I was sitting on the swings in the middle of a concrete jungle called Lake Elementary. It was recess, and all the usual suspects were running around like a bunch of wild animals that were just let out of their cage. Joe sat on the swing to the right of mine. He was blonde and strong and not the brightest of kids, but he was my brother and when the milk money was passed out in our house, I made sure he got his fair share.

As we sat on that ancient swing set, a dame walked up. Right away I smelled trouble, but then again, I always smelled trouble when a doll was around. Her lips were stained bright red from an unfortunate Pixie Stix habit she had acquired last year. Her name was Jessie Stern and she had a smile that made you forget about cooties and want to run up and offer her half of the ham sandwich your mother made you for lunch.

She made some small talk to while away the time before we were herded back to class, like the Prime-A beef the system thought we were.

“Sorry doll, but are you gunna bump gums all day, or do you have something important to ask,” I interrupted her.

“Well actually yes, I do,” she said. “Bobo is missing.”

Bobo turned out to be her favorite stuffed animal. She had brought him to school for show and tell when suddenly, the stuffed bear had pulled a Houdini and disappeared. She looked at me, her blue eyes cold and hard above her warm smile, and I knew we were being set up, but I couldn’t resist the case and honestly, Joe and I had nothing better than homework to do anyway.

“Alright Jessie, we’ll take the case, but first you gotta answer something for me,” I said. “Why’d you come to us?”

“Why, because you and Joe are supposed to be the best Frank,” she called over her shoulder as she walked away.

Yeah, she had lain on the sauce pretty thick with that one, just like they do with the Thursday special they serve down in that grease-hole school lunch room. I felt the same way about the lunch as I did the comment; I wasn’t buying either of them.

My eyes scanned that hard patch of heart-break that we called a playground. Joe and I had a case, now we just needed to find the mug that had glommed the bear.

While I didn’t have the answer, I did have plenty of suspicions. Could it have been mean Mr. Brown, that angry man who hated kids? Or even John Russo, the pointy-headed genius with lots of smarts but no respect? Right now I didn’t know, but as sure as Santa’s visit on Christmas Eve, I was gunna find out.

“Watch out!”

Andy jerked the car to the side as Bob shouted a warning. Even with Andy’s quick reflexes, they barely missed hitting the black Lincoln Town Car that had swerved head-on into their lane. The driver was hunched nervously over the wheel, a Yankee’s cap pulled low on his head. As it raced past, they caught a glimpse of a pale, scared face pressed against the rear window.

“That guy’s a maniac!” Bob exclaimed. “Did you get the license number?”

“No – I was a little busy trying not to hit him,” Andy replied.

Bob grinned sheepishly. “Yeah, and you did a great job, too. Hey, did you notice the guy in the back seat?”

“Not really. Why?”

“He looked a lot like Mr. Thompson,” Bob replied.

“Our biology teacher?” Andy asked. “No way. School starts in ten minutes, and he was going in the opposite direction. You know that Mr. Thompson hasn’t missed a day of school in twenty years.”

“Yeah, I know. But it sure looked like him. Maybe it’s his dobbel…doggil…dopgople…”

“Doppelganger?” Andy prompted.

“Yeah, that’s it!”

“Or maybe he has a twin brother.” Andy gave an exaggerated shiver. “Ugh! Can you imagine two Mr. Thompson’s in the world?”

Their laugher was cut short as they approached Pleasant Lake High School. Instead of seeing a line of yellow school buses dropping kids off, they were met with a line of fire trucks and emergency equipment. Black smoke roiled from one section of the school. A state police officer stood at the intersection, directing all of the students to the far end of the parking lot.

Andy had barely parked the car before Bob was out of it and running towards a group of friends.

“Barb! Ginny!” he called out. The twins turned around, their faces wearing identical expressions of concern.

“Did you hear what happened?” Ginny asked.

“Let me guess. There was a fire?” Andy joked.

