elaine, I was told you'd be prompt, and you're even early. Very nice."
"Thank you, sir. Can I help you?"
"I hope so. We have a problem, and we need an outside expert to investigate the matter. And it needs to be done- delicately, but quickly."
"I'll do anything I can to help."
"One of our officers, is missing."
That was something I never expected him to say. It took me a moment to respond.
"I see. Please, come in and go through it."
Every year on the Island there are a small, but significant, number of missing persons cases that go unsolved for some time.
Of course a sizable percentage of them involve boating or other mishaps on either the Sound or in the Atlantic that may or may not be answered later when a body is found washed up on Cape Cod or in a drifting derelict boat far out to sea.
Other missing persons turn up in Las Vegas or end up being pulled over by the State Police in Virginia, sometimes with a new name, and occasionally even a partially new face thanks to some cosmetic surgery.
And then there are always a few that remain an open Missing Person case long enough to go to a couple of Cold Case Investigators who pull them up once and awhile and see if anything new can be learned that might close it.
This Missing Person Report was three days old.
"Sergeant Perkins worked his normal shift for most of last week. He took half a day off on Thursday to go to a doctor's appointment. We haven't seen or heard from him since, and he hasn't been in touch with any of his family as well. His brother in law has even been out looking for him." He looked down at a very neatly written note on an actual note card. "There's been no charge or other new activity on either his bank accounts or credit card since he paid the copay at the doctor's office. We've tried to track his cell phone, it comes back as out of service. All calls and messages to it fail. And we've got standing requests in with the coroner's offices all over New England to call us if they have an unclaimed male decedent that matches his general profile. We've had two calls, neither were him." He paused for a second, then continued. "We want you, as an outside investigator to look into it for a day or two before we go public with a request for information. His family agreed to that."
"Very well, sir. Did he make it to his doctor's appointment?"
"He used the auto-sign in kiosk, but then when they called him up to fill out an insurance form he wasn't there." He took out his phone and tapped at the screen for a minute, "This is him using the sign in screen, they automatically take a picture when you use it." He showed it to me. "and I've already sent you a copy of this, and everything else. It should be in your email. If it's not, I'll resend it."
"Thank you, sir. I'll check on it before you leave."
"There's a security camera outside that shows him arriving, and then leaving in a few minutes. But it doesn't show which car he went to. The camera on the other side of the parking lot didn't get it."
"When you checked his house, what did it look like?"
"He lives in an apartment complex in North Babylon. Just a simple one bedroom. We got the landlord to let our people in, and it looked like he expected to come home. His uniforms were in the closet, and his duty pistol was hanging in its holster on a hook. No sign of foul play or other intention."
"How about his car?"
"It was still in the parking of the doctor's office. We got it and went over it. It even still had two bags of stuff he'd bought at a dollar store on the way to the office. Toothpaste, a box of plastic bags, stuff like that. He'd spent twenty seven dollars, there's a time stamp on the receipt. Nothing out of the ordinary there." He nodded and continued. "Of course we have interviewed every officer on his shift. The Precinct staff. Everybody. He hadn't said or done anything unusual that they can remember. Internal Affairs was very thorough with that side of it."
"So why do you think I can help?"
"There's some other things that were out of the ordinary in the apartment, and in his personal computer." The Commissioner shifted nervously and adverted his eyes. "It seems the Sergeant was into witchcraft."
That was the second thing the Deputy Commissioner said that I didn't expect.
An hour later I began going through the material he'd sent over to me.
There was an extensive file on his professional life as a County Police Officer, and then for the last few years, a Police Sergeant. He had earned several commendations, and was consistently referred to in positive, although not overly glowing terms. To his credit he had taken and passed several advanced courses, two of which I had taken myself, and had indicated that he was interested in another class. After which he would be well qualified to take the test to advance even further up the ladder in the department.
In short, there was nothing in the Sergeant's professional life that stood out as a reason for him to disappear.
So they wanted me to look at his private life.
At first I had thought everything from that maybe the Sergeant had run into an old flame and had suddenly eloped and it would come out that he'd been married in Mexico over the weekend, or that he'd had second thoughts about seeing his doctor and went out on an epic bender and would call somebody looking for bail money from New Orleans. And, a few things in between.
I remembered a case of one of our own department's correctional officers having a massive attack of conscious while on the job. He signed out of his post at Yaphank Correctional, and drove all the way to St Joseph's in Yonkers and begged to be admitted to the Seminary to take vows and become a priest.
