According to Miss Saron, there was a man with strange behavior in a park last night. She was there after dinner with her family. The man was wearing a black, long jacket, a flat cap, and from his silhouette, she noticed a long chest-length beard. A man with a similar description had disappeared after going to a museum in New York- I said.
Well, detective Henley, It seems that there may be a connection, but there is no concrete evidence about a man missing. Until we find the body, we can say that the man might have escaped. Taking into consideration that he was or is a grown man with debts and economic issues, to say the least.- Responded my boss, police captain, Evelyn Choi.
I bowed, assented, and left the office. It wasn’t the first time that an aged man disappeared after being seen in that exact park, acting in dissociative manners. Weirdly off, the captain always dismissed any of my hypotheses.
My last case of the week was solved, and my next shift was in two days. Considering my family’s absence, trying to solve a case by myself wouldn’t harm anyone.
I arrived at Riverside park, in Manhattan. It was gloomy because of the continuous rain for the past few days. The park felt lonely, but I saw a few people walking beside the river. I approached the area where Miss Saron told me she had seen the strange man. Below the bank I found a couple of pennies, they weren’t American, if anything they were another’s country currency. Nevertheless, I kept them in my pocket, and kept looking.
After a couple of minutes, I went back to my office and did some research on what I had found. A cigarette was sent for a DNA test, and I took some pictures of large shoe footprints so that my forensic investigator could take a look at it. Aside from those objects, there wasn’t much trash around that specific area, or I simply missed it.
That night I went home peacefully, just walking around my neighborhood (a thing that I usually avoided because of the crowds and contamination). While I was walking, I saw a poster with a sign. It was close to an alley. Even though it seemed familiar, I didn’t make anything of it and kept walking. When I was a few blocks away from that alley, I remembered the coins in my pocket. Which had the exact same symbol as the poster.
Rushing, I went back and remembered my high school Greek classes. I slept through them most of the time, but I did remember the Theta and Phi.
These signs were both math symbols and part of the dead language.
I took the poster home and started researching.
“New York. Theta and Phi.” “Greek symbols, Manhattan” “Alley Greek symbols, Manhattan” were some of the word combinations I used until I noticed a weird tint mark. It was a blue opaque color, but I remembered I had only seen that color of tint in the pens given as a gift from the museum.
I looked at the time, it was still 7 pm.
Swiftly, I ran with my jacket in hand and arrived at the Museum of Contemporaneous Art. It was a small building with large windows instead of walls. I barely entered, since it was shooting down soon. I spent some time looking at the art pieces, and I promised to come back. For the time being, I went to the gift shop and souvenir area. They gave me a pen with a notebook and a pin. Aside from the gifts, I bought a box.
The reason behind my sudden investment in the box was simple, the box’s name was “Pandora’s box” being of Greek mythology. The box was brown, probably made of high-quality wood, it had round corners and three signs on top: the Theta, Phi, and Pi. But the museum didn’t have any exposition about mythology, and the box was hidden on one of the shop’s shelves.
I went back home and decided to open the box. After checking the tint color of the pen on the poster (Which did match the blue tint mark).
The box had a strange opening, not the kind that needed a key. One, like the one for a bending machine. So, I used the coins that I found in the park, instead. Inside, there were a couple of bottles with liquids of different colors, some narrower than others.
One was blue and said Pride. Another one was red and said Wrath. There were also three bottles of a similar yellowish tone that said: Envy, Greed, and Sloth.
At first, curiosity made me want to open them, but I waited till the next day.
I met Charles at a Café, he is the forensic investigator I had mentioned previously. He checked and analyzed the substances inside the bottle and determined that they were Bath Salts (a type of drug that causes hallucinations). These aren’t technically illegal, so they were easy to find on the streets of Manhattan.
That afternoon, I went to my office and looked for some old cases related to Bath Salts. There were only a few, but there was a shop near my place where they sold Bath Salts and also helped men with economic problems if they helped with the distribution of a tint.
Charles was still with me, so I gave him the tint of the pen from the museum.
It also marked positive for bath salts.
Why was a museum selling a box of this kind? Why did this tint have the same components as Bath Salts? What relation did It have to the disappeared men? Is there any reason for the color of the bottles and the names given to them?
All the clues and facts united into one conclusion, redemption.