“Worse than that,” Barb replied. “They think that the biology lab exploded.”

“I’ll bet Mr. Thompson’s not too happy right now,” Bob commented.

“That’s the problem – they can’t find Mr. Thompson. A bunch of people saw him go into the lab this morning, but he didn’t come back out.”

“Did the fire get him?” Andy asked.

Barb shook her head.

“The firemen thought he might be trapped in there. But they searched, and there’s no sign of him. And it gets stranger.”

Barb and Ginny exchanged worried glances.

“Somebody also stole all of the frogs we were going to dissect today.”

Andy turned around and started to run to his car, with Bob close behind.

“Where are you going?” Ginny called.

“To find a Yankee’s fan and Mr. Thompson,” Andy called back.

Carlo sat on the cool cement wall that lined the water. The lights from the immense cruise ship towering above him shone down, illuminating the vast, empty pier. A warm breeze carried the smoke from his cigarette into the dark Bermudian air. He breathed in deeply and exhaled one last puff before throwing his cigarette into the water and praying the tall shadow making his way down the crew’s gangway wasn‘t his boss.

Carlo had spent the past six years of his life working for cruise lines. The last two were spent working for Jerry; an unusually tall and sarcastic American man who possessed an admittedly strong dislike and severe distrust for anyone of Hispanic descent: an unfortunate trait for someone who worked with an almost completely Latino staff. He spent his days barking orders and complaining and generally doing anything to make the staff’s lives miserable.

“Yo! Carlo!,” the man called from the end of the gangway.

Carlo breathed a sigh of relief, and reached into his back pocket for another light. Jorge, his coworker and closest friend, grabbed the cigarette out of Carlo’s hand. “No time for that,” he said. “You better get back on the ship.”

“Eh, we still have ten minutes ’til midnight,” Carlo scoffed, reaching back into his pocket for a lighter.

“No, really,” Jorge urged. “Boss’s really mad. A whole bunch of food is missing from the walk-in and he says we’re all in trouble ‘til someone fesses up.”

“So?” Carlo smirked. “I didn’t take nothin’. And I still have ten minutes to enjoy my cig, so you can go tell him I’ll be there when I feel like it.”

Jorge shook his head as he turned to walk back onto the ship.

“Bah!” Carlo said out loud as he lit another cigarette.

He glanced up at the bright full moon, which was casting a brilliant glow over the glassy water, when movement on a deck above caught his eye. He looked up to see two dark figures emerge from the doorway onto the open deck of the fourth floor. It wasn’t unusual to see people walking around the decks at night, but something about the way they were moving concerned him. One of the figures seemed to be pulling the other one. Neither was making a noise.

Never taking his eyes off them, Carlo stood and made his way slowly to the gangway. He watched curiously as one figure seemed to drag the other to the far end of the deck. Both figures stopped there and leaned against the railing. Carlo squinted hard, trying to see if he could recognize either one, but from such a far distance, it was impossible.

Approaching the end of the gangway, Carlo watched in horror as he saw the one figure struggling to lift the other onto the railing. “Hey!” he yelled, looking around for any sign of help. “Hey! What are you doing?” He felt helpless as he watched the shadow of a man plunge lifelessly into the dark sea below.

Jack quietly made his rounds through the darkened museum like he had every night for the past ten years. As much a patron as an employee, he loved staring at the paintings and statues in the spot light created by his 3 pound metal flashlight. Mixed with the dim nightlights strategically placed throughout the building, his tour sometimes felt surreal. In certain spots he would slow and admire work that made his heart soar. In others, he hurried through just briefly looking at each item to verify it’s presence, but otherwise avoiding the strange or frightening images.

However, his favorite pastime during these nightly walks was discovering new displays that were set up between his shift and the hour museum opens. He purposely avoided any announcement of new collections, not wanting to spoil the surprise. Once he spent a moment with the new exhibits, he would read the old memos and discover information the common patrons never knew: the true cost of these magnificent displays, the insurance amount, delivery information – the who and when of both delivery and pick up, and much more.

