PREMIER CHAPITRE.
PRIVATE DETECTIVE MITCHELL COX was sitting at a table by the window in a Flask’s Coffee Shop downtown.
He was waiting for an old friend to arrive. As he waited, he had time to look around—at the shop, out the window at the neighborhood, the college campus across the street where he and his friend had both majored in Criminal Justice.
At all the things that had changed, and all that hadn’t.
A ching sounded at the door and in walked Jordan Salavea, his old mate.
They’d met freshman year in a class called Intro to Crime, and as they shared the same taste in movies and music they had quickly become friends. They had also shared a certain vision of their major that separated them from the rest of their classmates.
Crime to them was not just a means of study in order to get a job, as it was pragmatically for most others. Crimes, and their motivations, were for the two of them an obsession.
They were kindred spirits in this way.
Crime to them was an Art.
It was a war against darkness itself and also an acceptance of the darkness in yourself.
For Mitch especially that darkness was a state of mind, a psychic place he went to whenever he could.
A universe of endless euphoria.
Δ
Jordan ordered a coffee at the counter and came over.
Mitch was standing up by then and upon greeting they slapped fives and hugged it out.
It had been some time since they’d last seen each other (they usually spoke on an instant messenger online), so before letting go, Mitch held his old friend a moment longer to take a good look at him.
The same eyes, the same smile when he laughed.
The same sick style of Hawaiian shirt, short shorts and expensive flip flops. He still wore those signature glasses of his too, the ones with the clip-on shades that flipped up. On his wrist the same gold watch.
His hair was still frizzy with a clean fade on the sides, but it had more grey in it now, and he’d put on a little weight since college, although who hasn’t? Jordan was a big guy anyway, it looked good on him.
To Jordan, Mitch looked like his old impassive self, like he hadn’t aged a day, with that same unfazed look he’d seen Mitch wear on his face in their classes, even when the most gruesome crimes were described.
For no two obsessions are alike.
Mitch wasn’t concerned with a crime’s gruesomeness. For him it was the Mystery that mattered most. The places. The people. The questions each crime makes you ask. That’s what inspired him.
It was all set against the darkest backdrop, one that demanded the strongest light in order to make one’s way.
He lived for this atmosphere.
Jordan on the other hand was more encyclopedic, more of a scientist.
He ran a website called thejordanproject.com, which he billed as “A Comprehensive Database of Local Crime”, (and below in enigmatic italics, “For the Benefit of the Community™”).
To the outside world it was an odd passion project but to Jordan it was a serious empirical experiment.
The programs he’d written continuously scanned the web for any and all crimes that took place in Los Valles, the setting and city of our story.
He used the data to see what trends might emerge and posted the results live on his site.
Who knew if there was a correlation out there that law enforcement hadn’t seen yet? One strong yet subtle enough that no law had been able to contain it? What if they could predict crimes, and stop them?
He was constantly cross-referencing disparate criteria hoping to come across something definitive.
One model in particular was specifically designed to identify serial killers and conspiracies.
And it was the results from this model that had jumped out at him while he was going over the weekly charts.
Three murders committed on the same night.
Each at a separate location,
in a different part of the city,
miles away from one another.
The night in question?
April Fool’s.
After studying his computer’s findings, and after a lot of deliberation, Jordan was still unsure as to whether his formula had produced a glitch or if he’d struck upon something real. That’s when he decided to call his former classmate.
If somewhere beneath these three different crimes there was a subtle pattern—a signature, let’s say, that could only be left by a single killer—Jordan knew that Mitch was the one to find it.
“I have all of the information back at my house,” he told his old friend. “Come over anytime you want and take a look.”
Mitch sat and thought about it, framed by the window from which their old campus could be seen, their alma mater.
The giant anachronistic buildings, the old trees, all was cast in a lush sepia by the afternoon sun. The color of memory. Of a time not so long ago, but already a lifetime ago.
A certain feeling was beginning to build within the detective as he contemplated what Jordan had said.
A familiar passion.
The sudden realization of it made every one of his cells feel alive.
He knew he had found what he was looking for.
A new case.
“I’m interested,” Mitch said.
The waiter came by and poured more sparkling hot coffee from a faux-artisanal carafe into their ceramic cups. Mitch eyed the waiter, who seemed to him to be eavesdropping, until the waiter went away.
“Just to be clear, I can’t pay you,” Jordan said.
He took out a pack of cigarettes from his back pocket and smacked it against the heel of his hand, then took one out and lit up before offering one to Mitch, who refused.
(Mitchell was highly selective of his indulgences.)
“But if there’s something there and you manage to crack it,” his mate said with a puff of smoke, “I have the means to let a lot of people know. You won’t have any problems getting new clients after that, believe me.”
He had his doubts, but he agreed anyway. Whether or not Jordan really had the juice to increase his popularity and fully monetize his business platform was irrelevant.
He wasn’t concerned about getting paid in money, and clients weren’t an issue either because Mitch didn’t take on clients. He didn’t work for other people, at least not in the economic sense.
He chose his cases personally, for his own particular reasons.
This case interested him.
Jordan started to embark on a whole spiel of explanation but Mitch stopped him.
“No need to explain,” he told his computer scientist amigo. “Let’s go now.”