The Lurker in the Dark

By J. Scot Witty

Set in the jazz age of the late 1920's, private detective, Maurice Landgrave, is accused of killing his friend and partner, David Archer. With only three weeks before his trial, he and budding detective Emmeline Quinn must navigate through the plots, intrigue, and conspiracies of international thieves, occultists, gangsters, and modern-day robbe

• Language: English
• Publisher: Authors' Tranquility Press
• Release date: Jan 25, 2023
• ISBN: 9781959579526

J. Scot Witty

An adventurous soul having hiked across the United States in his early life, J.Scot Witty became rooted in ideas rather than places. With a fascination for words,storytelling became second nature at a young age. Using his rampant imagination, he hascreated new worlds in his writing with a strong focus and preoccupation on characterbuilding. Currently living in Ithaca NY, when not writing, Witty enjoys time with his partnerand children, and playing fantasy role-playing games with the local children at the elementaryschools.During his thirty-five year tenure as a small business owner and manager, Witty hasdeveloped a strong passion for storytelling and became a game master. Witty's actual lifeexperiences, journeys, and adventures fuel an unwavering creative story and it is from herethat the writing launches. Out of his love of world history and study for many years, hebecame a teacher and is now a member of the Writers Guild of America. Witty views historythrough the lens of myth, legend, and wonder. It is with this magic that he enjoys expressingthe ideal that anything in life is possible. The struggle to answer the mystery of man's ownpotential and how it can easily go awry drives his writing.With his stories dealing mostly with the relationships of the characters and how they relateto each other, Witty hopes to effectively show how unity can still be achieved in diversity. "Asmuch as Americans in the U.S. would like to think that we are a melting pot of cultures, wehave become quite galvanized in the question of us vs them instead. Through his novels,Witty hopes to inspire hope and change as he is consistently involved with how to make adifference with today's environmental and socioeconomic issues.

Book preview

Prologue:

DEATH IN THE DARKNESS

IT WAS THE BEST OF TIMES, IT WAS THE WORST OF TIMES, IT WAS THE AGE OF WISDOM, IT WAS THE AGE OF FOOLISHNESS.

—Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

As the patrons sat in the darkened theater, shadows all with the light of the screen reflected in their eyes, those were the immortal words that suddenly appeared on the screen before them. Everyone was excited to see the moving picture film of the famous English director Frank Lloyd, and Mitchell Garvey, the mayor of Ithaca, was no exception. As he sat in the theater with so many of his neighbors, the images were all too familiar to him. The horror of the Great War was just beginning as the enemy started using airships to bomb England. With reports of German U-Boats near the coast of New York harbor, many were frightened of this new era of innovation. Many of Garvey’s neighbors had already left to join the fight that they had hoped would be the last war that man would know. President Wilson had promised that defeat would come swiftly for the Huns and as the unsuspecting patrons enjoyed a moment away from the news of the war relentlessly broadcasted on their radios, none would guess that before the end of the day, it would be known as ‘Bloody Sunday’ and most of their neighbors would be destined to never return.

Ithaca was a thriving city for its small size. The former president Teddy Roosevelt still frequented the local retreat located up river along the gorge built by the Quakers almost one hundred years ago. The city planning commission was building an elegant downtown district to rival most European cities. Garvey was doing his part to stamp out the poverty that plagued Central New York for decades. President Wilson had promised that innovation would bring prosperity to all, and the Strand Theatre was a testament to that. Prior to nineteen-fifteen, no one even saw a moving picture and in spite the cost of only fifteen cents a ticket, still a day’s wages for most, the theater was packed. As images of people living in small shacks appeared on the screen, Mitchell, thinking of the people who lived along the inlet in similar shacks, hoped that the prosperity he was bringing into the city would help to employ those who needed to be uplifted to be considered as one of the great cities.

Because of his ambitious political agenda, the city was becoming a shining star in New York State. Governor Whitman had already visited several times to compliment Garvey and his team. He was particularly impressed with the work of Edward Deer, the chief of police, who was working to mechanize the police department by training the officers to ride motorcycles, a new invention that propelled a human at breakneck speeds. Garvey reached over to home his wife’s hand when he caught the eye of Deer who was sitting next to her. He had the look of someone who needed a break. Garvey and Deer excused themselves and went into the lobby where men smoked habitually.

