inside.
They looked at each other and in unspoken agreement sprinted across the backyard to the rear door of Jack’s workshop. They drew their pistols, quietly counted to three, and slipped through the doorway.
Jack’s shop had been turned upside down. What was once an impeccably organized workshop now looked like the twisted wreckage of a junkyard-tools everywhere, cabinets turned upside down. Handmade chairs were now splintered wood scattered across the floor; the tall doors of a dark cherry armoire hung wide open, revealing an empty interior.
The small workshop off his garage was Jack’s haven, his sanctuary. When the days became too much and the house full of females left him feeling outnumbered, he’d fire up the power tools and build himself a bookshelf, a stool, a puzzle box, whatever it took to clear his mind. Some people found peace through yoga or golf; he found it through Craftsman and Dewalt power tools, knotty pieces of pine, and brass hammers.
The three-inch-thick steel door on the five-foot-tall gun case was ajar, its lock drilled out. Jack pulled back the heavy door and glanced inside. The guns still lay there in their racks, the ammunition drawers sat wide open, yet nothing was missing.
Frank laid his finger on his lips and held his gun high. He and Frank bisected the door into the house. Jack gripped his pistol as he wrapped his other hand about the knob and slowly turned it pulling open the door.
Peering into the kitchen, he could see every cabinet open, food and debris scattered across the floor. Before Jack could make a move, Frank rolled into the kitchen, gun at the ready. He spun around, backing himself through the room. Jack came in close behind, his gun held high, his finger on the trigger.
Jack’s eyes were drawn to the picture on the floor, the one of Mia and the girls at the beach, honest smiles on their faces. He remembered that summer day last year as if it had just happened. He could still feel the warmth of the sun on his skin, the smell of the ocean as its breeze tousled the girls’ hair. He remembered it all so well.
“Hey,” Frank whispered.
Jack snapped back to the moment to see Frank pointing his gun at the pantry door. He motioned Jack to take up a low position as he angled himself to the right of the doorjamb and, without warning, ripped open the door.
Fruck charged out. Frank leaped back, shocked, as the 150-pound dog nearly bowled him over before running straight to Jack.
“Jesus, you didn’t tell me you got a dog,” Frank said as he lowered his gun.
Jack opened the back door, hustled the dog outside, and closed the door behind him. “Sorry about that.”
Jack and Frank worked their way through the house, sweeping through the rooms: master bedroom, living room, study, basement. They were all ransacked.
“Whoever it was is long gone,” Jack said.
“What were they looking for?”
“The case. I’m sure they were pissed when they found out they snagged an empty one from the back of our car. Or maybe something of Mia’s that might point them in the right direction.”
Jack walked into the study and found that both his and Mia’s computers were missing, no doubt taken by the intruders, but he wasn’t too worried about that. The drawers were upended, the shelves swept clean of their pictures, books and mementos strewn on the floor. Jack leaned down and picked up the file labeled Keeler that the intruder had tried to steal several hours ago before hurling himself in front of a tractor-trailer. It was a medical file, with X-rays, MRIs, and information packets on death. He picked up the center drawer, inserted it back into the desk, and tucked the file away, keeping it from Frank’s sight.
“Is that the file from this morning?” Frank asked.
“Yeah, it’s just my boring health records and physical. Whoever came here second didn’t seem to want it.”
“Then what were they looking for?”
Jack turned to a tall cherry-wood armoire, its twin doors wide open, its contents of books, papers, and trinkets on the floor, leaving nothing inside. The joints were smooth and pure; the dark cherry finish was his favorite and had taken almost a month to bring to its current gloss. Jack closed the left door, latching it up while leaving the right door wide open. He stuck his hands inside, and, placing them along the back seam in just the right spot, he gave a slight push. The lock sank, and the floor panel of the case popped up, revealing a hidden compartment. Like a magic box where the magician’s assistant disappears only to come back moments later, it was a trick box, a puzzle case, the kind of thing he was fond of building. Mia always mocked him. “Why build a box when you can build a magic box? Why build a chair when you can build a trick chair?”
He lifted the lid to reveal a host of files. He thumbed through them and finally found what he was looking for. The file was thick with his personal notes and research that he had gathered on a case eighteen months ago. The file was, in fact, a duplicate file, the original remaining in his city office, but he wasn’t about to go near there. The files were not of a secret nature requiring lock and key, but he preferred to tuck away anything that might frighten the eyes of curious children who loved to rummage through Dad’s things when he wasn’t looking.
Jack looked at the small sliver of tattoo protruding from his left sleeve, written in an obscure language, from a culture not many had heard of. In all honesty, when Professor Adoy had looked at his arm and mentioned the foreign tongue earlier that day, it wasn’t the first time Jack had heard of the Cotis people. He had, in fact, prosecuted and won a conviction against one of them for triple homicide and had watched as that man was executed last fall.
In the file, there was a book on the Cotis people and the history of their small Asian country. He had read it through, trying to gain insight into the man he was prosecuting, but found the book to be filled with legends, mysteries, and myths, none of which helped him in his prosecution. There was the one-page dossier on the accused, whom they never could uncover background on and, most important, the detailed evidence that damned him to death by chemical injection.
Jack closed the file, the hidden door, and the armoire. He tucked the file under his arm and walked back into the kitchen.
“You got it?’
“Yeah.”
“You going to tell me what you got?”
“I think Mia’s kidnapping may be connected to a case I handled a while back.”
“Yeah, how do you know?”
Jack put the thick file on the counter, pulled out and opened the book on the Cotis people, specifically to a page of their language. He rolled up his sleeve and laid his arm next to it. While the lettering was on a different scale and in different coloring, there was no question: it was similar.
“And you didn’t mention this before because-”
“I wanted to be sure.”
“Bullshit.” Frank was pissed. “You better start sharing everything that you know if you want my help. That’s what partners do, remember?”
Jack nodded. “Of course, I remember.”
“I’m going to get the car.”
“All right, let’s go-”
“No. I’ll pick you up in five minutes. I need to clear my head now, thank you very much.”
As Jack watched Frank angrily walk out the side door, he closed the Cotis file. He looked again at his arm, the brown intricate writing continuous around his skin from elbow to wrist.
He thought himself insane for not remembering where it came from, how something so intricate could be applied, yet he had no memory of it. And as he continued to stare, he wondered whether Professor Adoy’s translation was accurate. Maybe there was more to what was written than either of them realized.
Jack loved Greek mythology but was obsessed with puzzles and mysteries. It was what inspired him in his job, trying to unwrap the unknown, piecing together evidence into a coherent story, into the truth. Now he was the mystery.
He had been intrigued by puzzles since he was a child and started creating his own around the age of seventeen. It started out with word problems, progressed to numeric puzzles and then on to mechanical puzzles, those impossible metal knots. He would build wooden cubes of twenty pieces that fit together like a glove, his work progressing into hidden compartments in the furniture he crafted, puzzle boxes for his children to solve, where once
