©1 August / 2026 Levite
http://themediadesk
1.
One of the things I've been asked in person is where are the Command Officers, other than the Sheriff himself, in all this. Our department has a full echelon of ranking officers, Captains, Assistant Chiefs, and all the rest, and they haven't been involved in my 'unusual cases'. At all.
Well, the answer is simple.
In the beginning, over three years ago now, when I first started doing the occasional Unusual Case, some of them either didn't want anything to do with it because of what they thought about the subject, or, they thought it was a waste of time, and in one notable case: both.
And then the Sergeant Perkins case happened.
And then all of the sudden, the Captain that would turn his attention elsewhere in a staff briefing when I gave an update to a case, or the one that made a point of asking me if I had any "real casework" in progress, became, well, as one colleague put it, fans.
Up until then, when I had one of my special cases working, I reported directly to the Sheriff, and, as you have seen, he would often accompany me into the field on a case. He admitted he found it fascinating, but he also admitted that he didn't have the slightest idea what to do on an investigation.
Unless it involved the Ground Penetrating Radar team, then, he even helped do a sweep with the antenna unit.
As most of these cases came from other County or State agencies, our Intergovernmental staff become more heavily involved than they probably wanted to be. As did the office information staff, and my office's admin especially. Just taking calls about the "Ghost Hunter" in the Sheriff's Office.
And no, for the record, I don't 'hunt ghosts'.
In fact, these journals are mostly about the cases I've had that ended up with a paranormal answer, or at least a somewhat entertaining, and possibly informative mundane answer.
But there have been, and continue to be, case after case where the answer wasn't only mundane, in some cases, it was somewhat comical. Or in one interesting case, criminal in nature and I ended up in court again as part of the prosecution's case.
I'll start with that one, and work my way to the comedy routine. No, really, it ended up being a comedy routine by one of the neighbors who was a working club comic. But first, the other, which wasn't funny at all.
And now that I think about it, the neighbor comic wasn't that funny either.
It was not long after I had spent a long night in the cottage in the swamp in the Mashomack Preserve... just me, my equipment, and about six million bugs of every kind ever seen on Long Island. In that wrap up, the Sheriff had gone back out with me to tell the lighthouse keeper that his station had been decommissioned and he didn't have to tend the fog bell any more.
A week or so later I got a call from a state agency that used a storefront office a couple of times a week to meet with clients who, for whatever reason, couldn't make the trip in to their main office which was quite some distance from this part of the county.
They had reported that every Thursday afternoon, all of their electronic equipment would, to use the lady's words, "go haywire", for about fifteen minutes.
The power company, their Internet Provider, their office tech guys, everybody was at a loss to explain it. Since there were rumors that the office had been a store that had been violently robbed several years ago, and that the owner, who survived that incident, had recently died.....
"Well, Detective Elaine, you come very highly recommended for this sort of thing," the lady added.
And so the Sheriff said, "This sounds like an interesting one, Detective. Once you sort it out, let me know what's going on. And since it is State Parole, I'll go with you on the reveal."
"Thank you, sir."
To me, it didn't sound paranormal at all. Even the most clockwork residual spirit activity doesn't always appear within minutes of their scheduled time. Yellowstone's Old Faithful is fairly regular in its activity, and even it varies its showtime, sometimes significantly.
So with that in mind, I set up my equipment in their office on a Thursday, about noon, and waited.
Waiting gave me good background information on what was happening in the strip mall, down to where I could tell you when the resale shop in the next space to the south made a sale because both their cash register and card reader gave off readable EMF spikes.
As a control I had a spare laptop logged into their office WIFI, as well as a recording EMF sensor telling me about that cash register about four feet away, on the other side of a really cheap dividing wall.
And then, right on cue, or rather, about seven minutes past three in the afternoon, there was an EMF field that all but decimated my equipment. The field was off the scale on every monitor I had, including the high energy sensor from my bag that I had used to find the massive old DC transformer in the ceiling not all that long ago. When the others went off their scales, I had gone out and bought it and walked around with it on its highest setting, and found the source of the energy.
