The Forgotten Eden Read online

  Peter was busy jotting down a few notes onto the back page of his journal, and Jack waited for him to finish. The agent raised his head and nodded when done.

  “I just wanted to reference the trip you mentioned,” he said. “Dr. Mensch was your brother’s academic advisor. Is that how you met him?”

  “Yeah, pretty much. I also took two undergraduate courses he taught, and guess I grew closer to him after being around him so much.”

  “Ah-huh….” Peter turned the journal back over, opening it again to a marked page near the front. “You’re graduating with a major in journalism, is that correct? Or, is it baseball?” He cracked another wry smile.

  Jack also smiled a little. “I wish it was baseball. But I’ve got a knack for writing, I believe, and should do all right with that as a career.”

  “I see you were a two-time all-SEC selection during your sophomore and junior years—and, an all-American honorable selection during your junior year as well. I played a little ball myself back in high school.

  “Really?” Jack was surprised. Peter didn’t seem like the baseball type…a little too primped. “What position did you play?”

  “Centerfield,” he replied, releasing a low sigh. He smiled, sheepish. “I started all three years, though I never achieved the awards and accolades you did. Always wanted to be a star pitcher like yourself…. ”

  His voice trailed off, the blueness in his eyes turning a shade lighter as he looked past Jack for a moment, so obvious in his nostalgia.

  “Well, you seem to have ended up okay,” offered Jack, eager to get the interview back on track. “I guess we can’t all be Roger Clemens.”

  “Yeah, I guess not,” Peter agreed, chuckling. “So, what happened this year?”

  “Tendonitis in the elbow of my throwing arm,” said Jack.

  Now he was the one giving in to a reflective moment. He grimaced, his pain emotional instead of physical. The chronic ailment cut short his playing career and eliminated any chance of achieving his dream of reaching the pros.

  “Ah, I understand. That’s too bad.” Peter seemed genuinely disappointed for him. “Well, who knows, maybe you’ll become a successful journalist one day.”

  “That’d definitely be nice.”

  Though unsure where this line of questions headed, Jack appreciated Peter’s approach as compared to Frank Reynolds or Steve Iverson’s. At least it didn’t hurt.

  Peter paused to sip his coffee, and then continued.

  “Let’s revisit the night you found Dr. Mensch, Jack,” he said. “According to the report I’ve got here, the front door was slightly ajar, and when the professor didn’t respond to your knock or calls out to him, you went inside his house. That’s when you found him lying on the floor in the middle of his living room. Correct so far?”

  “Yes.”

  “You didn’t try to move him?”

  “No. But I did check his pulse. I mean, I thought he was dead. There was blood everywhere, and his face was covered with it. I couldn’t tell if he was breathing or not, and once I felt a slight pulse on his wrist, I immediately called for an ambulance.”

  “That’s consistent with the evidence,” said Peter. “Your shoes tracked blood from the living room to the phone in the kitchen. Other than the front door ajar and the ransacked living room, did you notice anything unusual or out of place?”

  With the main floor in disarray, it was hard to tell if things were where they should’ve been in Dr. Mensch’s home. Jack did remember experiencing the creepy feeling of being watched while he stood on the professor’s front porch. While inside the house, he felt someone else’s presence with him. Perhaps someone hiding upstairs? Hard to say…but by the time the police and paramedics showed up he forgot about it, as so distressed about Dr. Mensch’s condition. He hadn’t thought about it again until he visited the professor in the hospital four days later.

  “No...well, maybe.”

  Peter raised his eyebrows and motioned for him to continue.

  “It’s nothing I can prove, but I’m pretty sure there was somebody in the house when I arrived. I should’ve mentioned this to the cops that night, but it slipped my mind.”

  “I see,” said Peter, frowning slightly. “You’re probably unaware that the upstairs rooms were in much worse shape than what you saw on the main level.”

  “No, I wasn’t aware of that.” Definitely not, thought Jack, irritated no one else had told him this fact before now.

