More Martian Concerns 

                                                                   by  

                                                         Aidan Gregory 

    

                                                           Goombahs 

     Paul Ricci had just awakened on his hospital bed after dozing off late in the afternoon. He was sleeping more. Stage four pancreatic cancer had exhausted him.  

  Paul was given five months to live about four months before. 

  His wife, Carol, had gone home with his two adult children.  Carol had things to do at their home, and his children had their own families.  

  His children had stopped in almost every day to sit with him, as did Carol.  They stopped bringing the grandchildren because the sight of him would upset them. His body was emaciated. Paul had, in a way, said goodbye to them weeks before. 

  There was a knock on the half-opened door.  

   With his eyes closed Paul said, “Come in,” in a loud whisper. He turned his head toward the door and opened his eyes. He immediately grinned. 

“Where have you been for the last forty -three years?” Paul said to Gary Moore, even though he knew that Gary had been living in South Jersey in Atlantic County near the cranberry bogs. And they had run into each other in town and spoken at a high school reunions. 

“I hadn’t checked my Facebook page in a while and there were posts that you were here. I had a meeting in the area today. How are you holding up?” Gary asked as he shook Paul’s hand. 

 Gary, a wrinkling sixty-year-old man of average build and sandy hair was in good shape and didn’t offer a hearty handshake, for obvious reasons. 

“Pain killer's help. Sleeping all the time,” Paul replied. Paul was staying in the hospice wing of a nursing home in North Jersey. “I thought you were retired?” 

“I volunteered to help on a cold case and a new lead brought me up here. Had a meeting with the Bergen County Sheriff. I work cold cases for departments all over Atlantic County. So, how’s the family?” Gary asked, not wanting to ask about his condition. 

“Everyone's good,” he paused then said, “The grand kids are afraid of me. They way I look. I don't want them to visit anymore. I don’t want to scare them,” Paul replied. 

  Gary nodded his head and tried not to grin.  “You can laugh. I get it,” Paul said.  

“Yeah, this isn’t funny though. I feel bad for bad you,” and Gary meant it. They were friends when they were kids. Gary thought of the last few conversations they had at those reunions, talking to one another with ease after years of no contact, as they were now. 

“Yeah, I know, but I had a good life. Shorter than I expected but good.  Good family. Lots of good memories,” Paul said.  After a short silence he said, “Your family?” 

“Good, thanks,” Gary replied. He started looking around the hospital room at all the flowers and cards. 

  Paul knew that Gary had a messy divorce years before. He didn’t push it. 

“First, they all send me get well cards. Then, more flowers than you get at a funeral,” Paul said with a grin, “One of the guys sent me a cactus.” Gary laughed. 

  Gary had taken off his winter coat when he had first come in and draped it on the back of the chair he was sitting in. He reached into the side pocket and retrieved a small care package.  He placed it on the night table next to the bed. “Ginseng tea for energy. Some cranberry tea, too,” Gary said. 

  “Thanks,” Paul replied with a smile.  Paul’s curly hair had all but fallen out from the chemo treatments, but his smile was the same.   

  The grave situation Paul was in suddenly became real for Gary and memories flashed. 

  When he first walked into the room, Gary had looked out the window over the valley of the town where he and Paul had grown up. The twilight and the cold weather reminded him of winter track practice. 

  Late in the afternoon the school halls would be empty. Hollers and laughter could be heard from the gym along with squeaky sneakers. 

  Paul practiced the long jump, he was taller. But they both practiced triple jump and pole vaulting. 

  There were other kids on the team too, and they would help slide the pole vault pit on the shiny gym floor after hauling it out of storage. 

  There was usually a wrestling match on the pit, or Indian leg wrestling. 

  The coach would whistle, and they would stretch and do sprints then sprint with the seventeen-foot carbon fiber poles. They would plant the tip of the pole in between the pit mats and practice swinging their feet up toward the ceiling then twist at the waist, as if going over a crossbar. 

  During the spring they’d practice outside on the fields behind the school preparing for the track meets and weeks later they’d host one or take a crazy teen aged school bus ride to another school for a meet. 

  Before high school and middle school Paul lived several blocks away from Gary and they attended the same grammar school.  

  It was safe in those days, and all the kids walked together on the same road that led to the school. Even in the rain and snow with raincoats and winter boots. 

  They were the same age and had been in classes together. They had gone to dozens of birthday parties and Field Days and Easter egg hunts. At Halloween the neighborhood streets were swarming with costumed kids running around.  

  No one locked their doors. 

  “Remember the two brothers? The skinny kid and his big, kind of fat brother?” Gary asked Paul. Paul looked at him quizzically. “They both had the Krate bicycles with banana seats. The skinny kid had an orange one and the fat kid had a red one,” Gary said. 

“The capo’s kids,” Paul said. 

  A capo had moved into an expensive house a few blocks away. His two sons were always bullying other kids. The skinny one would pick a fight and if you fought back the fat brother would punch you. 

  One day it was Gary’s turn to get picked on.  He fought back and got punched. But before he was punched a second time Paul stepped in and punched the fat kid in the stomach. 

  “You punched him, and he ran home crying. The skinny one said that he was going to tell his father and that you’d be in big trouble,” Gary said, grinning. 

 “The capo called my father. They had words. I don’t remember what was said but my father said not to apologize, and not to worry,” Paul replied, also grinning. "I never thanked you for that," Gary said. "No problem. I enjoyed it, " Paul replied.

  After fourth grade Paul and his family moved to one of the new developments in town. His father put up a six-foot fence around the property and Dobermans were always on patrol in the yard.  

  Paul went to the other junior high school, and they didn’t hear from one another again until high school. 

  Gary suddenly remembered one night in late spring during their senior year of high school. There was a party at someone's house and Paul was there with fiends from his neighborhood, and Carol. Gary was with his friends.  

  He and Paul got to talking about something when Paul asked Gary if he wanted to see his father’s 1965 Pontiac Catalina convertible parked in the street. They went out front together with Carol and a girl named Beth, who were giggling about something. 

