The Mystery of Lyle and Louise, a Sailor Moon + CSI Crossover fanfic

The Mystery of Lyle and Louise

by Jacob Green

Judeo-Christian faith, anime, and women, those are the three ingredients to make Jacob the most humble and honest person in the world. He pressed his finger on the left button below his touch-pad and laid back to watch his favorite shows on his laptop. Every so often, he logs into his Facebook account and posts to his high school crush, Seva Riley. While he is a decent guy, Jacob tends to have some of his posts reference their love together. He knew that she is committed in a relationship with her boyfriend. It had been a while since they loved on each other, but his commitment to God, education, and his country and determination to become a Renaissance man are not easily disregarded.

It was the fourteenth of January in Southside, the anniversary of Jacob's birth since twenty years ago. He lives with his immediate family which consists of his mother and sister. His father Anthony Green died eight years ago of a chemical accident inside his stomach. Jacob was very upset since his dad and Grandfather Bob Hill disappeared from the face of Earth. This will set Jacob back to anger and depression of the world until Christ shone light through his heart and will continue to do that for as long as Jacob remains committed to Him, God the Father, and the Holy Spirit. No matter how many real and fictional women are in Jacob's lifetime; there was a reassuring rhythm to it.

"Jacob, can you walk the two troublemakers for me?" Michelle asked, and her son did what she expects him to. That is one of the chores Jacob does to make his mom's life easier. She has class, but does not make any man pay for it.

It was Jacob's twentieth birthday, meaning that it has been twenty years since Jacob was born in Dallas, Texas. It was also the same time that the two investigators Catherine Willows and Nick Stokes had finished shipping off corpses and registering evidence they gathered at the messy murder scene near the remote fishing cabin next to the White River.

The ladder inside the cabin was still there. It had been left untouched. The family known as the Mondelos left Highland Park to live in a place where they can have some serenity in their lives. But something happened to them as soon as the eldest son brought the ladder out to fix the roof. One businessman and one stranger, an unknown woman, started the fight and then tragedy struck. The businessman was beaten to death by the stranger, who was later revealed to be his fiancee. Not long after that, the rest of the Mondelos decided to take refuge near the police station until the stranger woman informed the family on where to go. The hospital was the alternative place indicated and the family decided to accelerate toward their location. But suddenly, something happened in the family's car brakes and, while they are speeding, they reached their fate near the trees. They all died in a bang. Nobody survived in this terrible atrocity. Thus, the question remains: who killed who and why?

The bloody firewood was left unattended on the carpet with the first victim's blood on it. The coroner had to use his micropipette to pick up and deliver a precisely measured amount of blood. The first victim was the partial owner of the land and water development company. Likely, the second victim would be his business partner of his company; they assumed that he was the one who used the firewood. With the blood-strained tissue next to him, he had just less than a fifty percent chance of surviving the onslaught.

"The weird part," Nick remarked, inclined on the bar with his massive forearms, "is the firewood was near the ladder when we got there."

"It left a certain ghostly atmosphere to the scene," Jacob replied.

Jacob's understudies for the day, two young amateur detectives by the names of Velma and Amy, sat between Catherine and Jacob. Velma and Amy looked nervous. They had not worked many murder scenes before, and this one was not just bloody, it was ironic. Irony will sometimes make things worse.

The bloody tissue paper was part of a plot intended for the dead man. It had the dead businessman worried about what might happen to him if it were used to suffocate him. For the experienced CSI team, it was just another couple of dead people, another batch of evidence and paperwork. Jacob cleared his throat before he spoke, a habit that sometimes irritates Velma. "There's nothing ghostly about people killing each other on your birthday," she objected.

"He doesn't mean it, although his background knowledge of ghosts and spirits are sufficient," Amy said. "It's sinister and awful. Every murder is awful. But if we mourn the dead every time we find them . . ." Catherine said.

"Some do," Jacob interrupted. "They don't last in the job." He fixed his somber eyes on Velma and waited for the message to be processed to his brain. Before Jacob could be confident that it had, the drinks arrived. Beer was for everyone except Amy, Velma, and Jacob, who opted for sobriety over escape. Jacob, Amy, and Velma will not drink under any circumstance. Catherine poured her beer into a drinking glass. Nick picked at the label on his own beer.

