TITLE: Into the Abyss (Working Title)

This fic should start posting around the beginning of March.

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Your memory is a monster, you forget – it doesn't. It simply files things away. It keeps things for you, or hides things from you – and summons them to your recall with a will of its own. You think you have a memory; but it has you!

"A Prayer for Owen Meany" – John Irving

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Teaser

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Summer 1984

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"Jump! Jump! Jump!"

Marty inched closer to the edge, carefully walking over the rocky terrain in his Converse sneakers. He stood at the cliff and looked down to see his friends staring up at him, chanting "Jump!" over and over. The sun was directly above, beating down on him and making the back of his neck hot. It also made the world around him impossibly bright white so that even the water below didn't look blue. The sun's rays were bouncing off the water's waves making it sparkle like fireworks.

He could feel his heart thundering in his chest and he could hear his blood pumping in his ears. Resolved, he took a deep breath and turned around, walking back to safer ground. He removed his baseball cap and tossed it onto the ground near a bush before pulling off his t-shirt and toeing off his sneakers, tossing them in the same general area.

He slowly shuffled back to the edge, the rocks digging into the soles of his bare feet. The ground was hot from the sun and it burned the bottoms of his feet. He suddenly remembered reading in National Geographic about young boys in tribes who had to walk across a bed of hot coals as a right of passage into manhood. He wondered if they felt as nervous as he did right now or if they just knew they had to do it and didn't think twice.

Because he was having second thoughts and third and fourth…

"Jump! Jump!"

He reached the edge and looked down, wondering why on earth he agreed to this dare. It was a documented camp legend that only the bravest boys jumped off the cliff. While he always considered himself brave he couldn't help but wonder if it was more suicidal than bravery. After all, every other kid who tried was either killed or was severely disabled or was never seen or heard from again. At least that was what he was told. No one could quite recall having actually met someone who made the jump. Of course, legend also told that the boys who survived the jump bragged about seeing things deep in those watery depths. The abyss is what they called it, claiming to see fishes that were bigger than them, with big buggy eyes and long elegant fins. There was also talk of a mermaid who lived in an underwater lair. No accounts could be verified, which is how he ended up in this predicament.

"Jump! Jump!"

He inched closer to the ledge, the tips of his toes clutching onto the dirt and rock that hung over the side. Using his hand he wiped the sweat from his brow and rubbed it against his shorts.

"You can do this, Marty," he mumbled to himself as he held out his arms, bent his knees and…

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Chapter 1

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Present day…

In the moonlight shadows of the bedroom Martin shifted trying to seek out some warmth. He reached down to try and pull up the blanket but finding no luck. He cracked open one eye to see that he was lying in the bed without so much as a wisp of a sheet covering his boxer clad body. He leaned up on his elbows and looked over to see that Sam was still the reigning queen as the stealer of covers. He sighed as he carefully reached over and tried to pull some of the sheets back over to his side without waking her up. While he was enjoying getting to sleep with her every night, sleeping next to her was an entirely different matter. She would inevitably hog all the blankets, leaving him to fend for himself. He glanced at her slumbering face, nestled peacefully in the bundle of sheets and blankets before he gently tugged on one end of the sheet trying hard not to disturb her.

And then his cell phone rang.

"Shit," he mumbled as he maneuvered back over to his side of the bed and grabbed his cell phone off the nightstand. He glanced at the clock on the night stand; the digital numbers illuminated a bright red and reading: 12:05 am. He felt Sam stir and roll over behind him. He turned to look at her, her eyes blinking as they tried to focus in the darkness. He flipped open his cell phone and answered, "Fitzgerald."

"Hi Martin, sorry to wake you," Jack's gruff voice greeted him.

"What's up, Jack?" he said, casting a quick glance at Sam who was watching him questioningly.

"I need you to come down to the office," he said, skipping any pleasantries.

"I'm on my way," he replied before clicking off his cell phone. He rubbed his weary eyes and yawned, tilting his head side to side trying to fully wake up.

Sam sat up, holding the sheet over her bare chest. "Do we have a case?"

"I guess so but unless he calls you directly you should just go back to sleep," he stood up, clad only in his boxer briefs and walked to the chair in the corner of the bedroom. He picked up his discarded trousers and said, "You're not on call tonight so you might as well get some rest before hitting the case tomorrow morning."

She laid back down, her head resting on the pillow but her eyes still watching him. "You're probably right."

He grabbed his shirt, jacket and shoes and moved to the side of the bed, leaning over to kiss her. "I love it when you think I am actually right."