  The Pontiac was candy apple red and in mint condition. The house lights glistened off it. Paul offered to take them for a ride and he and Beth climbed into the back seat. 

  Paul drove slowly and carefully up and down the spacious streets with the radio playing pop songs. They all jabbered about one thing or another. Carol slid over on the front bench seat to sit close to Paul, and he put his arm around her. Gary put his arm on the top of the back seat above Beth. He caught Paul’s eye in the rear-view mirror and they both grinned as the warm night air wafted around them. 

  “Can you tell me a little about the case?” Paul asked. 

  “Sure. A teenage girl got separated from her friends at Brigantine Castle back in the late ‘70’s. She never came home. There were no leads then and the case was closed. 

  But someone sent an anonymous lead to the Galloway police department snail mail a few days ago. We traced the letter back to a mailbox in Paramus. That post office sent us the security camera footage from the night before the letter was posted. Someone wearing a surgical mask, a hoodie, and gloves had dropped the letter in the box after 2 a.m. He or she walked out of the camera’s view. The letter and envelope had been sprinkled with bleach to oxidate DNA strands.  

  The letter stated that the killer was a retired Bergen County Sheriffs officer. I met with one of the assistant Sheriff's and you can imagine he was not pleased by the prospect of attracting attention to their department. He said he was sure that it was a frame up by a disgruntled criminal. He gave me the suspect’s phone number, and I’ll give him a call later tonight.” 

  Paul looked Gary over for a moment. Gary had told him, on the several occasions that they had met, about some of the cases he had worked on and solved. Terrible stuff. The job had negatively affected his marriage, and he was still at it. 

He was good at it.

  When Paul was asleep, just before Gary got there, he had a vivid dream. In it, he and Gary were triple jumping. Then the dream changed, and Paul was re-living a sabotage mission he had performed years back for The Service.  

  He had jolted awake, and it came to his mind that he needed to tell Gary about The Service and that mission, to get his number and call him. And then Gary knocked on the door. 

  After high school Paul had gone to work at his father’s company in Brooklyn while his siblings went on to work in different professions.  The experience of working in the city had given him a different perspective to living in the suburbs. He became street wise. And he liked being around tough guys.  

 He earned a black belt in Taekwondo and entered competitions. He was registered on the National Council of Martial Arts as a black belt. 

  As the years went by, and as Paul gained trust with contacts at the ports of entry in the tri-state area, he took over for his father who had kept an eye on things at those ports for forty years after the Korean War.  

  When word got around that somebody was doing something that they weren’t supposed to be doing, his father would deal with it, or the information would go to the authorities. Paul’s father stepped back from that role and Paul took over. 

  But by the late nineties the government turned up the heat and Paul’s business suffered. He began losing his contacts, and ruthless foreign gangs who were allowed into the country began smuggling dangerous drugs with impunity. By 2010 they were trafficking and housing slaves and children, also with impunity. He didn’t bother passing on the information because the authorities at the highest levels condoned it and were paid in cash. 

  Paul had always heard about guys appearing from other dimensional levels. It was a thing, an understanding, that he grew up with and in the late 90s he started seeing them. They were spies. Paul received information from them from time to time.  

  Around the same time that the Iraq and Afghanistan wars began Paul was approached by Flavian, of The Service. He was sitting in his office and suddenly Flavian was standing in front of his desk. He was used to those guys appearing and disappearing by then. 

  “Paul Ricci. Flavian Bruni. I knew your father,” Flavian said. He was wearing a light brown belted trench coat with the collar turned up. “I’m sorry for your loss.” Paul’s father passed two years before. He then reminisced about Paul’s father and the past dealings they had.  

  “I’ll cut to the chase.  I work for the most secret service on Earth. We are called The Monitor’s Desk, and we have offices around the globe that include different people from other nations. We literally monitor the entire world. I work at the Clandestine Service Desk.” 

  “Have I or any of my guys done something we shouldn’t have?” Paul had said. 

  “Not at all. I’m here to ask for your help. First, I need to tell you something that you may not believe, but I still need assurance from you that you’ll keep silent,” Flavian said. 

  Paul wanted to hear him out and said, “Of course, you have my word.” 

  Flavian finished explaining what he needed. He then handed Paul a USB flash drive. “Take a look at this and let me know what you think,” he said, “I’ll contact you in a few days for your answer. I hope you decide to help us out with this mission. I think you’ll enjoy it.” Then Flavian disappeared. 

  “I need to tell you something, Gary. For some reason I need to tell you this. I’ve never even told my wife, but I think she had a hunch that I had gone to the crazy side, and she started nagging me to stop. Our kids were still young.” 

  Gary understood that the ‘crazy side’ meant, generally, people coming from somewhere else. Other dimensions. As a policeman you heard about these things from ex-military personnel who had become police officers.  

 He had also heard about exotic weapons and wild technologies that had been developed at the Skunkworks division of Lockheed Martin. Word leaked out now and then from McGuire Air Force Base if equipment from that division passed through. There was also talk of exotic technologies. But he had also had unexplainable and inexplicable experiences while solving crime. So, he kept an open mind. 

  Gary had an idea about what Paul did for a living, but Paul’s name never came up as an illicit drug smuggler on any police blotter, or as part of a murder for hire organization, and Gary knew he wouldn’t touch human trafficking of slaves and children. 

 Gary was glad Paul never sold those dangerous drugs. He had spent his entire career cleaning up mess after mess caused by those poisons. If Paul had smuggled them, he wouldn’t be sitting with him now. 

  “I want to start by saying I’m not making this up. I wouldn’t insult you with a lie and I was never good at tall tales. I need to know that you won’t say anything to anyone, not that anyone would believe it,” Paul said. 

   “I won’t say anything,” Gary replied. 

  Paul began by telling Gary about The Monitor’s Desk, and Flavian and the Clandestine Service Desk. Again, Gary was not surprised at hearing about an interdimensional spook. 

  Paul then recounted what he had seen on the flash drive.  

