©1 August 2025 Levite
http://themediadesk
Warning: some may find this topic upsetting.
1.
Every so often I run through my cases, and those that have had new information come to light even though the case was closed I put an update in the file.
Such was the case on one rainy Tuesday morning when I added the information that Trembelie Olsen had been transferred from our County Correctional Center to the custody of the State of Pennsylvania to face a series of charges for defrauding investors in one of his stage productions. It would seem that if you solicit sponsors and donors for money to stage a musical, even in Lancaster, Pennsylvania for tourists visiting Amish Country, it is probably for the best that you actually put together some sort of production. According to the court documents I reviewed, the only thing Trembelie had put together was a couple of dates with a local young woman who was now part of a civil action against him claiming he had 'disgraced her'. The Civil Suit was on hold waiting on the outcome of the criminal complaint.
Another early case that I updated was from not long after that. Miss Leondra called about a case that I had worked with on her at a Marina along the Sound on the North Side of the Island. It appears that Nancy, the smiling ghost that was posing for 'just one more picture', had been seen recently around the yacht club.
They weren't complaining, and, so far anyway, she hadn't been in any photos that they knew of. From the activity reported, she was just walking around the place, looking at boats.
From their description of when she'd been seen and what she was doing, I had to wonder if she was looking at boats, or looking for the friends she'd left that day when she decided to ride a borrowed motorcycle to catch the ferry home.
I added the note to the file and told Miss Leondra if they needed me to come back out and see if I could figure out what the young woman was doing I'd be glad to.
According to Mrs. Evans, the convent hadn't changed a whole lot. They were almost finished with the renovations, and had even opened one of the first floor stores. Everybody involved had been informed that their 'night staff' was there, and sometimes couldn't tell time and might do something during the daytime as well as in the middle of the night.
"One of our staff even said the same thing you did about the guys in the gentleman's club," she said referring to when one of them told me to take off my nightgown. "But she figured out a way to shut them up."
"Oh, tell me," I said.
"She told him 'you don't tip well enough for that'. Then she said that somebody on the other side of the room laughed, but they didn't say it to her again for a long time."
"I'll remember that."
She also reported that since the upstairs renovations had been mostly completed, that the activity had settled down a lot. "Even in the boys bathroom, you can still hear them in there, but not like before."
"How about the nun at the top of the stairs?" I asked her.
"Oh, she's still there, and I think she's there more now that we've got guests and staff coming in. We think she's just keeping an eye on the place."
"Probably. How about the music?"
"Sometimes they'll play Dixieland jazz."
One of the cases I had to update not long ago was the murder / suicide.... I'm sorry, but it is hard for me to include the child... the Double Murder and suicide committed by a county employee under investigation for financial issues.
The children who lost three fifths of their family on one violent bloody morning had transferred to a school near their grandparent's house and were thriving. The girl was on the soccer team and turning into something of a star, the boy had made honor role and had shown a flair for singing in the school's show choir.
The investigation into the cards and accounts both the mother and father had in their own names, never mind those in both names, showed a family in massively deep dept, and with no certain way out. It later came out that the father had been looking into bankruptcy, but was afraid of how that would look to his managers.
It was a terrible situation, but, in the end, the two surviving children were doing well.
Another update was a note a few months ago about one of the three grocery store parking lot losers that picked the wrong lady to try to rip off one evening.
I revealed in the original account that one of them was trying to sue because his actions that day resulted in him having a broken nose. The suit was entertaining for a couple of days, and then dismissed.
In any case. Mr. Broken Nose and one of the other ones eventually branched out into porch piracy and mail theft. In the end they fell for a well baited trap set by a White Collar Crimes Task Force and were caught with a carload of US Mail and private parcels not addressed to them. The mail included official US and State issued checks, and raised the stakes of their bad behavior considerably, as Postal Inspectors are not famous for their sense of humor.
They tried to have the various charges, including resisting arrest and fleeing from Nassau County into Kings County, reduced, but ended up taking a plea to most of it because of their previous record.
Which did, again, include assault on a female police officer.
I checked on the pizza ovens at the county correctional center, and they did still occasionally report somebody with a bad disposition being angry about something, but nobody had tried to slam the oven door on a cook's hand, or had shrieked at somebody trying to mop under it since then.
