The Glass Box

Sometimes history does more than just repeat itself.

"It doesn't seem like it makes much sense, Cal. Who would want to break into a small time library, let alone a historical society?"

I didn't say a word. He wasn't finished venting yet.

"This is Aston, Pennsylvania, not New York City. Nah, this doesn't add up."

"I don't know Captain Foster," I said. Then I knelt down next to the man's body for a closer look. "Strange times we live in, I guess."

The volunteer, appearing to be a healthy man in his late 60's, now lay in his final state of rest. His clothes weren't torn. His glasses weren't broken. Not one grey hair appeared out of place. No sign of blood. No sign of a struggle.

"My guys have already swept the room for prints. I know that you work for that security firm up the street. I also know that you are a former FBI man and all...

Cal Kelleher, former FBI man, that's me. Well, so much for keeping a low profile. But that's okay. This here is a small community, one I've come to call home.

At the moment, the good captain's eyes were scanning the historical society's large room. The man was desperately looking for something that had been overlooked.

"Hey, it's okay, captain. I'll do my best. What else have you got?"

"Not much. I've got a visitor's sign-in sheet log here. Local kids came through here from the grade school just the other day. A group from a nearby retirement center walked through. Shows here that a hand full of out-of-staters wandered in and out. That's about it."

"What about inventory? Anything missing?"

"Take a good look around, Cal. This is just local stuff, you know. Century old pictures, a few diaries about the early days. A few pictures of the mills that ran around here, back in the day."

"So, there was an inventory taken? There's got to be a record of what's here somewhere, Captain. Say, what's your take on the cause of. death?"

He stood there silent. His eyes grew narrow. He seemed to searching for an answer.

"Hey, the ambulance guys should be here any minute now," he said, avoiding my question. "But it looks to me like it was a single bow to the head. Make that on top of the head."

I reached down with gloved hands, parting the scalp. A red welt seemed to glowing right back at me. Nothing seemed to make much sense right now. That's the way it always is, in the beginning, FBI or not.

The captain gave out a low whistle. I looked over the rest of the room. I wandered over to the back wall. There I saw a used hacksaw blade, which had been carefully slid into the baseboard.

I clicked my pen, removing it with the tip of the ballpoint. I dropped it into the plastic evidence bag that Captain Foster handed to me.

The ambulance crew arrived with the stretcher. A police photographer took a few pictures. After that, the body was taken away.

That left the captain and I standing inn the middle of the local historical society room. Both of us were now wondering what a man was murdered. To date, we later learned that nothing had been taken from the cash register.

"Something's more than a little fishy here, Cal," he said. "I can feel it."

"All I can feel right now is my empty stomach," I said. Then I checked the time on my phone. It read 7"37 p.m. "It's been a long day, and I could use a burger."

"Yeah, okay. Let's hit that burger place, just around the corner." Everyone nodded when I came through the door.

"You must be a regular here," he said. "And, if I'm not mistaken, that lady behind the grill looks to be more than a little mildly interested in you."

"We go back," I said. I took a seat at the table near the window, letting his comment drop. "So, what we've got is a hacksaw blade on the floor. From that, we have a body from a single, heavy blow."

"And no blood," he added. I'm also thinkin' that you thought that this would be a little ol' open and shut case, right? Nah, this one's complicated, this one's deep."

Then the captain bit into his jumbo burger. Then, he never said another word. The man didn't even seem to be coming up for air, polishing off a full plate of French fries.

The captain was right about one thing: it was deeper case then I'd thought it would be.

You see, the more you work security, after a while, it all becomes routine. I'd left my FBI life behind with the second divorce. But, as I was finishing up on my large vanilla shake, I stared out of the window, out on to Five Points. Back in the day, I've been told, five stop signs dotted the intersection.

"That's it for me," the captain said, bringing me back to reality. "I'm calling it the day. I'll work my side of the fence. I'll check for any fingerprints, interview the library personnel, all of that stuff tomorrow. Let me know if you come up with any leads."

With that, he drove me back to the library, where I had left my car. Back at my apartment, I poured myself a cup of coffee. While the day's news droned on and on in the background. Then I made a list of places to check after work.

