CHAPTER 3: ANOTHER MURDER AT HAND
“I told you a million times, I don’t know who might have a grudge on me!”
Jonathan and Elaine were at Lionel Han’s home trying to question him and find a lead to this case that might solve the murder mystery. The family was wearing black clothes in mourning and they have a small altar with the pictures of the three little kids Jackie, Peter and Suzie in them. The whole place smelt a little of incense, which means that they have just done their prayers to the deceased.
“Are you sure? Aren’t there any friends or even enemies you might have pissed off?” Jonathan asked, his eyes fixing on Lionel whose eyes were red and sodden. It’s not always you see a boy cry.
“I told you, no! N-O, NO! End of story, OK? Aren’t you guys supposed to be out there looking for the murderer instead of sitting here interrogating me?” Lionel asked in a frustrated tone.
“You mind if I smoke?” Elaine asked as she took out one of her Marlboro cigarettes. The Han family shook their heads, but it was evident to her that Jonathan didn’t like it. She lit her cigarette and moved somewhere else to smoke to her heart’s content. She relished the feeling of having smoke in her lungs; it’s not easy being bad when you have over-protective parents and are obliged to put on a good look in front of everyone as the female Mozart. Only when she was out of the family and into the forensic team and hanging out with Judith that she was able to do all that.
“It’s because we need more information of who could’ve done this crime that we would sit here asking you questions instead of being out there finding him. OK, skip the enemy part. Do you have any friends? Like, as in close friends?” Jonathan tried to change the question a little.
“Are you suspecting that my friends could be involved?” Lionel asked.
“No, I just want to know what kind of friends you have,” Jonathan replied. “Unless you want me to go to your school and ransack the whole place asking who your friends are. That would be quite a bad image now, wouldn’t it, judging by the way you held a great party that night without your parents’ knowledge?”
“Well…” Lionel hesitated before answering, “They’re mostly my basketball friends: Cliff Chang, Gary Yap, Nicholas Ho and Jeremy Lee. We are pretty much a cool gang and all, only that Jeremy is more of a geek than a basketball player. Sometimes he doesn’t even play with us because he’s got a test to study for. That’s why he’s mostly a reserve than an official player.”
“Can I have their addresses, please?” Jonathan asked as he took out his notebook.
“Knock yourself out,” Lionel replied as he handed him the address book near his cordless phone. “But I have to tell you that they won’t be around town until tomorrow. They’ve all went to Alor Setar yesterday evening to watch Blink 182 live in concert. I couldn’t go because…well, you know, the mourning and all.”
“Were they at your party that night?” Elaine asked from her spot. She was beside the huge TV and was checking out the VCD-s in the rack.
“Yeah, except Jeremy. He said he’s got an unfinished project or something. Come to think of it, he never attends any of my parties anymore. Not since we’ve played that small prank on him when we were having this small celebration at home to celebrate the end of our PMR exams.”
“I see,” Elaine replied, not taking her eyes away from the rack of VCD-s.
“That must be your friends now, isn’t it?” Jonathan asked as he pointed at the group photo of the basketball team hanging on the living room. “Mind if I take a look?”
The sister got up and took the photo frame down from the wall for Jonathan to see. His eyes ran across the basketball members in the picture. A quite thin guy with glasses caught his eye; he was the only odd one out and had that studious type of look. He pointed at the guy and asked, “This must be Jeremy, right?”
Lionel looked and shook his head, “No, that’s not Jeremy. That’s Cliff. Told him to get contact lenses like Jeremy did but he just wouldn’t listen. This one is Jeremy.”
Jonathan looked to where he was pointing. At the middle of the team, between Lionel and another guy with thick lips and curly hair was a guy with wild-looking hair and a band across his forehead. He was as tall as Lionel but was far better-looking than the other guys. He had glassy eyes, which proved Lionel’s statement about him wearing contact lenses. Lionel then further introduced the thick-lipped guy as Gary and a pretty fat and big guy as Nicholas.
“That Jeremy guy looks a lot like Kyota from Ryonan, don’t you think, Jon? You know, in Slam Dunk?” Elaine’s voice suddenly came from behind him, taking him by surprise and ignoring Jonathan’s annoyed look at her. She was still smoking her cigarette, and probably might be her second smoke. She had a few VCD-s in her hand and was waving it at Lionel, “You really like horror movies, don’t you?”
“He’s practically a horror movie freak,” the sister replied. “He and his friends always come over to watch these sickening shows. Sometimes he even invites our Jackie and Peter to watch them, and they would end up having nightmares.”
