The Forgotten Eden (2 page)

The other agents looked on, and for the moment seemed unsure of what to do next. Jack felt better about his own situation, as it appeared McNamee intimidated them. At least fifteen years younger than the others, Jack could tell he was just slightly older than himself.

“
I’d like to interview Mr. Kenney in private,” said Peter. “As you’ll be able to follow along just fine from outside the room, I hope you won’t mind my request. It’s easier for me to remain focused.”

He pointed to the surveillance cameras barely visible in each corner of the room. Reluctant, his colleagues moved to the door.

“
All right, then.” Reynolds tone revealed more irritation. “Holler if you need anything, Pete. This gives us extra time to visit with Jeremy Kenney. Maybe he’s ready to enlighten us a little more.”

He gave Jack one last menacing look before exiting the room with his partners. After a hushed prayer for his brother’s safety, Jack turned his attention to the lone federal agent in the room.

***

Peter McNamee smiled and moved over to Jack’s side of the table and picked up the chair. He extended his hand for Jack to shake, only slightly deterred by Jack’s indifference to him.

“
I guess a handshake may be a little inappropriate at this point,” he chuckled. “Have a seat, Jack. We’re probably going to be here for a while.”

“
Actually, I need to take a piss.”

Toward the back of the room was a small closet-sized room with a toilet and sink. The agent nodded that would be fine.

“
How about some coffee? Or, perhaps a Coke?” offered Peter. He moved over to a small refrigerator that sat beneath the coffee maker next to the door.

“
A Coke sounds great,” said Jack, before closing the bathroom door.

“
Yep. I’ll grab you one.”

Peter brought the soft drink and a cup of coffee for himself over to the table. Jack soon joined him there. His hair combed back he stood behind his chair; sizing up the man sitting across from him.

“
Please, sit down,” Peter told him, unpacking his duffel bag. He placed a pair of journals in front of him, along with a small recorder in the middle of the table. Jack studied the recorder as he sat down.

“
Do you really need this?” he asked. “I thought the surveillance shit in this place would be sufficient enough.”

He motioned to the windowless room around them. The mustard-yellow walls seemed enhanced by three overhead fluorescent lights that hung from the room’s fifteen-foot ceiling. The middle light hovered a few feet above the table.

“
The recorder is for my own personal use,” said Peter. “I’d like to review our session at a later time, if that’s okay with you.”

Jack shrugged his shoulders.

“
All right, then. This thing can run for several hours, should we need it. Are you ready to get started?”

“
Yeah, I guess so,” sighed Jack. “But, nothing’s changed since I started talking to your buddies two days ago. My story’s the same.”

Peter smiled and leaned forward. Blond, blue-eyed, and dressed in a blue Armani suit and gold necktie; he looked far too pretty to be a law enforcement agent.

“
Jack,” he said. “I haven’t heard it. All I’ve had a chance to look at is the original police report from Tuscaloosa, which simply states you were the one who found Dr. Oscar Mensch unconscious and then called for an ambulance. That, and the fact you were the last person we can identify who saw him alive in the hospital after he regained consciousness.”

Jack nodded in response, guardedly wondering if that was all the agent knew.

“
So, you just want information concerning Dr. Mensch and his death? That’s it?” He popped open his Coke and took a good-sized drink, grinning impishly. “It seems like a wasted use for that recorder, since it’ll take just a few minutes to answer whatever questions you have on that subject.”

“
Maybe...maybe not,” said Peter, his own wry smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “Dr. Mensch’s death will be our starting point. I’ve got other questions related to this whole mess in Tuscaloosa. Why don’t we take it one step at a time and see where we end up?”

Without waiting for an answer, he turned on the recorder. He marked the session’s intro with an identifier and picked up one of the journals sitting in front of him and leaned back in his chair. He, too, had an I.D. badge similar to the other agents. His read ‘RS638’ etched in gold, along with his photo in a stoic pose similar to Reynolds’ badge.

