The Past Prologue

“Oh god, it feels like I’m being stabbed.”

“How do you know what getting stabbed is like?”

“I’ve been in this job a long time, kid. Can you drive?” My boss says, placing his hand over his side. I roll my eyes but nod, reaching for the company car keys that sat in a bowl next to the old oak door.

Working at a private investigation agency has its perks, one of which is the company car, a blac, sleek looking sports car. Unfortunately, it also came with some issues. For instance; there were only three of us working at the agency, and when you‘re on call 24/7, it kind of sucks.

So that’s why I was in the Critical Investigations office at four in the morning with my boss, Frank O’Hara, groaning and leaning over his desk like he’d been stabbed. He had dialed me twenty minutes ago, complaining about a sharp pain in his side and had asked me to come into the office.

“Why didn’t you call Jason?” I ask tiredly. “Or even an ambulance for that matter. You could take an Uber to the hospital. Or a Lyft. I have finals next week.”

“Jason didn’t pick up. I called him first.”

“Gee, thanks.”

Jason Ferro is my co-worker, the only other person who works at the agency besides myself and Frank, who owns the tiny company. Jason is a graduate student at the local university and had just gotten fully licensed by the state to be a private investigator, a fact which he never hesitated to remind me of every pay day when he smirked and waved his check around, proudly displaying his increased rates while I hurled wadded up napkins at him.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I really do like working at the private investigation office, but since I was only licensed as an ‘intern’ investigator in the state, I found myself limited on what I could do. Every time I went out to follow someone, I had to take Frank or Jason with me. If I was by myself and we got evidence of someone doing something they’re not supposed to, it could create a whole lot of legal red tape that defense attorneys would rip apart. So, I spend most of my days in the actual office building, looking over hours and hours of video footage and logging everything that happens in them. It’s quite boring, but so is following someone around for eight hours a day and not getting a pee break. I have lady bits, I can’t go in a bottle. It’s a losing hand either way.

I help Frank into the car and we sit in silence as I drive him to the hospital. It’s routine for someone to get hurt on the job, although in this case Frank had just been sitting in the office instead of doing something crazy, like this one time when he broke his ankle trying to hop a fence to follow some guy. Turns out the fence wasn’t even locked, and Frank had just jumped on the swinging bit and got himself flung from the fence fifteen feet to the floor. It had been an interesting Tuesday.

We reach the hospital and I help Frank out of the car, him leaning heavily on me as I stumble into the emergency room, which to no surprise, is pretty much dead this early in the morning. The lady at the front desk hands him a clipboard and he turns to face me.

“Go back to the office, Maria. I need someone to be there if the phone rings.”

I frown, looking him up and down. Frank’s face is pale and wary, and there are dark circles under his eyes. Frank has been in the business a long time, almost forty years. He has three adult children and five grandchildren. Maybe he really is getting too old for this business.

“Are you sure you’re alright? I can go in with you.”

Frank scowls at me, looking like his angry, sarcastic self for a brief moment before his face places in pain once again.

“I’d rather be pecked to death by hummingbirds. Go back to the office. I’ll call if I need anything.”

“Got it, boss.”

I leave Frank at the hospital and head back to the car. I get in and buckle my seatbelt before shooting a quick text to Jason, explaining what was going on with Frank before starting it up and driving back to the office.

When I get there, it’s almost pitch black except for the emergency lights. I flick the rest of the lights on and do a double check to make sure no one had called while I was taking Frank to the hospital. The office isn’t very big; it’s barely 600 feet of floor space on a level, and the building is a small two-storey as it is. My desk is on the first floor, near the front window. Jason thinks I look like a secretary, but I like it. It’s close enough to watch outside but far enough away so as not to be seen by someone looking in the window from outside. I toss my bag on top of my desk and sit, sparing a glance at Jason’s desk, which is parallel to mine. Frank has claimed the very small upstairs as his office, and despite my protests (and Jason’s), so the two of us have to share the tight office space and a single, paltry minifridge.

I learned in my first week that leaving pudding cups unattended is not a good idea.

I know it’s Jason stealing my pudding cups. What a tool.

I glance at the clock. It’s just past five, and Jason's not due until eight. I lean back in my chair and rub my eyes. I’m used to working long, unpredictable hours but even still; this seems cruel and unusual. I don’t get paid enough for this kind of thing.

I weigh the benefits of reporting Frank to OSHA as I goof around on my computer for a bit, checking my work emails. I only have one, which is a short message attached to a picture of a former client of mine, Amelia Danvers and her little daughter, smiling with uncontrolled glee at the camera, hair half-flying in the air. She looks happy. They both do.

Amelia had been a client I worked with nearly a year ago, when I had first started at the agency. Her ex-husband had taken her daughter across state lines from Georgia to Florida, and the police were going too slow for her. She haad strolled into the office with her beat-up kitten heels and demanded I track down her ex and her daughter. It had been a complete accident when I found her daughter and ex-husband two days after she had stopped into the office. I had gone to the grocery store when I saw the two of them, Amelia’s young daughter with her hair in braids holding onto her father’s hand while Mr. Danvers looked nervously around as he dumped bananas one at a time into his cart. Who puts in a banana one at a time? That’s what tipped me off in the first place; his odd behaviour.

