Sometimes These Things Happen

Professor Tess MacGregor is a reluctant psychic that is content to hide her life and abilities behind a stack of musty archeology books at the University of Virginia. Her quiet world is shattered when the F.B.I. in a last ditch attempt to save the F.B.I. Director’s kidnapped daughter, calls on Tess to solve the case. Helped by her sister, Charlottesville police officer, Libby MacGregor, the two are thrown into a world of chaos and danger. Misleading clues and a psychotic murderer intent on killing them dog their trail. Following psychic clues helps them with the case but the outcome of this fast-paced mystery is never certain.

Chapter One

It was well past my usual time to leave. My shoulder muscles screamed for relief as I had been sitting like a pretzel for over two and a half hours. It was late and I was tired. I sat up a bit more, hoping that the exhaustion would somehow magically disappear with a straightened spine. My last paper to grade was an especially wordy one entitled, “Home and Hearth - Artifacts From the Battlefield of Culloden.”

I rested my chin on my stiff hand and began reading the droll, opening paragraph which turned into many pages of the same boring content. My eyes burned red and my hand went numb. I decided to try to bring my hand back to life and shook it hard. Quite unexpectedly, my elbow collided with a large and rusty key from the mid-1700s, knocking the protective paper wrapper off it. The paper flew as an old dungeon key ignited with my silly bone and a faint impression of a granite stone floor, mixed with the smell of pungent red wine, cut through my sleepy haze and began to take shape. This was not what I wanted at all. I bit the inside of my lip, trying to use the pain as a way to stay in the present. But like marching soldiers, the images bubbled up, one after the other, and soon my oak desk got muzzy and faded away. My world  was replaced by a series of three-dimensional, full-color memories, that spun off the eighteenth-century key and there was nothing that I could do about it.

The year 1745 surrounded me. Ancient coldness from a worn, gray floor seeped into the bottom of my mud-caked boots and drained the warmth away from my feet. A transparent tissue paper covered my reality, smothering my perceptions of the present. The Scottish lady’s world pushed mine under as our hands became one. I could feel her wrist grow limp as the rusty key that had been used in my lecture, now hung heavy in her hand. Its squared-off bottom had a sharp edge that was entangled in a wisp of a white-lacy cuff. The frustration that it caused the nervous woman was vividly perceptible to me. Her paralyzing terror crept down my spine and mingled with the frostiness that had settled on top of my feet. I sucked in a long breath and heard heavy steps bounding down the damp passageway. The lumbering footsteps drowned out the rapid rhythm of my own heartbeat. I was caught in life experiences from long ago. This frightful world was now mixed with mine whether I wanted it or not.

“Stop, stop!” he called out. The muscular sentry was sprinting down a long, darkened hall. His torturous thoughts hung heavy with each crashing boot heel that pounded the rough stone. Closer, he was getting too close! I shuddered. She froze. I  felt her sensation of not being able to move, although a desire to move was frantic within me. With this new anxiety pressed close to my face, I became overwhelmed by her fears. Cascading tears burned her eyes leaving them blinded. She was lost in indecision.

The guard rounded the corner. I could feel the heat of the guard’s breath. Sweat flew as he lunged towards her slender arm. A large oily puddle made the smooth rock next to her treacherous. He met it and slipped on the wet slab, cursing as his feet went out from under him. The lady took that moment, and wasted more precious seconds by still puzzling over which of the two dark corridors would lead her to safety. I mentally screamed, Just move! But she continued to debate her choice, absolutely stuck in her mental sludge.  At long last, she made a decision to turn to the left. The guard’s large, scarred hand reached out and grabbed the key that she had been clutching, tearing the lace flounce as her panicked cry echoed down to the castle’s keep. I was terrified for her and struggled now with my own fear. I pushed back at the memories that had stormed into my current world by touching the old key. Their emotions lingered and clung to me. I endeavored to shake it off by a yoga technique to bring peace of mind. I expanded my lungs fully, feeling the air go deep into my belly, slowly releasing it out. I counted nine more controlled breaths in and out. Soon my heartbeat went from an antelope being chased by a lion, to a sleepy cat. I could feel the solidity of my old oak desk once again and smell the fragrant bunch of fresh-cut, butter-yellow daffodils on the windowsill. My fear departed. I was back in the present.