I was able to localize whatever was doing it to the store on the opposite side from the resale shop.
With that information in hand I waited until it had died down and then I scanned along the wall and found a residual field that indicated that some sort of equipment was sitting on the other side of the really cheap dividing wall on the opposite side.
According to the information from the landlord, the next space was leased by a holiday apartment sub-leasing group based in the City.
It was a mail drop. The Parole staff said they hardly ever saw anybody coming or going from that unit.
It took exactly seventeen minutes, and my best smile, at the plaza's landlord's office for me to come back out with keys to the unit to "just take a look and make sure nothing nefarious was going on".
I called for city uniformed backup before I used the key.
Once inside, it didn't take long for City Uniformed Backup to call for both their own Special Crimes Unit and the State Police Electronic Crimes Division backup. I called the Sheriff and told him "you need to come out here... follow the cops."
And the Sheriff went with me to the reveal.
First off, the "holiday apartment sub-lease" group didn't exist. The unit had been rented with that as a front for a digital criminal group from... everywhere.
The equipment I had detected that effectively squelched everything in the Parole Office once a week was a massive, and a somewhat poorly constructed set of servers that, seven times a week, with the six other periods being in the middle of the night, when uploaded all of its accumulated data to, well, wherever in Russia, Belarus, China, and similar locations.
But it was the data on the server, all visible on a master control laptop next to the server rack in its un-encrypted state, that was of interest to the various police personnel, including the FBI, that spent the next several days on the scene, and added significantly to the pizza roll and coffee sales in the convenience store at the far end of the strip mall.
They're still looking for some of those involved in what was on that server.
We still don't know who had built the server that, when it did its data upload of pretty much everything on the Electronic Crimes Division's list put out a thunderstorm's worth of electronic interference.
Eventually the experts backtracked some of the information to both Queens and Brooklyn, but, oddly enough, not to Manhattan, as well as several overseas locations that got Interpol involved, which was the first time, although not the last time, I got to meet one of their representatives to the US Justice Department.
And so, in one debriefing about how the matter came to light, I suddenly felt like I was in one of the soap operas that my grandmother watched in the nineteen... ... when I was much younger.... that somehow always managed to bring Interpol into it.
But this was no TV drama. The server contained everything from illegal sports bets on events world-wide, to stolen identities, child pornography from someplace in Asia, fake news stories being fed to various outlets, and a whole complex spreadsheet of banking information which said its last update was only a few hours ago.
Even with all of that, the main thing of interest to the various law enforcement types was that one of the folders on the server contained information, including a rather badly drawn map, of where other servers like this one were located both in North America and in Europe and elsewhere. Eventually, using that information, one was shut down in Portugal, and another similar unit was found hiding in the middle of a server farm of legally operating machines in California.
And if the criminal's tech guy had programmed the timer on the server to do its Thursday backup at night instead of twelve hours earlier, we might never have found any of it.
The one that ended up being several minutes of bad jokes involved a seasonal county employee who turned a county shed in a park into a drive through pharmacy.
He had worked for county parks for a couple of seasons, and had been a good worker according to his reviews and statements from some of his coworkers, until this last season when he seemed to be spending a lot of time at the equipment building. And he wasn't spending his time restringing weed whackers or sharpening mower blades.
And so I spent some time in the park hanging out, watching birds, taking short hikes, and so on, and, believe it or not, wearing a couple of simple, but effective, disguises, and driving different vehicles, while watching what was going on at the landscaping shed.
And then after hours one night I went and checked out what all was in the shed that was of such interest to not only the employee, but a random selection of outsiders.
And then I got a warrant to go to the employee's apartment, and with uniformed backup we paid him a social call on his day off from the park.
