Daniel Fenton, an ex-Baltimore cop, joins the FBI homicide division. He loves his job, and fighting bad guys with Tucker Foley and his boss Kim Possible seems to be the thing he loves most, but when a Samantha Manson joins the team, what will happen to his world as he knows it?

Chasing Phantoms

Part I: Mad World

Chapter One: You Can't Save Everyone

5:30 am. In another room, an alarm clock blared angrily on a side table, the flashing green numbers trying to take attention away from the unslept-in bed. Twenty paces away, on an old orange couch with the fabric fraying on the corners, stirred a man. Getting up groggily, he stretched upwards and cracked his back, twisting it right, then left. He cursed under his breath at the unforgiving garage-sale couch. Mussing his hair, he yawned hugely and rubbed the sleep from his eyes.

In the kitchenette, he turned on the fluorescent light that flickered and glowed and eerie yellow before strengthening to a dim white. He swept bits of rice off of the counter, removing the three-day old accumulation of takeout boxes sitting next to the sink, gently tossing them into a trashcan under the cabinet. Reaching in an upper cabinet he removed a stack of coffee filters, a plastic portable coffee mug, and the strongest Columbian grind he had in his stash. Mechanically, the filter was put into the aging, once-white coffee-maker, the grind placed in the filter, and the water poured in. After three attempts, the pot stirred to life, and began to put out a jet black liquid drop by drop.

Satisfied, the man tousled his raven hair again and walked thirty paces to the bathroom of his aging apartment, shedding a wrinkled button down, singlet, black slacks, underwear and socks and tossed them into the hamper by the door that was already threatening to overflow from a week's worth of unwashed clothing. The water in the shower was turned on and his platinum watch was shed, a small silver cross on a chain following it. He stepped into the shower, grabbing his toothbrush and toothpaste on the way, the still-cool water rousing him fully from sleep. The warming water turned hot and relaxed his sore muscles, but he made a mental note not to be so angry with his couch.

Within five minutes his hair was clean and smelled faintly of sandalwood, his face shaven, the smell of yesterday's takeout and strength and agility training gone from his smooth skin. He dried himself, wrapping a towel around his waist and walked out of the bathroom, cursing again as the cool apartment air hit his skin, still hot from the shower. In the bedroom, he pulled on a fresh singlet and button down, and took the rest of his clothing from the drawer, dressing on the way to the old coffee pot on the counter.

He fumbled with the black tie, but when he finished tying it, the coffee had dripped to the two-cup line. Damn old thing, he thought, poor baby is 10 years old…about time to get a new one. Immediately he felt guilty. The old pot had been with him since college, and he just couldn't let the old thing go. He poured the coffee carefully into the plastic cup, still wincing at the memory of last week's burn. He tightened the lid and turned around to pull a bagel out of the yellowing fridge.

Grabbing both, he walked out of the kitchen, and placed them on the table next to the front door. He lifted a leather holster off of a hook and pulled it over his shoulders, the chestnut straps running over his collar bone and under his arms, and over it he put on a black jacket. A leather ID, badge, and keys were slipped into his pants pocket. Walking out of the front door with coffee and bagel in hand, he picked up the morning paper that lay on top of the row of mailboxes outside the apartment; his cerulean eyes flashed at the headline running across the front page.

Quarter to seven, the elevator doors opened and the man hurriedly rushed out into the hallway, veering left – a full fifteen minutes late to work. Cursing the early morning D.C. traffic, he shuffled through the maze of interns carrying copied papers, men, women, milling about with thick filing folders, their faces busied with their own early morning work. He briskly walked down the hallway, past conference rooms and private offices before turning right through an open door-space in a large glass panel to come upon a large space.

Here was different than the rest of the building. The eyes of the people here were different. Their eyes were hardened, sad, but passionate, like soldiers on a battlefield. In the second of four bullpens, he found his desk. It was not exactly difficult to discern his desk from everyone else's'. The giant NASA poster of an astronaut tacked up on the soft panel that cradled his desk space gave it away. He usually turned his chair around after sitting down to look at it, but today, he sat down without even giving it a glance. He slammed the paper down in anger and sadness, and closing his eyes, he rested his head in his hands, sighing in sudden exhaustion.

"Trust me honey, I know. But next time, try not to be late for the fourth time in two weeks," said a distinct female voice.