  “There was a compilation of security videos of, are you ready? Mars one hundred and fifty years in the future!” Gary frowned. “Just hear me out,” Paul said. “The footage was all basically the same. There were several men hurrying back and forth on loading dock areas. They were short, thick, with flattened heads and black hair and beards. The lights were dimmed. They were obviously transferring contraband.  

  In a later conversation on the phone, Flavian said that they were smuggling a designer drug that had become popular, with local officials and high-ranking police involved. Nothing changes, huh? 

 He did say that the drug issue had become an epidemic.” Paul stopped a moment, watching the frown grow on Gary’s face. “I was skeptical too, believe me, but I was hooked. I was looking at a different civilization from one hundred and fifty years into the future. I considered the videos could be fake, but not from a spook, unless he was up to no good. I decided to try it, and man did I regret it.” 

   Having thought that Paul was being sincere Gary said, “Okay. So, what did you do?” 

   “Well, he said that first I was going to have to be made to teleport and he said  it wouldn’t be too difficult since I did plenty of teleporting in the spirit world before re-incarnating into this life, with a different agency but I don’t remember any of it.” 

  Gary was suppressing a grin. Re-incarnation too, he thought? 

  “Again, I know this is hard to believe, but I made a commitment, and I wanted to honor it. So, not long after I agreed the overnight sweating began and bouts of anxiety during the day. I don’t know how these things work, but when the invisible goons are focusing the mustard on you, your energy field is being altered for whatever reason, as needed. 

  Carol was upset the entire time it lasted and that was about six months. She wanted to know exactly what it was that I was going to do, but I couldn’t tell her because I didn’t really know, which made things worse. My kids were young, too, and that’s what really upset her. And I realized I’d made a mistake when I was short tempered with my kids on several occasions." 

   Paul stopped to let it all sink in for a moment. “I’m listening,” Gary said, seemingly more interested, “Cops I ‘ve worked with over the years, who were in the military, told me some wild stuff.” Not that he believed all of it, but he didn’t say that. 

 
  “Okay,” Paul continued, “After about six months Flavian appeared in my office. He said it was time for action. He gave me a rundown as to what I needed to do. Now, remember I was never trained as a soldier, but that wasn’t an issue. All I needed to do was plant a small explosive device in a corner on a loading dock. That was it. He said that even though I could be transported through the Mysteries he wanted me to use a teleporting device that apparently could send you into the past or future. He wanted me to go to the Madison train station in Morris County. There was a guy that would be waiting for me at ten p.m. on one evening. It was a sabotage mission. 

  When I got there, a couple of street lights flickered. It was weird.

The station was closed, no cars were riding on the street, and there were no people around except the guy I was supposed to meet 

He opened an old solid metal door on the side of the building that was behind some bushes.  

  We went down a long flight of steps and into a sparsely lit oversized basement that reeked of mildew and disinfectant. In the center of the floor there was this elevator carriage. I’m sure you’ve seen them outside of an elevator shaft.  

  The guy, who called himself Remy said, “This is it.”  I asked him how the teleporter worked, and he said that when prompted the device accessed the Earth’s electromagnetic field. Then the onboard computer accessed the Akashic Records, and we could go anywhere in recorded time on Earth, or anywhere else in the universe, which has nearly two trillion galaxies. And multiple dimensions. He said he had pre-programmed the computer for that mission. 

  He opened the elevator door and walked in. He stood there waiting for me with a no-nonsense look. All military, including the short hair cut. “I’m vectoring the craft,” he said. 

  I stepped in as he was fiddling with his phone and pointing it toward the teleporter control board.   Flavian didn’t tell me I’d be traveling with anyone, and I asked Remy why they needed me if he could do the job and he said he needed to stay with the transport because  it sometimes got squirrely and disappeared, but he could keep it steady while I did the job. And then he tapped his phone before I could step out and the door shut instantly.  

  The carriage started shaking and rattling for about sixty seconds and stopped.  

‘We’re here’, he said. I asked where ‘here’ was.  He said that we were on Mars in the year 2151!  

  My blood ran cold, and I got a little panicky. Remy said to take a deep breath and hold it for ten seconds. He said I looked like the guys who were about to jump out of C-47's in pitch darkness over Normandy on D- Day.

  He said the explosive was behind me, I didn’t notice it when I got in, duct taped to a panel. I gently removed it and took off the duct tape.  It was a ‘Mini claymore’. The name was embossed on the back side and on the front was embossed ‘Front Toward Enemy’.There was a small electronic device on it, too. 

  Remy showed me, on a drawing of the dock, that I was to stick the claymore at the end of a wall where a large hall began.  He would remotely detonate it. 

  We were at the back of a loading dock area, he said, and I only needed to walk about one hundred feet and back. There was sticky wax on the back of the claymore, and I removed the wax paper. 

  Remy opened the door, and a stifling breeze blew in. Have you ever been to Los Angeles in the summertime? It was like that but worse. I could taste the air pollution.” 

  “This is getting hard to believe,” Gary said, with a straight face. 

  “I know,” Paul replied, “And it gets even crazier. Hear me out. It’s almost done. 

  I’ll admit it. It took everything I had to hold it together. I looked at Remy and he was as cool as could be and he said, calmly, “It’s right over there. A hundred feet. You’ll be there and back in less than two minutes.”  

I just wanted to get it over with, so I steeled myself, stepped out of the car, and walked into the half dark of the back of the empty loading dock.  

  The overhead doors of probably fifty truck bays were open, and I could see out into a huge, empty parking lot. There were a couple of lights from lampposts shining down on paint markings that were something you’d see on a helipad. 

  I started loping. But then I heard this low humming noise coming from the parking lot and I stopped. Outside there was a large disk descending onto the helipad markings. It had to be about a hundred yards long. It was white with red numbers and illegible lettering. It landed swiftly and then I took off again. 

   I got to the wall where I was supposed to stick the claymore. It was on a corner of a large hallway that I assumed led into the warehouse. I tucked the claymore behind a fire extinguisher that was mounted there at waist level. 

 As I was about to turn around and go back, I heard voices in the hallway, and I dodged around the corner. I peered back and there were three short, stocky men standing at the other end of the hall. They had black hair and black beards, and they were arguing. 