Jack snickered, thinking it must be part of the standard operating procedures for these guys…. To look like someone’s got a secure grip on their balls while threatening to yank them off should they crack so much as a sliver of a smile.

“
Now, then,” Peter began, ignoring Jack’s response. “On the night of May fourth, you found Dr. Oscar Mensch, Professor of Archaeology at the University of Alabama, lying unconscious in his living room. Is that accurate?”

Accurate yes, a good description, no. It should be Dr. Oscar Mensch, internationally renowned scholar and expert in the study of ancient civilizations. And boy what a bleeder, Agent, sir. Yes sirree, every surface in the living room was splattered with the man’s corpuscles.

“
Pretty much so,” Jack replied.

“
What exactly did you do when you found him?” asked Peter, eyeing Jack as if somehow aware of the random thoughts running through his mind. “Oh, and also, why were you visiting Dr. Mensch’s residence?”

“
I needed to talk to him about an upcoming expedition to the Andes in South America,” Jack explained, feeling a little uncomfortable under the agent’s penetrating gaze. “Jeremy, my brother, is working on his masters’ degree in ancient studies, and he wanted me to join him and a group of other grad students on their summer internship. Dr. Mensch and Dr. Sutherland were sponsoring the trip. Dr. Mensch was like a second father to me and my brother…. I’ll be graduating in a week, so it wasn’t like anything in my immediate future would prevent me from going.”

Peter was busy jotting down a few notes onto the back page of his journal, and Jack waited for him to finish. The agent raised his head and nodded when done.

“
I just wanted to reference the trip you mentioned,” he said. “Dr. Mensch was your brother’s academic advisor. Is that how you met him?”

“
Yeah, pretty much. I also took two undergraduate courses he taught, and guess I grew closer to him after being around him so much.”

“
Ah-huh….” Peter turned the journal back over, opening it again to a marked page near the front. “You’re graduating with a major in journalism, is that correct? Or, is it baseball?” He cracked another wry smile.

Jack also smiled a little. “I wish it was baseball. But I’ve got a knack for writing, I believe, and should do all right with that as a career.”

“
I see you were a two-time all-SEC selection during your sophomore and junior years—
and
, an all-American honorable selection during your junior year as well. I played a little ball myself back in high school.

“
Really?” Jack was surprised. Peter didn’t seem like the baseball type…a little too primped. “What position did you play?”

“
Centerfield,” he replied, releasing a low sigh. He smiled, sheepish. “I started all three years, though I never achieved the awards and accolades you did. Always wanted to be a star pitcher like yourself…. ”

His voice trailed off, the blueness in his eyes turning a shade lighter as he looked past Jack for a moment, so obvious in his nostalgia.

“
Well, you seem to have ended up okay,” offered Jack, eager to get the interview back on track. “I guess we can’t all be Roger Clemens.”

“
Yeah, I guess not,” Peter agreed, chuckling. “So, what happened this year?”

“
Tendonitis in the elbow of my throwing arm,” said Jack.

Now he was the one giving in to a reflective moment. He grimaced, his pain emotional instead of physical. The chronic ailment cut short his playing career and eliminated any chance of achieving his dream of reaching the pros.

“
Ah, I understand. That’s too bad.” Peter seemed genuinely disappointed for him. “Well, who knows, maybe you’ll become a successful journalist one day.”

“
That’d definitely be nice.”

Though unsure where this line of questions headed, Jack appreciated Peter’s approach as compared to Frank Reynolds or Steve Iverson’s. At least it didn’t hurt.

Peter paused to sip his coffee, and then continued.

“
Let’s revisit the night you found Dr. Mensch, Jack,” he said. “According to the report I’ve got here, the front door was slightly ajar, and when the professor didn’t respond to your knock or calls out to him, you went inside his house. That’s when you found him lying on the floor in the middle of his living room. Correct so far?”

“
Yes.”

“
You didn’t try to move him?”

