CHAPTER 9: ANOTHER CLUE IN THE BLUE
“Thank you very much.”
Jonathan took the piece of envelope given by one of the crime lab office boys with a satisfied look on his face. He had asked for a warrant to search Gary’s house after having a certain lead on the new backpack thanks to the clues given by Rebecca the fashion freak. He contacted his usual searching raid team Judith and Elaine to meet at the crime lab early so that they can go on their search. Rebecca wished to tag along too so that she could take pictures of the search raid.
The girls came as they promised they would and they all rode on Elaine’s car towards Gary’s home. On their way, Jonathan’s cell phone rang. He picked it up.
“Hello…? Uh-huh? Yeah? What? We’re on our way.”
“Who was that?” Rebecca asked.
“It’s the cops,” Jonathan replied. “It seems that the place where we’re going to raid actually turned into a crime scene.”
“I told you!” Rebecca exclaimed. “I told you we should give them protective custody! But do you listen? No~! Now look what happened!”
“Alright, alright,” Elaine grumbled, irritated. “We get the point already! Don’t try rubbing it in or anything!”
“Let’s just go there and we can do both a search and our usual CSI business,” Jonathan said authoritatively. “No point arguing. I’ve already said we’ll put this issue aside for the moment.”
When they got there, there were a few other police cars outside the house and an ambulance just leaving the house, its sirens blaring. The CSI members expected that Gary had been taken away and that they’ve just missed them. They got off the car and walked towards one of the officers who was asking questions at probably the father of Gary.
“Identification, please,” the officer, who was a Kadazan, stopped them from coming closer towards the house. They all flashed their badges at him.
“Chief Inspector Jonathan Mark David from the Crime Scene Investigation,” Jonathan said in usual formal way, “and these are my colleagues Detective Judith Lai, Elaine Majon and Rebecca Liew. One of your men called us here. What just happened here?”
“We have a crime scene here,” the officer replied. “Their eldest son, Gary Yap, was being cut open and his organ removed before he was left to die in the bath tub. He’s still alive though, lucky guy. You just missed him.”
“Which organ was he being removed of?” Judith suddenly stepped forward and asked.
“Do you have to know?” the officer asked with a disgusted look on his face before clearing his throat and replied, “Well, he got his kidneys gouged out, and the person who did it didn’t bother to sew him back up. His mother was shocked beyond words. She was so shocked, she just lost her voice altogether.”
Judith fell silent almost immediately. She dashed into the house without a word, ignoring the calls from her head of the crime lab, and stomped quickly into Gary’s room, careful not to step on anything important for investigation. She took a look inside the bathroom and saw the blood at the bottom of the tub beneath all the melting ice cubes and took one of the blood-soaked ice cubes to inspect. Her eyes then trailed all the way to the bedroom where a trail of thick-looking blood leading towards the bed was.
She did it all in silence, practically oblivious of the curious eyes of her CSI colleagues or the other officers. She was doing it so quickly, so mysteriously and so suddenly that her CSI colleagues didn’t where to continue. Finally she walked out of the house, taking the car keys abruptly from Elaine, and moved quickly towards the car, taking the driver’s seat. Jonathan told the officer to relocate the Yap family to a new place and keep this crime scene untouched so that they can do another thorough investigation before following behind Jude with the others. They all looked questioningly at their mysterious member of the team; they could never figure out what was really going on in his mind, really. As she started the car, Elaine laid a hand on hers to catch her attention.
“Jude, where exactly are we going? You’re doing that silent mysterious treatment again.”
“We have to go to the hospital quick and ask as much questions as we can before we lose Gary,” Judith replied, her eyes fixed to the road.
“And why is that?” Rebecca asked.
“Because he was attacked using another urban legend I read from one of Rach’s books—about a flight attendant being tricked by a couple of Japanese locals who were really organ thieves and got him really drunk before they removed his kidneys alive while he was unconscious. And judging by the blood in the tub and all the other blood on the carpet of his room, I’ll say he won’t be alive much longer, even with medical help.”
Jonathan, Judith, Elaine and Rebecca walked as quickly as they could down the corridor of the hospital where Gary was admitted. Jonathan asked for Gary’s room from the receptionist nurse and he was soon led by a superior-looking—maybe the head nurse—to the ICU centre. At upon reaching the ICU centre, the CSI members were told to wait outside Ward 321 while the head nurse walked into the ward and informed the doctor who was checking on Gary about their arrival. The doctor came out of the ward and shook hands with Jonathan.
“Good morning, Chief Inspector. I’m Dr. Tan,” the doctor introduced himself as he reached out to the girls to shake their hand. “I suppose you’re here for this boy’s case.”
“We sure are,” Jonathan replied. “What’s his condition, Dr. Tan?”
“Not too good,” Dr. Tan replied doubtfully. “We don’t think he’ll be able to survive through tonight. We have informed his parents of being ready for this coming. He’s been left in that bath tub for too long and his cut open back has been exposed for too long. Germs have infected it and he’s going down pretty quick. So if you have anything you want to ask him, make it quick, ‘coz his family is coming in later.”
The team nodded and made their way quietly into the ward and towards the bed where Gary was lying in. the doctor was right—he didn’t look too good and by the sight of it, one small nudge could make him fall into the pits of death. They had to move in quick.
“Gary? Gary, wake up,” Rebecca touched Gary lightly on the shoulder, taking him out of his slumber. Gary stirred a little and his eyes seemed to recognize the team.