  Gary, I swear on my mother’s grave, the next moment there was a dull flash of yellow- green light behind the men and this over -sized large bruise colored sack hovered there. Like a huge spider egg sack! The three men immediately dropped to the floor. 

  Then the thing started moving down the hall toward me. I looked toward Remy, and he had turned a light on above his head inside the elevator carriage.  He was looking at me. Then a weird, muted beeping noise came from the carriage. I looked back at the floating sack again and I was absolutely terrified. How was I going to get back to the elevator?  

  It was veering toward the other side the hall and it had made it to the corner and was facing Remy. And then Remy hit the controls on his phone and the carriage vanished just as a yellow-green beam was shot at it from within the sack. The beam exploded into the wall. 

  Okay, I’m going to tell you this next part, and it's the craziest.  

  I was stunned and immobile, but I heard a low whirring noise behind me, and I managed to swing my head around. Remy reappeared with the carriage, but I couldn’t move. At least not quickly enough because someone grabbed me in a bear hug and pushed me into the carriage just as the mini claymore exploded, sounded like a few  m-80s. I looked back at the sack, and it was laying on the dock shredded and oozing vile looking liquid. There were three bodies covered in bits of the sack. 

  Then I looked down at who had grabbed me and, are you ready? A bear, or wookie, standing in an upright position! He was a little shorter than me and wearing a light blue baggy jumpsuit.” 

  Gary burst out laughing, as quietly as he could. But Paul wasn’t laughing. 

  “Gary. He looked like the wookie from Star Wars with a black nose and dark, watery eyes. He said to me, ‘You’re alright, mate’ with an English accent. He had a jaw like ours so he could talk! Incredibly, there was nothing terrifying about the situation. I nodded and he put one of his paws on my arm, but it had five furry fingers! He said, ‘Keep up the good work, brothers,’ then he disappeared.” 

Gary had stopped laughing but was still grinning. “I don’t know about this,” he said. 

  “Now here’s the real reason for telling you this story,” Paul continued, “Immediately after the bear, or wookie, disappeared a guy with dark brown perfectly quaffed hair, like he had just come from the barber, appeared at the door and pointed a weapon at us. He was yelling in some strange language.   

  Remy pressed the door button, and it shut fast as lightning. Then he hit the controls, and the carriage started vibrating again and went back to the train station. But the thing is that the guy with the perfect hair-” 

  Just then Carol walked into the room. “That guy what,” she said to Paul, and then she said to Gary, in a pleasant tone, “Gary, it’s so nice to see you!” Gary reciprocated and they all chatted together, but Carol asked Gary all the questions. After catching up Carol said, “So, what were you two talking about?” 

 “I was telling Gary about the time when Frankie Calzone came into my office and threatened me, but then he apologized when he found out it wasn’t me who said it,” Paul said. 

  Carol looked at them both and could tell by the sheepish look on Gary’s face that that was a lie. She was going to ask Gary what Paul had told him about rude Frankie Calzone but decided against it. She knew what they were talking about because there was only one secret Paul kept from her.  

  Why did he tell Gary? 

  After retrieving two square containers of apple juice from the mini refrigerator she poured them into small plastic cups. She gave Paul a mini straw since he was laying on his side. There was a half of a hoagie sandwich in the frig, too, and Carol offered it to Gary. He thanked her and said he'd had a late lunch.  

  They continued chatting and shared anecdotes about their children. 

  Carol’s phone rang. She excused herself and walked just outside the door.  

  “What’s your number,” Paul asked. Gary told him and they were quiet as Paul texted him-’Call me tomorrow’. Then Carol walked back into the room. 

  A short while later Gary said he needed to be on his way, but that he’d stop by in a few days since he had another meeting with the Bergen County police.  

  Gary shook hands warmly with Carol and Paul, and Paul also gave him a knowing wink. 

  On the way home Gary called the suspect. It was just about 9 p.m. The suspect answered. Paul had a sense that he had been told he’d be getting a call. His voice sounded off, sheepish at first, then switched to a low baritone. They agreed to meet the next day at the suspects house in Little Egg Harbor, New Jersey. 

  In the morning Gary meant to call Paul, but he got distracted. He needed to meet the suspect, and he would call him later 

 

  Retired Captain Richard Linden of the Bergen County Sheriff’s Department lived alone on the western end of town a few blocks off of Main Street, in Little Egg Harbor. The appointment was at ten a.m. 

  Gary walked up the driveway that was full of leaves, as was the lawn.

 It was an older box shaped house with new light blue siding and new windows. The front door was vinyl faux wood in a shade of dark red with a new brass knocker. The doorbell didn’t work. 

  He knocked a few times with no response. He tried calling, no answer. He figured Richard was home since a car was in the driveway. He tried the entry handle and the door was open. 

  With all his years as a policeman he was instinctively cautious, and he called out first before sticking his head in. All at once he wished he’d brought his weapon with him. 

  But there was no answer, not a sound. He smelled smoke.  

  He stepped into the small foyer and looked to his right, into the dining room and then looked to his left, into the living room.  

  A shock ran through him after he saw the suspect in his underwear, a t-shirt, and bare feet. He had his legs beneath him and he was sitting on his heels. His face was sticking through a jerry-rigged piece packing cardboard that covered the front of the fireplace. It was tightly held in place by duct tape. The suspect had cut a round hole in it and his face was inside the fireplace, resting on his chin. There was a half empty bottle of Chivas Regal next to him on the floor. 

  Gary slowly walked over and checked for a pulse. There was none and so he called the local police. There was a notepad on the floor, an obvious suicide note, but he would wait for the LEHPD. He stepped outside.  

  Two patrolmen showed up first followed shortly afterward by a detective. 

  After explaining who he was to the detective, and showing him his badge, Gary explained how he had spoken to Linden the night before at about 9 p.m. and made an appointment for 10 a.m. Gary said it was related to a cold case, and he briefly explained the case. He asked if he could get a picture of the note emailed to him and the detective agreed.  