  “Okay…. Let’s move on to the eighth of May, the night Dr. Mensch died. Did you visit him in the hospital before his death?”

  “I tried, the morning following his attack. But the nurses on duty told me I couldn’t see him, that he was still unconscious. They said I could be there quite awhile before he might awaken. Dr. Sutherland was also there and told me to go on home. I guess he could tell I hadn’t slept much since the incident from the previous evening. He said he’d call me when Dr. Mensch regained consciousness.”

  Jack paused to take another drink, and Peter used the opportunity to flip through a few pages in his journal while he sipped his coffee.

  “A nurse named Annette Rison stated you came to see Dr. Mensch around seven o’clock the evening of the eighth,” resumed Peter. “Tell me what happened from the time you got there until you left.”

  “Dr. Mensch had regained consciousness and I really looked forward to seeing him,” said Jack. “He was pretty weak and most of his head was covered in bandages. But he was glad to see me, even if he couldn’t talk much. Most of my time with him was spent sitting in a chair next to his bed. I stayed there for half an hour or so, and then left.”

  “According to the report, Nurse Rison stated you did leave around 7:35 p.m. What did you discuss with the professor?”

  “Nothing much. He felt too weak to have any real conversation. But, he did tell me I’d be welcome to join the expedition he and Dr. Sutherland planned for this summer.”

  Jack smiled sadly as he reminisced.

  “Are you sure that was all you talked about? Nurse Rison stated she saw Dr. Mensch hand something to you as she came into his room to administer his evening medication.”

  Peter studied Jack, as if caught in a lie regarding what really took place that night.

  “I honestly don’t recall that,” said Jack, a little nervous under Peter’s scrutiny, but determined to keep this fact from the agent’s awareness. “If anything, it could’ve been a cup or something. I remember helping him take a drink at least once…. That’s the last time I ever saw him—alive or dead. I couldn’t bring myself to go to the visitation at the funeral home.”

  “All right,” said Peter, thoughtfully. “As you know, Dr. Mensch was strangled shortly after you left the hospital. The coroner’s report placed his death around eight o’clock that evening. Oh, what the hell.”

  He closed the journal and laid it back down on the table.

  “So, are we done?” asked Jack, hopeful this latest interrogation had ended. “I told you there wasn’t much to tell.”

  Peter chuckled in response, though his eyes betrayed his seriousness.

  “On the contrary, we’ve just begun,” he advised. “True, we’re done with our questions in regard to Dr. Mensch—at least for now. Remember, I told you I’ve got other questions.”

  “Man, I’ve told you everything I know!” said Jack, angry. “There’s really nothing more I can give you! Go ahead and check whatever recordings ya’ll have made since last night if you don’t believe me!!”

  He pointed to the surveillance cameras in each corner while shaking his head, defiant.

  “Are you sure about that?”

  Peter reached over and opened the attaché case. He pulled out a large envelope and a pair of old, tattered books. He sat the books down on the table and opened the envelope. He then carefully removed the envelope’s contents and placed them directly in front of Jack.

  “Recognize this?”

  Jack couldn’t mask his astonishment at what sa
t before him. A pair of color photographs rested side by side on the table. Both were of the same object, a footprint, which most folks would likely guess as reptilian. Nothing extraordinary, unless one noticed the photo also contained a John Deere tractor. The tractor and footprint were roughly the same size.

  Accompanying the photographs was an item he figured drew even more curiosity. A dragon-like scale roughly the size of a standard football sat on the table beside the pictures. It refracted light in a rainbow array of colors. Dismayed, there was no way to deny that the footprint and scale were related to each other.

  “Where’d you get this??” he demanded, his voice a mere whisper as the initial shock hadn’t worn off.

  “From you,” said Peter, somewhat smugly. “Actually, this came to the FBI from Sheriff Joseph McCracken, who sent it to his nephew, Agent Marvin Depew. You identified these items for Sheriff McCracken nearly eight years ago.”

  Jack stiffened in his chair, nervous as to where this interview now headed.