Earlier that night, he heard Mandy, the museum’s curator, commenting to an after-hours guest just how successful the showing had been. It was rare that any employee was still in when Jack’s shift started, but not unheard of. He recognized Mandy’s voice and continued down the hall, anxious to find tonight’s surprise.

He didn’t have to go far to find it. He immediately knew that this was both the most mesmerizing and frightful display in his ten long years. Hanging prominently from the ceiling was a banner proudly stating “The Tutankhamen Diadem” and below in smaller print, it explained “King Tut’s Crown”.

It was perfectly set in a clear acrylic box on a raised pedestal in the center of the small room. Velvet ropes were placed to keep the honest people away; infrared sensors kept everyone else away.

Jack lost track of time staring at the exquisite piece of jewelry. Careful to not cross through the beams and trigger the alarm, Jack circled the dais a hundred times. The beam of his flashlight was sucked into the obsidian eyes of the crown’s vulture. The cobra seemed ready to strike at any time, and in the dim lights, chalcedony and turquoise looked like blood seeping through chunks of flesh.

The loud clap of thunder made Jack jump in fright. The dim building lights flickered as the electricity cut off and the emergency generators kicked on. He quickly painted the walls of the room with his flashlight, as if he could catch the lightning that caused the failure. As his breathing slowed and heartbeat returned to normal, he turned for one last look at the display before continuing his rounds.

His racing heartbeat returned when the beam of light passed through the empty box. Not knowing what else to do, Jack pulled the alarm. The sounds of the sirens drowned out the more natural sounds of nature’s storm.

                                       Chapter 1
                        An Accidental Discovery

        Ben lay quietly, barely breathing in and out. He wanted to move, to sit up, to open his eyes and look around, but shock, and a little bit of fear kept him from doing so. Slowly, he assessed each part of his body. With his eyes still closed, he moved first a toe, then his foot, and then his whole leg. When everything worked as it should, he continued on to his other leg, and then his arms. Breathing more regularly, Ben opened his eyes just a slit. He saw nothing. Hoping, praying that he was not blind, Ben opened his eyes the rest of the way, and with relief, saw a small circular opening about thirty feet straight up. The sky was overcast, but it was still bright compared to the pit that Ben found himself in.

        Faintly, as if from a far distance, Ben could hear his name being called. That would be Steve and Joe, his best friends since childhood, looking for him. Just as he was about to call back, Ben realized that if he could barely hear them, they would certainly be unable to hear him. Less than a minute passed though before Ben could see two heads silhouetted in the hole he fallen into just a short time ago. After making sure that Ben was all right, Joe ran back to their truck to find some rope.

        While Joe was gone, Ben related to Steve what had happened. The three of them, star players of the Badger football team, had been playing wilderness golf. Ben had hooked his ball over a small hill onto old Mr. Potter’s land. Steve and Joe refused to help him look for his lost golf ball, since Potter was well known as a crotchety old man who hated trespassers.

        After Ben found the ball, he took a step back to survey his next shot. Instead of solid ground beneath his foot however, Ben encountered nothing but air – thirty feet of air. After falling for what had seemed an eternity, he landed flat on his back. Ben expected a sharp pain when he hit, assuming that there were rocks and hard ground beneath him. Instead of pain however, Ben felt surprise. Rather than rocks, he had landed on something soft and giving, like a pile of pillows.

        Just as Joe returned, Ben finished relaying his story to Steve. Joe dropped the rope over the edge of the pit, and while he and Steve held it firm, Ben climbed up hand over hand. As he pulled himself over the edge of the pit, Steve and Joe both gasped. The handsome athletic body of their friend was covered head to toe in a bright silver powder that seemed to glow with a light of its own, even on an overcast sky.

