Memories, Light, & Promise

Embarkation

Every detective, investigator, profiler, and criminologist has a favorite case or those that stand out in their minds.  What I am about to relay to you is the one case that will forever haunt my dreams. The hour is late into the night, it’s very dark and I am depressed and sitting alone in my disheveled, little cubical. My fingers lick the key board, as I type up a report from my latest investigation. To be honest it’s hard for me to concentrate, this is because even now I feel my mind drifting, swirling—no hurtling towards the events surrounding what I refer to as the “Episode.” 

The very rare few who know what happened have told me that the story would make a great movie, but being from Los Angeles that always seemed too cliché.  At times like this, late into the night, or in the morning—depending upon your perspective—I have amused myself with the idea of writing it all down. In this I could deal with the torrential emotional and mental anguish I have suffered since that investigation. To be honest, my therapist recommended I write it out.  I try but I hold back due to an ever nagging, and haunting of my own internal guilt.  Even to this very night I remain suspicious of real motives for not putting this case behind me.  I read once that with great power comes great responsibility that is on par with maturity. As I have gained greater maturity through the years I feel more responsible.  I’ve learned that the more I mature, the more I am responsible and liable for my actions—and rightly so.

I’ve been through this emotional teeter-tottering before and I’m filled with resentment and excitement. “Shit, I hate doing this…. If my co-workers knew I had this material locked in my bottom drawer, they’d swear I was certifiable. I look at this information when I am alone in the office and the sun is in deep hiding from the moon.  Every time I unlock and enter the recesses of my lower drawer and extract this case file, I feel foolish for even keeping it.

I now find myself entering Pandora’s Box.  The large manila folder packed with every scrap of evidence from the case. I revisit it so much because somewhere in all the data I expect to find hope—not for myself, but for others. I stare at it like a cocaine addict going through withdrawals, and in need of a fix.  I gape at the confines caught between its yellowish over stuffed maw that’s being muzzled by a fat, thick, red rubber band. I know it’s my own self induced delirium but the whole event takes on a life of its own, and I become nauseated and filled with loathing, understanding, and loss.

Try as I might, I attempt in futility to put the file away.  As I fight with in my consciousness, I question why I’m so compelled to revisit this case I think I do so as self-punishment. Leafing through the personal letters, pictures, and holiday cards I shudder.  I always pause when I get to the poems.  I hate myself for trespassing here. It is at this point I take out something else that I shouldn’t have in my drawer—whisky. It always takes a few shots of Jack Daniel’s to help me get through the entire packet.