I had a couple of hours before my next shift, so I rushed to the museum. It was still open, but the patrol officer did find my recurrent visits suspicious. Later, I found an old man wandering around the shop. The behavior of the cashier was quite different from when I bought the box yesterday. She looked interested and was attentive to the man’s moves, while with me, she was indifferent.
I approached her, blocked her sight from the old man. I wanted her to notice that I knew she was up to something. Furthermore, she kept staring back.
Excuse me, Miss. May I talk to you for a second?
I’m truly sorry, but I can’t find my spot here at the shop. So, If you aren’t going to buy anything, I would appreciate it if you leave the establishment.
I looked at her with rather cold and demanding eyes. Immediately, she changed her focus to me and nodded.
An informal interrogation started, without telling the woman who I was, I started questioning her behavior and subtly introduced the situation of the disappeared men. Her behavior changed, and she abruptly put her hand in her pocket.
May I see what’s in your pocket, Miss?
My pocket? There’s nothing in my pocket. This overall isn’t even mine, it’s just my uniform.
I showed her my detective badge, she flinched and started explaining how she was being manipulated to offer the box to old shabby men, who entered the shop. She gave me her phone and pointed at a chat named “Boss”.
Whoever that was probably already knew about me questioning the cashier, either way, I took her phone.
Those messages were from a week ago, around the time when the man had disappeared.
These past 2 days were full of rushing over to places. I reached the alley where I had found the poster. It smelled like cigarettes and trash, there was another smell. It wasn’t exactly pleasant.
There was a basement with an entrance from the outside, I went down some stairs that led me to a different environment. It was an office with dim lights and almost empty, except for the table, two chairs, and small sofas. It smelled like wood and leather. Everything seemed too quiet and too accessible, not even the basement door had locks. As if someone wanted me to get in.
Imprudently, I started looking into the drawers. Files about chemistry, museum plans, contracts, and accountability files filled the drawers. All organized by date.
The contracts had different male names, attached to them there was a page with personal information about each: Age, birthdate, address, bank account, ID, etc. These were all old men, there were around fifteen files with the same characteristics.
I took some pictures and planned on leaving, yet a grind stopped me. I rushed and sat on one of the chairs. A man with a brown leather jacket, black pants, dark hair, and a slightly dark skin tone entered through what seemed like the door of a safe.
You must be the new client, a little too young for my liking. Eve didn’t tell me anything about you. Let me notify her.- He looked troubled and angry- Did you bring the tint?
The tint is… outside, I’ll go pick- the sound of Eve’s phone interrupted me and filled the whole darkroom.
The man slowly moved his hand towards his pocket. Before he could fire, I shot him in the leg. He started crawling towards the desk, but I took his gun and tied him up. My boss came with reinforcements a couple of minutes after I called her.
It seemed like Phi was an organization run by a sociopath with incredible oral skills. My encounter with him was simply a moment of negligence that made their whole twisted organization slip.
Theodor Phillips started an organization that tricked old men to work for him and get financial help. The tint itself was made of the material inside the “Pandora’s Box” and the names were five of the seven stages of grief since he considered that every man that was in need of money and was willing to do anything to get out of trouble was the reincarnation of these sins. Even though not all men consume the Bath salts, the constant interaction with the tint caused subnormal behavior to the workers. Some workers were curious and did try the substances.
Phillips was aware of the problem and instead of stopping it, he continued these actions driven by an urge of unknown precedence caused to hurt the elderly.
He had an obsession with his Greek ascendancy, which increased his ego and, according to him, made him more interesting. Aside, he had studied mathematics and administration in college. Eve was being manipulated by him, but still was conscious and more importantly, got an income from these actions.
The men that had disappeared probably had been exposed to these substances, and the hallucinations led them to the depths of the Hudson River.
Even though I was illegally investigating and doing it off-hours, I found about the disappearance of several men, which later led to the corpse floating underneath a bridge in a state of decomposition. These were found after some tracks.
Phillips’s motifs behind the illegal actions, fraud, and manipulated or indirect suicide towards the men were uncertain. But he would receive his respective punishment.
The problem was that Eve had escaped, and no one had seen her. After certain interrogations, Theodor Phillips ended up being only the tip of the iceberg from a much larger problem yet to rise.