The van door opened and Ben appeared with a cup of coffee in each hand and the keys between his teeth. “I gah oo cahee,” he announced, pouring the steaming drinks into two travel mugs. “Ih’s haselnuh.” He spat out the keys as he climbed into his seat and tried again: “It’s hazelnut. You like that, right?” I glared at him and deliberately didn’t take a mug.

Ben pulled his seat belt around and checked his hair in the rearview mirror. The purple dye clashed with his red scarf. “C’mon, lighten up!” he admonished me, putting the van in gear and backing out of the parking space. “It’s only for a week.”

I stared out the window, arms folded, hands tucked deep into the folds of my coat. “I’m still not speaking to you,” I growled.

Ben left the rest stop and merged back onto the interstate. “Your loss,” he said cheerfully, and flicked on the radio. I unfolded my arms and stabbed at the power button. “Geez, someone got hit with the grouchy stick.”

“I wonder whose fault that is?”

“Um . . . yours?”

“Mine?! You dragged me along on this stupid trip!”

“Is that all this is about?” Ben said cheerfully. “I got you a flight back, didn’t I?” I refolded my arms and resumed my silence. “Look at it this way, at least you’re having an adventure before your new job starts.”

The sweet smell of hazelnut wafted through the van. “I didn’t have any choice!” I shouted at him.

“Whoa, dude, nobody held a gun to your head.”

“YOU DID.”

He chuckled. “Oh yeah. Poor choice of words, huh?”

“And what’s going to happen to all my stuff? It has to be out of the house by tomorrow and in the apartment by Tuesday, and I don’t have anything packed up yet. Not that it would do any good if I did, because I won’t be there to move it!”

“Travis, relax! I made some phone calls before we left. It’s all taken care of.”

I groaned and put my face in my hands. “The last time you ‘made some phone calls,’ I ended up treed on a telephone pole. I thought that sorority was gonna kill me.”

“But they didn’t, and you were fine.”

“Don’t change the subject.” I lowered my hands and looked out the window. “Do you know how much trouble I’ll be in if I don’t get back in time?”

Ben switched lanes to get around a slower car. “I told you to relax and I meant it. We’ll be fine. I’ve got people waiting for us at every stop we’ll make, so you don’t have to worry about a thing. You’ll get back in plenty of time to move in and start your new job.”

“You know that, legally speaking, you kidnapped me, right?”

“Yeah, I know. You’ll thank me later.”

“I’ll do something to you later.”

Ben said nothing. Winter sunlight glinted on the gun in his coat pocket.

I wrapped my hands around the thin wire, pulling down slightly as if it were enough to test whether or not it would hold my full weight. I looked down at an angle through the skylight of the museum roof into the quiet darkness below where the arrow had wedged itself next to the display case. A display that was the first in a series of jobs that were going to give me everything I needed to live out the rest of my life in island solitude, once the fence managed to take the goods off of my hands with the appropriate buyer.

Carlson nudged me from behind, gesturing that I needed to stop stalling and take the plunge. Of course he felt safe in sending me down since he was confident in his own abilities to have disabled the sensors and blocked the cameras, although I wasn’t quite as comfortable with his skills. I should have been though since he was on the team that installed them. Not being able to tell if they were on or off made taking the plunge through the darkness a very risky business, however there’s nothing like a nervous challenge. I let gravity pull my weight through the opening and began the slide down. Squeezing gently, I slowed my descent near the end touching down gently onto the floor, thankful that alarms had not started piercing the silence. My momentum carried me towards the case, but I pulled myself back before sending it crashing off of its podium.

I fought not to gasp aloud at what I was seeing. A single note inside the otherwise empty case made me want to scream, but I knew any noise would bring every guard running. While I was intent on staring at the case, the sound of Carlson sliding down the wire snapped me from my reverie soon enough to step to the side before he crashed into me. His eyes instantly fixed on the case when he landed and the words registered immediately in his mind. “How…” he began to stutter through gritted teeth.