This moving picture thing is something isn’t it, Garvey asked Deer.

Sure, but it will never last. I think the idea of going to the flickers will be a fad that will pass before we know it, Deer said while lighting a cigar. Hey what ever happened with that fella you wanted me to look into? What was his name?

Robert Surfeit. We could not come to an agreement. Seems the Panatlas Foundation wants to purchase several buildings throughout the city. They want to make Ithaca their base of operation in their international endeavors now that all of Europe is at war. Shame too, they want to invest millions into city development and between you and I, we could really use it.

Deer smiled and said, What’s the problem then? I told you they are not connected to the mob. Why the hesitation? Think of what you can do with that money. Schools, new housing developments for the poor, a new coal power plant, a new pumping station and maybe even a new college for the local kids who can’t get into the university. It would certainly do wanders to solve the crime problem. Hell, they keep talking about that new covering for dirt roads, I am sure that would synch a win for the next election.

They want to buy the City Hall building, Garvey pointed out.

So what, so you move City Hall. Or sell them something else. I am sure we can find them someplace to build whatever they want to build. Besides, a new police department building would be nice.

It is a new building, Garvey rolled his eyes. But that is the problem, they want very specific buildings throughout the city. He said it has something to do with how the planets will line up or some nonsense. It all sounded like religious mumbo jumbo to me. Beside I offered them land inside the city, and they said no. They even want to build over the Municipal Parking Garage. That is a brand-new building and with the growing number of automobiles being sold in the city, where would we park? Oh, and get this, they want to buy and dismantle the trolley. What kind of craziness is that?

You sure this guy wasn’t sent by someone trying to ruin you, Deer asked in his policeman manner.

Garvey thought for a moment and asked, Why do you think someone would want to ruin me? I am not anyone. I think I had more power before I stepped down from the State Assembly. It is not like I am the governor or anything.

Mitch, this city was nothing until you made it something. Everywhere you look, that is your work. You even brought the Strand here. These people are enjoying a moving picture for the first time of their lives because of you. Someone with as much vision as you is bound to create enemies. You just keep your head down, my friend. Oh look, it must be intermission.

The two wives of the men talking came out of the theater accompanied by the masses who smiled at the mayor as they walked by and approached their husbands. Garvey leaned in and kissed his wife and smiled. How is the flick, he asked.

Miss Garvey, unimpressed, asked if they could go home. She had found the film quite depressing having been a kid from the streets herself. After some exchange between the couples, Garvey and his wife had decided to leave the theater early and spend the night in the comfort of their home in the heights. Edward told his wife that he would walk the mayor to his car and return. Don’t worry, my sweet. You won’t even know I was missing, he said. As he walked away from her, she had an overwhelming chilled feeling that came over her.

Garvey, his wife, and Deer walked the busy street toward the parking garage. Mrs. Garvey marveled at the shops as they walk past the plethora of stores on State Street. It only took a few short years for the business district, as it was being called, would start to grow and prosper attracting stores that you would have to travel to the city to shop. Staring at the mink stole in the window of one of the more prominent shops, she ran her fingers over the fox that was curled around her neck and wondered why someone would need such extravagance as that. She recanted when she accompanied her husband to political functions many of the woman who she considered friends would critique her inexpensive furs. A smile came across her face when she remembered the day they Mitch had given it to her. He was proud that day. Having spent most of his earnings to purchase it for her, he often remarked that it was their honeymoon and for that she had always loved it.

Realizing that she had been falling behind, Mrs. Garvey raced to catch up with the two men who were too lost in their conversation to realize they were missing one person. Suddenly she tripped and fell onto the cobblestones of the city street when she saw that she had broken the heel of her shoe and sprained her ankle in the process. She called out to Mitch who immediately came to her rescue. The two men balanced her from either side to help her get to the car. Unbeknownst to them, as they reached the parking garage where they had parked the car, they were being watched, followed by a mysterious figure in a black overcoat and wide-brimmed hat.