 Then the coroner walked in the door. 

  The suspect had lit a half of a bag of charcoal briquets at the back of the fireplace and had closed the flu as far as it would go. The coroner thought that after chugging half of the bottle of Chivas he removed a cover he had placed over the round hole in the cardboard, and stuck his face in. He more than likely passed out after a minute or two, he said. 

   The smoke that had stuck to his hair and t-shirt was very pungent, and Gary could picture the suspect engulfed in a cloud of it as it poured out of the hole and around his head. 

  Gary asked to be kept apprised of any new information if it turned out that there was foul play.  

He had told the detective that there was an anomaly concerning the cold case of the murdered teen girl. There were markings on the body, made by a knife, that Gary had first seen in the 90’s as a young detective. They were likened to ritual killings. 

  But it didn’t matter anymore. The case would be wrapped up and Linden blamed as the murderer. 

He was going to drive thirty minutes to the office that the Galloway police let him use, in the Records Unit area of the precinct, and write a final report. He would probably be tasked with contacting the teen girl’s next of kin.  

  Gary climbed in his vehicle and put his earphone in. He decided to call Paul on his way to the precinct. He enjoyed talking to Paul the night before and he actually wanted to hear the end of that story. 

  As he began to pull away from the curb, he noticed that he had left the case folder open on the passenger seat, and he noticed ‘Brigantine’ on the first page and he instantly remembered what he ‘d forgotten to ask Paul.  

  Brigantine Castle was built by an entrepreneur by the name of Carmen Ricci. Gary wanted to know if he had been a relative. 

  Gary dialed Paul’s number and began driving. It kept ringing and he was about to hang up and pull over to text a message to him when Carol answered.  

  After they said hello Gary could tell by her voice that something had happened. There was a moment of silence then Carol just said that Paul had passed. He was awake earlier and they were chatting, she said, then he fell back to sleep and slipped away. 

 What she didn’t say was that when Paul was awake, he just started telling her how much he still loved and appreciated her. She thought she would keep that to herself for a while. 

  Gary was not exactly stunned, but blindsided. “I can’t believe it. I’m so sorry to hear that,” Gary said. Carol said the wake was the next day and the funeral in two days. She asked him to come. He said he would. 

  Gary was numb with shock—two deaths in a single morning. He had witnessed so many over the years that he'd grown used to the sting. But since one of them was an old friend that he had just spoken to the night before, sorrow crept in. 

  Gary turned left onto Main Street heading west toward his office to write the final report, but he turned around and decided to go to a marina. 

  He parked his vehicle at the Ocean Heights Marina in Little Egg Harbor. It was that was located on the Barnegat Bay-Little Egg Harbor Estuary. He had a slip there years back when he had a power boat. 

  It was warm for winter, nearing sixty degrees, but the wind carried a chill from the sea. 

  As he walked down the empty dock in the bright sunshine, memories of taking his wife and kids out in the boat mixed with memories of his youth with Paul and all the kids he’d known back then. He lost touch with all of them when he moved to South Jersey. 

  He had stayed in the area because he had met his wife, Sandy, at Glassboro State University. He was planning on getting better grades and then apply to Rutgers or Penn State, but he decided to become a police officer. Sandy’s father was an officer at the Galloway police department. 

  Gary became a Galloway PD patrolman in the late 80’s. He worked his way up to detective in the 90’s and by 2010 Sandy wanted a divorce. He’d grown distant. The job numbed him, and he was less attentive. He loved his kids, but he didn’t feel the same for Sandy as he did when they were first married. 

  She told him, one day, that she had been seeing someone platonically. He was relieved but as he got older, he regretted it. He should have quit the job and become a patrolman again or gone to work for a security company in Atlantic City.  

  But at the time he was consumed by a sense of purpose, wanting to make a difference and help victims.  

  He was taking work home and it was mentally and emotionally consuming. He didn’t realize back then he’d had compassion fatigue or secondary traumatic stress.  

  He made sure to stay attentive to his kids and they had grown up balanced, but they were emotionally distant from him now. And they moved to other states. 

  Whenever he started thinking about how he’d miffed it with his family, he dove back into work. 

  He reached the end of the long wooden dock and leaned on the rail. He looked out into the marsh grass, to where the teen girl had been found, about one hundred and fifty yards from where he was standing. 

  In 1979 the teen girl had gone missing from Brigantine Castle, as mentioned. The Brigantine Haunted Castle was a popular attraction, especially for teenagers. Gary remembered being there in the 1978. All the attractions were packed with mostly teens. 

  Gary surmised that the girl knew Linden from school.  He was two years older than her. They probably bumped into one another at the castle. She got separated from her friends in the crowd. Upon questioning none of her friends saw her leave with Linden, or anyone else.  

  He probably took her out on a boat docked at a nearby marina in Brigantine. He may have tried to kiss her. She refused and then he got rough, she started to scream, and he strangled her.

  He got scared and wanted to ditch the body, but instead of ditching her in any one of the many empty islands near Brigantine he brought her to Ocean Heights Marina. Gary wasn’t sure why that marina or area, but it was probably an attempt at deflection, to keep the police from searching Brigantine marinas.   

  Then there were the markings on the stomach. Gary thought he remembered a theatrical human sacrifice in one of the Brigantine Castle rooms where they had placed a plastic bronze colored pentagram on the stomach of a young woman who was lying on a table. There were also fake shrunken heads all over the room, on tables, hanging from the ceiling, even on the floor. 

  Linden may have tried to carve a pentagram into her belly. The coroner said the knife markings were made after she was killed. Gary used pieces of string and connected the markings over the top of the crime photograph, and it could have become a pentagram. Gary remembered how Linden had not closed her eyes, that had been haunting him lately. 

 

  Gary was going to finish his final report at the Galloway police department and then present it to lieutenant Johnson, who was responsible for overseeing the cold cases for the Galloway station, but he decided to wait for the coroner's report. If the LEHPD detective didn’t call by 3 p.m., he’d call him. 

