Paranormal Police-Book 1 - Foundations

Paranormal Group Conference Room, Australian Federal Police National Headquarters, Canberra

The Tasmanian Devil. The world's largest surviving carnivorous marsupial, the devil has a thick-set, squat build, with a relatively large, broad head and short, thick tail. The fur is mostly or wholly black, but white markings often occur on the rump and chest. Department of Natural Resources and Environment Tasmania

Mary Antonopoulos called the meeting to order. “Right, let’s keep it to first names, we don’t have time for all the ‘fancy’ stuff. Can we go around the table and get an update of where we are up to?”

Sergeant Fancy McCullop rolled her eyes at the pun, then went first, summating the information that they had on the shifters from the event. All except for one were now identified and profiles had been created. “Only Constable Smirn is even close to being in a sensitive position. Two others work at the Australian National University in the Earth Sciences department. We are expanding the net through their friends and family, still no red flags. The only statistical anomalies so far are they seem to be a bit healthier than normal, and they mostly have ‘bushwalking’ listed as a hobby.”

Mary asked, “Healthier?”

“They’re linked, with bushwalking as a hobby, we’d expect sprains, broken bones, etc, but none of them have had any. Very few sickies taken”

Sergeant Adam Trinidad went next. “Some of the IDs have been doctored or are fake.”

This bombshell created the expected mayhem.

“We have no idea how it was done and if push came to shove, we’d have almost no chance of proving it in a court of law, but I’d bet my career on these being falsified in some way. Is there anything in what we know that would cause them to want to change records?”

Assistant Commissioner Roger Roswald said, “We have some unconfirmed intelligence that they’re lifespan may be 2-3 times longer than normal.”

Adam thought for a minute, then said, “OK, that would be consistent. Most of the irregularities would make sense, if they are simply changing the birth date and location - turning over IDs every forty years or so. The remaining two, however, are a complete mystery. We can come up with no way that the records could have been falsified, but we can confirm that they just suddenly appeared in the Federal and various State’s records. One four years ago and the other ten years ago. We’ve launched a covert program to siphon off a complete copy of the information from each state into an archive. We’ll compare the live information to this secure archive every six months or so and simply track changes. This is probably something that the AFP should have been doing anyway and is certainly legal under our current framework. We have also confirmed that all warrants are in place to cover our current investigations, so that clock is ticking. However, with the falsified identities, we’ll be fine until the investigation finishes.”

Roger took the next spot. “An initial interview with one of the…suspects?”

Various suggestions of words to use instead of suspect were made around the table, and although ‘aliens’ was the most popular, no better option was found then ‘person of interest’.

Roger continued, “OK, the person of interest was forthcoming, seemed honest, consistent and very nervous.”

Fancy snorted.

“We have an interview with them, in about thirty minutes, and one of their parents to get more details. At no stage have they refused to cooperate, not even trying to obfuscate. They seemed more resigned that this had finally happened then surprised. We can’t get a good feel for how nervous they are as their fear level seemed to never drop below ‘extreme’ for long.”

Fancy snorted, again.

“We have our planed set of questions, here’s a copy, but at this stage our level of concern is going down, except for the mention of a dragon. All we need now are a Godzilla and T-Rex to set everyone off.”

Senior Constable Joey Smythe said, “Right, surveillance went about as expected when the suspect, I mean ‘Person of Interest’, is a trained police officer. The tailing seemed to have gone off well, but the stationary surveillance was spotted within minutes of setting up near their premises. The POI sauntered out and spoke to the team, letting them know to ask if they needed anything. Again, they didn’t seem surprised or worried by the surveillance. Other than that, it’s been all smooth sailing.”

Tasks were discussed among the group and deliverables for the afternoon were agreed on, and Fancy and Adam left the meeting.

Joey said, “Shit.”

Mary said, “Problem, Joey?”

“I think we need to blame Assistant Commissioner Roswald for this one. What was it you said about a Godzilla or a T-Rex?”

“Go on, Joey.”

“We’ve been trying out the new, super stealth, super quiet, long-range drones on this, mainly just to get a feel for how they will operate. This just came in.”

A video appeared up on the large screen, showing Alexa standing with two older people and two younger ones. The younger seemed to have sheets draped over them.

A young boy stood in the middle of the three adults and then disappeared. A minute later the sheet was removed showing a Tasmanian Devil. This changed back and forwards into a boy a few times. Next the girl took his place, but this time it was easy to see what happened. She turned into a dinosaur.

Joey froze the frame and enlarged the image.

“Now I know it’s not a t-rex, but really, hexing us with a mention of a dinosaur?”

Roger said, “So about how big are we talking?”

Joey manipulated the image and said, “Six meters or so? Something like that.”

“What sort of dinosaur is it?”

“Dunno. It wasn’t in any of those dinosaur movies, so I’ve got no idea.”