CHAPTER 15: THE ANSWER TO ALL QUESTIONS
Everyone was up and ready to get on with the case. They have recently received another murder case—as told by Jonathan ‘coz he’s the only one staying back in the crime lab (like Grissom)—about another victim from the basketball team had been killed at his own home. Turned out that Gerald, the victim, was babysitting his neighbour’s kids when suddenly he was under attack by their ol’ friend The Urban Legend Copycat Killer. Both his arms were chopped of and they have found one dumped somewhere near the doghouse. They couldn’t find the other. His body was on the staircase and they assumed that he was trying to escape from the killer. Obviously, he was too late.
Needless to say, this was also one of the urban legends.
Now that the suspect’s gender had taken a swift turn, Lionel and Jeremy were soon out of the list of suspicion. Everyone was now looking for a girl with dyed burgundy hair and has a taste for blood.
Well, not exactly everyone. Judith still had doubts about the suspect. She still believed that the suspect was a guy and that this case was getting slightly personal. I mean getting back at someone who had bullied you sure wasn’t a big crime—she had a few shares of getting back at people—but to kill someone for it, that was too much. She had Elaine as backup to her theory but it’s just not enough to convince Jonathan otherwise. She had to get to the real culprit before the whole basketball team gets mauled or something even worse happen.
While the CSI team was trying to figure out who the culprit was, Jonathan was busy hooking up some more papers on protective custody. This time, he wasn’t taking any chances. He was going to make sure that every one of those possible victims made it out of this hellish nightmare alive. He was planning to go to SM Victoria Institution and gather the rest of the basketball team to announce their protective custody plan. At first, Rebecca volunteered to go—she definitely had a knack of wanting to announce to the people that she was going to save the world or something—but instead, Jonathan chose Judith to go with him. Elaine could guess what it was all about, but she’d rather not say anything. She could tell by Jonathan’s tone and by the looks of things that he and Judith needed to be alone, so when she noticed the rest wanting to go on this ‘rescue mission’, she dragged them away and said loudly on purpose that she needed their help on cracking more evidence.
In the car, Judith and Jonathan discussed briefly on Jonathan’s favourite anime like Gundam Wing, Evangelion and Gatekeepers. Not that she had much idea about the anime, but she entertained him just the same. Their topic slowly drifted towards the case.
“So, any leads yet to who might be the culprit?” Judith asked.
“Not much,” Jonathan admitted. “What I’ve learnt from Jeremy’s personal background was that he never had many girlfriends. He had one or two during Form 1 or 2, but they weren’t serious, and it was the girls who broke it off. And he’s not exactly the most popular guy among girls either. He pretty much keeps himself to himself. I can’t figure out who could have liked him so much to be willing to kill for him.”
“What about friends outside of school?”
“He’s, like what his friends said, a living, breathing human geek. Besides basketball or any other extra curricular activities, he doesn’t go out much. Like I said, not very popular. You? Who do you think killed those people?”
“I still think it’s a guy,” Judith replied firmly, “and it has to be one of the members in the basketball team.”
“Like who? I mean almost everyone there bullies Jeremy and none of them really gives a darn about him,” Jonathan said as he took a left turn. “Even his group of best friends bullied him with that prank. Who else can you expect?”
“Maybe. Just maybe…” Judith tapped her chin thoughtfully, her mind obviously working. Jonathan let out an exasperated sigh.
“Just let it go, Jude. The suspect is already obvious. You don’t have to cramp your brain trying to figure out what’s not possible.”
“Now you are acting like a walking contradiction!” Judith exclaimed, glaring at Jonathan accusingly. “You always teach me to think outside the box, suspect the unsuspected and always look for the non-obvious ones, and yet you are not practicing what you preach!”
“Well, sorry for not teaching you that when things are already screaming guilty at your face, you shouldn’t think otherwise,” Jonathan said, annoyed, and stopped when there was a red light.
“Just hush and let me think for a moment, alright?” Judith said and went back to her thoughts.
Jonathan sighed and let her be for a while. Judith continued to have that serious look on her face trying to figure out the whole thing and trying to come up with a logical theory for all this. Jonathan couldn’t help feeling that she looked almost like Detective Conan or Hajime Kindaichi when she did that. After a few more minutes, they’ve finally reached SM Victoria Institution. Judith was still lost in her thoughts to notice and Jonathan had to shake her back to reality.
“Hey, baka-onna. We’re here!”
“Huh?” Judith was knocked out of her senses almost immediately. “Sorry, wasn’t paying attention. Let’s go.”
“Do you remember to bring the documents with you?” Jonathan asked.
“Yeah, I have,” Judith waved a brown envelope at him.
As Jonathan locked the car, without looking at Judith, he asked, “Jude, is there anything you want to tell me about?”