  He’d gotten halfway to his condominium when his phone rang. It was the detective. He said the coroner had found serious bruises on the body and would he meet him back at Linden’s house to share anything he could regarding Linden. Gary agreed. 

  In 20 minutes, he was back at the house, case file in hand. 

  Two plainclothes policeman and another detective had already begun searching the premises.  

   The detective that was there earlier had introduced himself to Gary as Brody Flynn. The other detective’s name was Jay Franklin. The three detectives gathered in the living room. Gary presented the case file of the teen girl who was murdered. She was from Galloway. 

  Her name was Fiona Flannigan. She was sixteen and murdered in 1979.The detectives had heard about the case and they would undoubtedly find the file in the LEHPD Records Room.  

  Gary showed them what he had and how he ended up at Linden’s house by that anonymous tip. 

  Then Gary asked what the coroner had to say. 

  There was severe bruising on both shoulders, as if two men held him down, and a third person pushed his head in through the opening and held it there. The cardboard had almost made a paper cut under Linden’s chin. It was considered a homicide now. 

  Brody asked Gary if he would walk the house with him. Gary had earlier told him that he had worked on over one hundred and fifty homicide cases in his thirty-year career, with many of them in and around Atlantic City when the ACPD requested help. 

  They walked through the dining room and to the kitchen, which was a complete mess, as was the rest of the house. He was obviously renovating. 

  There was a laundry room behind the kitchen and a very small bedroom or office next to that. The house was built on a slab so there was no basement or crawl space underneath. 

  There wasn’t much furniture throughout the house, just enough for one person.  

  They made their way upstairs and looked around the three bedrooms and bath. The two patrolmen had flashlights, and they were looking into a large hole in the floorboards in the master bedroom. 

  Brody asked them if they had found anything and they said only a casino chip. There was broken sheet rock in front of the opening as if it had been broken open recently and there may have been something of interest in the wall, also.  A simple deduction would be that some type of incriminating evidence was removed by Linden’s killers. 

 Just then a patrolman said he’d found loose boards under the master bedroom closet floor. 

 The other patrolman shined a flashlight while the first officer picked at the boards with a large pocketknife until a few of them popped out. 

    There in the flashlight glow, was a small model of a ship carefully wrapped in clear plastic. A brigantine. On closer inspection a photo, cut out from a yearbook, was rolled up and tucked onto the deck of the ship. It was Fiona Flannigan. There was also a thin gold chain with a pendant.

 The ship, picture, and pendant was a classic serial killer trophy. 

 Another patrolman called out from the attic. There were more trophies. 

 “I’ll speak to the chief to see if we can get permission to tear the sheet rock and floorboards out throughout the house. There might be bodies in the walls. The attic floorboards need to come out, too. We’ll need to get a contractor over here to demo it all tomorrow. We’ll get forensics here, too, with GPR for the back yard.” Brody said. 

  Gary asked Brody if it would be alright to stop in the next day and he said he would run it by the chief because he would appreciate his input. 

  On his way home Gary contacted lieutenant Johnson. He told him the current situation and would keep him apprised as the case progressed. 

  The next day Gary went back to Linden’s house after noon. There was a large dumpster in the driveway, and it was loaded with sheet rock and floorboards. He showed his badge to the patrolman at the front door and walked into the house.  The entire interior had been reduced to studs, but the steps were still intact, and he could see through the ceiling studs that planks and plywood had been laid out to walk on. 

  Gary cautiously opened the sliding back doors to the back yard. The detectives, who had been watching the forensics team, turned their heads around in unison. 

  Gary looked beyond them for a moment. The contracted forensic team was all over the yard dressed in protective lightweight Tyvek jumpsuits with hoodies, boot coverings, NK95 masks, and safety glasses. They were preparing their investigation. 

  The driveway side of the yard fence was knocked down and they had set up a tent with their equipment inside. There was a mini backhoe, rented from a Home Center, next to it. 

  Brody and Jay Franklin shook hands with Gary and introduced the third detective from the LEHPD Deborah Collingsworth. LEHPD had all four detectives working on the case with the fourth detective, Al Foreman, in the office hard at work building the case. He was already documenting the photos and videos taken from inside the house after the demolition. Brody was the lead detective on the case, but all four were acting as Crime Scene Investigators. 

 They shook hands with Gary and got down to business. 

 “Forensics is just setting up the GPR,” Brody said. “We’ll check the entire back yard. The pool was built in the mid1980’s when Linden’s parents lived here, so we don’t think we need to demo that. Not yet.” 

  Linden’s house was on a dead end and was, actually, at the end of the street on a half of an acre. The neighbors on the long street also had half acre plots. The neighbors could not see into the back yard of Linden’s property. 

  “Deborah has a dossier on Linden; she can catch you up. Jay and I are going to walk the property with forensics,’ Brody said. The forensics team were just finishing up laying out a large grid inside the fence. 

  The demolition contractor had his men rake and dispose of the leaves, then the forensics team laid out small red flags on one-foot pins in a square grid that were each three feet apart.  

  The Ground Penetrating Radar was on a cart with four oversized rubber wheels, and they began rolling it starting with the closest grids to the driveway. 

  It was sandy soil and good for the radar to penetrate. It was winter but in South Jersey the ground doesn't always freeze. Ice or frozen layers can cause radar waves to scatter or weaken. The two forensics techs and the two detectives began walking slowly behind the cart. 

  Detective Collingsworth was a comely dark-haired woman in a dark gray pants suit. She was very professional.  

 She explained to Gary the events of the very early morning before the house was demoed. Forensics dusted the entire house for fingerprints, but the only fresh ones were Linden’s and his own on the front doorknob. 

  After repeating what he knew thus far about the case, Deborah read the Linden dossier out loud.    

  “Linden grew up here. His parents gave him the house when they retired to Arizona. He was an only child. 

   He worked for the LEHPD here in the early eighties as a patrolman. He had applied to the NJ State Troopers but landed a job, through his father’s contacts in Bergen County where his father was from originally, with the Bergen County Sheriffs Department. 

