PART 1
Three years later.
Jack didn’t like Sleepy Grove. Even the name itself bothered him, since it fit too well. It was as though the townsfolk of the quiet, placid suburb realized they lived in a place called “Sleepy Grove” and decided to live accordingly. Of course, the opposite could be considered. Perhaps a certain type of person is attracted to a suburb with a name like “Sleepy Grove.” In this place, adults had normal, stable jobs; the sort that could provide for their family, but never tempt them to pursue a dream of any degree of grandeur. The children went to school, competed in athletics, rehearsed for the theatre… all in the most mundane manner possible. Like something akin to livestock. And the boy named Jack didn’t like it one bit.
Of course, Jack lived a life with its own degree of simplicity. He watched the same old reruns of the same old sitcoms on television; he meandered aimlessly through the town’s shady, lonely woods; and he attended Sleepy Grove Christian, the town’s private middle school, on an inheritance derived from his parents. After that Tuesday, Jack hadn’t seen his parents again. Adults in the following days told him that his parents must have vanished. That the police would find them. At some point in the years following, someone in the police department must have signed some document and decided his parents had perished. After that, the town stopped telling the boy he’d see them again one day.
The adults treated Jack in a way he’d learn to call pity, and the children either avoided him, or pretended they hadn’t heard the rumors. They’d heard. Every last student in the entire school knew of the tall, freckled boy. And, most notably, of his mysteriously deceased parents.
Six months after Jack was told his parents had passed, he decided there wasn’t any reason he couldn’t change his last name. He didn’t have any other family, at least none he was aware of, and his original last name was of the exact sort that one might expect to find in a place as terrible as Sleepy Grove. It was boring, stood for everything wrong with his community, and he detested it.
After much consideration, he decided on “Ripper,” and added a middle name, “the.” He felt it was perhaps the first time in his entire life that he was allowed to demonstrate autonomy, and Jack was not one to squander an opportunity.
A reasonable person may ask how a town of likewise reasonable people would allow a recently orphaned boy to change his name to “Jack the Ripper.” If you asked the town notary (who Jack had implored to sign the documents he’d found on the internet), she’d look wistfully toward the heavens and tell you that it’s because people don’t like to be uncomfortable. While the name change certainly wasn’t legal (the paperwork was long outdated), to stop the boy from filing the form would require a bit of effort. They’d have to do something. This, for the average resident of Sleepy Grove, was an uncomfortable proposition. Hence, Jack the Ripper was born.
Nightmares came to the boy intermittently. He never bothered to tell anyone. How could he ever burden another with what he’d found in that bedroom?
*****
Toby Dawson was obsessed with time travel. Since he could walk, he’d desired nothing more than to travel backward (or forward, at a faster rate than normal) in time. The idea of time being the fourth dimension fascinated him. So much, in fact, that little Toby once drew a ‘timeline’ which wrapped around all of Sleepy Grove.
Said line involved multiple magic markers, sticks of chalk, and cans of spray paint, depending on the surface he was covering. Theoretically, it was supposed to demonstrate the cosmic insignificance of humanity as a whole. In practice it was merely a very, very long line. When he finished, he stood as tall as a little ten year old could, admiring the fruit of his effort.
Once he’d basked in its glory for long enough, he turned around. He happily addressed the local police officers who’d gathered to sit and watch Toby complete his line before reprimanding him, taking him back to his parents, and making him clean it all.
“Did you know,” inquired Toby, “that space and time are intrinsically linked?”
The police officers shared a glance, the sort of look that said something along that lines of did a ten year old just say ‘intrinsically’?
“No Toby,” officer Simons said, “I don’t suppose we did.”
“You see, it’s easy enough to travel through space.” Toby said.
Toby walked a few feet along his line.
“I’ve just done it now! In fact, we travel through space so often, we take it for granted.”
The boy stood still. “Even now, we’re zooming through the universe at unfathomable speeds. And yet…” Toby said, pensively, “we seem to know only how to traverse time in one way. It just feels… like something we’re missing in our understanding of the world, I think.”
“Maybe, Toby. Maybe.”
“Come on now,” said officer Jackson, “let’s get you home. We should probably pick up all sorts of paint remover on the way.”
Toby smiled, proudly showcasing his three missing teeth. His short blonde hair blew in the breeze.
“Don’t worry officer,” he said, walking to the patrol car, “I’m way ahead of you.”
Shortly after this incident, Toby would anonymously publish his first academic essay on time travel to much acclaim. He was, by definition, a boy genius.