“What do you mean?” Judith asked, slightly surprised, as if she knew what Jonathan meant.
“You know what I mean. It’s not right to bottle it up and keep as a secret, you know. I can see that something has happened last night and that’s why you’re wracking your brains so much. And you wouldn’t tell me what. I thought we had a deal about not keeping secrets to each other.”
“My personal life is none of your concern anymore,” Judith replied in a serious tone, “and you shouldn’t be prying into other people’s business unless it’s professionally important. Besides I never made such a deal. You made it up.”
Jonathan wanted to rebut her again but finally decided against it, sighing, “Fine, whatever. Sooner or later you’re gonna come clean with me.”
They walked all the way to the Headmaster’s office to tell him about their intention. The Headmaster soon sent for the office boy to tell the people in charge of the P.A. system to make an announcement that all the basketball players gather at the basketball court immediately. The teens did as they were told and within minutes, they were all present and were sitting on the spectators’ seat listening carefully to Jonathan’s plans and instructions about their protective custody issue. Just then, Jonathan noticed that there were a few people missing.
“Where are Jeremy and Lionel?” Jonathan asked.
“Lionel has gone off to Subang Jaya with his family to bury the brother and sister,” one of the team members voiced out. “Jeremy is calling in sick today and won’t be in school for a month.”
“A month?” Judith was taken aback. “What was he going to do at home for a month?”
“Personal therapy, that’s what I heard,” another member replied. “He got into some sort of accident and had to see a shrink for a month. Poor guy, scared out of his wits that day.”
“What happened?”
“Well, from what I heard, Gerald—God bless his soul—locked him in the sports room for the whole night. That darn sports room hasn’t had its light bulb fixed in years now and he was left there in the dark all alone. The janitor found him and he was curled up there talking nonsense like a madman. Lionel was the one who drove him home and now the shrink is pretty much trying to help him to get back to reality and cope with his fear. I think that whoever is afraid of the dark sure is a wimp!”
“That’s exactly the kind of attitude towards your teammate that got all of you in this murder frenzy jam in the first place,” Jonathan said grudgingly. Judith stared secretly at the boy who made his statement just now, her mind beginning to click in comprehension. She excused herself to the bathroom and once she was inside, she took out her handphone and called Rebecca.
“Hello?” Rebecca answered the phone.
“It’s me,” Judith said. “Have you got anything on our evidence yet?”
“Nope, not a single one. I’m stumped. I really am. I gotta admit: this is the smartest criminal we have ever encountered in years of CSI business. I fear that we’ll never get our man. I’m looking through their school yearbook right now to see if anything relevant might come up from here.”
“I have a feeling that he’s not smart enough. Listen, Jeremy and Lionel are not at school today and I think I’ve got most of it figured out. I want you to go to Jeremy’s house and ask him some questions.”
“About what?” Rebecca sounded surprised.
“Anything,” Judith replied. “Just about anything that has to connect him to the case and his friends. There’s something we’re missing out here. One more missing piece of the puzzle that will clear the whole case. Oh, and I want you to issue out a search warrant.”
“For what? What else do you want to search about?”
“The house of the other person who didn’t come to school today.”
Rachel was sitting at her office reading through the SM Victoria Institution school yearbook. Rebecca plopped it at her desk all of a sudden and asked her to help her find any clues that could be in the yearbook that might lead to the case, and that was before she sped off to somewhere—Elaine tagging along behind her—without even giving Rachel the chance to ask. When Rachel got to the page where pictures on special events were taken, one picture caught her eye. Before she could recall what was familiar about the picture, Judith stepped in, looking quite pleased with herself.
“You look like you’ve come up with something good,” Rachel commented.
“As a matter of fact I have,” Judith replied, taking out an envelope. “Just raided someone’s house and guess what I’ve found.”
Rachel opened the envelope and saw a receipt that read ‘QuickFilm Photoshop’. She took a look at the picture that was in the envelope and her eyes widened with interest. She shifted her gaze towards the picture she saw on the yearbook and, as the Human Library she was, it all began to make sense. Judith noticed the picture on the yearbook Rachel was gazing at and grinned.
“So, Rach, wanna make a conformation or have you reached the verdict?”
“I’ll make some calls,” Rachel smirked knowingly and punched the numbers written on the receipt.
“Woah! Seriously that bad, huh?”
Rebecca and Elaine were at Jeremy’s house and Rebecca was talking to his mother. She brought along the protective custody papers for the parents to sign and promised that their home would be under surveillance 24/7.
“Um, Mrs. Lee, can I just go up and have a chat with Jeremy?” Rebecca asked. “I just wanna, you know, ease his nerves a little and tell him about this protective custody thing.”