The neighbor happened to be on their balcony watching the scene, and, evidently, took notes, so when the employee threw several small packages out the window and then jumped off his own balcony and tried to escape, the comic could mimic the suspect's run, or rather, attempted run, on a badly sprained ankle.
But it was my work with the unusual cases that made me something of an anomaly in the office. Which, really, I was OK with, and still am.
It was also my work with the unusual cases that made me the office expert on several types of surveillance gear, and when the County Police, or one or the other of the local City Departments needed advice on the practical use of some of the gear, they'd call me.
Once, one of the Undersheriffs who, until then, didn't approve of my cases, but he didn't object to the point I had to stop them, came in with an assistant police chief from the Riverhead City department and walked up to my desk and asked if I had a few minutes free.
"Yes sir, what can I do for you?"
"Mister Rollins here had a question at the lodge meeting last night, and I knew you could answer it, so I asked him to stop by this morning," the Undersheriff said with no emotion at all in his voice.
"Yes, sir, I'll help any way I can," I said to Mr. Rollins.
His question involved low light photography through a telephoto lens. Something I had some experience doing, so I understood the basics.
"What I need to know is how to get the best quality photo to serve as evidence in some really crappy conditions."
I nodded, that I knew about, "The problem is the resolution in the photo in poor light if you can't have a long exposure time, and if the subject is moving, that makes it worse." Then I told him about my efforts to catch an unexplained light, at night, across a river, looking at the overgrowth on the far bank.
As we discussed it, the Undersheriff backed out of the conversation and then found something else to do.
Two days later Mr. Rollins was back with one of his department's tech people and we went through the advantages and disadvantages of various formats, including full spectrum, in low light situations, to the point of drawing the blinds in our conference room and, in almost pitch darkness, trying to photograph a test subject from the far end of the room.
Later, the Undersheriff stopped by my desk and thanked me for my assistance. "I've known Rollins for a long time, we worked together when I was over there, he's a good man and a great cop. He said you knew things about that sort of photography that their expert didn't."
"Just from doing it. I read the manual, and the help files, then figure out how to make it work on a golf course in the middle of the night, or in the rain in the courthouse parking lot, instead of in a lab, or the office before lunch."
"So, I guess your doing those night investigations has paid off." He stood there and looked at me like he was seeing me for the first time. "Well done, Detective."
He said it, and I think he meant it.
And then a few months or later I had to stand up, in dress uniform, and smile as I was given a commendation for exceptional assistance to local law enforcement, that the Undersheriff had put me in for. So, I guess he did mean it.
2.
A few days after our evidence photography in the dark consultation, Mr. Rollins was back, and he brought both the Sheriff and the Undersheriff with him, and he looked very uncomfortable. In fact, two of the three did.
The Sheriff put them on the spot, "Well, it's your problem, you ask her."
Mr. Rollins nodded, "It's not my problem, directly, but OK. I'd heard all about your paranormal cases, and how you expose hoaxes and things that have a, how do you put it? A normal cause."
"A mundane cause. Like plumbing issues or electrical interference."
He nodded, "Like I said, it isn't my problem, and I'm like Brother Crandal who didn't believe in that sort of thing either. Until my sister moved into a haunted house."
I looked from one to the other, then spoke to the Sheriff. "If it's private property...." I started to say, but the Sheriff cut me off.
"As a personal favor to a fellow law enforcement officer, or the family of one, we'll allow this exception."
"We should let the Detective discuss it with Mr. Rollins," the Undersheriff said and they walked away.
I waited a moment and asked Mr. Rollins if he'd be more comfortable back in the conference room and he agreed.
"Yes, that'd be good, and you'd be able to hear it better on the voice mail she left me."
"Your sister?"
"Yes, she called me one night a couple of weeks ago, and, whatever is in her house was yelling at her, and you could hear it."
It stands as the strangest EVP I've ever heard.
He opened the ap on his phone and went to his voice mail, and just played it. "My sister calls me Guy, that's what she says first."