“
No. But I did check his pulse. I mean, I thought he was dead. There was blood everywhere, and his face was covered with it. I couldn’t tell if he was breathing or not, and once I felt a slight pulse on his wrist, I immediately called for an ambulance.”

“
That’s consistent with the evidence,” said Peter. “Your shoes tracked blood from the living room to the phone in the kitchen. Other than the front door ajar and the ransacked living room, did you notice anything unusual or out of place?”

With the main floor in disarray, it was hard to tell if things were where they should’ve been in Dr. Mensch’s home. Jack did remember experiencing the creepy feeling of being watched while he stood on the professor’s front porch. While inside the house, he felt someone else’s presence with him. Perhaps someone hiding upstairs? Hard to say…but by the time the police and paramedics showed up he forgot about it, as so distressed about Dr. Mensch’s condition. He hadn’t thought about it again until he visited the professor in the hospital four days later.

“
No...well, maybe.”

Peter raised his eyebrows and motioned for him to continue.

“
It’s nothing I can prove, but I’m pretty sure there was somebody in the house when I arrived. I should’ve mentioned this to the cops that night, but it slipped my mind.”

“
I see,” said Peter, frowning slightly. “You’re probably unaware that the upstairs rooms were in much worse shape than what you saw on the main level.”

“
No, I wasn’t aware of that.”
Definitely
not, thought Jack, irritated no one else had told him this fact before now.

“
Okay…. Let’s move on to the eighth of May, the night Dr. Mensch died. Did you visit him in the hospital before his death?”

“
I tried, the morning following his attack. But the nurses on duty told me I couldn’t see him, that he was still unconscious. They said I could be there quite awhile before he might awaken. Dr. Sutherland was also there and told me to go on home. I guess he could tell I hadn’t slept much since the incident from the previous evening. He said he’d call me when Dr. Mensch regained consciousness.”

Jack paused to take another drink, and Peter used the opportunity to flip through a few pages in his journal while he sipped his coffee.

“
A nurse named Annette Rison stated you came to see Dr. Mensch around seven o’clock the evening of the eighth,” resumed Peter. “Tell me what happened from the time you got there until you left.”

“
Dr. Mensch had regained consciousness and I really looked forward to seeing him,” said Jack. “He was pretty weak and most of his head was covered in bandages. But he was glad to see me, even if he couldn’t talk much. Most of my time with him was spent sitting in a chair next to his bed. I stayed there for half an hour or so, and then left.”

“
According to the report, Nurse Rison stated you did leave around 7:35 p.m. What did you discuss with the professor?”

“
Nothing much. He felt too weak to have any real conversation. But, he did tell me I’d be welcome to join the expedition he and Dr. Sutherland planned for this summer.”

Jack smiled sadly as he reminisced.

“
Are you sure that was all you talked about? Nurse Rison stated she saw Dr. Mensch hand something to you as she came into his room to administer his evening medication.”

Peter studied Jack, as if caught in a lie regarding what really took place that night.

“
I honestly don’t recall that,” said Jack, a little nervous under Peter’s scrutiny, but determined to keep this fact from the agent’s awareness. “If anything, it could’ve been a cup or something. I remember helping him take a drink at least once…. That’s the last time I ever saw him—alive or dead. I couldn’t bring myself to go to the visitation at the funeral home.”

“
All right,” said Peter, thoughtfully. “As you know, Dr. Mensch was strangled shortly after you left the hospital. The coroner’s report placed his death around eight o’clock that evening. Oh, what the hell.”

He closed the journal and laid it back down on the table.

“
So, are we done?” asked Jack, hopeful this latest interrogation had ended. “I told you there wasn’t much to tell.”

Peter chuckled in response, though his eyes betrayed his seriousness.

“
On the contrary, we’ve just begun,” he advised. “True, we’re done with our questions in regard to Dr. Mensch—at least for now. Remember, I told you I’ve got other questions.”