I mulled it over; this was once again another unwanted glimpse of someone else’s life that had now, unwillingly, become part of mine when I shared that wretched memory.  Predictably, the event was a traumatic one that would leave me shaken for hours even though the experience was less than two minutes long. These events never seemed to be a kitten playing in the sunshine, or a drag queen with a great act that I was able to see and share; instead, it had been my experience that the more intense and gruesome the emotion had been in the incident, then the more likely that memory would be stuck to the objects around the person and so transferable to me. And so, I picked up the bothersome eighteenth-century key that had once been held by Ms. Lacey Indecisive, and flung it back into the Archeology Department’s cardboard box where it belonged. I wished that I could put all of my “unusual abilities” into the same box, wrap it up with a big red ribbon and toss it in with the rest.

“Professor MacGregor, there’s a visitor here for you,” I heard the loud, baritone voice call out. “It’s someone with a badge, or so Tim said. Do you want me to have them come down here?” He paused as he tugged on the end of his Viking style pony-tail, waiting for me to respond.

I recognized the voice as Sean, one of my undergraduates. He had taken on the role of my earnest helper and the defender of all of my break times. For the last year he did everything that he could to make sure that I had whatever I needed; a pen that would write, a cup of scalding hot coffee from Shenandoah Joe, even some pretty good jokes now and then. I decided that Sean would make someone a well-educated, thoughtful and stable husband. He’d also be most happy with a couple of children clinging to his back for a ride; this is how I saw his future.

Thinking about Sean and about the type of woman that would probably choose him, made me think of the string of husbands that my mother chose. Sean was very unlike the four or five husbands, I refused to remember the exact count, that my mother had ensnared and married.

I looked over my tall stack of musty books, past Sean’s concerned look, and with a lingering disappointment about the memory of my mother, mixed with the realization of what was about to occur, I became irritated, not with him, just the situation that I found myself in once again.

I had had enough of the FBI’s demands. I knew that someone was here from the Bureau with an unsolved crime. They would attempt to manipulate me into agreeing to help with this often described as, one-last-case. I was weary of being the FBI’s go-to-freak. This was not my lifetime’s ambition. I did not appreciate hearing the news from one of the agents that I was referred to as “Professor Freak” when they spoke to each other. No one had actually said it around me, but they thought it often enough and it was all too easy for me to hear. I knew that my name came up only during times of desperation, so they must be pretty desperate to call me after our last encounter. I decided that after that time, I would most likely never hear from the Bureau again. At least, I hoped that would be the case. I had shared thinly veiled insults with the Not-So-Special-Agent-In-Charge that ended in a boisterous fight, or as the report said, “A divergent opinion as to a logical summation.” I wondered what that bureaucratic vernacular meant. There was one thing that I was certain about though, the box next to my name on his report must have had a check mark in it that said, Talk to Never. No psychic abilities were necessary to know that fact.

“Thanks Sean, I’ll go see whoever it is. I’d rather not have anyone see how messy it is here.” I grinned at him, while I put my tired feet back into my worn Dubarry boots, stuffing my dark-olive linen trousers down the long, brown-suede shaft. I left the sanctuary of my quiet, small and messy office, stepping through a stream of brilliant sunlight, wondering what their gimmick would be this time.

“Professor MacGregor?” She called out to me as soon as I had popped into the hallway. The attractive, young agent had on a bright red suit with three-inch pumps to match. She didn’t look like the usual federal type. She captured the look of a high-fashion model. This agent had the type of beauty that was hypnotic; stellar complexion, shiny auburn hair that had not one split end and which framed her symmetrical face flawlessly, with arms and legs that seemed related to a gazelle. All in all, she was model perfect.

Then Agent Sexton, yes, it was Sexton,  I thought, flashed a beauty-contestant, award-winning smile, that could have been used as a super power. I had never seen anything like her come out of Quantico before, but I had learned years ago that things were often quite different from what they seemed, especially if the federal government was involved.