"Guy, I know it's late, but it's happening again, and it's worse. I sent the kids...."
Then there was a howling sound that sounded closer to her phone than she was, she was still speaking, saying where the kids were, and evidently didn't hear the howl.
Then it stopped and she continued, "but I don't know what to do, I can't afford a motel and it's too late to drive to mom's."
That's when the voice that had howled began shouting about how this was their house and she had to leave.
She heard that because she said, "Can you hear it? That started that a couple of hours ago and it hasn't stopped."
Once the recording ended, I turned to him and nodded, "Mr. Rollins, your sister has a problem, and if I can help, I will."
"Good, because I went over there that night, and it was still yelling, and then it started banging pans in the kitchen, then it knocked on the wall. And I could feel something hitting the other side of the wall, but there was nobody in the dining room. I was standing in the doorway, I could see the dining room wall, with my hand out flat on the wall in the kitchen, and I could feel something hitting the wall. I packed her up and she spent a couple of nights with us."
"I've had that happen, I could even see the vibrations on the wall where it was being hit so hard. There was nobody there."
"But I've been a cop my whole life. I worked as a security guard when I was in high school. That's not something that I ever thought could happen. I've seen the movies and TV shows and stuff, and I always thought that that was all just made up stories to scare people. You know, maybe it was real back in the day, but not here, not now." He coasted to a stop and looked at me.
"If it was real back in history, what's changed? People are the same. The houses are the same. Maybe time doesn't matter to whatever is in your sister's house, so it doesn't know how long it's been there."
He looked down, then agreed, "you're right, but that's not how I was raised, it's not how I was trained. We look for realistic explanations for stuff. Even on vice, you look for real causes."
"But what if the real cause is something you can't arrest?"
"That's why I came to see you. I had a chance to come ask you about the camera issue. I just wanted to meet you and see if what I heard was true, and it was. You're a competent and dedicated officer who simply looks for the truth."
"Thank you, that's all I've ever tried to do."
Mr. Rollins smiled for the first time that morning, "Thank you, Detective. Would you like to go meet my sister, Lynn?"
"Yes. My stuff is in my car. If you want, I can follow you over there."
Sister Lynn lived in one of a double row of small to medium sized houses that, at one time, were called Bungalows in one of the neighborhoods built in the post WWII housing boom on the Island. Except now, several of them had been remodeled to where the original builders wouldn't recognize them, and a few had been torn down and replaced by efficient, but soulless, modern style homes.
Lynn was so grateful that I'd come to try to help she actually broke down in tears when Mr. Rollins introduced me and said I was the Sheriff's Detective she's seen on the news.
Then as we got into the problem, she said it would come and go, "but lately, it's been happening more and more. Usually in here, or the dining room and kitchen. Once in awhile we'll hear it in a bedroom, but it's usually in here."
"Have you done anything to the house lately? You know, remodeling, painting, sometime even just moving furniture will upset something that's been here but has been quiet for a long time."
She shook her head, and started to say, "no, nothing unusual... Oh, wait, yes, in my son's room upstairs. He wanted to redo it because it'd had the same wallpaper in it since he was little. We took it all down and redid the walls, and put up a TV." And then she nodded and pointed the other way, "While we were doing that I went ahead and painted the dining room. And we did some stuff to my daughter's room as well."
"And you took down all those old boxes over the curtain rods," Mr. Rollins said.
"Yes, the cornice boxes, they were all over this end of the house, and some of them were coming apart. They were original to the house as far as I know."
"And that was all done at once," I asked.
She nodded, "Yeah. I guess it was. You know, while you're making the mess, just go ahead and make the mess. And we painted the accent wall in the living room too, after we took that big cornice box over the double window down, it needed it." She got up and showed me a picture of the living room in Holiday Mode with tree and all. The box over the front window dominated the far wall, but it made a good platform for hanging a large lighted garland.
"Whatever is here probably had gotten used to all that, and then you changed a lot of it at once, without leaving it a lot of space to hide in undisturbed."