“Hey, I didn’t exactly invite them watch it,” Lionel protested. “They wanted to watch it, so I let them.”
“Hmm…Urban Legends, Friday the 13th, H2O, Hannibal,” Elaine read the titles of the movie on her hand. “House on Haunting Hill, The Haunting, Sixth Sense…You really have a knack of watching these scare shows, don’t you? Who watches these shows with you?”
“Just my fellow friends Jeremy, Nicholas, Gary and Cliff. No one else. They’re the only ones really close to me and would actually have access to all my things. They even spend the night here sometimes.”
“OK…” Jonathan scribbled down something in his notebook before getting up to leave. “Thanks for the cooperation, kids. We’ll keep in touch. I assure you we’ll catch the criminal as soon as possible.”
Elaine put out her cigarette before following behind Jonathan. As soon as they were out of the house and inside Elaine’s Proton Wira, Jonathan suddenly voiced out, “It has to be one of his friends. I have a hunch it could be one of them.”
“Why so?” Elaine asked.
“Someone as popular as he is could never have any enemies,” he replied. “Well, maybe some, but I’m sure they’re minor ones, what with his popularity in school and the amount of friends he had for his crash party that night. I’ve checked his records. He’s pretty clean and he’s the jock and the hopes of the entire school and he’s practically friends with everyone he meets. He may not be an all-rounder but he sure is everyone’s favourite.”
“And he also said that he and his friends Cliff, Jeremy, Gary and Nicholas are really close, almost like brothers, I suppose,” Elaine said as she started her car. “They do things together and they have access to all his things, even had a slumber party or two at his home. One of them should know about the ins and outs of his house very well to be able to sneak in unnoticed and know about the soundproof room to dare to kill his siblings without hesitation.”
“Exactly,” Jonathan replied, snapping his fingers. “And tomorrow, we’ll pay them a little visit. Oh, did I mention that I’ve got the latest scans on the Gundam SEED prototypes from the net last night? Some of them were pretty cool, like the Aile Strike Gundam, Freedom Gundam and the Blitz Gundam…”
Elaine let out a groan as our head of the crime lab droned on and on about his Gundam SEED all the way towards the crime lab.
Cliff Chang was driving towards a secluded spot away from the stadium with a girl he just picked up from the concert. She looked like a hottie and all and as the horny man he was, he couldn’t resist hitting on her. He immediately started tackling on her and ditched the gang secretly before taking the car on a little ride with the girl. He had to ditch them in secret—he was the one driving his father’s car and if they knew that he was running off with their only transport, they’d maul him and kick him to Timbuktu. Lucky for him, this girl looked like she was used to this kind of situation and seemed street-smart enough to handle him, or he would’ve been reported to the cops for sexual assault.
They were getting to the heat of their ‘game’ when suddenly Cliff needed to go on a leak. He grumbled to himself—he had quite a weak bladder and when he had to go, he had to go. Smiling sheepishly, he apologized to the girl and snuck off to a dark corner to do his business.
The girl was in a pretty good mood, so she waited for him. But when his business took too long, she was getting a little annoyed. Has Cliff ditched her or something, just like he ditched his friends? She folded her arms across her chest and huffed in frustration. She had never felt so cheated before. She had a good mind to just drive off the car and let him suffer the wrath of her friends. She gave a mental note that if Cliff doesn’t show up in the next 5 minutes, she was definitely going to drive the car away and profit herself a little from it.
No sooner she thought of that than she heard frantic scraping sounds on the roof of the car. At first she thought maybe it was just the branches of the trees because the car was parked under a tree. But when the scrapings got even more and more frequent, she was beginning to think that something was wrong. There wasn’t any wind tonight—she was sure of it—and even if there was wind, it couldn’t have let a mere branch scrape the roof of the car continuously. The girl was pretty much petrified that she didn’t dare to get out of the car to see what’s going on. She just shut her eyes and closed her ears hoping that she could block the sounds away.
After what seemed like forever, the scrapings finally stopped. The girl tentatively opened her eyes and let down her hands and was relieved to hear the peaceful silence about her. The only thing that still annoyed her was that Cliff still hasn’t come back from his ‘business-doing’. She got sick of waiting. She got off the car and stomped towards the dark corner and yelled, “Hey, man! Are you going to do it or not? I’m not a sitting duck, you know!”
When silence replied her, she yelled again, “Fine! If that’s the way you want it, then I’m taking your car!”
As she turned around to face the car, she saw something so gruesome and so horrifying that a blood-curdling scream escaped from her lips almost immediately.
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