Recognizing it immediately, he glanced up, and with a dead sort of look in his eyes replied, "Oh God Val, what are we going to do?" He looked hopeless. "I've been here for two months, and now three people are dead," he paused for a second, his breath rattling, "I feel like I'm not going my job." The woman named Val looked at him, her eyebrow arching above her teal eyes. She knew when people started to talk like that. They talked like that when they were giving up. The man sighed and nodded, and with a renewed glint of determination in his blue eyes, he adamantly responded, "I never said I was giving up." That kid maybe clueless, she thought, but he sure is perfect for the job.

"Not what I was going to say at all, Agent Daniel Fenton," she said with a sassy smirk on her face, "I was gonna say that I am your superior, and should the director walk into this God-forsaken Homicide Division, I better be called Special Agent Grey."

With a wink over her shoulder, she walked out of the bullpen, swinging her hips, just as a fiery haired woman walked in. A giant pile of official-looking files in her hand, she walked with agility and confidence, her tight green slacks and black turtleneck revealing both a disdain for the dress code and a hardened physique, despite her age in comparison to the agent at the desk.

"Morning Daniel, you're late," she greeted him, slapping the thinnest file on his desk, taking the desk diagonal from his. He groaned at the official-looking file on his desk, knowing it meant that the newest victim had been deferred to them, knowing it meant lots of homework for the night. Just because he was late for work again, he knew that she would pick on him all morning until she felt he had done enough work to make up for it. But no agent wanted the case they were working on, so their team was stuck with the most difficult case in three years.

"Daniel, I want that file read in an hour, and at eight sharp I want you to have everything pulled up on this victim, see if it matches the others. Autopsy should have the time of death by then, and cause…well, the cause is all over the front page, isn't it? Tucker is running financials and phone records for red flags." She waltzed out of the bullpen with purpose. The serial killer they were dealing with was not any closer to being caught, and Daniel sure as hell didn't want to think about him being out in the open.

"Kim…?" Daniel groaned. She stopped for a second and looked back at him.

"He won't get away with this much longer," she said softly, her emerald eyes blazing, like a soldier before a battle. Agent Daniel Fenton nodded back, determination in his eyes.

The red-haired agent walked back into the bullpen at precisely eight to find an African-American sitting at the desk next to Daniel's, typing hurriedly away on his Blackberry. Daniel was nowhere to be found. The white-board between their desks, half filled before she left this morning, was now almost black with scribbled words. She took Daniel's rolling desk chair; his jacket draped on the back of the chair. She pulled it up in front of the board.

"What's the sitch Tucker?"

The dark skinned agent looked up and noticing her presence for the first time, stood up abruptly. Kim smiled to herself – the kid had that device, and a dozen others – practically attached to his body. His red beret flopped down over his eyes as he saluted her dramatically.

"Tucker Foley, reporting for duty!"

"Cut the crap, Foley, what's the sitch?" she replied exasperatedly, but still amused. He sighed, a bit sadder than he was merely a second ago. The case was taking a lot out of everyone on Kim's team, even Tucker, who usually only cared about the tech and girls. His eyes brightened though as he flashed a grin up at the tall, raven-haired agent as he walked in sipping a scalding coffee.

"Nice of you to show up Fenton," she said with a small smile, glancing at his coffee, "with your third refill today too. You know that means you've had about six cups?" She had a skeptic look on her face. That man ran on coffee. How he slept, she had no idea. He gave her a questioning look as he reached the whiteboard.

"How the hell did you know that this was my third?" he asked, his eyes narrowed.

"I am an FBI agent, Daniel. I was a detective at one point. I would be a bad agent if I didn't notice things like that," she said cooly. She sighed, remembering he liked hearing her little stories of deduction.

"You brought a cup with you, so you have had more than one, because that cup is too hot to be the one you brought. The stain on your shirt says you definitely got more. It is logically your third. Your hands aren't jittery yet, like they would be after four, and the stain is dry, meaning you went back for more."

He gave her a displeased look, but they both knew he enjoyed listening to her. Bringing everyone's thoughts back to the case a t hand, Daniel cleared his throat and began, beckoning to the last of three photographs tacked up on the whiteboard.