"Yes, when I think about remodeling I think about tearing out walls and moving doorways like they do on TV. This was a lot of kinda small stuff."
"Small changes, all done in a short time."
She nodded, "Will it ever quiet down?"
"I'll see if I can find out who, or what, is upset, and if I can convince them that the house is OK, and you are taking care of it."
"Thank you."
Sister Lynn was going to stay at their mother's with the kids for a couple of nights, leaving me in the house with whatever was angry about the drapery cornices being gone.
Fortunately, one of my favorite pizza shops was nearby, and recognized my number as a frequent orderer, and I got a good deal on their house special deluxe.
So I settled into the house and did a background scan of everything, and made sure random radios and other devices were turned off or unplugged. I put a voice activated recorder here, and a motion activated camera there, and so on.
I know it was probably the power of suggestion, but when I walked from the living room into the dining room looking for somewhere to put my directional recorder, I felt like something was watching me.
After my pizza arrived I began just looking around and talking about the house while my cameras and recorders did their thing. I wasn't carrying anything except a napkin with some residual sauce and grease on it.
"You know that cornice in the Christmas picture was way too big for this room. The ones in the dining room were the right size. This one would have been at home in one of those big Victorian houses back toward the City, or maybe some sort of Colonial era house."
And I just kept walking and talking with just enough light coming in the big front window to keep me from tripping over the couch...
Then I noticed that the digital recorder was picking up a sound when I wasn't talking. I stood still and silent until the indicator on it went out. Then I took it back into the kitchen where my laptop was sitting on the table.
I had a good recording of my running commentary about window treatments, and then something started moaning. It was low and subtle at first, but then it either got louder or closer to the recorder, or both.
I went back to the living room and got the motion activated IR camera and checked the photos of me acting like the judge on an interior decorating game show.
"Well, hello." I said as the time stamp indicated that whatever was moaning was also causing a random shadowy area that was also somewhat blurry, and it was between me and the recorder.
It had moved into the frame from the left. At first it was barely noticeable, but then as the sound got louder, it became somewhat more defined. Then, as the sound died away, so did the shadow.
"Now I've got something I can work with."
I checked the other recorders and cameras. The unit in the dining room picked it up, but it not only sounded like it was in the next room, it seemed to begin with some barely audible whispering. The camera that was in the corner of the dining room showed a brief shadow that moved out of frame not long before the activity started in the living room.
So whatever it was was centered in these rooms.
I thought about how to best approach something, or somebody, that may have been the original owner of the place, or at least whoever had lived her long enough to become extremely attached to the house the way it was.
I moved into the dining room with a couple of the recorders and cameras, and sat at the table with a glass of water and just sat there for a long time.
"Tell me your name," I finally said. "Speak into any of these small boxes. They can hear you even if I cannot."
I waited for a minute or so, then asked a couple of more questions. Then I checked the two recorders in the dining room and the one in the living room.
I got a different sort of response to my asking its name.
"..... I don't want to ... talk.... you."
There was nothing to the next two questions, but then when I asked how long they'd been here I got something.
".... since they tore down ... t-ore d-own my .... house across street..." With the last few words sounding like they were spoken directly into the recorder.
And the voice sounded like an older woman with something of an Eastern European accent.
And now I had research to do.
The easiest way to see which house the woman was talking about was to simply look out the front door.
There were two houses diagonally across the street to the left and right, one was an original although it appeared to have been added on to years ago, the other looked to me to have been built in the nineteen eighties or nineties. I checked the house number and went back inside.
And now I had a project for the next couple of hours, and another slice of pizza, searching property records, and then obituaries for the owners from years ago.
And I found something interesting.
It was getting late, but I wanted to see if what I had learned about the "house across the street" got any reaction even if she didn't want to talk to me.
I didn't have a printer, but I saved a screen shot of a death notice and then the property transfer that came a year or so later. I moved my laptop into the dining room and sat where I could see most of the living room and part of the kitchen.