She smiled, her body looking soft and languid beneath him and whispered, "Well, don't let it go to you head, it doesn't happen very often"

He smiled and moved the final few inches to kiss her squarely on the mouth. "See you later."

"Later," she replied before closing her eyes and rolling back over to go to sleep, pulling all the covers back over with her in the process.

He shook his head at her before stepping out of the bedroom and heading to work.

Thirty minutes later he was on the elevator heading to the office. He watched the numbers light up marking each floor as the elevator ascended to the twelfth floor. He yawned between sips of the large cup of coffee he picked up on his way, hoping the caffeine would start taking effect very soon.

The elevator finally stopped and he stepped out. He didn't see Jack in his office so he continued down the hall to the bullpen. He glanced around and still no sign of Jack or anyone else from the team. Perplexed, he decided to wander over to see if Jack was in an interview room. As he turned the corner he saw Jack talking with Kyle Saracen who was an SAC in Violent Crimes. Neither men noticed him approach from behind, too engrossed in their conversation.

"Do you think he's for real?" Jack asked as he stared behind the one sided mirror at the middle-aged man sitting in the interview room.

"He knows details about all the cases that were never released to the press. Things he couldn't have known otherwise. Plus, he said he can produce the souvenirs as evidence if we can grant his request," Saracen replied as he sipped the last of his soda from the paper cup before tossing it in the trash can. "Jack, if he is the guy we need him to talk but do you really think that he can handle it?"

Jack shook his head and replied, "I hope so."

"Look, I want to know where those other bodies are buried but I also don't want to give this guy a chance to fuck with his mind either. He has enough victims stacked up, I don't want to give him another," Saracen said as he folded his arms across his barrel chest. "I can't imagine how I would react if I were put in his shoes."

"Whose shoes?" Martin asked, announcing his presence.

"Good, you're here," Jack said as he stepped away from the mirror. "Why don't we go in my office so we can talk?" He started to lead him down the hall when Martin stopped and glanced at the gray haired man in the interview room.

"Who's he?" he asked as he glanced at the man sitting at the table, looking relaxed and unconcerned about his surroundings. He looked as if he were in a café waiting on his meal to be served instead of a federal interview room.

"I'll tell you in my office," Jack replied as he started down the hall, not giving Martin a chance to ask another question.

Once the three men were in his office Jack closed the door and told Martin and Kyle to sit down on the sofa. He wasn't sure why, but there was something in the way Jack was acting that set him on edge. His eyes were darting between the two men before he finally said, "What's going on? You called me in the middle of the night to come down right away, what's up?"

Jack sat down on the chair across from the sofa and said, "Kyle called me earlier this evening to tell me that Alan Schneider, that man in the interview room, has confessed to a series of murders of young boys going as far back as the late seventies to the mid nineties." He paused and finished, "Thirteen total."

It took Martin a moment to process that revelation before he finally said, "Why is he confessing now?"

"He won't say," Kyle answered as he stood up and picked up a large stack of case files that were sitting on Jack's desk. "He gave us just enough information so we could confirm that he is who he says he is; details from cases that he could never have known if he wasn't the killer."

"I still don't get why I am here," Martin replied as he put his cup on coffee down on the table so he could flip through the files. Inside were pictures of young, cheerful boys in school photos alongside grisly crime scene portraits of their young mutilated bodies in shallow graves. His heart clenched at all of these boys lives cut tragically short. "If he confessed to all the crimes, why do you need me?"

Saracen glanced at Jack before explaining, "Schneider not only confessed to killing the thirteen that we know about but he also claims that he killed three more that we still haven't found."

Martin nodded his head and said, "So do you want me to work the case? See if I can learn any more facts about the other boys…"

"Actually, Martin we need a lot more than that," Jack said, his words said carefully and slowly. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. "Schneider said he is willing to reveal where we can find the boys but he won't tell us – at least not directly."

"You lost me," he replied as he closed the file and fixed his gaze on Jack.

"He wants to talk to the boy he said got away," Jack breathed out.

"Got away?" Martin repeated.

Saracen shifted in his seat and said, "He claims that one of the boys taken was by accident. That he meant to get his friend but there was some confusion and he ended up snagging the wrong kid."

Martin furrowed his brow in confusion and asked, "So, you want me to look for the boy he meant to take?"

Jack shook his head and replied, "No, we know who the boy is." He took a deep breath and said, "Martin, you were that boy."