He did.
And as far as I've heard he has never set foot on Long Island again.
But instead, I was looking first at a spreadsheet they had recovered from the Sergeant's computer.
Not only was he a practicing witch. He was the second ranking Warlock on the Island.
And that was why they wanted me to look into it.
2.
I stopped by the County Police impound yard and looked at what they had taken out of Sergeant Perkin's car. Then I looked through the car itself. It was a totally unremarkable smaller model hatchback that you see all over the Island. It started right up when I turned the ignition, and I even checked which radio station he had on, a local classic hits station on FM and a sports talk station on AM. Other than some of the random stuff that accumulates in the back of most cars, jumper cables, a bag of plastic bottles he probably meant to recycle at some point, and things like that, there was nothing noteworthy or interesting in it.
The same went for his locker at the precinct. Of course their department's IAD had been through it with a fine toothed comb, but they left it more or less intact. Again, it looked like it was ready for him to come in and work his shift.
So I left there and went to where he lived, hoping for a clue, or at least somewhere to begin an investigation.
The office of Sergeant Perkin's apartment complex had been told to expect me, and the lady at the desk handed me the keys to his place and explained how to get to it after only a glance at my badge and ID.
The apartment was exactly as they had described it. The only thing they'd taken out was his service firearm.
They had found some of his accessories, and looked at some files on his computer, and left.
Which means they'd missed quite a bit of the good stuff.
Sergeant Perkins had a large suitcase of items he evidently used in his other activity. There were robes, and various belts and sashes. And even different headgear, some with various symbols and words on them that I couldn't read other than knowing it appeared to be in Latin.
In a case that looked like it should contain a set of snow skis I found three long wooden staffs carefully wrapped in a beach towel. Each staff with a different insignia at the top. One of them had ornate work above and below a grip that was wrapped with leather. Also in the case with the staffs was a set of fine black leather gloves, and a scarf of black silk.
But it was a jewelry box on the end of the dresser that made me step back and look around the room.
Inside were several large rings and a gold chain with a large and heavy, inverted cross on it.
Another chain held a large pentagram with a stone in the center.
If there had been any question that perhaps the Sergeant was just mildly interested in an alternative religion. These things proved otherwise.
I took several pictures of the items and then carefully closed the box and ski case and put them back where I found them.
In the bottom drawer of the refrigerator I found an interesting selection of items the Sergeant likely couldn't have picked up at the dollar store he had stopped at. Including one glass jar with a handwritten note saying it was "goat blood", and another that held what appeared to be a dead snake of some sort. It wasn't labeled and my skills at dead reptile identification are somewhat lacking.
Then in a box in the front closet next to the apartment door I found several of the plastic storage bags like what he had picked up on his last shopping trip. One contained "comm wafrs" written in the same lettering as the goat blood, and another that said it was "cemtry dirt".
Another box contained a large assortment of various colors of candles, with more of them being black than any other color. And there was also three brass oil lamps in the box. But no oil for them. And I didn't see a bottle of oil anywhere else in the closet.
While his computer booted up I poked around in his desk drawers.
One good thing was that I found Sergeant Perkin's passport. Which meant that he hadn't taken a Gypsy cab to JFK and left the country.
I flipped through it, by the stamps, it looked like he'd gone on a cruise several years ago, and that was it.
Then I went through his computer and became fascinated by a recent email exchange between the Sergeant and at least two of his fellow witches and the male leader of the Long Island group who apparently lived in Hempstead and wanted Perkins to come visit.
The ranking warlock of the group, one who called himself Gaoth, was unhappy that Sergeant Perkins had recently started getting heavily into the Dark Side of their art.
"No good can possibly come from embracing the path you are on. I cannot forbid you, but I am going to attempt to discourage you from following it." I read off the screen. "When you come over, I'll show you why you must turn aside from it and put it behind you."
One of the others, a woman who went by the name Elzabelle was also unhappy with his choice.
"You used to be so full of joy, and now all I see is sorrow and evil," she said to him in a message two weeks before he vanished.
I sat back in his chair and took a deep breath. This put everything in a new perspective.
And it also meant I'd be driving over to Hempstead to talk to a warlock.
I went through the apartment again. And this time I did it with an eye as to who Sergeant Perkins was before he took the turn down the new path. Which had evidently begun only a few months ago.