Then with a cold drink I sat in the dark and quiet and let the house settle down around me while my recorders and cameras sat waiting on activity.
3.
"Mrs. Thomas," I said softly. "Elizabeth Thomas. Or as some people called you, Bessie. My name is Elaine, and I work for the County Sheriff's Office." I held out my badge and ID for her to see. "I found out about your house. I have some more information if you'll talk to me like you did before."
I waited a good two minutes before I said basically the same thing. Then I added a bit more information. "One of the things I found out was that this house belonged to your Cousin John." I paused, "His name was John Morgan, and he married Pamela, who the paper said was one of your best friends. You were in each other's weddings, and bought these houses at about the same time, and lived here for over thirty years. Is all that right? Do I have the right lady? Bessie Thomas?"
I heard a soft, ' .... yes .... ' from one side.
I could see two of the digital recorders from where I was sitting.
Both of them indicated they were picking up audio after the 'yes'. One was barely registering the sound, the other one was showing a stronger signal. Then I caught a glimpse of the back of the IR camera on the sideboard that was aimed at the living room, pointing away from me so nothing I did would cause it to activate. It had 'seen' something and was taking pictures.
"OK, good. Mrs. Thomas. I found where your son sold your house across the street the year after you died. He was working in Philadelphia and was planning on moving to Richmond, Virginia. Is that right? So he couldn't keep the place up, and his own son didn't want to live out here because he had a job down there. And they knew that renters would just tear it up, so they sold it."
Again, I waited.
"Then the people that bought it did what nobody wanted them to do, and tore it down, and built the house that's there now in nineteen eighty seven."
I waited and heard something from not far to my left. It sounded like an older woman saying "I know."
"So I'm guessing that you just moved over here to your cousin's and best friend's house, which was probably a lot like your own because they were all built in the forties by the same construction company."
I waited, but didn't hear anything else.
So I took a break from talking to Mrs. Thomas and picked up the recorders and played what was on them while I checked the images the cameras had taken.
I had several answers to my statements including what I had heard, and one fairly clear image of a definite shadow standing in the door between the living room and dining room. And then another image from a few minutes later that almost didn't look real, but I knew it was.
Then I put everything back out, and went through telling her about Lynn, and her brother, and how they were taking care of Cousin John and Pamela's house. And how I thought that Lynn and her children would be happy to let her stay there with them as long as she wanted to, if she quit shouting at them.
While I didn't get any more audible responses, the recorders did pick up something that I thought was interesting, and indicated that this one wasn't residual.
I got a few hours sleep on the couch, and then called everybody to tell them that, after only one night, I had some answers for them.
"It's Mrs. Elizabeth Thomas. She lived across the street in a nearly identical house that was torn down in the late eighties. This house belonged to her cousin and his wife who was her best friend from when they were girls. So, in a way, she feels like she still belongs here because her home is gone. She is the only presence that I know of in this building."
Lynn, and her brother Mr. Rollins, and his lodge brother the Undersheriff were sitting around the dining room table that I had spent most of the night at.
"And you found all of this out in one night?"
"Yes, and I'll take you through it. This was the first set of EVP's that I got early in the evening. The second one is the clue to what was going on."
".....t-ore d-own my .... house across street..."
Then I explained what I'd found based on that statement. "I did some checking with the property records, and found it. It led me to her obituary that included the information about her cousin across the street, they're the ones that found her body when she didn't come over for dinner one evening." I patted the dining table, "she was very comfortable here. So when her house was demolished, she naturally came over here."
Lynn was sitting and staring at the image I had put on the monitor of the first shadow moving in the living room. "That's what we've seen. Sometimes its more, I don't know, real, or solid, or something, sometimes it's just like that."
"I've got a couple more images from later. But I can bring them up now if you want."
"Please do."
I clicked through to the last set from the dining room camera.