"Lot of murders this year since three years ago," Nick said, in a way he might notice it was a bone-chilling night. Jacob cleared his throat. "People can get crazy even after the first non-white politician became president?" Velma asked nobody in particular.

"Statistically speaking, if you're going to kill somebody, the holiday season is a popular time," Catherine replied. She examined her watch.

From the beginning, arriving at the bar had been Catherine's idea: it was too late to go home and settle down. She did set a nature-oriented alarm to wake her daughter Lindsay up, and now that she was twenty-one, Lindsay did not want to wake up feeling like she has to go to school. So, like in Christmas, Catherine was pretending it was the Christmas Eve night, rather than the Christmas morning.

Nick had planned for the team to grab coffee and breakfast, but he went solo; his family was in Texas. He could sit around all day. Catherine, on the other hand, had a full schedule of family events, and home breakfast was one of such events.

Jacob glimpsed over at Velma and Amy. The gals were not cut out for this work, though they both are highly intelligent. Velma is a fairly good detective who came from Mystery Incorporated, an organization dedicated to solving mysteries and uncovering hijinks. In contrast, Amy is a "bookworm" with a laptop that is way more advanced than Jacob's Alienware laptop. Her supercomputer can collect any information with no limits on data storage, including information from any conflict with a variety of factors. Although both Amy and Velma are textbook smart, they are not great at murders. Velma would be best at property crime, hustles, and hacking while Amy would utilize her energy to transform, create and manipulate water, and assault.

Jacob's first reaction to any timid law officer was to understand authority, analyze any situation they are in, expose the soft parts of their personality and toughen them up - that, or, with respect, drive the officer out of the department before he or she makes an expensive mistake. Still, it was a pleasant day, according to people's tastes, but any hapless officer would clearly have a hard time.

"Sometimes, even with murder, miracles will happen," Jacob said.

"The tissue was in good quality," Nick agreed.

Catherine shook her head. "Go easy," she said, observing Amy and Velma's discomfort.

"No, seriously," Jacob continued. "Remember something about car accidents? Who would possibly be the most vulnerable victims of any car accident? May I remind you that, according to PCR findings, these are the individuals who left their cabin to reach to the police station for help."

Nick raised his bottle to his mouth, trying to remember, then snapped his fingers and set the bottle back down. "The adult male and the adult female."

"And the female child," Catherine added. She never forgot the child. "It makes sense now. The children of the family and the mother are the ones who got killed in an accident," Jacob said. "I honestly believe that the mother and her children are the recent victims of a planned murder."

Amy had her hands folded in her lap, her juice untouched in front of her. She clearly did not want to ask, except to find some clues to solve this murder mystery and return to Japan to be with her friends. Velma felt the same way except she wanted to rendezvous with the meddling kids and their dog. The others were expectantly looking at Amy, so she asked anyway, rather than let the silence get excessive. "So how was there murder if nobody is really doing anything at the moment?"

Jacob took a glass of berry flavored Kool-Aid, dabbed at his lips with a paper towel, and twisted his neck around so he could face both Amy and Velma. "I will tell you," he said.

"It was one hot summer night, back in the wonderful days when people went to Batesville just to save their money and live a simple life – all within their budget. There was still plenty of criminal activity within city limits, but it was a different kind of crime, the kind that comes from a prosperous environment. These days, it is the kind of crime that comes from lagging opportunity. To most victims, the difference is theoretical."

Jacob's best friend, Rachel Esteppe, was with him on a date. So far, with little to no crime at Batesville, they still managed to have a picnic together in the gulf course; nothing major. However, not long after that "non-date," in certain country clubs near Southside and Batesville, there have been some recent gang violence and mysterious kidnappings with unknown motives. Fortunately, nothing foul befalls them once they departed. As of nine o'clock pm, two days after Jacob's birthday, an important call came in.

"The call came from the White River Medical Center. One nurse found three corpses in the trashed-out car. They were lying on their seats," Jacob said. "The ambulance showed up, the medics thought it could be foul play, they were the ones who called us. I was first on the scene, me and a couple of patrol personnel."