She squeezed past the last bunch of coeds that were giggling their way down the pristine white hall and now stood a few feet away from me. The Agent extended her perfectly manicured hand. My hand, with its ragged cuticles from pulling up some of the Pavilion Garden’s abundant crop of weeds, soon neared the woven, rose-gold ring on her right index finger. It was then that I could sense that she was not playing by the rules. The beauty contest winner had something unspoken for me.

I hesitated just a half-second too long before I started to withdraw my hand from hers. Special Agent Sexton noticed the small motion of me pulling away. As quick as she could, she grabbed my hand and with a kung-fu hold, firmly shook it.

The vision popped open as soon as I touched the ring. The room was poorly lit; dark stains crawled up from the floor onto the cracked walls. I saw a man sitting stiffly in a wooden chair behind a desk. He was breathing hard and I felt that he was anxiously waiting for something or someone. His anxiety about waiting pervaded the memory, eating up all of the nooks and crannies. My stomach involuntarily began doing back flips as I saw a woman standing in front of him. She pulled out a revolver from her purse and shot him in the center of his forehead. I could feel the clamminess of her hand, as she let go of the gun. The gun and a ring clattered down to the cement floor. His head jolted backwards and then his body slumped forward and crashed onto the desk, spewing blood on the blotter like a broken water fountain. Blood covered what was left of his head and dripped down, decorating the unwanted gun and ring. Like a panicked deer, she took off.

I pulled my hand away from the agent’s hand, and from that ring. Steading myself, I leaned on the spotless white wall and saw that she was scrutinizing me. Her eyes squinted almost closed. Agent Sexton was desperate to see what I had just seen by staring at my eyes! I must admit that this was a new twist. I guess that she thought that I worked just like a DVD player; just pop in the disc and watch the movie. Little did she know that she really didn’t want to be able to see what I saw, or feel what I felt.

“Professor MacGregor, I am Special Agent Colleen Sexton,” she said with as much authority as she could project, as she straightened herself to stand even taller.

“Yeah, I got your name coming down the hall, and that was a rotten memory that you shoved me into,”I snarled. I had just gotten through one terrifying glimpse of a Scottish dungeon failed escape and now this! I was vexed.

I never mentioned having any type of unusual abilities with most people, but with the Feds, the secret was out. This one I found particularly irritating because of the amount of manipulating fairy-dust that I knew would soon be sprinkled on me by, as I had just dubbed her, Miss-no-splint-ends-at-all. So I decided it was okay to put her in her place and righteously storm off, but then, I opted to be kind and give her another chance. After all, I knew that the tale of Miss Lacey Indecisive had rankled me like a festering sore.

“Well,… what did you see? Anything?” Colleen Sexton was pushy, and I just realized, she was about six feet tall sans shoes. Wow, now that’s a tall woman! I wondered why she was wearing such high heels?  My focus was stuck on those heels. I felt mesmerized by the red of the blood and the red of her outfit.

Colleen cleared her throat. “So, I would like to verify what information you got from that ring.”

Her words lit my raw nerves like a match tossed on gasoline. I viewed my options and chose my first one again, leave. I was half way back to my office when I heard her call down the hallway, “She’s ten years old, the same age that you were when you were abducted.”

And as Agent Sexton had planned, her clearly spoken and sterile words made my knees go weak and my stomach began to ache. I came to a dead stop. My boots squealed on the waxed floor as I turned to face her. I watched two coeds, now not giggling, turn towards our public event to see what would be said next. Even on such a large campus as the University of Virginia, there could never be enough fodder about professors to ignore it when things so easily flew by your ears. This could be a high ranking post on Snapchat, Instagram or Twitter. For them to miss something this potentially salacious would be a true waste in their opinions. And because I was the youngest professor on campus, any and all gossip of my doings were a hot commodity.

I pointed towards my office and began marching towards the partially open door. She got it, and followed me down the hall, her heels clicking sharply behind me, a further annoyance. As I closed my door, Agent Sexton took a seat and pulled out the newest iPad. She opened up a file and handed it to me. I was now going down the familiar path to my own horror show through this little girl. I did not want to go.