After that, I laid down for a short nap. Right.

Preoccupied I found out, is with the alarm going off, you're lying there thinking about something other than what you still do for a living.

I gave Mr. Citizen, a mangy stray cat that wandered in after my girlfriend left, a bowl of milk, before leaving. He lapped it up, like there was no tomorrow.

My stomach was growling again, so I hit the local diner for breakfast. I took my usual booth, just below the tv above me. Diane came over to take my order.

""Bit early for you, ain't it Cal?"

"Yeah, but something came up yesterday."

"I heard. It's a small place. Word gets around," she said, writing down Western omelet on her own. "Too bad. Some high school kids were in here laughing about it."

"Yeah," I said. "Kids, what do they know."

After breakfast I took care of my routine duties at work. I polished up the quarterly report. I did a background check on a new employee, then attended the usual half-ass staff meeting.

The day flew by, but Diane's words stuck to me like a bad dream. I felt like a little kid again, waiting for recess. The end of the workday couldn't come fast enough. There was an extra spring in my step as I hit the company parking lot.

Diane, not knowing it, had actually given me my first lead.

"Well, look what the cat brought in," Mitch Gaines said. There he stood, at the security deck at the Juvenile Detention Center. He was grinning from ear to ear.

He wore the freshly minted Lieutenant insignia on his grey uniform.

I guess that explained his smile. A promotion will do that to a man, I guess.

"There was a murder over at the-"

"Yeah, I heard. What about it?" He pulled a gold pen from his pocket. It looked like a brand new one. Sort of like a small gift that you get as you're going up the corporate ladder.

"Just wondering if you had nay new arrivals over night." He took out a ruler, carefully running his soft office fingers down the grid on the clipboard. Then, he did it a second time, this time over the computer, just to make it all look official, I guess.

"No, it's been pretty quiet, actually."

Then his eyes shot up, meeting mine. "Hey, how are you and that girlfriend of yours doing these days?" He was looking back at me now, already knowing the answer.

There was that grin again. I thought about laying him out right then and there.

"Not worth talking about."

"Huh," he said. That's not what I've heard. Anyway, try next door. They might have found something overnight."

"Thanks, Gaines," I said, forcing the words out of my mouth. "And congratulations on your promotion. The state of Pennsylvania is that much safer."

In return, he gave me a cold stare. And as I left, what he was muttering behind my back, I'd rather not say.

Next door was the crime lab. From the moment you walk through the heavy-as-hell doors, there are more monitors, cameras, and metal detectors just this side of the Pentagon.

I was polite, as one security guard after another checked me out. I was in a hurry, yes, but I was also courteous.

Charlotte Stuart saw me coming. If I didn't know better, I'd say that Gaines had picked up the phone as soon as I hit the door at the detention center.

"Hi, Cal. It's been a long time." Her hair was a lighter shade of brown. Since the last time that I'd seen her, she'd lost her glasses, in favor of contacts. Other than than, she was the same Charlotte.

"I heard about your breakup just the other night," she said carefully. "Seems as though you two had it out, right down the street here. Sounds like she'd had enough of your crazy hours. Anyway, sorry to hear about it."

"Yeah, well life goes on, right?" I said, with her words still stinging inside of me. "Do you have anything for me to go on, from the other night?"

"Our guys went over the place. We didn't come up with any fingerprints. We checked the lock at the door. It hadn't been tampered with. Now, the hacksaw though, it looks like it was bought at a local hardware store here."

Later, with that thought in mind, I looked over my hand-written notes at the local cafe. I was working my way through a bacon-lettuce-tomato sandwich, when the pair came strolling in.

We returned nods. I had seen them around. They kept to themselves, for the most part. They were good people, I decided, paying my check. Some people just have that certain look, you learn after awhile.

Out in the parking lot, I pulled out my phone, calling the police chief.

"What do you mean, you've got nothing, Cal? Come on now, Mr. FBI! I've got people starting to ask questions. Let's make that serious questions about how I'm doing my job."

