Glimpses: Jon Brighton Mystery Series, #1

Have you ever caught a glimpse of something out of the corner of your eye?  It catches your attention enough so that you turn toward it, but when you try to look straight at it, it’s gone so you brush it off.  What if that glimpse was trying to tell you something important? 

Prologue 

The car had come to rest upside down on the edge of the creek bank.  There was glass everywhere and the wheels were still turning.  They screeched to a stop and jumped out of their truck.  You could still smell the rubber where she slid off the road.

One of the men ran down to the creek to see if she was still alive.  After looking at her, he turned around and yelled, Her neck’s broken.  There’s nothing we can do.

He climbed back up the creek bank and got in the truck.  Let’s go, he said.  We’ve got to get out of here.  As they spun out, he hit speed dial on his phone and said, Boss, we’ve got a problem.

Chapter 1

I thought I had it all worked out.  I was out of my tiny hometown and about to get my degree.  I figured I would move to Nashville and wait tables like every other college graduate until I could find a real job.  The one thing I knew for sure was that I wasn’t going back home. 

There was nothing there for me.  My mom was gone.  My dad owned a real estate agency that I had no interest in joining.  The other option was a chemical plant, which would have been even more fun.  The whole point of going to school had been to get away from all the above. 

Now nothing is going the way I planned.  I’m back in my hometown with no degree or job, and people are trying to kill me.  I guess I better start from the beginning.

My name is Jon Brighton.  I’m twenty-two and a senior at UT Martin.  Not quite six feet tall although I’ve been known to fudge that, especially on sports stats.  I wear my blond hair a little long and my eyes are hazel. I was a good athlete in high school, but my body wasn’t put together well enough to take it to the college level.  My knees and ankles just weren’t going to hold up to the pounding.  I stay active anyway because I’m borderline hyperactive and will play any sport or pickup game that I run across. 

It was late Fall.  I lived with my roommate Dave in an apartment right next to campus.  It was small with two bedrooms and an open area for a living room with a narrow bar separating it from the kitchen.  Most of the residents were students.  It wasn’t much but definitely a step up from the dorms. 

Dave and I moved in together our sophomore year.  He was a big guy from New Jersey who had walked onto the football team as a freshman but hadn’t made the cut.  He liked Martin, warm weather and southern belles so he stayed.  We met in the dorms our first year and had roomed together ever since.

I didn’t think too much about it at the time, but in retrospect, I should have paid more attention to something weird that happened to me one morning.

I slept through my alarm and when I woke up, I was drifting in between sleep and reality.  I’d been dreaming.  I wouldn’t say it was a nightmare but I was drenched in sweat and my heart was racing so it wasn’t pleasant either.  There had been the dark shape of a bird backlit by the sun, and it was rushing towards me.  It was on top of me and I woke up just before it hit me.  I lay there for a minute as it faded, took a few deep breaths and looked over at my alarm clock.  I was late for class so I jumped out of bed and sprinted around the room twice before I finally started to get a grip on reality.  I stopped in front of the bathroom mirror.  Brushing my teeth seemed like a good place to start.  I cleaned up a little bit, threw on some clothes and ran out the front door.  I could still make it in time and couldn’t afford to miss any classes. My grades were already suffering enough.  I hadn’t exactly been the poster boy for focus and motivation. 

I only had two semesters left to graduate and was totally stressed about what I was going to do after that.  By the time you reached your senior year, you either had a plan or you didn’t.  I had plenty of friends on both sides.  Some knew exactly what they were going to do.  They were headed off to Grad school, or Law school or the family business and seemed to have it all together.  Then there was my group.  We were all going to have college degrees and had no clue what to do with them.  My dad was lobbying to have me come back home and work for the agency.  I’d already spent some time working for him during summer breaks, and I’d rather sell a few organs than go that route.  You could get a pretty good price for a kidney these days, and I’d heard you could get by just fine on one so at least I had a back-up plan.