The story stared out at me in a digital display of  the mundane turning into terror; the girl’s photograph, the parking lot where she was kidnapped, and various shots of the mall and of her house. Copious pages of witness interviews took up the bulk of the information but it was the gruesome expression on the deceased undercover policeman that made my pulse quicken. His throat had been torn open by a large throwing knife. The next photo was of the mother’s bloodied camel-colored cashmere coat. She had been standing next to him, so most of his throat splattered on it along with a great fountain of his blood, making this season’s choicest piece in classic camel look more like last season’s edgy leopard.

I made myself look at the vacation photos of the family. These were the worst for me to view. They were the photos of her and her family in happier times. The collective joy on their faces seemed to slam up against the evil of the current situation, making the horror of the event unforgettable. The juxtaposition made me shudder.

I pushed on and read the agent’s account of the occurrence, the lists of potential suspects, and scanned the summary of the massive amounts of what was to me, useless data that had been compiled and carefully entered into the report. The FBI had been trying to find her for four days! There was not one lead that had panned out. I looked up at Agent Sexton and asked her what I already knew.

“You have nothing? Not a clue on who took her? Statistically, she is already dead. Why did you wait so long to come to me?” But I knew that answer too. I was the last stop on the Bureau’s train to Wits End. And they had to go to that station, as this little girl was Jennifer Stark. She was the daughter of the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

She paused, took a deep breath and started the sales pitch. “Professor MacGregor, may I call you Tess?”

Okay, so a big no to that one I decided. I never liked the way they try to disarm you by using your given name. It was an old tactic used for years by door-to-door salesmen, and I wasn’t buying it. “You may call me Professor MacGregor,” I told her. There, the line was drawn.

Agent Sexton was not a stupid person and she put the best,  All-American Federal Agent, here-to-save-the-world-glow on her checks, and went on with the rest of the rehearsed pitch. “Professor, I have asked that we, the FBI, explore all leads that are possible to us, and I knew about you. SSA Robert Ashwood, one of the agents that found you when you were abducted, well, he was my mentor at the Academy. He told me that you had special abilities in helping people so I brought your name up and got the go-ahead.” She placed both hands back in her lap and rested her case.

I felt trapped. Anywhere but here, was where I wanted to be. I looked down at my desk and noticed the faint scent of Chanel No. 5 that clung to Agent Sexton. It reminded me of mother and the countless cocktail parties that she went to nightly, even just a week after I was back home from my ordeal. I could still see her dressed in her glamour magazine clothes, with polished nails, and wafting perfume that enveloped all of her distant goodbyes and left me crying in a dark room.

“Huh, I guess you have the whole story then,” I paused and I felt my feet go cold again. It was not because of the old Scottish key this time. The chill was a natural by-product of my memories of being snatched, alone, and naked on a cold floor. The terror rose from my core, draining the blood from my extremities and just for a second, I felt ten years old again with no one to help me. I involuntarily shook ever so slightly.

She closed her notebook and the magnetic snap brought me back to the present. “So are you interested? Will you assist us?” she asked me with a subtle irritation that she tried to suppress. Agent Sexton wasn’t used to having to ask for much of anything, ever.

“How far away is it?” I asked as a way of delaying the inevitable.

“Not so far, it’s near Washington. The helicopter is close by so you’d be at Quantico in about fifteen minutes. You could be back in time for dinner.” She made it sound like it was just a pleasant stop-over to see the Wizard of Oz for a brief tete-a-tete and then back to Kansas. I looked down at my well-worn boots that were still caked with a bit of dirt from the garden and thought about Jennifer Stark, and a mad man that was now in control.

I could tell that Colleen was pleased with herself. She saw that I took the bait just by reading my body language. She got up from the chair and looked down at my worried countenance and smirked just a bit.

My response was to let out a long sigh. I was resigned to this now and I contemplated about the last time, the last case, and how it was so tiring for me. That ordeal seemed to go on forever, and the ‘vic,’ as they like to say, the woman, died. I felt so useless. All of my special abilities were no more effective than parlor tricks during that case. I looked down at the floor thinking about Jennifer Stark, all alone and terrified.

“I must be back by 7 p.m., no later.” I was drawing another boundary line; although I knew that I would stay as late as they needed me. “I need to stop by my apartment first. You are not the pilot, are you?” I asked her while looking at her three inch heels.