Shortly after Jack and Ken had talked about searching for the body in the land fill, Ken headed back to his office and thought he'd check through some records around the date that Jack had mentioned. He thought it might give him an idea of where to look.
On his way back, Ken pondered Jack's situation. Suddenly deciding to look for a body, or evidence of a body based on a few dreams? That was out of the blue and very out of character for Jack. Ken never even knew he dreamed, or let himself indulge in such things. He shook his head.
At a stop light Ken saw a man standing on a street corner. Something about him caught Ken's attention. A second later a big garbage truck made a left turn in front of the man, the truck finished the turn but the man wasn't there like he should have been. And there was nowhere for him to go that fast. He didn't jump on the truck, or fall into the street, he just seemed to vanish. Ken stared in shock as horns began beeping behind him. Back to reality he made his way through the intersection and kept trying to look at the corner where the man was standing, but didn't see him again. His mind reeled. He'd never seen someone vanish like that, it just doesn't happen. He'd other people's stories of this sort of thing, but never given it too much credit. Now he had seen it, and he didn't know what to think.
The next thing he knew he was pulling into the parking lot of the sanitation department. Ken didn't remember the rest of the trip, and that was a good ten minutes ago. Now that particular route was very familiar, he could have zoned out and driven it on 'auto-pilot', as he sometimes does, but this time there was no recall of the trip at all. It scared Ken a bit. When he parked the car, he got out and checked to make sure he didn't hit anything or anybody along the way. Nothing really new and obvious, just the same old dents and dings from previous encounters in driveway and parking lots, good.
Once in his office, He breathed a sigh of relief , he felt safe, his work was his refuge. He closed his eyes and tried to regain his focus. Ok, now, about that body... Footsteps in the hallway is a sound Ken hears a lot. He can almost tell who they belong to by the sound they make on the linoleum, and where the person was in the hallway, but he'd never heard these before. Standing at his desk, Ken looked left, to the door. He could see if someone was outside because the wall separating his office from the hall was solid 3 1/2 feet high, and frosted glass to the 7 foot hung ceiling.
From the sound of the footsteps, someone should have been visible through the frosted glass, Ken was sure of it. But he didn't see anything. His safe, refuge feeling quickly left him as he made his way to the door to look down the hall. Poking his head out into the hallway, looking both ways he saw nothing. But noticed it felt oddly cooler than it had when he walked in mere moments ago.
He closed his eye and said to himself, No, this is not happening, this is not happening. Pulling his head back into his office he closed the door and took another deep breath. For a moment he thought his world was coming apart, first Jack having dreams and talking to dead people. Now he was seeing things and hearing things that made him wonder when he was almost proud of his skepticism, but something was going on and he was afriad to admit it.
A thought came to his mind, Ken turned around and inspected his desk and filing cabinet area. Something seemed to make him think that there was something he had to look for, a note...a sticky note. A remembrance came to mind of such a note, it was odd because it was hot pink. Only yellow was ever used around here, that's why it stood out. Somewhere on his desk. Ken checked the desk pad that had been there forever. Under the sidepads, nope, and nothing under the green main pad, then he lifted the whole thing.
There, right in the middle of the desk pad area was a hot pink sticky note.
"Now where did that come from?" Ken said to himself as he pulled it off the desktop and looked at it.
Call Joe ME and a phone number. Ken picked up the phone and dialed the number.
"Hello, Medical Examiners Office, Joe speaking."