I silenced him immediately, although the same thoughts were going through my head. The words on the note kept repeating themselves in my mind: You were too slow on this job. Better luck next time. The fact that this note was written on bank stationary showed that someone not only knew about this job, but also my next target.

Chances were the other thief was still in the museum with us, but headed out with my treasure.

It was a sad sight – me on the bed, covered in blood and with a phone cord wrapped tightly around my neck; the dead guy on the floor, also covered in blood, but with a pair of embroidery scissors jammed in his jugular. I couldn't believe this was happening. I sighed and reached for the phone. With my rotten luck, my husband would be the first on the scene. I should be thankful not all my dates ended this way.

Detective Robert Morrison wasn't the first on the scene, but he still made it in record time. I was standing in the hallway outside of my apartment when he appeared, looking serious and concerned. I knew he must have been peeved underneath, what with his wife – estranged though she was – having just killed the man she had been seeing for two months.

"Molly, are you okay?"

Sure. I was fine, peachy, shiny, whatever. I started to cry. Bobby put his arms around me. I felt better immediately but milked it for a few minutes.

"Better? Good. Now, can you tell me what happened?" He got out his notebook.

"Well, we went to the museum, that Monet exhibit. Then he took me home. I invited him up for tea – I don't like coffee, so I was going to make tea. Probably Earl Grey, but if he liked the cranberry –"

"Skip the tea and get to the bedroom," he said crankily.

I took a breath. "Okay. I didn't take him in there. That's what you're thinking, but I didn't. I was going to lend him Cicero. He followed me and tried to kill me. I grabbed the scissors on my nightstand and stabbed him.

"Bobby," I wailed, "how could he know I was afraid of phone cords?" A cloud of silence eminated from the dozen or so cops in my apartment.

Here's the story. When I was ten, my brother decided to strangle me with a phone cord. He never intended to kill me, or so he said. He got an hour in the attic, and I got a lecture on tattling.

It's not much of a story.

"I don't think he did."

"But-"

"He might just like strangling beautiful women with phone cords. How long did you say you'd been seeing him?"

Beautiful? I started crying again, just so he would hold me.

"Two months. I don't even like him."

"Then why did you keep going out with him?"

I shook my head, flustered. Then it hit me. "I knew him. No, I recognized him."

"When you met him? From where?"

"I don't know. That's why I went with him. I needed to find out. Maybe he was with the CIA."

Bobby sighed, closing his notebook. "Have you been taking your meds?"

"Yes, you jerk! Why does that always –"

"Detective," interrupted an officer holding something that made my blood run cold, "look at this."

I barely uttered the word "crap" before I fainted into dear Bobby's startled embrace.

“Pablo! Pablo! Wait up!”

The sound came to me on my way home from a Debate Club meeting. I recognized the voice immediately, and after a glance at the stoplight ahead, knew I could keep up my walking pace. Just as I figured, he caught up to me at the corner.

“Didn’t you hear me?” Saul panted. Both his gasping for breath and the uniform he wore told me he must have just come from soccer practice.

“Au contraire, mon fraire, I heard you.” I pointed to the sign that had changed from ‘Walk’ to ‘Don’t Walk’. “You have my undivided attention for the next minute.”

Saul looked at me quizzically before continuing. “We’ve got another job. And you’ll never guess who needs to hire us: Tamara and Todd Thompson.”

While ‘never’ was a stretch, those fraternal twins and top rivals to our crime-solving exploits would have been far down the list of those who might need our help. “What could those two want from us?”

“They were at the old Donaldson house, searching for a neighbor’s Golden Retriever, when Todd disappeared!”

I was partially surprised by this. Few people neared that abandoned building because of the many rumors to regarding haunting spirits or past occult deeds, not to mention being it dangerously close to falling apart. “How long has he been gone?”

“All weekend, according to Tamara and her mother.”