“Don’t worry, Mrs. Lee,” Elaine assured her. “She’s quite good at cheering people up.”
“I don’t see why there would be any harm to it,” Mrs. Lee replied. “He’s pretty much out of the hallucinations now, but still not out of the shock. Go ahead. It’s the first room on the left.”
“Thanks, Mrs. Lee,” Rebecca thanked her and, together with Elaine, went to where Jeremy’s room was. The door was slightly opened but she knocked it anyway, just in case she’d startle him or something. She heard his voice muttering “Come in” and they let themselves in.
“Hey, Jeremy. How’re you doing?” Rebecca asked Jeremy who was sitting on his bed in his pajamas hugging his legs. “You remember us? I’m Detective Rebecca and…”
“Yeah, I’ve seen you two. You’re two of that nasty black CSI agent’s co-workers who said I killed Cliff,” Jeremy looked at them grudgingly.
“W-ell, you can put it that way,” Rebecca replied awkwardly.
“Are you here to arrest me for the other killings too?”
“Oh no, no, no,” Rebecca said as she sat on the bed beside him. “You’re out of the suspect list. I’m here to tell you that we’re gonna give you protection from the Urban Legend Copycat Killer, if you’ve heard of him.”
“Who doesn’t?” Jeremy replied, looking disturbed. “A lot of people have been talking about it. They say that it had a connection with me, ‘coz the victims used to bully me, and they think that I killed them, or hired someone else to do it.”
“Is that why Gerald locked you in the sports room?” Elaine asked.
Jeremy nodded, “He said he was going to keep me in there so that I won’t have any bright ideas about getting to them. Lionel brought me home when the janitor found me. I have to admit, although he had bullied me that year, he’s the only best friend I trust.”
“Really? You don’t have any grudges on the people who bullied you, do you?” Elaine was skeptical as she surveyed Jeremy’s room a little. Typical geek’s room, just as his friends described it.
“Nope. I believe people get what they deserve, so I usually keep quiet about it when they bug me so that when something bad happens to them, I can have the last laugh. Although seeing them dead wasn’t what I had in mind, really.”
“But do you have any idea who might wanna kill for you? A girlfriend, maybe?” Rebecca asked.
“I’m not the Romeo type, believe me,” Jeremy chuckled. “Girls don’t find me that attractive.”
“Why exactly are you afraid of the dark anyway, if you don’t mind me asking?” Elaine inquired.
“Well, it started off when I was a kid, back before I live here,” Jeremy explained. “My cousin and I decided to sneak into my rich neighbour’s home and take a dunk in his swimming pool in the middle of the night. I got adventurous and decided to swim at the deeper end of the pool. Needless to say, I almost drowned. It was dark when we were swimming and as I sank, the whole place was so dark I couldn’t see a single thing. The water surrounded and the darkness was more suffocating than the water. I was rescued just in time. Funny though, it led me to be afraid of the dark instead of water. Every time I’m in the dark, I could feel the suffocation and the feeling of merciless water around me…I still couldn’t get over it…”
“I understand. No wonder you’re so shook up in that sports room,” Rebecca said pitifully.
“Well, looks like someone took this bully and the other bullying seriously. Too serious, in fact,” Elaine said. She noticed the school yearbook on Jeremy’s table and when she picked it up, she noticed that it was the same year as the yearbook they found in Cliff’s home. She waved it at Jeremy and said, “I see you have the school yearbook.”
“I read it from time to time,” Jeremy replied, holding out his hand for it. Elaine passed it to him. “Brings back memories once in a while.”
“I’ve read it too,” Rebecca said. “I got one from Cliff’s home. Your school sure is interesting, unlike my high school.”
“It has its specialties,” Jeremy said as he flipped through the pages. He stopped at a page and smiled, “Ah, this one’s my favourite.”
Rebecca and Elaine leaned over to look. On it was a picture of Jeremy wearing a tuxedo and Gary wearing a bad boy gangster outfit, smiling widely and posing at the camera. Between them was a girl with burgundy hair and a one-piece blue dress. She had lovely make-up and looked very, very beautiful. Elaine and Rebecca looked at each other; she looked exactly like the woman Jothan Lo the 3rd had described!
“Jeremy, who is this girl in the picture with you guys?” Elaine asked, pointing at the burgundy-haired girl.
Jeremy let out a laugh before replying, “Got you too, didn’t it? Everyone kept asking the same question after that Drama Contest about who he is and everyone ended up being shocked. We won the Grand Prize for that drama, you know.”
“He?” Elaine raised an eyebrow.
“Drama Contest?” Rebecca was startled.