I called the police and we tied things up in a nice, neat bow eleven months ago. Despite the time, Amelia still kept in contact with me, sending me picture updates of her daughter every now and again. It makes me smile every time I see them. The photos give me a warm, fuzzy feeling that I normally only get from whiskey.

Those types of cases, parental kidnapping, aren’t something we normally take on, but Amelia had seemed so desperate Frank gave in and took the case. We mostly do disability fraud cases, where an insurance company contacts us with concerns about someone faking an injury to get worker’s compensation. Most of the time, there is nothing to be worried about, but a few times we’ve caught someone ‘unable to walk’ doing a keg stand at a frat party. That had also been an interesting Tuesday,

I sigh and click off my emails. It’s barely six in the morning. I reach over to the phone on my desk and turn the volume all the way up before placing my head down on the desk. I shut my eyes, weariness seeping in as I relax into sleep….

The phone rings. I jump up, surprised at being torn from sleep, and I fumble with the phone before finally getting a grip on it.

“Critical Private Investigation, this is Maria. How can I help you?.”

“Maria, it’s Frank. I need you to work for the next few days. The doctors here seem to be under the impression I need to have my gallbladder removed. Can you?”

I blink the sleep from my eyes, trying to form a sentence clumsily.

“Oh, yeah. Sure. My classes are done for the semester anyways, Uh, did you want me to call your wife?”

“No. I already did. I should be out in a few days. Just keep an eye on things over there.”

“Got it. Call me if you need anything.”

Frank hangs up and I sign, placing the phone back into the receiver. I had really hoped to get the next few days off and finally get a solid eight hours of sleep, without having to worry about work or school. There’s a creak in front of me, and I look up. Jason is sitting at his desk. He must have walked in the door without me noticing. His eyes are red and swollen, his lip split right down the middle, crusting with dried blood.

“Morning.” he mutters to me, turning on his desktop.

“Jesus what happened to you. Have-,” I pause, squinting as I try to get a better look at his face. “Are you crying?”

“I just watched Bill Pullman’s speech from Independence Day. It gets me every time.”

I roll my eyes.

Jason is only a few years older than me, but he has always seemed much older, especially now. He has bruise-like dark circles under his eyes and frown lines on his forehead. I stare more intensely at him, hoping he would notice my gaze and answer my unspoken question about what the heck had happened.

Jason glances up at me. “Will you shut up, please?”

“I didn’t say anything!”

“Well, stop thinking so loudly,” he huffs, looking back at his own computer. “I got mugged last night. Not a big deal.”

“Did you report it to the cops?”

“Of course I did. And Frank doesn’t know. He’s not going to find out, either. He has too much to worry about right now with the whole hospital thing.” Jason adds quickly.

I pout and pull up the video logs from our current case, another involving insurance fraud. Frank, while being an overall terrible boss with widely unachievable expectations and a penchant to pay late, or not at all, also treats us like his own kids. He’s protective in that way. If he knew about Jason getting mugged, he’d probably be launching a campaign to find the mugger from his hospital bed to deliver some vigilante justice with a crowbar.

I glance over the top of my desktop and stare at Jason. He’s a big guy; he’s got almost a foot on me and I’m 5’4. He’s muscular too. One time I made the mistake of challenging him to a push-up contest and I puked. There’s no way he had gotten mugged. At least not without more of a fight.

If there is one thing I learned working here, it’s that there’s always more to the story, and everyone has something to hide. Jason looks up at me, irritated by my attention.

“Why are you glaring at me?”

“I’m hoping you’ll spontaneously combust,” I retort, then silently curse myself for my callousness. I’d catch more flies with honey. “Seriously, what happened to you, Jason?” I ask, a little more gently, my eyebrows furrowing.

Jason sighs and leans back in his chair, crossing his arms. “There is no greater terror than watching something you love fall apart in front of your eyes.”

I frowned at his reply. “What’s that something? Or someone?” I ask. Jason frowns at me. “I had to take Dante to the hospital. He really didn’t want to go.”

“Oh.”

Dante is Jason’s longtime boyfriend. I think they met freshman year and they’ve been dating ever since. Dante is also bipolar, and sometimes has these terrible episodes. This has happened before, when Dante needed some serious help and refused to get it unless Jason got involved, but Dante had never gotten violent before. He wasn’t a violent person, especially with Jason of all people. I had met Dante a few times, when he stopped by with lunch for Jason during the odd days that their shifts allowed it.

Dante works as a mechanic a few blocks over, and everytime I met him, he seemed to be a very gentle, timid person who really cared for Jason. Jason seemed to really care for him, which was weird because I was pretty sure Jason didn’t care about anybody but Brenden Frasier. Frank and I actually had a bet for when they would get married. I have fourty dollars in the betting pool for May of next year.