I will help you get her into the car, but then I have to skedaddle, exclaimed Deer.

Sure, thanks. I am not sure how I would do this without you.

The two men helped Garvey’s injured wife to the car and braced her while Mitch went to the far side the help her get to her seat. He carefully lifted her legs and guided her to the padded seat in the passenger side of the car. With his wife safely situated in the car, Mitch jumped out to return to the passenger side of the vehicle.

Thank you for all your help, he said, offering a firm handshake to his friend and colleague.

Before the police chief could utter a word, the unmistakable sound of the rifle bolt being pulled back. Both men raised their hands and turned around slowly. They did not recognize the man with the gun but understood that he was serious. Standing in the dark, the gunman was wearing a suit that was far more elaborate than any sold in the small city of Ithaca. His shoes reflected the electric light along the garage walls.

What do you want, Deer asked, but the man stood silent. The barrel of the Thompson Machinegun glistened in the dim light of the parking garage.

Garvey stood forward and said, Look, I have money. I can pay you. But as Garvey reached for his billfold from his vest pocket, the gun man squeezed the trigger. He held the trigger until the round cartridge was empty. Then he put a cigar into his mouth and lit it. He returned the gun underneath his coat and walked over to the two bodies lying on the pavement. An ash fell from his cigar as he removed a small revolver from his pocket and shot both men in the forehead. He smiled and relit his cigar as he quietly strolled out into the busy street. No one paid him any mention and when the police eventually arrived, nobody had remembered seeing the man leaving the garage.

Officer Jersey was the first to arrive on the scene. He was a beat officer and this was his beat. When he found the victims lying on the ground, he immediately ran out of the garage to the call box on the corner of the main cross street. After an hour had passed, more officers and detectives arrived to find Jersey working to keep the on-lookers away from the scene. Detectives Lewis and Archer had walked the two blocks from the police station. An ambulance was already parked at the entrance of the garage but had not moved the victims yet.

What do you think, Lewis asked.

Archer looked carefully and produced a small metal ruler he kept in his pocket. He measured the bullet holes in the metal plating of the automobile and compared them to the bullet holes in the wall behind the car. He then looked at the woman who was in a sitting position with her face pressed against the dashboard of the car.

Has anyone touched the body in the car, Archer asked the officer.

I am afraid that by the time I got back from the call box, people were crowded around the car already. I don’t know what it is about a dead body that brings out the morbidity in people, Officer Jersey replied.

Archer returned to the car and pulled the woman’s body forward to look at the bullet holes in her back. He then stood up and turned to Lewis when by this time was holding a handkerchief to his mouth to in order to keep himself from losing his lunch.

There was one man, Archer began. He stood about there and used some sort of auto rifle. Whatever it was firing forty-five caliber bullets. It should not be hard to find a rifle that fires that.

What makes you think that it wasn’t several men with pistols, Lewis asked.

Archer walked over to where he thought a single man would stand based on the bullet holes and announced, I want photos of all of these shoe prints in this area. One of them is our man. He then turned back to Lewis and explained, The bullets went right through the car, the seat, and killed the woman in the passenger side of the car. There is no pistol that I know of that would do that. In addition, the sheer number of bullets used was a bit excessive. I have never seen anything like this. We will want to consult with someone from Fort Drum. My guess is that this would have to be a military weapon of some sort.

Don’t worry; I will get someone on it. With the death of Chief Deer, that leaves me in charge until they replace him and I want every man looking for who is responsible for this. Does everyone hear me, Lewis announced to the officers on site. Put aside whatever cases you are working on! I want the man or men who did this found and in my jail by the week’s end. Is that clear to everyone?

In the months and years that followed, the Ithaca police never found the person who was responsible for killing the mayor and chief of police. As the Tommy Gun became more prevalent as a symbol of organized crime, the newspapers labeled the crime as a random gang violence act and it was soon forgotten. Archer never gave up looking for the man. He knew that one day he would come face to face with the person who had done this. As time marched on, the City of Ithaca seemed to develop a life of its own. The planning commissioner had a change of heart and granted the sale of various buildings to the Panatlas Foundation, which brought an unheard-of wealth into the city. New housing was being constructed, new stores were opening, and the trolley had become a thing of the past for it was considered a dinosaur of a bygone era. Ithaca had become an enlightened city of the future.