It was about a ten-minute dash to my class, which I did on foot because it would take too long to park if I drove.  I passed some early morning runners and a few people who looked as harried as I did.  I ran up the steps and down the hall and stopped for a minute to catch my breath.  I opened the auditorium door slowly and did my best to slip in without attracting any attention.  Ms. Cotton, my creative writing teacher, looked directly at me to let me know that she saw I was late.  So much for my attempt at stealth.  I sat down at the end of a row in the back.  Apparently we were reading a poem by Yates or Keats or one of those classic poets.  She was a good teacher and very passionate about literature, but in spite of that, half the class was looking glazed over and sleepy.

I was sitting there listening to her reading when I got a flash out of the corner of my eye that caused me to flinch.  I turned towards it and there was nothing there except the guy sitting next to me.  He was looking at me expectantly.

How do you like this poem?  I asked casually, as if jerking around in a panic was just my preferred form of exercise.

It’s fine, he said slowly.  It’s not making me freak out. 

I like to get animated when I’m getting my poetry on," I said, keeping a straight face and willing him to drop it. 

He shook his head and turned back towards Ms. Cotton.  I tried to pay attention to the poem and it hit me again.  This time I managed not to react.  Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the outline of a man in a hoodie. 

This is just great, I thought.  I was sick to my stomach.  It was a glimpse.

It had been years since I had to deal with them. Let’s talk about the shadow man for a minute.  That’s what I call a glimpse.  I had them when I was growing up.  They seemed harmless and mostly happened when I was playing games like hide and seek with other kids.  I always knew where they were because a glimpse of their hiding place would flash in the corner of my eye.  They could never figure out how I won every time.  I assumed, like any kid would, that everybody had them until I started talking about them.  People responded with wide eyes and whispered conversations.

I grew up hearing my grandmother say, Don’t act crazy, they’ll take you to Bolivar.  All we knew about Bolivar was that people who acted crazy disappeared there sometimes and might never be seen or heard from again.  Of course, she was referring to a psychiatric facility in the town of Bolivar, but in my mind Bolivar was just like the bogeyman under your bed.  I did not want to go to there.

By middle school, I had decided that the glimpses made me different and not in a good way.  I started ignoring them and they went away for the most part.  I certainly didn’t act on them or talk about them anymore.  By high school they were gone and I had almost forgotten about them.

Now they were back.  Not exactly what I needed in the midst of the chaos that was my life.

Chapter 2

After a long day of classes, I was back at the apartment trying to figure out what to do for dinner.  I was standing there looking at the dismal contents of our refrigerator when I had another flash of the hooded man.  This time it was stronger and he seemed to be coming at me.  Without thinking I raised my arm to protect myself.  While I was still in this ridiculous position, Dave came into the kitchen.  He stopped and looked at me with a questioning expression. 

I think this food in the fridge is alive, I said.  I swear I saw something moving in there. 

He laughed and said, Most of that stuff has only been in there for a few weeks, but there’s a bag of red liquid setting on top that I can’t even identify.

I looked at it and he was right.  It had been a tomato at one point and we’d been ignoring it for a couple of months. 

Well, we can’t eat here, I said as I tossed it into the garbage. 

Rather than clean up, Dave suggested that we grab a bite at Rosie’s Pub.  I decided to put the glimpse and the fact that I might be going crazy on hold.  A burger and a beer with Monday Night Football sounded much better than the potential food poisoning I was looking at in the fridge. 

The pub was around the corner just off campus.  When we walked in, there were already a few of our buddies sitting at a table.  They motioned us over and we joined them.  Pitchers of cheap beer were a staple at most of our hangouts, and they had obviously gotten a pretty good head start before we showed up.  There were several mini-conversations going on.  Some were lamenting the fact that midterms were coming up.  There was a squabble going on involving a girl that supposedly liked both guys and some discussions about tonight’s game and the spread.  Dave and I had a couple of burgers and a pitcher of beer.  I was trying to pay attention to the conversations, which could only be appreciated by guys our age, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the man in the hoodie.  Since I had no luck focusing on these important subjects and was not interested in the game, I ducked out early.

It was cool on the street and the wind had picked up.  I