Report # ARI-47023-TX-001

ASAIC H. Carruthers commentary: The initial request for an ARI agent to assist in investigating the case in question indicated a low-priority incident, given both the relatively small number of remains found and the age of the remains recovered at that date. SA Jayden's lack of experience in performing field work was therefore not considered a major consideration when assigning him to the case; he was initially expected only to fully flesh out FBI records and provide a potential psychological profile to check against other case histories of a similar age. His pre-site and early site notes therefore both reflect this approach to the assignment; it should be noted that their format and tone, which are clearly not in keeping with departmental standards, are results of his being unable to prepare a final, formal report. The following selections, unless otherwise indicated, are from his actual typed notes, rather than verbal ARI recordings.

SA Jayden pre-site notes: Check see where this county's g****** records are. Why so few? Check if other county with same/similar name to account for problem. Initial reports of site confusing/poorly diagrammed, insufficient evidence for profile formation. Time overlap w/several other murders on record, depending on Medical Examiner's later clarification; no clear match for geography/psych profile in either solved or unsolved. Hope in-person review of site to aid; maybe site's arrangement not too disturbed by investigation, though doubt it. Who did I piss off so much that they're sending me to Bumf***, Nowhere, Texas?

Aaron led the way out to his squad car, which he'd lazily left purring in what was technically a towaway zone, its air conditioning still running. It was too early in the year for the day to be a total scorcher, but it was still awfully warm out, even in the shade. "Like to put your briefcase in the trunk?" he suggested to the FBI agent.

"No," came the swift response, and Aaron couldn't refrain from raising his eyebrows a little as the pale man tucked the case tightly under his armpit in response, entering the car. "I don't particularly feel like letting it out of my sight, not after the fuckup with my luggage. There's important stuff in here. Confidential stuff. What's the deal with the motel? The Valentine, you said? Is there something weird about it? Why was the Mensa reject back there so surprised by the name?"

"All right. Well." Aaron squirmed a little, uncomfortably, as he snapped his seat belt into place. The drive was already going to be unpleasant enough without having to confess the Valentine's dirty secrets as the first order of business. "You gotta understand that there ain't hardly nothin' out there where we found those bodies. Hardly anybody lives out there, even. Half of the county is just owned by these big out-of-state land speculation companies that've never done anything with it. I guess somebody from your department told my department that you wanted to be as close to the scene as possible, though. So we got you a room at the Valentine. It's not the nicest place, but it is the closest one."

Agent Jayden grumbled something between his teeth that Aaron didn't quite catch before he followed it up, more loudly, with, ". . . just how primitive are we talking, here?"

"Oh, they got cable and that," Aaron assured him as they pulled on to the appropriate county road. "Just lock your door and you'll be fine."

"I was more concerned about Intern- wait, lock my door?"

"Wellllll," Aaron drawled; he didn't look, but could feel the other man staring at him. The FBI agent was so unexpectedly fussy that the deputy was actually starting to enjoy this a little. "The place has gotten a lot better since the new manager. But it's called the Valentine because you can get rooms by the hour, if you know what I mean. Most of what they get there is still long-haul truckers who don't feel like sleeping in the cab for a night, and sometimes they have ladyfriends they picked up a little ways down the road. Like I said, you should be all right as long as you don't leave your door unlocked, because sometimes there's some problems with drunks wandering in to the rooms. But we ain't had a drug bust out there for maybe a month now."

There was just silence from the passenger side of the car; Aaron finally shot a glance in that direction. The FBI agent had narrowed his eyes and was squinting out the windshield in obvious irritation, slowly shaking his head. "I thought small towns were supposed to be America's heartland or some shit like that," he grumbled.

"Well, and who says we're not?" Aaron was beginning to feel almost cheerful at the ludicrousness of it all. It had been a terrible few days – the county sheriff's office was totally unprepared for the challenges that came with discovering what was apparently a quadruple homicide site, and the strange tangle of jurisdictional provenance between the county sheriff, the nearest town police, and now, the FBI, had made things even more confusing. If there was one thing Aaron hated, it was a murder case; if there was something he hated more, it was red tape. Even though Sheriff Walters had been moaning about "Washington big shots" sticking their noses where they weren't wanted, Aaron had been looking forward to dumping the whole mess in somebody else's lap. He didn't quite approve of the lap in question he'd been given, but at least this Washington big shot wasn't terribly intimidating. "So, you want we should go to the Valentine first? Or just straight out to the site?"

"Well, there's no point in stashing my luggage, since I don't have any now. Let's go see your site. Tell me about what's out there. You found new stuff since I was last updated?"

"Yeah," Aaron confirmed. "It's a whole mess. I'm not even gonna try to check in on the way," he nodded at the crackling radio. "Might as well just get the rest of the story once we get back out here. I'm not even entirely sure I know what the new stuff is, just that –"

"Hold on," the agent said, fussing with his inside coat pocket, "Stop talking until I can get my ARI on."

"You what now?" Aaron genuinely hadn't understood what had been said.