As for the more mundane matters, the senior citizen's bus routing test of 'flexible' routes had been a marginal success, and with some modification, was still in service. With no buses being sent to the other end of the Island to pick up imaginary passengers, or have been rerouted to some dead end road facing out over the Bay.
Also, there was another incident at the County Complex with a seldom used voice paging system that was supposed to allow access through a secure door. Evidently it would sometimes announce the time and temperature, or repeat the agency's "all operators are assisting other callers...." recording. Somebody remembered my solution to the Medical Examiner's issue with voices in the hallway, and they began checking the wiring and what was connected to what. And then I got a thank you card for solving a mystery I was totally unaware of.
2.
And now we come to the reason all this came up in my journal.
Sergeant Perkins of the Suffolk County Police.
It was my most disturbing case and was totally unsolved. The otherwise normal police officer that had gotten involved, make that, Deeply Involved with witchcraft and other dark arts, and then suddenly disappeared.
Not only had he been totally missing for over two years, there was simply no new information about him or his activities before he had simply vanished.
That is, until he called me.
I answered my office desk phone the way I usually do, and heard a somewhat raspy, elderly sounding, male voice. "Detective, Elaine?"
"Yes." I answered, "can I help you?"
"It's Tom."
The name didn't mean anything to me. "I'm sorry, I know a couple of Tom's you don't sound like either of them."
"Tom Perkins," the voice said.
I felt a chill.
He continued, "Sergeant Perkins, Suffolk Police."
That chill turned into a glacier.
All calls made from or to our office system are routinely recorded.
I sat in the Sheriff's office and we listened to the entire conversation.
"He sounds like he's a hundred years old. How old was he, or Is he?" He asked me.
"In his thirties." I answered.
"Did he smoke three packs a day?"
"I don't think he's ever touched a cigarette. At least before he went AWOL."
He sat there and backed up the recording a few minutes, then played it again.
"I've got my medallion and all to prove to you I am me," the caller said.
"You know what that means?" The Sheriff asked me.
"Yes, when he, left, he took some of the items with him. I know which medallion he's referring to."
"So you think it's him?"
"It might be. I'd like to meet him where he says he'll be and find out."
"OK, I know you could kick him in the side of his head in a split second. But I still don't want you going out there alone." He brought up a map of the location on his monitor. "I want to be on the other side of the parking lot, here, and I want a sniper in a van...." he ran his finger around the perimeter then picked a spot, "...here. You confirm your meeting, I'll take care of this side of it."
"Thank you, sir."
The meeting place the former Sergeant Perkins picked couldn't have been more public.
I pulled into the employee parking area of a 'big box' retailer and drove to the far end, furthest from the store, near a recycling dumpster, and where they collected the broken shopping carts that were beyond the running gag of wobbly wheels and uncontrollable steering.
I backed into an open parking spot next to a shopping cart that looked like it had been run over by a semi, and waited.
When I drove in I had passed the Sheriff in an unmarked car, and I could see he had somebody with him. On the other side of the lot I could see a County Police van and knew it had a marksman inside.
And then as I had backed into my spot, I saw one of our deputies drive by on the frontage road.
If nothing else, I had a lot of backup on the scene.
A few minutes later I saw a man get out of a car one row over.
He didn't look anything like the photos I had of Sergeant Perkins. But then again, he did.
The man used an older model walker, and slowly, even painfully walked out to stand in front of his car, then he reached into he coat pocket and took out a ribbon with a large golden amulet on it.
I got out of my car and walked over to him, but I stayed a good distance from him.
"Sergeant Perkins?" I asked him.
"I used to be."
"Why now?" Was the first question I asked him.
"When you invoke the powers I brought up." He stopped to catch his breath. "There is a price." He looked at himself. "This is it. I'm dying." He took a breath. "I wanted to come back. Before the end."
"And say goodbye?"
He nodded, "and some other things."
The man sagged against his walker. I got on my radio and called for an ambulance.
The Sheriff and his rider were running across the lot and somebody from the County Police van jumped out with a medical kit.
Sergeant Perkins was taken to a hospital where they confirmed what he'd said.
The only identification he had on him was an ID card from New York in a different name, and a work pass from someplace in Missouri. But we were able to get his fingerprints and double check who he was.
Not only was it him, he was lucky to still be alive.