“Yeah! His make-up fooled you, didn’t he? As you can see, we’re an all boys’ school and we couldn’t simply just team up with the girls at Form 6, and practically no one wants to play the role of the leading actress, so he volunteered. He got me too, really, and I was playing the leading actor.”
“Who exactly is he?” Elaine and Rebecca asked simultaneously.
“It’s Lionel. Lionel Han,” Jeremy replied, still amused. “He’s a genius, isn’t he? Anything wrong, detectives?”
Justin was checking out the body of Gerald on his surgery table. It looked pretty gross seeing a body with no arms except one that looked pretty mangled, which was placed in another tray on the table. He had expected to find just wounds and no clues to the case and was ready to call in the cleaners to clean and ‘repair’ the arm on the body when Jonathan came in.
“Hey, Chief, what brings you here?” Justin asked.
“Well, I was hoping maybe there could be some evidence to pinpoint our suspect,” Jonathan replied.
“You guys got the murderer already?” Justin was surprised.
“Just a suspect. Unless we find evidence to back it up, we cannot arrest him,” Jonathan said as he scanned through the body, just in case Justin had missed out something.
“So it’s back to a he now. Jude was right after all. It is a he.”
“Is that what you guys been discussing during your date last night?” Jonathan asked. “Or is there something else you guys have been discussing?”
“Pretty much just the case,” Justin said as he took off his plastic gloves. “And it’s not a date. It’s just a simple night out with a friend. That’s all it was.”
“So you guys are not going anywhere near Danger Zone yet, am I right?”
“What are you trying to imply here, Jon?”
“Only that you have missed a spot,” Jonathan replied nonchalantly. “Take a look at this.”
Justin moved over to where Jonathan was pointing. There, on the skin of the left hacked arm where the socket was, was a small wrinkly dent with something wet on it. Jonathan used the evidence cotton bud to take a swab of it while Justin checked out the rest. The lab guy in charge of cleaning the body came in and Jonathan asked him to pass this cotton bud to Rachel so that she could take it to the DNA lab to analyze it.
“Looks like this wet stuff has been digesting a wee bit of the skin and part of the exposed flesh,” Justin commented. The only fluid that can ever digest food before we swallow it is the saliva. It has enough pH to do so. But this has to mean that…eww! Our murderer also has a taste for blood!”
“How long has Gerald been dead?” Jonathan asked.
“His neighbour kid found him at about 7 a.m. this morning, so I guess he’s about more than 12 hours dead.”
“How long does it take for human saliva to digest food?”
“According to human body temperature, it’ll take at least 10 to 20 minutes for human saliva to break down food into pieces. But since it was room temperature, it could take even longer. But then again, he’s 12 hours dead, wouldn’t take too long for it to be broken down, although just a really tiny portion of it.”
“Mmhmm,” Jonathan muttered thoughtfully. “So the murderer killed about 12 hours ago, waited for him to die and started chomping on one of his arms and got a little messy. I have a gut-sickening feeling where the rest of the missing portions of the other victims went to. Does this sound like part of a movie to you, Justin?”
“Yeah, it sure does sound a little,” Justin replied, recalling a movie that almost symbolizes this ritual.
“I’ll go check on Rach. You can do whatever you want with the body now,” Jonathan said as he left the autopsy room. Before he stepped out of the room, he stopped and, with his back facing Justin, he asked, “Do you believe that certain feelings can be repaired, even if they’ve already broken beyond recognition?”
“I suppose so,” Justin replied. “If there is hope, there will always be room for repair.”
“…Thanks, Justin,” Jonathan said as he finally walked out of the room. Justin sighed as he moved the body towards the cleaning sink with the help of the lab guy who came back after passing the DNA sample to Rachel.
“Jude, you are one lucky gal.”
Meanwhile, Jonathan went into the DNA lab where Rachel did her final testing on the swab Jonathan got from Gerald’s shoulder. He stood there quietly, not wanting to bother the Human Library at her work. When she was done, she got the DNA codes printed out on transparent paper. By then, she realized that she was being watched and turned around and got right down to business.
“You remember the DNA swabs we took on those friends of Jeremy’s?” Rachel asked. Jonathan nodded and she continued, “Well, most of them are dead, so who’s the one left to match?”
“The odd one out,” Jonathan grinned in triumph at the DNA codes shown in front of him.
Lionel was getting ready to mount his bike and was going to ride to his school. Checking by the attire, you could guess that he was on his way to practice some basketball moves. But before he could move out into the driveway, he was stopped short by our famous CSI members who were standing in front of a very worried-looking Han family.
“What’s going on?” Lionel asked, curious.
“Lionel Han,” Jonathan began to read his rights as he moved over to handcuff a startled Lionel. “You are under arrest for multiple murders. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say or do can be used against you in the court of law…”
No comments:
Post a Comment