"Heck of a hospital it is, but about the Tumbling Water Land Development Company, that company, about the size of the Bank of America, was based in Illinois by a greedy businessman named John Wayne Gretzky. Looked like one of those green government buildings that everyone is talking about. As crime scenes go, not too dishonorable - especially compared to the Watergate office, where at that moment most of the evidence was on its hands and knees, looking for audio cassette tapes with a simple source of light, a flashlight."

Jacob took a swig from his Kool-Aid.

Velma cleared her throat, but Jacob got there first: "So we take a right at the hospital entrance, near the parking lot, and there are three victims in the vehicle next to the main floor of the medical facility."

"Dead," Nick added, in case Velma was as slow as he thought she was.

"Lethally so," Jacob resumed. "Louise Ann Mondelo, mother and wife of the Mondelo family. Nice lady. She tends to commit an affair with the greedy businessman as suspected by her husband and father of the family, Lyle Christopher Mondelo. They had two children, Wally and Jan Mondelo. The former was the oldest child of the family, frankly fourteen years old; however, the latter was eleven years old and was the youngest sister of Wally. They were lying face down against the airbags and seats without their seat belts. The cause of their crash is the broken piston which means that the brake pad was not pushed against the disc. Therefore, this rendered the wheels unable to slow down. I suspected that the unknown woman was behind this event.

The mysterious woman was the interesting piece of the puzzle. On the surface, there were blood strains of Mr. Gretzky and Lyle, Wally, and Jan Mondelo. And most importantly, a wedding ring Gretzky had for an undetermined amount of time - from where this individual's body was bashed near the fireplace. The ring was thrown at Gretzky by a mysterious woman as a sign of a divorce because of his history of shading deals and marital problems. The mysterious woman had a similar height and builds as Mrs. Mondelo, but I doubt it would be Louise who committed the deed indeed. Sure her marriage is plagued by extramarital affairs with her business partner, but she would not want to kill her family just to get what she desired: a man with good looks and charms."

"An accident," Amy interjected in her high school vernacular. "Yeah, except for one thing: Gretzky's junk area is all busted up. There's blood above his stomach. As for Mr. Mondelo, his skull would be crushed by the ladder's weight when the mystery woman knocked him out. Maybe it's relevant, maybe it's not, but these guys were in a fight sometime around when they died."

"Sounds circumstantial," Velma said.

Jacob ignored Velma, hugged Amy and lightly kissed her cheek, and carried on, determined to get to the exciting part: "So I looked around while I am waiting for the two CSIs to show up, and I cannot figure it out for the life of me. Looks like Gretzky just fell down and busted both his head and back, right? That is death by misfortune, except he was the only victim without his drawers on. And when I look around, all I find is a completely packed suitcase in the bedroom. Where are the clothes he came inside the cabin with? Where are his fancy shoes?"

"The only thing that Gretzky has on is gold chains and a Swatch, which is one of these Swiss automatics that sets you back to below the poverty level, specifically below sixty grand. Basically, I am stumped."

"Which doesn't happen that much," Catherine said, and raised her glass to Jacob.

"Here's to the new beginning under God the Father, God the Son, and the Holy Spirit," Jacob said toasting with his Kool-aid.

"Took us a while to get there from Nevada," Nick said. "The different major scene, the gang fight, was a big mess. Gil Grissom, current CSI senior supervisor since Catherine's term expired, and the rest of our team were working it for hours. When we finally got out of there, Catherine and I showed up at the Mediterranean Hotel looking like trash pickers." He laughed at the memory and Catherine smiled. At the time, it had not been funny.

"What does it have to do with the murders of the Mondelo family and John Gretzky?" Jacob asked Nick. "Nothing. I thought it would be nice to tell a story to lighten the mood." Nick said.

Nick went on: "Anyway, there wasn't any neighborhood surveillance on that part of the county, but we got the Independence County law enforcement to secure the area from all sectors. Then we went into the cabin. One of the deceased is a greedy and selfish bastard, a lot more good looking than I am, with lots of money in his pockets. He has a black wavy hair with a straight line and tattoos of the names 'Louise' and 'Pam' on his back. The other guy is a family guy and a partner of his wife in L&L Mondelo."

"The tattoos probably scared Louise more than the blood," Catherine added.

