It felt strange. Jack closed the door behind him and glanced around the small flat. It was like visiting a friend who lives out of town– everything was familiar, but in a distant sort of way. It didn’t feel like home. Jack sighed and dropped his bags. He supposed that was what happened when one was away for so long. Somewhere in the back of his mind he wondered why he had never bothered to fix the place up. There were no pictures on the walls, no little decorative items sitting around. The furniture was comfortable and functional, but not particularly nice to look at. It was clean, mostly. A pile of clean laundry was scattered across the settee. He had packed his bags in a hurry and hadn’t bothered to put everything away before he’d left.
He made his way into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. The smell nearly made him ill. It would probably have been wise to clear out those old take-out boxes before going away. He peered past the half-fermented kung pao chicken and the fossilized pepperoni pizza and found the one thing that hadn’t been compromised during his long absence. There was only one bottle left, but he needed it after these past few days.
It had been so long since Jack’s last drink. He didn’t usually drink much to begin with, and he had abstained to keep his mind sharp while he was working on that case. But now he felt the cold, bitter liquid slide down into his empty stomach and he found himself wishing he had more than just the one bottle. He wanted to just drink and drink, until he no longer cared about anything. He didn’t want to think about mangled, bloody corpses, or about helpless little children being stolen away from their homes. He wanted to forget about that mysterious woman and her strange friends. Those people with only first names, who lived in giant houses and carried weapons and made threats and had big, dangerous secrets and false papers. People who could manipulate security footage from all over the world. People who were obviously involved in something very large and very illegal, but who never seemed to get caught.
Jack drained the last few drops from his bottle and set it down beside the sink. Since that woman had left Switzerland with the boy, the investigation had gotten nowhere. A few false leads, but nothing more. She was gone. The boy was gone. And she had the audacity to tease them with images and videos on a daily basis– images and videos which couldn’t be used to trace them, no matter how thoroughly they were studied.
After several months with no new leads, it had been decided that the small task force should be broken up. The case had gone cold. The investigation was, at this point, a waste of resources. There were other cases– other crimes being committed, other criminals to be caught. Everyone was sent home. Jack was given a week’s leave, and then he would be back at his old desk, probably assigned to another kidnapping case. A normal one, this time. Something involving a ransom demand, perhaps.
Jack groaned. There was so much more to this case than just a double murder and a kidnapping. He knew it. And no one else seemed to see it. The local police in Switzerland had somehow gotten the idea that they were wasting their time watching those people. They had stopped all surveillance of that house. Why? Were they paid off? Threatened? And no one had ever found that man who had attacked the hospital. He had completely disappeared. Why couldn’t everyone see that there was something very wrong about these people?
The whole situation made him sick. Jack made his way to his bed and pulled off his clothes before flopping down onto it face-first. Worst of all was the fact that there was nothing he could do about it. He’d tried explaining his suspicions, hoping to convince someone to keep the case open, but all he’d gotten was a canned response. “Thank you, we’ll look into it.” That was it. Nothing more. And now he was expected to just put it all behind him, enjoy his week off, and be ready to get back to work next Monday.
As if it were that simple.
Jack stretched out across the bed. At least now he would finally be able to catch up on his sleep.
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