Several years prior, on the other side of the world, where empires have returned to the sand, gentile souls work diligently sifting the sand in search of knowledge and soon find themselves enthralled in a destiny written a millennia ago. The early morning sun began to settle over the scorching dunes of the Egyptian desert. After solving an ancient riddle found in an urn on the banks of the Nile, Professor Waverley and his team of experts of the Panatlas Foundation of Cambridge, England had relocated to a desolate location in the middle of what he called the Sahara Sea. The sand was fine, making it practically difficult to get near mixed with quantities of salt. They were far from any spec of civilization, and for their safety, Robert Surfeit, sensing that the team was near a great find, had brought several armed men with him who were keeping a vigilant watch along the horizon. The good professor was certain that they were near the hidden tomb of the pharaoh Akhenaton and was sure that he would find it. Robert Surfeit had arrived on the scene late, acting in the interest of the foundation to ensure that the artifacts would reach the museum of London.

Among Professor Waverley’s team was his wife Anne, a professor of ancient languages, Eric Beechen, a professor of mythology, and several students from Cambridge University. This was the first venture Cambridge had attempted and to share in the costs, the Panatlas Foundation was invited to support the dig. The foundation sent Robert Surfeit to smooth the ways with the Egyptian government to ensure the success of the expedition.

Bouncing across the sand with a small golden object was a young woman making her way from a small group of students digging in an area that had been deemed panned-out by the experts. She approached a large tent the team had been using to study any and all artifacts they had found in the area since their arrival. Where is Professor Waverley, she inquired.

An older, middle-aged man had stepped out from the rear of the tent where he was brushing sand from a water flask of the old kingdom period, Has your team finished filling in pit number nine yet?

Holding out a small gold medallion, she suggested it was something of importance, We found this in number nine while we were filling it in. It looks like what we are looking for, but I don’t recognize the inscription.

Professor Waverley took it from her delicate grasp and viewed it under the magnifying glass that was always found tied around his neck. His eyes widened as he looked up at her, Where did you find this exactly?

I had the team stop their work until I showed you this. Let me show you where it was located. Do you think it’s what we have been looking for? Victoria had been a student of Processor Waverley for many years and had hoped that one day she would find something important. After many digs and many years, she found a small golden crest that was used to seal a tomb. But was it the tomb they had been looking for? She guided Processor Waverley pit number nine where they had previously found nothing. As they were walking across the wood planks that made a path to the hole, a large plume of dust rose from the direction of the pit. Everyone at the dig had seen this sort of thing before and it could only mean one thing, there was a cave in. Victoria ran to the pit where many of her team was standing around yelling into the hole in the ground.

What happened here, Victoria exclaimed.

We were waiting for you to return when Pete saw something in the floor. He went down to take a look and the bottom fell in. We were just looking for a place to anchor the rope. Pete is not answering our calls.

Victoria tied the end of the rope to a lamp and lit it. She then began to lower the lamp into the pit. She took a sigh of relief when she saw that there were no snakes in the hole. Poisonous snakes were a real hazard with any dig and although Victoria was afraid of snakes, she was more involved with making an important find then succumbing to her fears. Pete was lying on the floor of the tomb and was not moving. She raised the lamp from the hole and checked to see if the end was secure. She called out to have one of the trucks moved closer to the worksite when more of the crew began to gather around the hole. Derik Radcliff, head of the security team brought in by the Panatlas Foundation drove the truck over and parked it as close to the pit as possible. Victoria handed him the end of the rope and alerted him that she was going into the pit to get Pete.