Last fall he had finished third in a fantasy baseball league, the year before that he'd finished in the top half of their participants. He did not sign up for this year's league, and the notebook he had used to track his draft picks and other information laid buried under old mail and sales ads.
Until recently he'd been active with the Police Athletic League, and had been one of their softball coaches. While I saw where he had continued to be active, he'd stopped coaching, and from an email I found from the group, they hoped he was OK and looked forward to his being at their upcoming field day. As far as I could tell, he didn't answer the email, and I don't think he went to the field day.
Then I spotted another folder in his email box that I'd missed earlier. All it said was "new folder" but it indicated that there was a lot of mail in it.
The contents of the folder explained the concern of the others. Starting about three months ago, Sergeant Perkins began to correspond with somebody who called themselves ArchFiendFreind and signed their emails from a major free email service with AFF.
Every email Sergeant Perkins sent to them wanted to know about power rituals and how long it took a certain incantation to begin to work.
The answers were sometimes vague, and sometimes short saying that "it doesn't work like that".
The last email exchange with AFF was three days before Perkins vanished, and instead of inquiring about the power ritual they'd sent him the specifics about, he had asked about how long you can store an unfrozen veal heart. The answer was to keep it refrigerated and it should keep well enough to serve in ritual for several days, but that its being fresher was always better. If you had to keep it before use, once it began to stink, throw it away.
With that I had read all I wanted to read. I saved everything to my flash drive and stood up and took a long deep breath.
Whatever had happened to the Sergeant, both with his choice to follow a new course in his 'hobby' and what had made him vanish that morning outside the doctor's office probably wasn't good.
I went back and got the contact information from the one in Hempstead and called him.
"Why no, I haven't heard from Ol' Perkins. I hope nothing untoward has happened to him." Gaoth said after I identified myself and why I was calling.
"That's what I'm trying to find out. It would seem he's missed several of his shifts and we're just trying to find him to make sure he's all right. Would it be OK if I came over to talk to you in person?"
"Why, yes, detective. That would be fine. I'm almost always home. Please, stop by."
I set up an appointment with him in about an hour.
I also found out that his name, "Gaoth", was the Gaelic word for "Wind", and, apparently he had come by it honestly.
I closed up the apartment and gave the key back to the manager.
"When will we be able to prepare it for a new tenant?" She asked me.
"When we determine that it isn't a crime scene or that there is more evidence in it."
She took that like she'd heard it before, "When will that be?"
"I don't know yet."
3.
I know people that live in the downtown area of various cities, but I'd never met anybody who directions to their house said to park in a light rail parking lot and walk across the street. As I was driving a Sheriff's Department car I wasn't worried about getting a ticket, but it was an interesting note on Gaoth's concern for my well being.
And he was right, that was the easiest place to park, and his house was right across the street.
"I'm sorry, Detective, but my curiosity got the better of me and I made some calls of my own. He used to go by the private name of Tosaigh. I'll save you the trouble of looking it up, it's Celtic for 'to begin' or 'start'. He had told me not to call him that any more. He was using the word Potentia, Latin for power, and I refused to call him that." He took a short breath and continued, "I called several of those that I thought he'd been close to, and found out that he had all but stopped talking to them. He had even dropped out of our online chat, and hadn't posted on our message board in some time. I can look up the dates of his last posting if you wish."
I was amazed at a chance to speak, "That's OK. Do you know somebody that goes by ArchFiendFreind?"
"Yes, and no. I know of them. But I don't know if it is a man or a woman. Or really, even if it is a person, or maybe a group posting as one, or, now, it could even be one of those computer chat bots. It's hard to tell now what's real and what's not on line. That's one reason we like our religion, it is all real." He took another breath. "But to your question about Arch Fiend Friend, I'm familiar with some of their statements, as Tosaigh had been copying some of their messages to him, until I told him to stop. And even they weren't as dark as some of what Tosaigh had been getting into." He stopped and looked around. "I do know this." He stopped again and bit his bottom lip.
Gaoth seemed nervous and unwilling to say what he was thinking about telling me. "It might be important to the investigation, so please, take your time and just tell me."
He nodded, "Yes, thank you, Detective. I know this, he told me himself. Your Sergeant Perkins, the man I thought was my friend and coworker in our craft, Tosaigh, had left the path of light and love and wisdom, and was looking for the rituals and talsmans needed to...." he paused and took a breath, "to call up Satin himself."
I let him sit for a moment before I answered. "I had almost suspected something like that from some of what I had come across in the apartment."