  “This accompanied a report sent to Agent Depew by Sheriff McCracken, confirmed by Carl Peterson, the local Fire Chief in Carlsdale, Alabama,” Peter continued. “You told them both, and I quote, ‘a giant lizard that looked like a mix between a dragon and a ‘tyrannosaurus rex’ chased you through the woods behind your home.’ You further stated this enormous creature was a ‘fire breather’ that you estimated to be around seventy feet in length. According to the report the creature caused a fire that engulfed the woods, but mysteriously never spread to your property.”

  He waited for Jack’s confirmation, which didn’t come.

  “Well, Jack?... Is this what you truly encountered, or were these two gentlemen full of it?”

  Jack remained silent. Sheriff McCracken and Carl Peterson died within a month of the incident in question, and he still felt responsible for their deaths.

  Carl was reported missing in early August that year, less than two weeks following the July event. His bloated remains were recovered from an abandoned rock quarry just outside Mobile, Alabama a week later. The case had been closed quickly, as quietly decided by the coroner’s office down in Mobile that the fireman committed suicide by swallowing the double barrel of a shotgun. There remained many unanswered questions surrounding his death, largely due to the rumored discovery of an extra shotgun casing found a few feet from his body, lying near the splattered remnants of Carl’s brain and shattered skull.

  As for Sheriff McCracken, he along with a rookie deputy named Charlie Adams, who had recently joined the Carlsdale Sheriff’s Department, were found murdered in the dilapidated frame of an old barn. The unknown killer, or killers, left their nude bodies in an obscene position, with piano wire wound tightly around their necks and a pair of bullet holes through their heads.

  The sheriff’s briefcase contained some very incriminating papers along with a small vial of pure cocaine, conveniently discovered just outside the barn. Enough to satisfy the ABI agents assigned to the case, they wasted little time destroying Sheriff McCracken’s squeaky-clean reputation as a law enforcement officer. The ‘real’ Joe McCracken was secretly a perverted deviant who preyed on younger, vulnerable males like Deputy Adams. According to their report, the sheriff lured poor Charlie to the barn for sex. An unidentified enemy, likely a miffed drug dealer, happened upon the two men and murdered them both execution-style after torturing the pair first.

  Jack never believed either report.

  “Could my answer get me killed like Sheriff McCracken?”

  Surprised, Peter looked up from his journal. “What in the hell are you talking about?”

  Jack eyed him evenly. “I know ya’ll killed them both.”

  “Do you mean me personally, or the agency I work for? I can assure you that we had nothing to do with their deaths!” Peter stood up immediately and leaned over the table, glaring at Jack. “I’m sorry either man is gone, and partially from a selfish standpoint. I would’ve loved to talk to them, and not just you!”

  In disgust he turned away, moving over to the wall nearest his chair. He stared at the cinderblocks in silence, perhaps gathering his thoughts. When ready to continue, he returned to the table, holding Jack in his gaze as he sat down again.

  “There’s so much to learn from you—and I believe we can help each other,” he said softly. “I have information that may prove useful to you, as well, Jack. I can help you tie some loose ends together of your own. But before I’ll do that, you’ll need to answer my questions. They aren’t many, but I need the truth—your complete honesty—in answering each one.”

  Jack quietly pondered the pros and cons of cooperating with Peter’s request, reflecting most upon the sorrow and torment he’d endured the past eight years. “I’ll give it a try,” he said, finally.

  “I’m certain you’ll be glad you did,” Peter assured him, his expression relieved. He leaned back in his chair. “Now, back to my earlier question. Is this a piece of some seventy-foot dinosaur that rampaged through the woods behind your place, and are these actual photographs of its footprint?”

  He picked up the scale and photographs and moved them even closer to Jack, who motioned it wasn’t necessary to do so.

  “Yeah, they are.”

  “And this thing actually breathed fire through its mouth, like one of those mythical dragons we all read about as kids?”