"The latest victim is Elijah Brown. He's 25, and Jewish. Top of his class at Columbia Law School, he just began an internship for a major law firm down here. Had a lot of promise." The young man in the photograph had dark hair and dark eyes, his skin fair and smooth-shaven. Behind Daniel, his boss sighed, her fingers gently rubbing her temples.

"I talked to the coroner; he says he died of a single stab wound, but a rather unusual one. Killer entered through the back, piercing the left lung, but the hilt was jammed upward, bringing the blade down through his left ventricle. There are no fingerprints and no physical evidence of yet, and we have today and tomorrow to find some. I'll have to give the body back to the family for embalming and burial on Wednesday. I owe them that much."

At that point she stood up and taken over the whiteboard while the younger agents watched intently, trying to find something, anything that would give them a lead.

"Last seen leaving the movies with a group of friends in Bethesda at eleven forty-five," Daniel piped in as she scribbled events intently on the timeline, "he didn't go home with any of them – they all say that he went home alone," he finished. The older female spoke as she wrote down what she herself had found.

"Time of death was three to three thirty this morning. He was found in Cabin John at five-fifteen by a jogger this morning in a clump of trees, but the body was moved. Elijah was killed somewhere else."

Daniel sat down in the chair she had risen from; he frowned as he noticed it was his chair. He sighed, granting a sympathetic look from Tucker.

"God, I hope this isn't another one," Tucker said morosely.

Daniel looked up at him and replied, "We can hope, but we all know that he's another victim of the killer." He looked down at his feet for a second, thinking intently about something, and then looked back up, scooting his chair back to his desk. With fervor in his blue eyes, Daniel went back to the other two files, trying to piece together something, anything.

Daniel Fenton stumbled into his aging and mildly disheveled apartment well past midnight that night, dragging along a bag of Chinese takeout and an exhausted Tucker Foley. He hung up his jacket on the hook, and dropped the takeout on the coffee table as Tucker hung up his own coat. Sitting down on his beloved couch, Daniel took the plastic boxes out of the bag as Tucker rummaged through his sparsely stocked fridge for a beer.

"Hey Tucker, bring me one," Daniel called back from the tiny living room. The dark agent flopped onto the other end of the couch, setting a beer next to Daniel's plate of wonton soup, while he himself opened his plate of teriyaki beef with relish, sipping at the beer in between sips.

"Thanks man," Tucker said with his mouth not quite clear of food, "Sometimes the last thing you need on a case like this is a lonely house full of beeping computers and noisy college kids for neighbors. God, MIT kids were nothing like these frat boys."

Daniel nodded in understanding, smiling to himself at Tucker's mention of his alma mater. He enjoyed the newbie's company; despite the confusing computer speak often randomly inserted in his normal conversations. The raven haired agent deftly picked up the wonton in his soup with the chopstick and shook his head, remembering his own college days at Georgetown. He had come down to D.C. from Amity Park, Illinois for college in hopes of joining the NASA space program, but Georgetown was probably significantly more rowdy than MIT. He sighed as he finished swallowing his wonton.

"Tucker, this case is a mess. There's no evidence and no leads. And they toss it to the FBI because it crossed the state border on the last murder. And then the main homicide detective tosses it to us because they're busy with that dead Senator."

Tucker finished the last of the beef, abandoning the chopsticks in the plastic takeout bowl. He made a face and complained, "This stinks."

"Sorry man, I told you that you need to stop ordering that beef every night or you'll get sick of it."

"No, this case!" Tucker replied adamantly, protecting his love of the teriyaki beef, "P. F. Chang's is the best, I'll never get sick!"

"I know what you mean," Daniel responded, "We have no physical evidence and no leads, and all we know about the victims is that they all were about to become very successful and they were all males. What's that supposed to tell us about the killer!" Daniel threw down his empty soup bowl in frustration, and Tucker put down his beer with the same force, but the two agents looked at each other with a mischievous glint in their eyes.

"I never sleep the day we get cases like this."

"Me neither." Tucker said, "They give me the worst insomnia."

"Doomed 9," the two agents said in unison, their faces breaking into grins for the first time in hours. They rushed off to get their respective laptops, and racing each other back to the couch. Both tops flipped open and headsets put on at an inhuman pace. In seconds, an eerie green and purple screen loaded and he two agents were battling virtual ghosts and ghouls.

'Dweebs,' the Kim-voice in Daniel's head chided.

to be continued...

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