The sign changed again, and I crossed the street, Saul in tow. I used the time to think about all this information, until I reached the other crosswalk. “A couple of things still bother me. First, a missing person is more the area of the police. Second, the Donaldson house is quite a distance away for two 8th graders like us.”

Saul snickered. “C’mon, you know how slowly the police move around here. Shoot, it was half the reason we first got into this business. And as far as getting there, well, that’s what Isabel is for, right?”

I sighed as I nodded my head. Of course he was right on both accounts; I just hadn’t wanted to admit it. I still recalled that day Saul and I had barely knew each other before we’d had our bikes stolen and teamed up to find them, with the help of my older sister Isabel. Together we formed the Supernatural Private Investigators (S.P.I., after our initials) – at least after I explained that no matter how much Isabel wanted to be listed first, “ISP” meant something completely different and didn’t have the same mnemonic value. I’d have to put up with her ego and Saul’s crush on her to get her assistance, starting with giving us a ride.

Still, that wasn’t the only problem now. This had the makings of a trick, except that there was no way Mrs. Thompson would agree to such shenanigans. Besides, at the core there was a kid and a dog missing that needed our aid. “Call them and tell them we’ll do it. But we demand payment up front.”

Midnight found Officer Jensen standing alone in the middle of Culver City Football Stadium. The moon came from behind a cloud, making the shadows dance. Suddenly he was blinded by the glare as all the stadium lights snapped on.
A whisper issued from a score of speakers with a vicious undertone that made the hair stand up on his neck; after all, this was the Zig-Zag killer: “Take the wire off, Jensen, or I’ll shoot you now.”
“Look, I agreed-”
Jensen started as his voice came booming back over the speakers: ‘LOOK, I AGREED-’
“What the h-”
‘WHAT THE H-’ boomed his own voice, echoing all over the stadium.
The whisper continued: “I’m switching you down now. After all, we don’t want to wake the dead, do we? Just remember that anything you say to your cronies will be heard by me, too.”
Jensen was shaking. “How did you do that?” His voice was at normal volume now. “I signed the radio out at Police H.Q. just last night.”
“And,” interceded the whisper, “you left it on your dining room table while you were cavorting with your pretty little wife. Plenty of time to adapt it.”
Jensen went rigid, then exploded: “You filthy creep! You were in my house?” Jensen had to fight to keep control. Making an effort, he growled: “OK, no more games. What do you want?”
“Want? You are the only one I can convince that I didn’t kill those twenty-three women.”
“What? You must be joking.”
The voice intensified. “Look, fool, I saw all of them being killed, but I didn’t actually do the deed.”
“Are you trying to tell me that-”
“Shut up!” There was a muzzle flash from the roof of the distant Press Box, and a bullet ploughed into the earth inches away from Jensen’s foot.
“You idiot, Jensen, I could have shot you any time”.

On the opposite side of the stadium, Officer Beasley saw his chance and, with a surge of renewed hope, took it. He swung the sniper rifle towards the Press Box and turned the ‘scope’s IR-Enhance to maximum. Peering down it, he could make out a dark figure crouching over a rifle. Beasley’s pulse hammered as he realized he had but one shot-and if he missed he would pay for it with Jensen’s life.
He took aim and fired. The dark figure was knocked sprawling. Heart pounding, Beasley pumped off three more shots in succession. The prone figure jerked as the bullets impacted it, then it went still.

“I got him, Sir, roof of the Press Box,” he said into his mike.
Jensen let out his breath with a whoosh. “Good work. On my way, Beasley. See you there. Be careful.”
“Wilco, sir.”

Jensen and Beasley approached the sprawled figure cautiously, guns drawn.
Jensen went ahead and knelt to feel the man’s pulse. “Stone dead. Nice shooting, Beasley.” There was no answer. He turned, puzzled. “Beasley?”

The cold muzzle of a gun pressed against his neck and a stranger's voice whispered: “Officer Beasley has left the Service, Mr. Jensen.”