  Peter appeared tentative, as if the question sounded absurd once it left his mouth. Yet, the excitement written all over his face told Jack the man wanted to believe the existence of such a being, if only he would confirm it.

  “Yes. It could fly, too.”

  Peter reached over and picked up the scale, snickering nervously while he examined it, as it he could envision its appearance. “No shit. So it had wings, then?”

  “Yes,” said Jack, his tone serious. “But they hardly seemed big enough to support its body. It was covered in scales just like the one you’ve got in your hand, and had horns on its head and a pair of fan-like appendages on either side of its neck.”

  Opening up like this put him at ease…a little. Increasingly unconcerned with whoever else observed them, he searched Peter’s face for clues as to whether or not he really believed what he said.

  “It must’ve been pretty harrowing to face something like that,” observed Peter, still admiring the scale in his hands. “I would’ve probably pissed my pants if I’d been there. It chased you through the woods until you reached Ben Johnson’s farm….. Are we still on the same page so far?”

  “Well, sort of,” said Jack, sitting up straight in his chair. “I lost track of the thing when I made it out of the woods. Sheriff McCracken was the one who told us it’d eventually made it out of the woods and then gone over to the Johnson’s place. I guess it had tracked mine and Banjo’s scent.”

  “The pet goat your grandfather kept?”

  “Yeah,” said Jack. “One of Grandpa’s most prized possessions. He taught Banjo more tricks than any dog he ever owned.”

  Peter nodded while reading another page in the journal.

  “It states here that this ‘dragon’ or whatever it was suddenly disappeared without a trace. Don’t you find that statement as hard to believe as the very existence of the creature in the first place?”

  “Sure. But it’s true. I never saw or heard from it again, and neither did anybody else from what I gather.”

  “Ah-huh.... Well, at the very least that’s an experience few people on this planet will ever share. We may come back to it, but for now let’s move on. The next thing we’ve got here is the fact your home was completely destroyed by a tornado less than thirty-six hours later. Pretty weird sequence of events, right?”

  “Yeah, most folks should agree on that.”

  “I’ll bet most people would find it even stranger that only your house was destroyed. Your next-door neighbors, the Palmers, suffered minimal damage. But there wasn’t a single thing left intact in your yard other than an old tool shed in the back. Just like the Palmer’s plac
e, it wasn’t harmed at all. Correct?”

  Something in Peter’s demeanor shifted, ever so slight. Only the most observant eyes would’ve caught this. The agent was on a covert mission and Jack worried about his role in this journey. I wish he’d quit talking about this shit! Leave it in the past, man!!

  “Correct,” he finally answered.

  “You, your brother, and your grandfather fled from your home. At some point, the tornado overtook you and hurled your vehicle into a field less than a mile away. What do you remember about that experience?”

  “Actually, not a whole lot,” said Jack, determined to be less accommodating, more evasive.

  “Please tell me what you recall.”

  “Well, most of it’s pretty hazy, other than jumping into Jeremy’s truck and speeding down Lelan’s Way. The tornado snatched us up from behind before we made it to Baileys Bend Road…. The last thing I remember was crashing into a ditch in the field. I didn’t regain consciousness for three weeks, and had no idea if my brother and grandfather were even alive.”

  Peter studied him in silence, absently clicking his pen. Jack took this opportunity to speed things up, anxious to finish the interview.

  “We recovered enough to visit what was left of our place, and it surprised us all that the tool shed was still standing,” Jack continued. “We lived with my uncle and aunt in Tuscaloosa for the time being. Once I saw the barren plot of land that used to be our home, I realized we’d never be coming back there to live.

  “Almost immediately, some dudes started following us around. They looked like ya’ll. Dark sunglasses…stiff business suits and driving nice sedans—hard as hell to tell one from another. When we learned what’d happened to Sheriff McCracken and Carl Peterson, we figured these guys had something to do with it.

  “The uninvited surveillance lasted right up to my freshman year in college, and then it stopped. Until this week.”

  “Anything else you want to add to that, Jack?” asked Peter, frowning.