First was the shadow that seemed to materialize out of the half light of the room. And then, as I had talked about her and her cousin buying the houses at the same time, she almost appeared as a full body apparition that, for whatever reason, I didn't see, but the camera did with decent clarity in the image. She was standing there listening to me. And then she was gone.
"I found this photo of Mrs. Thomas from a member's directory from the Lutheran Church. This picture was taken in nineteen eighty one." I brought the image up and then enlarged the group to show the lady fourth from the left in the front row.
"There's no doubt about it, that's her, just a little older, and thinner, last night." Mr. Rollins said.
"And you really took that photo last night. Of a ghost," the Undersheriff said.
"Yes, sir. The raw file is still on the camera if you wish to verify it."
He shook his head, "I'll take your word for it. Besides, I wouldn't know where to begin to do that."
I didn't say anything, but instead, moved on to the last set of EVPs, with the surprise at the end.
"....m sorry.... I'm sorry. I upset... her..." there was a pause, then, very softly, "... didn't mean to do that...."
I played that one three times because the last bit was a lot softer and slower than the first part. But it was there, and you could hear some inflection in it.
"She apologized for acting like that?" Mr. Rollins said to the following silence.
"That is what convinced me that we're dealing with an intelligent spirit and not one that is simply residual and reacting to a change in its environment."
Mr. Rollins had a another question, "That's the second time you said that. That this, woman...."
"Elizabeth Thomas." I offered.
"Elizabeth Thomas, is here, and knows we're here, and is active and aware of all of this."
"Yes. Although there are times when she is more active and aware of things. And it is apparently easier for them to manifest at night when things are quieter, or, when there is a lot of activity in the house that upsets them. Like remodeling the place."
"So she could be here now and respond if we asked her to."
"Maybe. But remember, we're talking about an eighty year old woman."
"I understand." He said, "Does anybody mind if I try to get her to respond. Just to confirm that Detective Elaine is right about all this."
"I'm OK with it if Lynn is," the Undersheriff said. "I'd like to know that myself."
"He's still a skeptic, but that's fine," I said.
Lynn had the final vote. It took a minute, but she finally nodded and said "OK."
"What do we need to do?" Mr. Rollins asked me. "Hold hands or something?"
"No, this isn't a seance. We'll take a break, I'll get a couple of recorders in case we can't hear everything she says. Then we'll turn off the lights and just sit here quietly for a few moments. And then just talk to her."
I'd never done anything like that with anybody but Derek, And that time didn't work out as pleasantly as it could have. So this time I was a bit more careful.
Finally, after a few minutes of quiet I looked around the room and spoke to Mrs. Thomas like I did before.
"Elizabeth. Or even, Bessie. Do you remember me? Detective Elaine. We had a nice conversation about the house last night." I paused for a moment and tried to see if the digital recorder was picking anything up but it was just a little too far away for me to see the screen clearly. "This is Lynn, she lives here now. And her brother, and one of my bosses from the Sheriff's Office. They're here to make sure everything is OK with you about Lynn and her children living in this house. Can you say something to them so they know you'll let them stay here and take care of your cousin's house?"
The room got very quiet, and, to me, it seemed a bit darker.
I caught Mr. Rollin's eye and nodded to him.
"Mrs. Thomas is it? I just want to make sure my sister and her kids are safe in this house. They like it, and they're sorry that doing the work to it upset you. But it needs to be taken care of. You remember that from when you had the house across the street don't you? There's always something that needs to be done. And if you don't...."
He paused and looked around.
"Somebody said 'yes'."
"I heard that," the Undersheriff said, "it came from over there."
Lynn was looking around, "she's right here," she gestured to her left.
"Let's keep talking to her," I said softly, "Lynn, she's an older lady, just talk to her."
"I remember an Aunt Bessie when we were growing up, I think she was my great aunt. Back home, not here. She was my grandmother's sister. A wonderful lady that was always knitting. She taught me how to do it. I'd like to think of you like my new Aunt Bessie."