Jason looks down at his phone and looks back up at me, his face a mask of terror. I startle in my seat.

“Oh, god. Oh no. Maria.”

“What? What is it?” I ask, my body tensing in anticipation.

“I think I just felt something from you. An emotion?”

And there he is.

I groan and he cracks a huge grin. “You have GOT to be kidding me right now,” I mutter. “Why would you do that?”

“I’m complicated and bitter. It’s one of my many, many charms.”

I grab an old paper off my desk and crumple it. I chuck it at Jason who easily dodges the non-threatening paper projectile.

“I don’t think you know what the word ‘charm’ means. Or what counting is. You’re the worst human on this planet, Jason!”

Jason puts a hand over his heart mockingly. “I think that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.” I grab a pen off my desk and hurl it at Jason. It smacks his lip and he winces.

“Ow, dang it Maria,” Jason exclaims, putting a hand up to his lip for a moment before bringing it back down to look at.

“Is that blood on your hand?” I ask, leaning closer to get a better look. He brings his hand to his lip once again before bringing it back down and studying it.

“No?”

“I’m pretty sure that’s not a question you’re supposed to ask with another question, dude.”

Jason gently pokes at his split lip with his ring finger. “No, I think we’re good.”

“Neat. So, on a scale of one to ten, how much do you hate me right now for doing that?’

“I’m hovering in the high thirties.”

Well, he’s justified. I grin sheepishly at Jason who rolls his eyes back at me. That tended to be a recurring theme whenever we talked. Someone was always dramatically rolling their eyes at another person. There’s also a lot of sighing involved.

“You know, when make a gay man bleed, your risk of getting HIV increases by a thousand and ten percent,” Jason says casually, looking back at his computer.

“That’s not even remotely true.”

“Of course it is. I read it on Wikipedia. Just now.”

I shrug. “Can’t argue with that. Wikipedia’s the best.”

“That it is.”

I jerk up from my chair suddenly, causing Jason to jump with surprise. I point a single finger at him.

“Did you just agree with me? For once?”

“Oh God, I wish I could take-,”

“No!” I interrupt him. “You said it! No take-backs!”

Jason responds to this by throwing the paper ball I had just thrown at him back at me. I don’t move out of the way, letting it bounce harmlessly off my head. I want to give Jason a win on this one. “Just get back to work, Maria. I’m in charge while Frank’s in the hospital.”

“Fine, fine.” I utter, sliding back down into my seat and waking my computer up.

I look over the video logs, crawling at a snail’s pace through each frame, looking for anything we might have missed when logging the video in the first place, trying desperately to fill the time with work. By the time I finish, it’s almost lunchtime. I get out of my chair and stretch, preparing to raid the fridge Jason and I share for some pudding cups. The bell on our door jingles, I look toward the source of the sound, as does Jason.

Three people walk into the office, wearing dressy work clothes. The group has two men and a woman, who looks to be in charge. One man is short but strong looking, clean shaven and in a crisp suit. The taller man looks older, just as muscular as the first man but more worn out looking, with tired eyes and some stubble that must have taken a few days to grow. The woman is the shortest out of all three of them but looks the fiercest, wearing a gray pantsuit and sporting a harsh pixie cut that matches her ‘no nonsense’ look.

“I’m Special Agent Chase, this is Special Agents Santini and Smith, we’re with the FBI. We’re here for Jason Ferro.”

I look over at Jason in surprise. He looks solemn, or… gloomy, almost. If he was surprised, he didn’t show it.

“What for?” I ask. Agent Chase glances at me with piercing grey eyes and I swear the room temperature drops a few degrees. My internal private eye screams at me to interrogate the crud out of this lady. As much as Jason and I didn’t get along, I didn’t necessarily hate him; it was more of a mutual dislike. But I had to admit, he had grown on me, and dang it if I’d let him get arrested by the FBI without finding out what the heck was going on first.

“We have questions about your boyfriend, alias of ‘Dante Adams’. He escaped a mental hospital this morning and killed three people while doing it.”

“Excuse me?” I ask. “Dante? Alias? What the hell-,”

“His real name is Javier Ramirez. He’s wanted in five states for multiple homicides as far back as seven years ago.”

My blood turns to ice as the realization hits me. I had heard that name before, or, I had read it. As a private investigator, I feel like it was part of the job to keep up with the most wanted lists in each state and nationally. Javier Ramirez has been number ten on the state’s list after the first three bodies were found hacked into little bits with an ice pick seven years ago. The name had climbed up the ranks until he made it onto the top ten list for the FBI. Javier Ramirez’s name took the spot of Osama Bin Laden, after the latter had been killed in 2011.

“But- Dante doesn’t even look like-, I mean-,” I stumble over my words, trying to put the piece together in my mind.

I recall vaguely some of the news reports I’d seen. Javier Ramirez had escaped a maximum security federal prison nearly five years ago, and no one has seen him since. No one even knew how he had escaped in the first place; he had been in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day. I swallow hard before looking at Jason, who had gotten pale. He had just made the same realization I did.

“You’re dating a serial killer.”