If the security detail was Chief Martinez’s men, they didn’t identify themselves as such. Dr. Vickers had not been able to ask them many questions, but they clearly knew more about him than he would have strictly preferred. He felt entirely flustered, and his tea had gone cold during their interrogation. Waiting a few moments after they finally left, he rushed over to the front door and locked it, pulling the blinds shut as well. He adjusted his shirt and smoothed his hair back as if they had actually roughed him up, and glanced around the museum, as if they had tossed it. Although not a single item was out of place, he still could not help but feel violated. Hands shaking as he lifted his tepid tea to his lips, he struggled deciding as to what, exactly, he should do. For just a few moments, he decided he would finish his tea. And then, perhaps, he might call it an early day and head home for the evening. Within just a few minutes of making the decision, Dr. Vickers had collected his briefcase and lunch bag and was setting the alarm on the back door. He locked the Aerostar doors the moment that he was inside of the van, sat looking at the back door of the museum, the dumpster enclosure, and a stack of empty boxes behind the neighbors’ businesses. Everything was exactly as it should be. The agents were gone, and he was going home. He turned the key and started the van.

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Dr. Kent Vickers only wished that the event was, as had often been insinuated over the decades, merely a figment of his childish imagination. Unfortunately, and despite having been obliged to retell the story so many times that even he could not be certain of the details any longer, he still remembered exactly how he had felt that entire time. On occasion, upon recognizing a certain dusty pine scent or sometimes even a particularly heavy petrichor odor, he found himself seized by the memory of that night, an emotional state which he remembered so viscerally that the inexplicable panic could easily leave him incapacitated.