"Did you check his storage unit?"
"No, I didn't know he had a storage unit, do you know where it is?"
"Yes, we used to use it to hold some of the larger items we used in ritual. But he moved them all out and I had to find another building. It's over in Babylon. Islip Road Self Store, something like that, right off the highway."
"I'll find it. Thank you. Do you have a contact number from some of the others of the group. He had been exchanging messages with Elzabelle, and one named Shar-On."
"Yes, yes, I know both of them. Lovely ladies indeed. And Elzabelle was very close to Tosaigh, untill he began to do these other things. Let me get you their numbers."
"And one other thing, if you don't mind. I've not found anything that indicates that he was dating anybody, or anything like that. Do you know of anybody he was close to?"
You could see him thinking about it. Then he answered, "Well, he had been dating one of the members of another group. Months ago, but they moved down to DC or someplace, and I don't think he's been serious with anybody else. And certainly not since he's been doing... what he's been doing."
I nodded, "Thank you, if you could find their number as well I'd appreciate it."
"I'll see if I can find it." He went to an old fashioned contact book and began flipping through it. And, every so often, he'd read me a number and tell me a bit about the person it belonged to.
But it wasn't that easy to get away from the wind. He talked for another ten minutes about how he makes an effort to keep his practioners away from the darker aspects of their art. Finally, I made the point that I needed to find Perkin's storage unit and he let me go.
The storage unit wasn't a total dead end, but it was pretty close to it. And he wasn't using it for storage any more.
There was a large pentagram drawn on the floor with black candles all around it, and other paraphinalia of dark magic. In one corner was a camera tripod, but no camera. There was a box of odds and ends, including an empty jar that had a label similar to the one in his refridgerator.
But it didn't look like it had been used in the last few days. Whatever liquid had been in a chalice next to the inverted cross on the wall had completely dried up and there was dust on top of the candles where, if they had been it, it would have burned off or melted into the wax.
Elzabelle, which was her real middle name, was just as upset with the change in Perkins, and hadn't seen or been in contact with him since their last text message exchange the week before he vanished. She'd tried to call him, and had left several voice mails and sent messages, but he did not respond.
While they had been friends, that's all they'd been. And once Perkins began delving into the darker art, she didn't want anything to do with him.
Shar-On and her husband hadn't talked to him recently either. "He used to come out here where we'd have a circle in the back yard. It was an uplifting time. To recharge our spirits and feel life and love." She said. "Even though I feel he never fully embraced the goddess as he should. He was on the path to her light."
Her husband wasn't quite as poetic, "He liked it when the women wore their nature gowns." He saw that didn't mean anything to me. "They weren't always sky-clad. That is, naked. Usually. Sometimes they were, we'd all be. But they usually wore just what amounted to an oversized scarf."
"To keep it from being too airish," Shar-On added.
"Thank you, for the information."
"If you find out what happened to him, please let us know. He had been a friend."
Sergeant Perkin's past wasn't shining any light on where he might have gone or what had happened to him outside his doctor's office.
So I went back to his apartment and got into his computer and found more of the information about who, or what, ArchFiendFriend may have been.
4.
I made a point to go through everything I could that Sergeant Perkins had done in his leaving the mainstream and mostly positive side of his chosen beliefs and began heading into the darker world of it with direction and intent.
And then I found something that shed a lot of light on his dark hobby.
When I was going through some of his web hisstory and the documents he had saved from a couple of websites that he found interesting enough to bookmark multiple times I saw a symbol that looked familiar that I wanted to draw on a peice of paper to look up later.
So I opened the desk drawer where I remembered seeing a notepad from the credit union thinking I would borrow a sheet to draw the symbol and write down where it was.
Under the notepade was a small memory card that I had missed earlier.
It was some time before I drew the symbol on the notepad.
I put the card in the computer and opened it.
It was full of photos and videos of Perkins doing rituals. Some of them had been filmed outdoors, and some of them in his storage unit. And in all of them he was alone.
From the camera angels and the fact that the camera didn't move until he went over and shut it off made a good case that nobody else had been with him, even as a camera operator.
In several of the still images, you could see a remote trigger in his hand.
I opened the metadata on one of the still images to find out what the camera had been. And it helpfully informed me that it was a well known model of a medium priced model, and even included the focal settings and resolution.
But I didn't remember coming across a large bodied camera like the model in the photo's data.