"Multiple organ failure. His heart is only beating at about thirty percent efficiency. His kidneys aren't working, his liver is barely... fluid in his lungs..." the doctor shook her head. "The man is dying."
"How old would you say he is?" The Sheriff asked her.
"Nineties, maybe mid eighties if he's had a hard life," she said.
"Thank you."
In his hospital bed he talked to several officers he had worked with, and a few members of the Coven, including Elzabelle who sat next to his bed and got sadder and sadder, and then when I walked out into the hallway with her, she started crying.
He passed on two days later from general systems collapse.
He just died.
In the autopsy, they could not explain how a man known to be thirty five years old, and in very good general health three years ago when he passed a police physical with flying colors, could end up a total human wreck without a major disease being present.
He did not have cancer, there was no massive infection, he tested negative for everything they could think to test for including Hutchinson Gilford Progeria Syndrome, and the only thing in his blood was evidence that he liked coffee for breakfast.
With extra sugar.
What was left was what he had said to me.
He had invoked something exceptionally unpleasant, and it had cost him.
3.
He was buried with little fanfare and very few people present in a county cemetery, with his amulet.
But I had already gotten to work trying to close the case.
I had the phone he had been using, and his car that he had driven to the parking lot with Massachusetts tags on it. And some recent mail in the car with the name Thomas Jones to an address in Springfield up there, and a handful other clues.
And now, I had a request from the County Police to find out why their Sergeant was dead.
The landlord of the one bedroom, semi-furnished apartment in Springfield had no idea that their 'Tom Jones' wasn't a retired schoolteacher who had moved in about two months ago. But they let me into the apartment and thanked me for the news that Mister Tom wouldn't be coming back.
The apartment had a great view of the Connecticut River and the highway on the eastern bank, but what I was there for was in the stuff I found in the top drawer of the dresser. I had looked through the living room, and the kitchen, and didn't find anything of interest.
There was considerable evidence that Mister Tom had just moved in, and for that matter, wasn't planning on staying long as he was, essentially, still living out of a set of suitcases.
It was the mail, the documents in a folder, some photos in a big envelope, and a few other odds and ends that filled in most of what he had been doing, and what had happened to him, for about the last year and a half.
And it only covered just a bit over eighteen months.
Where he was and what he was doing for about the first six months after he vanished remained a mystery.
Somehow Mister Tom, the former Sergeant Perkins, made it from Long Island to Taos, New Mexico in the period from when he walked out of his doctor's office to when his first receipt was put in the envelope that ended up in his drawer in Massachusetts.
I don't know what it was for, only that there were five items on the ticket, two 'grocery' items, something labeled 'non-food', a 'periodical', and one 'misc'. His total was seventeen dollars and fifty-eight cents, and he paid with cash. The name and address of the store was unreadable, but I could make out the date, and the city.
He had covered something like seven states and two thousand miles without a car, ID, or even being spotted by every law enforcement agency in the country that was aware of a missing police officer.
Three days later there were other receipts from Taos. One from a tool store where it looked like he bought some supplies for work, and another from a fast food place for what would be lunch for two guys. Both were within an hour of each other. And both paid with cash. The same was true for a gas station slip from a few days later, also in Taos.
So, in Taos, he got a day job doing, if the list on the tool store receipt was to be believed, light construction, or possibly, demolition. But he was still dealing in cash.
I went back and looked through my notes from when he went missing. He had not withdrawn significant funds from either of his bank accounts, savings or checking, or from the Credit Union, for several months. The last time had been just before he had gone on a short vacation trip several months before he vanished. And on that trip, he didn't go to New Mexico.
Or to Missouri. Which was where the next set of papers were from.
About three months after he left Taos, he spent a long time in Missouri. First in Branson, again, doing what appeared to be odd jobs, then in St. Joseph, before he landed in Rochester, Minnesota. Where, again, he did odd jobs and paid for packages of lunchmeat and cheese with cash.
I had to look it up, the town isn't really near anything of note, and was fairly small. But then after I thought about it, it made sense, while it might be easy to get lost in a major city, like Kansas City or Minneapolis, there were also a lot more cameras around, and if you knew you were being looked for, you might well avoid metropolitan areas, and pay for things in cash.
On the one paper that he had to sign for a delivery for, his name was Tom Jones. The handwriting matched the samples I had.