"I need to put on my ARI. My glasses. Sunglasses. All my notes are in my glasses." He yanked a dark pair of glasses out of the same pocket he'd been fumbling with, and brandished them briefly in front of the deputy before slipping them onto his face.

"What?" Maybe Aaron hadn't picked up an FBI agent at all, maybe he'd simply put a fairly well-dressed homeless maniac into his squad car. He probably should have asked to see the man's identification. "You wrote your notes on the inside of your glasses?"

"Mmm-hmm," replied Agent Jayden absently; apparently not listening terribly hard. He pulled on one glove as though he were a cracker version of Michael Jackson, and tensed his fingers a few times in mid-air. "Easier to sort that way."

"All right," Aaron said, politely. This was just supposed to be pick-up-the-FBI-guy-at-the-airport duty, not surreal-conversation duty. It had suddenly become like talking with Boom-boom. "How are your notes in your glasses?"

"My ARI. Weren't you told what it is I do? Usually we only get sent out when we're specifically requested; there aren't a lot of us to go around." His voice was hovering somewhere between smugness and irritation over Aaron's ignorance. "ARI is A. R. I. It's an abbreviation for Added Reality Interface. It's just a way to store information so that – look, it's like a computer I wear as glasses. It's extremely important. It's why they sent me. But you don't need to worry about it."

"I . . . all right. What . . ." staring incredulously at the FBI agent, Aaron nearly missed a turn. "Uh. Well, I can't see your notes. What do you need?"

Agent Jayden was now apparently completely off in la-la land. The guy was now fiddling with the empty air in front of his face for no apparent reason, with his briefcase balanced primly on his knees. "Let me take it from the top. You've got four corpses you found in shallow graves in a semi-circle, all buried in what look like ritualized positions. Your local ME's best guess is that they're all adult women, varying ages, who all look like they've been there maybe twenty years?"

"Yessir. All about the same time, though they were still working on just what time that was. They were looking at the bodies and then some of the jewelry and things that was down there with them. Not all of them are complete bodies, but it looks like maybe they were buried intact and then coyotes and whatnot got some bits of 'em, more than that they were cut up before they got put there. They're all pretty well rotted away, so the medical examiner's mostly just shrugging over cause of death right now. Some parts are mostly bones, some are more sort of like mummies. We got people out here who just like to bury their dead on their own property, but it don't seem like that could be what's happened. Someone'd remember four women from one family all dying together twenty years ago, but nobody does. So I guess it could all be a mistake, but probably not. Not old enough to be Indian ruins or nothing like that."

"And you don't know who any of them are?"

"Not a one," Aaron admitted. "Not yet."

The agent's lips thinned disapprovingly. "Do you have a lot of missing person cases from twenty years ago?"

Aaron bristled slightly. "Enough," he answered. "Some of the records from back then aren't the greatest." He was hedging more than a little with this last bit of information.

"Hmph," replied Agent Jayden, and Aaron groaned inwardly, knowing that Bernie would almost certainly have not done anything about the godawful mess that was their paperwork history before this man started poking around in it. "So the basics haven't changed, then? I'd like to look at the details of each body and the scene itself when I get out there. What's the new information you were talking about?"

"Well, we don't even know if it's connected. Right by all the women, right where their feet were all pointing, there were . . . more bones, and some other stuff. Some animal parts, I guess, and some old money, and other things. I was leaving to come get you just as they were starting to figure out what it was. I don't even know if any of those bones were human or not; maybe they've figured it out by now." Aaron stared as the other man's hands tapped out a rapid tattoo on the blank surface of the briefcase in his lap; he looked like he was typing on a keyboard that didn't exist.

"So this all started with one severed hand? You didn't know about it until someone gave you a hand? I'm confused by what happened."

"Well, Boom-boom brought it in, just about having conniptions. It's one of the ones that's sort of like a mummy. He mostly comes in with crazy stuff he's made up, so we weren't ready for a hand of a real dead person. I guess he saw one of the bodies that had come out of the ground a little ways and just yanked off the hand because he didn't want to haul the whole body in when he told us about it. Boom-boom's not really all there, most of the time."

". . . boom-boom?"

"I do apologize." Aaron actually had to dig in his memory for a second for the man's legal name. "You got a Sam Corning in your notes? In your glasses?"

"Yes. Samuel Corning, Esquire."

Aaron smirked. "I forgot he did that law degree by mail the first time he got sent to prison for a couple years. Pretty sure he ain't got a valid license at this point. We call him 'Boom-boom,' because he was so bad at running a meth lab he blew up his house. We still got him in a cell because he couldn't make bail after I arrested him for abuse of a corpse, if you want to talk to him. But he probably won't be that useful."

"Mm. We'll see." And with that, Agent Jayden apparently simply dismissed Aaron's presence, though he continued to fiddle with his briefcase and the air in front of him, muttering inaudibly. The chattering dispatch radio and the bizarrely gesturing man in the passenger seat made for an unsettling combination, as though Aaron were watching one TV show while listening to another. His jaw set in irritation at being treated like a chauffeur; he managed to relax it again by anticipating, with some pleasure, the ruckus that almost certainly result at the end of their ride, when this crazy damnyankee met the rest of the boys.