"Okay, okay," I said. "I've got one more lead. I jotted down a couple of names I need to look into. Let me check these two out. Then, I want to meet back up with you at the historical society. I've got a theory."

"Theory? Theory? When I see you over there, let's say in about 30 minutes, you better have something."

"I understand," I said, when I really didn't.

"And it better be something other than some half-assed theory." Click.

It was now 6:45 p.m. Rush hour traffic had now slowed down to a trickle. I pulled up into the cul-de-sac. A dog was barking at the window. The lawn had seen better days. A nosy neighbor was wiping off his greasy hands on to a greasier rag.

I got out of my car.

I rang the doorbell. I introduced myself. She looked nervous. "What do you want?"

"I'd like to speak to you and your husband. Is he home?"

"He's down in his workshop," she said. "I'll go get him."

While a beagle kept me at bay, the cat in the background, vanished into another room.

Soon, heavy steps were heard climbing up the stairway. The man, covered in sawdust, shook my hand.

"Were you two at the historical society the other day?"

"Yeah," he said. "I bought some postcards, looked around, then left, maybe 15 minutes later."

"That's it?" he asked.

"Yes, " I said. "Sorry for the trouble. Good night."

I was pulling out of the cul-de-sac, when it hit me. I floored it to the local chimney sweep. I caught the owner just at closing time. I asked him to check his records.

Yes, he said, they had done a job there, a few months back.

Now I had a theory replaced by probable cause. I then drove through traffic carefully, like I was going to the dentist. I was stalling for time. Time that my brain needed to put all the pieces in place.

After all, not much was on the line here, just my reputation.

My brakes screeched as I pulled into the library parking lot. The captain stood there, waiting for me. He was trying to look calm and collected, but it wasn't working.

He met me at the door.

"This better be more than good."

"It is," I said, as confidently as I could.

"Do you have a ladder?" I then asked.

"Yeah, there's one out back."

Once we were both on the roof, I walked him over to the furnace chimney. I flicked on the flashlight.

A series of bricks had been removed near the roofline. Further back, two flat boards had been laid across the beams and insulation.

The captain, not looking pleased, grunted behind me, as we took the journey inside.

"Look at this," I said, shining my light over the light box. "Our intruder removed the light fixture just enough, dropping this brick, lying there."

The captain was silent, a student about to learn.

"Dropping the brick, on a rope, landed on his head, hard enough to kill him. He then climbed back down on the rope. Once down, he took out all of the contents of the glass box."

"What glass box?" he asked.

We climbed back down the ladder, going back inside the room.

"When you said that you weren't sure about the inventory," I said, "things just didn't add up, and that's when I saw this."

I took the captain over to the back table. It was where a diary, that had been safely contained beneath the glass, had once stood. Now, it was empty.

"Someone took an old-time diary?"

"Not just any diary. Come on."

Captain Foster and I got back into my car. I floored it leaving the parking lot.

"Where are we going?"

"To where our murderer thinks that there's a fortune in gold."

Minutes later, I stopped the car in the old mill parking lot, cutting the lights.

"Years ago, I read about an old hand. He worked right here at the mill. He had a bag of gold dust. A man by the name of Jonas Christianson."

The captain didn't say a word.

"The story is, according to the diary, that he'd buried it here, beneath one of these stone columns. Our killer, he thinks that it's right here."

"Why tonight?"

"The diary was written in verse. Everyone figured that he was just crazy. But he left a date. The date was to be when the gold dust would rise to the surface from the columns."

The captain ran one hand across his square jaw. "Go on," he said.

"My hunch is that our killer is a member of the historical society. He's read about it, from that very diary. He had suspected it to be true for years now, and tonight he's going to come out a get his share."

Just then, a flashlight, outside the car, flicked on. A dark figure emerged, lurking, throwing light, left and right, from the other side of the column.

"Stay put," the captain said to me. "We'll take it from here."

That was fine by me.

I sat back and watched as they cuffed the surprised man. The captain called for a squad car.

The next day, the crime lab found the killer's DNA on the brick left back in the ceiling.

This was one for the books.

And for me?

Well, I've still got my run-of-mill security job, one that looks pretty good right about now.


THE END