Codename: Jumping Spider [Published]

Five

Sunlight seeped through the parted blue curtains. As she lay in her bed, Jenn thought about the dinner she had with Ray yesterday. Ray seemed extremely interested in her life overseas. Fortunately, she managed to evade most of his questions by distracting him with witty remarks and occasional flirting. As for her own questions, she did succeed in digging up something interesting about the case.

According to Ray, all the victims attended parties around town before they went missing. He would not tell her how he knew about this, but Jenn saw no sign of deception in him, so she decided to believe him. Perhaps someone had made him promise not to tell.

It was totally unexpected for her to have obtained this piece of information. Although Ray did not elaborate any more about the murders, Jenn was sure that he knew more than he let on. However, she did not push him any further; she did not want to raise suspicions, and he seemed very uncomfortable talking about it.

It did strike her as odd that Ray would hold key information about the case, but it was a small town after all. News and rumours usually spread like wildfire in a small place like this. What was really odd was Ray's demeanour while they talked about the case. She remembered observing the sudden change in his gaze as his eyes glazed over when she breached the topic. A vacant, almost hollow look had filled his baby blue eyes, as if he had been there watching when the murders took place.

Of course, he went back to normal when they moved on to a new topic. It made her wonder how much he did actually know about the murders of those poor souls. Perhaps he knew one of the victims personally. That would explain his interest in these murders.

Her reverie was broken by the sound of her cell phone ringing. Uttering a groan, she silently prayed that the caller would not be who she thought it was. She got out of bed and fished her cell phone out of her backpack. Relief filled her chest when she saw that it wasn't him. But the feeling faded away when she realised that it was General Warner instead.

She greeted him, wondering the reason behind this phone call at this time of the day.

"Good morning, Agent Nelson." He spoke smoothly. "Did I wake you up?"

"No," she replied. "I was just doing some analysing about the case. Why did you call?"

"I just wanted to check on you." She could picture General Warner shrugging as he said this. "So tell me, how are you doing?"

The general wasn't usually like this, she thought. Lately, he had been much softer than before. She had asked herself before what had caused this change in his behaviour, but she couldn't come up with any logical explanation. However, it could be because of the return of his ...

She shook her head suddenly, dismissing her train of thought. Turning her attention back to the conversation, she said, "I'm doing fine. I'll be heading to the local PD today."

"I thought you would have done it yesterday." There was not a hint of surprise in his tone, just mild curiosity.

"I'm not really off to a good start here. The information gathered by the previous case agents of this investigation is merely enough to give a public statement," she said bluntly. "So I thought that I ought to make my own baseline of this investigation before speaking to the agents in charge."

"I think that you'll do a great job in whipping them into shape." The general chuckled. "All right, I'll leave you to your work." They exchanged goodbyes and ended the call. Then she started to get ready for the day.

Today Jenn was going to speak to the agents in charge of these homicide cases. And she was going to do it with style.

~