  After a few years he worked with the SWAT team then Sheriff’s Officer, to Investigator, then Sergeant, Lieutenant, and finally Captain before he retired. Never made it to Chief. 

 More detective work is needed concerning what he did in the late 70’s as far as jobs. He may have worked at one of the many docks in the area and borrowed a boat that night. We’re also checking if his family had a boat registered. 

 He kept this house and moved to Paramus and into a two-bedroom condominium. He only paid $1500 per year property tax into the 2000’s, on this property, and that gradually rose to $5900.00 in 2025. We don’t know what he paid monthly in Paramus yet but, apparently, he always had a roommate. 

  He used this house on weekends and, according to the contractor, locals here remember that he had some real crazy pool parties in the 80’s and 90’s.  He had a power boat registered. 

 That’s all we have at the moment. Here’s his high school photo.” Deborah handed Gary the picture of Linden that was on her phone, taken from a high school yearbook. It was a color photo. Gary used his fingers on the screen to make it larger. 

 He had an odd-looking face. Not ugly, just a bit cartoonish. He had light brown hair cut short, high cheek bones, and his nose was upturned a little too much. The eyebrows were thick and dark brown. His head was compressed from the sides and likened to a loaf of bread. His eyes were hazel, and his smile, filled with straight white teeth, was infectious. 

 Gary had seen this type of face, that was almost like a mask, on different murderers over the decades.  

 “Found something,” Brody called out.  

 The demolition contractor manned the mini backhoe himself and slowly rolled to the fifth grid area. The forensics technician showed the contractor the screen image of a possible grave and its depth. The contractor was instructed to dig five feet deep; measurements would be taken as he dug. Then the forensic team would jump in and remove the rest of the dirt with shovels.  

 If bodies are buried less than six feet, odors from decomposition can rise through the soil. Linden obviously knew this.  

While the contractor started digging, the GPR team continued to the next grid. Brody and Jay stayed with the contractor. Deborah and Gary joined them. 

 The detectives knew that some serial killers liked to keep their victims' bodies close by as added trophies and for control, having a sense of dominance and power over the victim after death. It was looking like Linden was fitting that profile. 

 “If there are more bodies, we may need to bring other municipalities in for assistance,” Brody said. “But not the FBI unless absolutely necessary.” 

 Brody paused a moment while he took out his phone. The other detectives were silent as they watched the digging progress.  

 Brody dialed a number, and Al Foreman answered.  

 “Did you contact the NJ Attorney General's Office about this? OK, well we need to because Linden worked for a Sheriff. Fill me in as to what the chief is up to regarding this case so I’m not blindsided by FBI agents rolling into the driveway here. Thanks, out.” Brody then turned to Gary, “Chief’s not one to take all the heat. Can’t blame him. Anyway, will you be around tomorrow? We need to canvas the town and talk to people who Linden may have dealt with lately. Billy, the contractor here, said that the owner of the paint and hardware downtown said that Linden had been in the store at least twice within the last month with some guy he’d never seen before. Might be something” 

 “I need to go to a funeral tomorrow in Passaic County. I should be available after 2 p.m. but it’s a two-hour ride back,” Gary replied. 

 “Actually,” Brody began, “Linden’s roommate may be available in Paramus at that time. Al contacted him earlier today about and interview and he said he was working 4 p.m. to 12 a.m. this month.’ 

 “Text the phone number,” Gary said, “I’ll take care of it.” 

 “Found another,” one of the GPR techs called out. 

 The funeral was the next day at St. John the Baptist Cathedral in Paterson, NJ. Gary just made it before the priest had begun the service. Sunlight poured through the oversized stain glass windows.  

 Gary just sat down as the cathedral organist began playing ‘O Santissima’ often played at Sicilian funerals. Then the cathedral doors opened, and the pall bearers brought Paul’s casket down the aisle. 

When the first pall bearer got close to Gary, he recognized him as Paul’s son Vinnie. He had met him as a child then again, later on, at a golf outing with Paul. Vinnie gave Gary a knowing look and Gary choked up.  

 Gary was emotional, he realized, not only because he was speaking to Paul the day before, but because their lives had just flown by. Here was Paul’s son, a grown man, burying his father already. 

 The service was traditionally Catholic with the eulogy written by family members and delivered by the priest. 

 After the service, the congregation was invited to the Calvary Cemetery in Paterson for the burial ritual. 

 On the way out of the church Gary got caught up with some old friends from town. One of Carol’s good friends, Loretta, chatted with Gary and at one point she said that if he could make it Carol would like him to go to the luncheon at their home after the burial. Gary accepted. 

 By the time Gary arrived at the cemetery most of the congregation had parked a distance from the burial site and had lined both sides of the cemetery road. It was sunny and cold but not frigid.  

 The hearse, with the family limousine behind it, had parked about fifty yards away from the burial site. 

 In front of the hearse a ‘bande musicali' began a slow, mournful march tune and then marched to the family plot. 

 After everyone had gathered around the grave, the family dressed in black, the priest went through the rite of committal, then a passage from the New Testament, then the prayer over the grave, then the committal as Paul’s body was lowered into the grave, then prayers for the deceased and faithful departed, then the Lord’s prayer, then the final blessing and the swinging of the incense burner, and finally the concluding rite asking God to grant Paul eternal rest. The congregation had naturally crossed themselves at every step, like Catholics do. 

 The congregation slowly dissipated, but Gary didn’t make his way to Carol to offer condolences. He would do that at the luncheon. 

 He was again chatting with some old friends as they walked to their vehicles, when something caught his attention and he looked to his right. Up a small hill, in a family plot, was a life-sized copper statue of a red male deer with a sixteen-point rack of antlers. Odd as that was to be located in a graveyard, he then remembered that back in the day the men from Paterson and Totowa Boro were avid hunters. 

 At the luncheon, Gary stood near the window wall in the living room at the back of Carol and Paul’s house. They had a beautiful view of the valley below. Their house was on the same ridge as the hospice. 