Usually people with a camera like that kept them in a camera case or padded bag. There wasn't one in the apartment. I went back through looking specifically for something like that. That model of camera also took a special rechargable battery, which took its own type of charger. There wasn't one of those there either.
The tripod had been in the storage unit, but I didn't remember seeing a camera case.
I went back and looked through several of the still images from both the outdoor clearing and the ones from the storage unit. And then I saw on the far side of the clearing a small black bag which looked like it well could be a camera case.
It now seemed likely that wherever Sergeant Perkins was, he took his camera with him.
Which made me wonder about what else was in the photos and videos with him. So I looked through them with the notepad and kept track.
In a couple of them he was totally naked and not holding anything at all. So those didn't help much.
But in others he was wearing one of his robes, and holding a staff as he recited what I recognized as some Latin poetry.
I enlarged the photo so I could see the staff, and marked off which one it was. Then I worked through the videos.
There were four different staffs in the videos and photos. But there were only three in the closet.
The same with the medalions in the jewellry box. There were two there now. In the same set of photos from an outdoor ritual with the missing staff he was wearing what appeared to be a cresent moon beneath a large retangular medalion that I couldn't get a good enough look at to see what was enscribed on it.
The same with his hats. The bright red miter style hat he was wearing was not in the suitcase or in the closet. It'd be hard to miss a scarlet colored hat that was at least eighteen inches tall.
Lastly I tried to identify the robes. There were several in the suitcase and a couple more in the closet, and some of them looked very similar, black with a black collar or trim and sleeves. I just couldn't tell if the one from the video with the red hat and missing staff and necklace was there or not.
So, whereever he went, he evidently took at least some of that outfit and those accessories with him, and his camera.
I looked at the outdoor scenes, and the information in his emails and computer trying to narrow it down. But it could be anywhere. A fairly small clearing, with several different sorts of trees in it.... they were all over this end of the island.
I turned the sound up on the videos to listen to the background noise when he wasn't chanting in Latin. I could sometimes hear automotive traffic, but I didn't notice anything that'd help, such as the sound of aircraft or boats.
I even took the still images from the clearing and zoomed in on the background until it began to pixelate, looking for anything, a half visible street sign or building. All there was was trees.
As far as the symbol on the ground. In some cases it was three interlaced circles, in another it was another pentagram, in one it was an equilateral cross. But all had been laid out with what appeared to be peices of cotton or nylon rope. He could take it up and put it down wherever and whenever he needed to without leaving a trace.
I stared at the image of Perkins. Then I did something that I had been dreading doing since I saw the name on the email.
I tried to contact ArchFiendFreind. I simply sent an email to the address from Perkin's account. I didn't pretend to be him, or sign it with my name, or anything else. I just replied to one of the most recent emails with a nondiscript message.
And waited.
In a few minutes there was a blinking indicator that there was a new email in the account.
There was, but it was a spam message about how there was a sale on cruise ship cabins.
I took a break and looked through the apartment in case I missed anything in a kitchen cabinet or the back corner of the front closet.
When I came back from looking under the sink in the bathroom there was another new message.
It was from AFF.
I had simply replied to an earlier email that Perkins, under his name "Potentia" was missing and we were concerned about him and looking to make sure he was all right.
And that had drawn the reply.
"I didn't take him. He was already mine." I read the first line of the message out loud. The message ended with that they didn't know anything about his whereabouts, he had not sent anything to them in over a week, and not to contact them again as they were in Eastern Europe and had never even been to America.
I didn't believe for a minute that I had just read an email from Satan, but, instead, one that was from somebody that thought they were his friend and spokesperson.
One thing I did do was to save the full header information from the email to take back to the office where one of the tech guys on the other side of the building could look at it and maybe get more information from it than I could.
I know that at times they have been able to even get what was called a MAC address off things and identify a particular machine something had been done on. I was hoping all the information I got off the new messages header would do that this time as well. Then while I was thinking about it I went and got the similar data off of a couple of their other emails.
So I took a few minutes as I sat at his desk to think about things carefully.
I was no closer to solving the case. But I had learned a great deal about the Sergeant.
And I had also located two local butcher shops where you could buy whole beef and veal hearts. I had also called and asked if they remembered somebody buying one last week. So far neither shop had answered my voice mail.
He had always been something of a loner, but one that was amiable and easy to get along with both professionally and privately.
Perkins had been living a simple, but what some would regard as a fullfilling life.
But for some reason that I still didn't understand, three months ago everything changed. Dramatically.