“Sorry to wake you, slugger, but we have some important questions for you,” Jonathan said. “Do you think you can talk, maybe just a little?”
Gary moved his head a little side by side, indicating that he couldn’t. Elaine stepped up to him and said, “Here, this is my palm. Just tap once for ‘Yes’ and twice for ‘No’. We’ll get the picture.”
“The backpack you showed me that day when I sent you home from the concert,” Elaine started. “Is it really yours?”
There was no response from him. Judith could see from his eyes that he was hesitating.
“Tell the truth, Gary. No one is going to get you now. Is it really your backpack?”
A quivering hand from Gary reached out and tapped Elaine’s palm. Two taps. It was a ‘No’.
“It belonged to someone else, isn’t it? Someone from your group of friends?” Rebecca asked.
One tap. A ‘Yes’.
“Is it still in your home?” Jonathan asked.
Yes.
“Did you kill your friend Cliff?” Judith asked.
A hesitant ‘Yes’.
“Using Jeremy’s army knife?”
Yes.
“Did you commit the other murder too, the one on Lionel’s brothers and sister?” Elaine asked.
An immediate ‘No’.
“Is it? Are you really telling the truth about not killing Lionel’s siblings?” Jonathan looked at Gary skeptically.
Yes.
“Someone told you to murder Cliff, didn’t he?” Judith asked.
Yes.
Judith walked closer towards Gary and removed his breathing mask a little, bringing her face closer towards his mouth, “You can tell me who ordered you to kill. No one is going to get you. Tell me, who told you to kill Cliff?”
“Jude, his parents are here,” Elaine called out. Judith looked up and saw Gary’s parents talking to Dr. Tan and looking very devastated indeed.
“But, Mark David, he’s almost going to tell me. We’re having a real suspect here,” Judith said indignantly. “He’s about to tell me. He’s…”
“Jude, let it go,” Jonathan pulled her away and replaced the breathing mask over Gary’s mouth. “We need to think of his family out there. Don’t make him worse as it is.”
Judith knew what he meant. As much as she wanted to know who the real suspect to this crime was, she had to respect the family’s wishes to have their last words with him. Reluctantly, she moved away from the bed and followed her team out of the ward. As she walked out last from the ward, someone grabbed her sleeve. It was Gary’s little brother, looking at her with watery eyes.
“You’re a police, right? Have you caught the bad guy who hurt my brother?”
“No, not yet, sweetie,” Judith replied. “But we will. I promise.”
“And when you do,” the father suddenly voiced out determinedly, “don’t arrest him. You hear me? Don’t arrest him.”
She knew what Gary’s father meant.
Shoot at sight.
The CSI team was at Gary’s house again, doing a thorough search as written in their job description. They searched everywhere in Gary’s room to find the whereabouts of the backpack he claimed he had kept, but Jonathan found it instead dumped inside the dark tool shed in the backyard. He passed it to another fellow CSI to be brought to the crime lab for Rachel to analyze.
“There’s no sign of a break-in here,” Elaine said as she checked the perimeters. “The lock of the door wasn’t broken, the front door is a-OK and none of the windows showed any signs of forced entry. It seems as if the murderer knew his way in the house.”
“Just like the way the murderer knew his way into Lionel’s house,” Jonathan said. “I wonder how he knew how to get in without alerting the household…”
As if answering his question, his hand accidentally hit something hollow in the wall inside Gary’s closet. He tapped it for a few times and realized that it was making a lot of hollow sounds in it. He touched and felt the wall until his hand felt a small handle on it. He gestured for Judith to turn on the closet light and noticed that there was a seam on the wall that formed a small door. He gave it a little shove and the door opened outward.
“Speak of the devil, look at this, girls,” Jonathan said as he called for the girls to look at what he had found. Judith was the first to check it out—she always had a knack of being interested in new things. The other girls followed suite, turning on their torch lights at the process. The hallway was pretty dark and the walls which were made out of wood seriously needed a makeover, judging by the mould that has collected on it. The floor was pretty sandy and all as they went deeper and deeper into the dark passageway. When they finally came to the end of their dark ‘trip’, which was another door, Jonathan opened it and they soon realized that they were standing in the middle of a large wine cellar.
“Woah! Look at all these wine bottles!” Elaine exclaimed as she eyed greedily at all the wine bottles stashed into their racks. Judith took one and looked at the label.
“Wow, a 1970 Burgundy! Very good year, I reckon. I remember drinking this when I was Primary 6. Who’s got a cork opener?”
“Now’s not the time to start intoxicating yourself, you bakasaru!” Jonathan said sternly as he snatched the bottle away from Judith. “We got a case to solve here!”
“Hey, I found our way out!” Rebecca hollered, pointing at a short staircase that went upwards. The team walked towards the staircase and walked up. When they opened the door above, they found themselves staring at the tool shed just a few feet in front of them.
“Guess we know how our murderer got in,” Jonathan concluded before his cell phone rang. He answered it and looked pretty grave.
“Who was it, Mark David?” Judith asked after he hung up the phone.
“It was Justin. He had heard wind about Gary and had just received news that Gary has been officially dead. He’s requested the hospital to send him the body for autopsy. We gotta be there. And that means no eating in front of a corpse again, Jude!”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” Judith replied, crossing her fingers behind her back.
No comments:
Post a Comment