 Carol had handed him a plate loaded with delicious ziti, bread, and antipasto. He was trying his best to finish it all. He was talking with some men he didn’t know, but who seemed to know him, about Paul as a kid and Gary told him about the capo’s kids and how Gary took care of the situation and the men were trying not to laugh to loud, out of respect. 

 Carol asked Gary to have a seat next to her on the couch, and he obliged. He had already spoken to her and given condolences.  

 Instead of talking about Paul, she asked him how his case was going. Gary had told her about it, too, and she found it very interesting. He said it looked like it was going to be serious, and he needed to interview someone in Paramus that afternoon. The story was already on the news networks, but the backyard being searched with GPR wasn’t. He didn’t think it would be a good time to talk about backyard graves, so that’s all he said. 

  She then asked, in a slightly louder voice, if Paul had told him anything about some clandestine work that she thought he was involved in and that brought the attention of all the guests both in the living room and dining room. 

 Gary smiled and was about to recite the entire story when he realized that Paul’s associates were staring at him. He then remembered the code of silence that Paul had joked about when they were kids.  

 Gary hesitated then said, “He asked me not to tell anyone.” At that all the guests resumed their conversations. 

 “You can tell me,” Carol said, and she stood up. “Please Gary, come with me for a minute.” 

 Gary felt a little awkward, but he stood up and followed Carol into the office that was near the front door. She left the door open, of course, and she asked him to sit in the guest chair. She leaned on the side of the desk.  

 Gary had a slight crush on Carol when they were teens and Carol knew it. She was in fine shape, still pretty, and her long, lustrous brown hair had no gray in it. She smiled, and then Gay smiled and told her the entire story. 

 When he reached the end, he told her he thought he may have mixed fantasy with reality, but Carol said if that’s what he said then it was true, even if he had fallen asleep somewhere and went to an astral dream level.  

 “He didn’t want to worry you,” Gary said, still not sure that the story was real. Carol was quiet for a moment then said, “If he had told me that back then, I may have wanted a divorce. There’s got to be a reason why they needed him. I know he quit after the first mission. He wasn't himself for weeks. The story he told me was suspicious. He said he was a look out for some men who were having a clandestine meeting in the early morning hours, and he almost had to fight a gang of thugs. At the last-minute things were calmed down and they left. He said he didn’t want to endanger me and our children if he’d ever gotten hurt .” 

 Gary could see that she was hurt but also relieved to hear the truth. She was going over the story in her mind already and thinking about what would have happened if he hadn’t returned. 

 Shortly afterward Gary said he needed to do the interview, and he thanked her for the delicious lunch. And, like the rest of the guests, he said that if she ever needed anything to call him. 

 Earlier in the morning Gary had contacted Darnell Clay, Linden’s roommate. They had set an appointment for 2:30 p.m. It was a thirty-minute ride from Paul and Carol’s, and he made it with five minutes to spare. 

 Darnell let him in to the condominium. It was nothing spectacular, but the furniture looked new, and the place was neat. 

 Darnell was in his forties, divorced, and he had been living with Linden for the past three years. He also worked for the Bergen County Sheriff. 

 “Never would have guessed the guy was murderer,” Darnell said, “Everyone in HQ is devastated. He was little goofy, you know, but funny in an odd way. He was reliable and SWAT members say that he stepped up in several dicey situations.  

 I hardly saw him. He was either on the job, at the shelter, or at his house.  

  You know, as an officer, you can sense when someone is really bad. You can feel it. But not Richie! We would sit and talk, every now and then, right here, and I never got those bad vibes from him. I can’t believe it. I never locked my bedroom door.” 

 After a round of questions for Darnell, questions that would rule him out as to having anything to do with Linden and his crimes, Gary wrapped up the interview. 

 The next day Brody texted and asked Gary to send the interview notes to Al and if he could, to stop in again at Linden’s house. Gary took pictures of the notes and emailed them to Al.

 At 10 a.m. Gary had to park halfway down the block from Linden’s. The GPR team had finished in the back yard the day before and was now checking the front yard. 

 Gary walked into the back yard and was stunned. There were at least forty holes dug throughout the yard! They had to bring in a second mini backhoe. 

 Brody and Jay were there. Deborah was out canvasing.  

 “Do you believe this?” Brody said to Gary, “We had to hire another forensic team from Salem County. Linden chopped off the heads of all the victims and put them somewhere. There’s a team from the Paramus PD searching the condominium now and his one car garage. They couldn't get to it yesterday. Thanks for interviewing the roommate.” 

 There were forensic experts in ten of the graves and they were carefully gathering the remains. They be taken to a controlled location and DNA would be extracted from bone marrow for testing, to find the headless skeleton's identities. 

 Gary went back to the Galloway PD and reported to lieutenant Johnson as to what was going on with the Linden case. Everyone in the station was aghast.  With all those bodies the investigation would go on for years. And that didn’t include the search for Linden’s killers. 

 Gary was about to call Fiona Flannigan's next of kin when he received a text. Gary read it out loud. 

 “Paramus PD found more than forty shrunken head skins in a storage space above Linden’s condo’s garage. The skulls are not there.” 

Gary had read about head shrinking years before and it wasn't an easy task. Reading out loud Gary said, " An incision was made behind the ears to pull the skin and flesh away from the skull. The eyes are sown shut as is the mouth and reed seeds are inserted in the nostrils. Then the skin is boiled in tannin-rich herbal water to retain the features. Finally, the the face and head are head are covered in charcoal ash." Laughter boomed through the station.

 Gary awoke that night after a series of nightmarish dreams about Fiona Flannigan, Linden’s creepy yearbook picture, open graves with skeletal remains, pentagrams, shrunken heads, and a view of Mars from outer space. He was drenched in sweat. 

 He lay there for a moment, thinking. Then he sat up quickly in a slight panic and said, “What the hell?” 

   

  

 

  

  

  

  

  

 

  

  

  

  

  

   

  

  

  

  

 

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

 

 

   

  

   

   

    

  

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

 

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

 

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

 

   

   

 

   

   

   

   

   

 

 

 

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

    

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

  

  

   

   

   

   

   

   

  

   

   

   

  

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