And I still had no clue as to what it was. And I had less information about where he could have gone.
I shut everything off in the apartment and drove to my office to compile my report.
I checked with our tech guys about whether AFF was really overseas.
He looked at the email headers and checked the routing information in it, "Yeah, this one came from, if I had to guess, Poland. But I don't like this Yandex routing header, whatever server they're using is behind that. But this isn't North American network routing."
Then I had to go to County Police headquarters to meet with Mr. Wickham the Deputy Commissioner, and give him my report.
Mr Wickham moved the discussion of the report to the conference room where his Comissioner, as well as my boss, the Sheriff, Perkin's shift captain, a union representive, and a few others gathered.
First the Captain of Perkin's shift gave a quick review of the Sergeant's work record. Which he then summarized with "he was a good, solid, uniform officer with a good future with the department, and perhaps even beyond. The others in the precint liked working with him. We miss him at the station."
Then they all listened as I gave my report about his personal life and showed images of some of his accessories and other information on the big screens. And how he had suddenly begun persuing the idea of gaining power in this world with the assistance of certain entites from ... outside.
"Three months ago," the Commissioner said. "What happened to him three months ago?"
I shook my head. "I couldn't find anything in his apartment or anywhere else from that time to explain such a dramatic change."
"Maybe I can," Mr. Wickham said. "It was something that happened, but at the time, it seemed, important, but not. This, important." He said with emphasis.
The rest of us turned our attention his way.
He continued, "Sergeant Perkins had an interest in taking the Lieutenant's test after he had completed an upcoming academic class. My office is tasked with furthering the administration of various legal settlements that have involved the department over the years. While we do not have a racial quota for higher positions...." he paused and nodded, "we have an unofficial racial quota. Unfortunately, Sergeant Perkins is a heterosexual... white... male. A member of my staff, completely, off the record, off duty, and unofficially, contacts certain officers and, just gives a bit of friendly advice, that, at present, perhaps it would be better if they postponed testing for a higher position."
The room was dead silent to where you could hear the clock on the wall ticking.
It ticked for awhile before anybody spoke.
One of the civilians in the room whose name and title I didn't catch asked the obvious question.
"And that advice was given three months ago."
"It would have been about that time, yes."
I nodded and lowered my head, "that explains why it happened so suddenly. And so completely, but it doesn't answer the other question."
"Which is, Detective?"
"Where is he now?"
5.
The request for the public's assistance in the locating of Sergeant Perkins went out the next morning.
It broke on the morning news locally and in the City. Then it went national, and even International as I saw it posted on a couple of UK news sites.
And, as I had picked up the term from the UFO group, we had a number of schmucks send in a report, people making false or incomplete reports for reasons of their own.
Several people reported seeing him the day before in his home town. Reports that turned out to all be his father, whom he had more than a casual resemblance to.
I even got another reponse from AFF. They had seen the report while looking at American news, and knew it was him, and that neither they, nor anybody in their group in Europe had any information on the missing officer.
Nothing that came in was of any help at all.
I continued to scour the island for his clearing, and found several illicit campsites, one moonshine still, and a notable garden full of marijuana that hadn't been tended to in some time. But none of them matched the location enough to be of any help.
I even asked various county workers if the site looked familiar to them. Their answer was the same as my initial thought, it could be almost anywhere, including private property.
Which brought up another angle for me to pursue. Who did Sergeant Perkins know that owned significant land on the Island that had a stand of trees that bordered a clearing that appeared to be about half an acre or so?
It kept me busy for a few days while more scattered reports came in of him being seen here and there. Of which exactly none panned out.
I met almost every member of the Eastern Long Island Coven who didn't live in an apartment or townhouse. And several from another group, and talked to some friends of other friends of other people whose cousin owned some land and..... Of which exactly none panned out.
Another case which needed my attention came up. So I had to put Sergeant Perkin's file on the back corner of my desk and check on things once in awhile while I did other work.
The County Police's IAD unit had every account of every sort flagged with every alert they could arrange. But there they sat. Nothing. No activity occurred at all.
It's been several months, and there is still no answer to where he was or what had happened to him.
He had simply, vanished.
-end missing-
The Elaine Investigates index page.
[NOTE: The above story were written as adventure fiction, and is to be taken as such. While most of the geographical features of Suffolk County exist, the rest of the setting is fictional.
Thank you, Dr. Leftover, TheMediaDesk.com]
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