Victoria tied the rope around her waist and tested it. She instructed her team to hold the line and lower her into the pit. As they held onto the rope, they lowered the small woman into the darkened hole. Once she reached the bottom, she tied the rope around Pete who was still unconscious and yelled for them to lift him up. While Pete was being lifted to safety, Victoria took a flashlight out from her pocket and began to look around. There were paintings of Egyptian gods along the walls with hieroglyphs everywhere. At the far end of the room was a horde of items that would have belonged to the god-king himself. Along one wall was a large Egyptian boat intended to take the pharaoh to the next world, but she did not find a sarcophagus anywhere. Curious, she climbed up a small step setting next to the boat in order to look in to see its contents, but she was not prepared to find what she had seen. Resting at the center of the boat, the king’s sarcophagus had been placed inside as it was prepared to leave this world for the next. She began to shine the light of her flashlight around and had determined that the tomb had not been disturbed since it was sealed so many millennia ago. She ran to the pit opening where the rope was waiting for her to be pulled back to the surface.

Looking up at the concerned faces above, she yelled, full of excitement, Please lower the equipment and professor, you need to get down here right away. I think we found what we are looking for.

Soon cameras and lamps were lowered down. Victoria quickly took the equipment and began to feverishly set them up to chronicle everything in the tomb before anyone had a chance to move it. Soon professor Waverley was lowered into the hole and as he saw the tomb, his eyes widened. When he reached the bottom, he looked around at the marvels of a time long passed. There were items made of every metal known to man found inside. Along the walls, pictograms told the story of a king who misguidedly led his people to the ends of the earth to their deaths. Professor Waverley followed the pictograms across the length of the wall to a carnal belief of the one god who had promised the king of Egypt the power to control the world itself if he would open the pathway to a dark dimension but before he could fulfill his desired hunger for power, his wife, Kiya, had betrayed him to the rebellion led by Queen Nefertiti. He was slew by Kiya with a sacred dagger believed to have mystical powers. With the belief that the pharaoh Akhenaton would rise from the dead, his followers had stolen his body and laid him to rest in this obscure, hidden location of the deep desert.

After several hours of taking photographs to document the find, Victoria had begun to arrange some of the more obscure items to document the tomb’s contents. While she and Professor Waverley were working to identify some of the more unique items that did not seem Egyptian at all, the silence of their work was disturbed by gun fire from above the tomb. A large truck that had been monitoring the developments of the expedition had driven into the camp. Men wearing black Arab style clothing came in with very European weapons and began killing everyone in the camp. Gunfire whittled though every tent, every table, and smashing every piece of equipment the expedition had brought. In confusion, many of the students tried to run away but the Arabic assassins hunted them down and killed every last person. Trapped deep inside the pit, Professor Waverley and Victoria searched for a way out but found only that they were trapped.

Professor Waverley remembering something he had seen on the wall writings and had returned to the wall and seemed to find what he was looking for. He returned to the far wall which looked like a false doorway to the underworld and began to utter what seemed like Egyptian incantations. He placed his fingers on the indentations that at first glance appeared to be made for the display of gems and pressed the wall. Clicking and cranking began to echo through the chamber as the door began to open and roll to one side. Victoria grabbed whatever she could fit in her pockets for fear that bandits were taking the camp and ran for the causeway that was opened by the secret door behind the professor.

Processor Waverley grabbed Victoria and pushed her into the causeway. He whispered for her to get far away before he closed the door. As the door sealed, she could hear gunfire from inside of the chamber. She turned and ran down a declining passage which was used for the workers who made the tomb. Running for her life, her flashlight led her to a large room that had been closed off by the shifting sands of the desert. She was trapped. She frantically began digging her way to the surface when she heard the bandits trying to break into the doorway she escaped through. She dropped everything she had been carrying and began scooping into the sand using only her hands. She had hoped that if she could dig her way to the surface, she would be free but as she clawed her way into the sand, the sounds of men running through the cause way echoed in her mind.

After several hours, Victoria was dragged out from the passageway and back into the king’s chamber. Lying on the floor was Professor Waverley, dead. The Arab bandits had taken everything that she had been carrying and began to raise her to the surface through the hole of the pit. Once she reached the open air of the desert, the bandits took her and dragged her to the area where the large tent had once been. The lead Arab walked up to Robert Surfeit who was sitting at the table studying the objects taken