*****
Ace took a drag from her e-cigarette, then set it back in her trench coat. In a couple years she’d switch to real cigarettes, like all the great detectives. She wiped her feet on a doormat that read “Aloha!” over an illustration of a sunny beach. She wondered where the Robertsons had acquired such a thing.
Stacy “Ace” Rawlings was known for one thing, and one thing only: being the single best investigator in all of Sleepy Grove. Despite being just sixteen years old, Stacy’s previous clients would all tell you the same thing of Ace. She got the job done, every time. Without fail.
Ace learned of her ‘knack’ at a young age, when she became the subject of every housewife’s gossip after deducing the endings to each Sherlock Holmes book in succession, usually before progressing halfway through the text. Her uncanny ability only improved, and before long, she was solving old Sleepy Grove PD mysteries (her father being the chief, she had access all the declassified files she could ask for). Most notably, Stacy caught the notorious “Midnight Marauder of Sleepy Grove,” a high school dropout who’d taken to killing the town’s pigeons and hanging the carcasses around town. The police had dropped the case a year prior due to a lack of evidence, yet after it hit Ace’s small, plastic toy desk, it was solved in days. To show their extreme gratitude, the police force gave Stacy a novelty police badge, leftover cake from the official police fridge, and a slight raise in her allowance (this, of course, the decision of her father).
Years of solved cases passed, and she was soon contracted by all sorts of people. Filing a police report in Sleepy Grove meant that within four days of filing, each and every Sleepy Grove resident would know. Word spreads in small towns. But if one hires a teenager, they get a special sort of discretion. This allowed the girl access to Sleepy Grove’s deepest and darkest secrets. Kids hired her to find their lost pets, adults hired her to bring evidence as to whether or not their spouse was cheating on them, and even the police (on occasion), to help with mysteries that they couldn’t solve on their own.
It just so happened that Ace was in the middle of exactly such a case. The entire Robertson family had gone missing in one night, and the police were mystified. They searched the home, checked through the Robertson’s cell phone records and emails, they even checked the search history on every computer they could find.
Zero. Not a trace.
She examined the scene. A simple, two story house. Your classic fare, with all the expected furnishings. Framed family photos adorned the wall adjacent to the creaky wooden staircase, questionable rug selections in each and every room served as evidence that the Robertsons… were a tacky bunch. Ace wrote this down on a fresh page in her leather notebook. Every detail mattered to Ace, and she operated under the perpetual assumption that a good detective doesn’t make sweeping assumptions. A memory flickered on the edges of her mind.
“Hey Dad,” Ace said, entering Chief Rawlings’ study, “you ever read any Hume?”
“I can’t think of a single worse start to a conversation,” Chief Rawlings said, closing the notebook he’d been scribbling in. “Are you reading this for school?”
“No, of course not. I’m just bored of mysteries. I solve ‘em all. At least, the easy ones, the one with answers. For the moment, I’ve moved on to mysteries I can’t solve, ya’ know, about capital ‘T’ Truth and stuff.”
“Oh, Stacy…”
“Anyway, he was talking about cause and effect, and for once, I understood exactly what he was on about. It’s like, well, we don’t really know much of anything at all. Does that make sense?”
“Not at all.”
Ace thought for a moment, but her father interrupted before she could continue.
“You know what? Forget I asked that.”
“No, it’s pretty simple, actually. It’s like, you keep telling me to study more like it’s gonna make me pass algebra. But how do you know one thing really leads to another? Well, probably from studying yourself. But you’re you! And I’m me. So really you can’t be sure.”
“Stacy, and I say this with nothing but love in my heart, you’re the smartest idiot who ever lived.”
“All I’m saying is you can’t be so sure everyone thinks like you. Maybe for me, watching movies is the best way for me to study.”
“Maybe you should go to bed.”
Ace sighed. “Alright.” She turned around, and began to close the study door.
“Hey, honey?” Chief Rawlings called.
“Yeah?”
“I love you. Try to get a good night’s sleep for once.”
“I will Dad, at least I will if this old, depressed guy stops making so many damn good points.”
The study door closed with a click. Chief Rawlings leaned back in his old leather chair, chuckling to himself.
“Oh Ayumi, I wish you could have seen what she’s becoming. She really is something,” he muttered.
The conversation didn’t go as Ace had hoped. Regardless, she resolved herself to keep an open mind. A detective could never be sure that one clue would lead to another, or exactly what could come in handy.
Tacky taste in furniture, Ace quickly scribbled before continuing down the hallway. With a slight nod, the detective snapped the notebook shut, readjusted her baseball cap, and continued into the home.
Odds and Ends 
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