A few months later there was a batch of receipts from Kentucky, North Carolina, Tennessee and that area.
And in with this batch, there was a photo ID, for Tom Jones. Except the picture on the card that announced him as a 'day temp' at a tourist attraction was of a man at least twenty years older than the Tom Perkins that had gone missing. He looked gaunt, and somewhat stooped, not the strapping young sergeant from the County Police.
Mister Jones seemed to enjoy a Tex-Mex take out place, always paying with cash. He bought gas, with cash, at a couple of stations, and even was on the mailing list for a thrift store.
He was in the hills for several months, apparently having a pretty decent life all things considered. Then the receipts and mail and other items fell off.
Before he arrived in Springfield, Massachusetts, some seven weeks ago, he spent some time in several small towns in central New York. That was where he did some work for a school district, and was able to produce several papers with Thomas Jones on them as working for the schools when he got to his apartment.
I still don't know how he knew to call me. But, most likely, he had a friend somewhere on the Island that he had been in touch with who told him the detective lady from the Sheriff's Office had been making inquiries about him.
It wasn't much. But it was something.
I took what I had to the County Police and showed them the trail I had built. Then I asked them if they wanted me to do any more followup.
"No, thank you for what you've done," was the official statement.
The Unofficial Statement 'and if you ever mention it we'll deny it' was: "How did working odd jobs make him fifty years older than he was? The doctor said he didn't have Proger... Progres...."
"Progeria," I finished for them, "besides, that usually occurs in children and there's a related condition that happens in young adults. Not somebody over thirty."
"I see." They nodded, "So what did it? Off the record, what you say here doesn't leave this room." They looked around at the others involved in the case, everybody nodded, including my boss. "Just tell us."
I explained it. In perhaps a bit too much detail for some in the room. At least one of the others, and it wasn't the Sheriff, got very pale and started shaking and wiping at their eyes as I went through what I had uncovered before but didn't disclose all of, which now confirmed by the Sergeant himself, so now I could lay it all out.
Later, back in our office, the Sheriff looked at me and took a deep breath. Then he looked around.
"OK, it's just us. You said it wasn't Satan himself that killed Perkins."
"No. Most likely not."
"But whatever it was, whatever he called up and made a deal with, is still out there."
I nodded, "it's Out There, but without him as its local host, it has probably moved on."
"Probably moved on." He took another deep breath and looked around, "well, I guess that's good."
"Yes, sir. It's about all we can hope for."
4.
"It's been eleven minutes."
I looked up at Derek, "What has?"
"Since you moved, spoke, or touched your food. You just reached for your water glass."
"I'm sorry." I said honestly. "I was just thinking about that case."
"The one with the County Police Sergeant. You said it was closed now."
"Yes, he's identified, and deceased. It's closed."
"So there's something you can't tell me about that's eating you alive," Derek said softly. "I'm not part of either agency. I don't talk to the media unless I'm promoting an oil change and tire rotation special. I'll swear on a stack of Bibles that I'll never disclose anything you say if you want me to. But I can't stand watching it tear you up like this." He reached over and put his hand over mine. "Let me help however I can. Even if it's just listening."
Even just him doing that was such a relief I felt like I could handle the rest of it.
We were in my apartment, there was nobody around, so I went through a bit of it.
"Is there any way you can identify whatever he was dealing with?" Derek asked me when I coasted to a stop.
"Probably not. Even the records he did keep from back then he wrote in some sort of code, and I never found the key for it. It was probably in his head."
"And you don't know where the portal he created for it to come over is? And you said you had that medallion that he'd used buried with him."
"Yes, it's gone." Then I shook my head, "no idea about the location, and really, it may not even be on the Island."
"And even if you knew what it was, and where it came through, you can't send it back."
"No. And I know better than to try. Maybe a priest could, but I can't."
"And unless somebody else intentionally invokes it, and like you said, invites it in, they're probably safe."
"It might attack somebody, but they usually like an easier target."
He nodded, "so make sure you say your prayers tonight, and sprinkle some more of that sand around."
"And some holy water too," I smiled. "Thanks. I needed that." I looked at the table with our now cold dinner on it. "Shall we finish?"
-end 25-
[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, the rest of the setting is fictional.
Thank you, Dr. Leftover, TheMediaDesk.com]
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