Foster's

Jack Campbell .2

Jack had woken up that morning expect what he normally expected. That this was going to be just a regular old day.

Except it was anything but.

He came into the office with the coffee his wife had made him, ready to sit in his office and do paperwork all day while hopefully avoiding anyone with Culverton complaints. He was sort of lucky, but mostly not.

What he came into was his admin assistant—Edna—his deputy—Brett—and a few officers all gathered around in a circle in the middle of the bullpen.

And something in between them was ringing.

He knew right away what it was.

"Why did you take the damn clock out of evidence?" he asked.

They weren't at the stage where they could mark this case unsolved. Enough time hadn't passed yet, which meant that Angelica would be waiting a long time for this clock. She may never get it back at this rate.

Also, not a single one of them were wearing gloves. They definitely were not following the chain of custody rules and regulations and they could get in some real shit for this. Jack just didn't want to deal with it though, not at that moment, though the paperwork he'd have to fill out for this would eventually be the death of him.

"It won't shut up," Brett cried over the din of the ringing. "We've tried everything."

"You take the batteries out?"

"Yes."

Huh. Interesting.

Jack offered his hand out and the ringing clock immediately went quiet the second it hit his fingertips. Everyone's mouth dropped, and Jack just stared at it. He did double check, and the spot for the battery was empty, and it seemed like the alarm was in the off position.

He turned it back around to see if it was still ticking which it wasn't, and it didn't seem to be causing issues now.

"See, its fine," he said and then offered it back to Brett who took it hesitantly. "Put it back in the evidence lock up, please."

For a brief second, while the Brett walked off with the clock, he felt as if something ran across his very back, from one shoulder to the next. Little feet, a bug maybe. His hand swatted at it, but nothing was there and he figured it was the lingering sense of wrongness felt when inside Culverton.

His mind, playing tricks on him, all over a silly clock.

He didn't have time for this though, so he went into his office, shut the door determined to ignore all the weirdness that seemed to be around him now.

[-----]

A scream of frustration echoed over the bullpen and, once again, Jack sighed.

He went to the door, opened it, for what had to be the sixth time that morning and then just glared at Brett.

This wasn't the first time he had had some kind of meltdown today. Though this was more meltdown and less just a yelp of surprise.

He knew right away what Brett was going to say, that it was another mouse. And yes, maybe mice were a problem a year ago, and yes they seemed to gravitate towards Brett's desk, but that was a year ago. The exterminators had come in and dealt with the problem and Jack had made Brett clean out his desk and keep it that way so they didn't attract anymore mice.

There was no way that the mice were back. Jack had literally just inspected Brett's desk and it was fine.

But all morning Brett had been seeing mice. All out of the corner of his eye, originally.