Mr. Rollins nodded, "I'd forgotten about her. She lived in that apartment building, oh, where was it? I just remember it being around the corner from a playground." I could see his smile in the dim light of the room, "and she always had a bowl of peppermints on the table by the door."
Lynn laughed, "He remembers what was important to him back then."
"You ate your fair share of them too," her brother immediately answered, then he chuckled.
"Yes, I did. But I learned to knit," she had a huge smile on her face.
I was laughing as well, "See, Mrs. Thomas, they're really brother and sister. And Lynn and her children like this house, and like living here."
"Yes, we do." Lynn added.
"And if you agree, they'll stay here, and take care of your Cousin's house, and you can watch over them."
We waited a minute and didn't hear anything.
"Bessie," I said softly, "is that all right with you?" I watched the digital recorder that was next to me. It didn't react at all. I my voice to something with a bit more authority. "Mrs. Thomas. We're from the Sheriff's Office, this is an official investigation into a disturbance. I need an answer. Is it OK with you that Lynn and the others stay here in peace?"
This time we heard the response and the digital recorder registered it.
"I heard a woman say, 'yes, of course'," one of the others said.
Another agreed, "from over there," they pointed to the corner of the table next to me.
I nodded, "I heard her right here," I waved at that spot to my left. "Thank you, Mrs. Thomas. That's good to hear. Thank you for your understanding and cooperation.
4.
The downside was that the Undersheriff spent the next three days telling everybody about the investigation and his attendance at the reveal where I got a ghost to agree to be nice to the people in the house.
And then, somewhat unexpectedly, one of our ranking command officers announced that he was going to retire in a couple of months.
Which began the usual round of speculation and even betting as to who would put themselves in the running for the position.
I even thought about it. For about a minute and a half. I am, after all, about halfway to my own retirement. And it does look really good on your record if you ever want to go do anything else to have been in that position. So I did think about it. But then I decided that there was still plenty of time for me to go for that, and still have a dozen years or so to go.
Plus. I know what the command staff do. And I don't want to do it.
They spend most of their time doing personnel evaluations, doing paperwork, telling people like me that we didn't log something that we did two weeks ago, sitting in on hearings of some sort or another, and then attending meetings where they talk about evaluations and paperwork.
I remember hearing the officer who was retiring say several times that during evaluation season, he didn't get to leave the office for about two weeks unless he made a point of going out to lunch.
That's not me. That's never been me. I enjoy getting out and doing the mundane investigations all over the county.
For instance, not long ago I spent two days in a county office that I had never heard of, sorting through some billing because they thought they were being billed for a project review that they never requested, from a firm with no record of ever doing business in the state, let alone our county, and who was now in the process of filing a lawsuit for payment.
It was a complicated mess, but in the end, we got to the bottom of it.
A consulting firm that they had used, was itself a victim of a type of identity theft, and the criminal mastermind behind it was now using the consultant's database to send out fraudulent bills which looked very real. In fact, later, I uncovered where another county agency had paid one.
Unfortunately, as has been the case in most of these sorts of crimes, the criminal was well outside of our jurisdiction, and other than stopping all payments to the account in the US that simply forwarded funds overseas, we couldn't haul anybody into court to face the music.
But. I wasn't in our office, I was in their office. Which was in a great old building that may well be a candidate a different sort of investigation. They bought my lunch the second day from a fantastic BBQ place nearby, "the owner's wife makes the sauce", and the investigation itself was very interesting as we sorted through the layers of what was happening.
So, when anybody asked me if I was thinking about putting in for the open command slot, I said "no, not this time."
And I thought that was that.
-end Promotion 1-
[NOTE: The above story were written as adventure fiction, and is to be taken as such. While most of the features of Long Island exist, including a large number of identical looking houses, the rest of the setting is fictional.
Thank you, Dr. Leftover, TheMediaDesk.com]
http://themediadesk.com