"No question about the head injury," Nick said. "He got it from the firewood. His scalp was split open with a furrow gouged out of the skin, and on the iron corner of the table there's a corresponding scrap of tissue with identical hair on it. You could take a glance that Gretzky used the firewood and hit that skull to where it killed him.

But we never speculate at anything if we can rather prove it instead. So we take a set of matched pictures of the whole scene. Then we collect the tissue, the hair, the money, the blood, the ring. Then it's time to move the bodies."

"Corpses are always heavy, but this guy weighed less than a ton," Catherine observed.

Jacob hugged his arms around both Amy and Velma around their waists and winked at them. "It took all three of us to rotate his body clockwise," he said. "If you two had been there, it would have been simple." Nick stepped in to proceed on the subject matter. "The front of Lyle was more interesting, from a forensic perspective. Mr. Mondelo had been hemorrhaging, and it flowed under him, affixing him to the carpet, which happens to be one explanation that he was so difficult to move. His hands were tight so they can become fists. We found some blonde hair caught under his wrist's chain. Several skin labels were found. They got pulled out."

"Needless to say, he wasn't blonde," Catherine added.

"So we flagged it. There was blood, maybe even tissue, above his chest, so we went to bag his hands, too, and that's when we start to realize that the Swatch is a factor after all. I remember the make. It was a bright yellow Swatch Beat, and like Jacob says, it was worth five figures."

"But it did not fit his wrist. Had a Vintage Trifari in-line bracelet on it - you set those precisely to size on a watch like that, by adding or subtracting links with small screws. It was way overly tight. So we unfolded the clasp and found blood on the tennis bracelet's underside. No lividity where it squeezed the skin into its dark, bluish appearance, so as far as we can tell, the watch was worn after death. And get this into your minds - a patent fingerprint on the crystal. I mean you could perceive it in ordinary light, it was that lucid, and written in blood."

Amy and Velma cleared their throats, and Jacob suddenly thought of something. When he thinks, he looks like Rodin's the Thinker. It was consummate.

"If there was blood on the Swatch, did it match with the remains of Gretzky?" asked Amy. "Did his hand fall under his head, or maybe his private area bled on it?"

"No," Catherine said. "But good question. His hands were down at his sides, palms upward, and the blood was all down below his head. His private area had stopped bleeding some time before death." "So the blood either came from the earlier fight or it came from someone else putting the watch on him after the guy was dead." Amy nodded as she figured it out.

Jacob added: "That is not all, though. It was on his right wrist, which makes a lot of sense if he is a southpaw, but it was not a left-handed Swatch."

"So we looked around," Nick said, "collected whatever we could, and then I accompanied the body to the morgue. Jacob and Catherine went to ICPD to file the preliminary report."

"That was it until we had more information," Jacob said. "So back at my apartment office, I did some exhaustive research. John Gretzky was not unknown to the authorities."

Jacob paused. "Gretzky was from Highland Park, Illinois, but spent most of his time in Chicago, always at the most expensive hotels. Looking at his marriage records, his first wife divorced him for his handling of Lake County trust funds by illegally transferring money from one trust fund to another, so he was always looking for more women, power, and money. But he was too lazy to actually earn it, so he went for the quick scores: private bookmaking, junk real estate, and money laundering through clubs. Most of all, gambling and prostitution are the two prime sources of his success.

He loved the cards, so even if he made any money, he lost it just as fast. He got into some wild bets. People got hurt. But he never did a day's time."

Nick excluded a few details on his fingers: "The assistant coroner determined Gretzky's time of death to be an estimate of one hour prior to the horrific car crash. Likewise, it is also estimated to a day before passing residents noticed the bloody footprints on the sidewalk that came from the main door of the cabin. So I checked out the cabin's living room security footage, looking for any visitors to that room during this time frame.

Sure enough, a guy and his female partner got inside the living room alone. They were suspicious because he's got a sock covering his whole face. Can't get a good look at him. He rode up from the parking garage, exiting the living room. Five minutes later, he went to the same room and went back to where they started. At the same time, the Mondelo family was in it. Louise, sensing that something will destroy the family and her marriage, tended to her kids and took them to the family car. Not long after that, she returned to the cabin and started to fight with Mr. Gretzky and the unknown woman. Lyle got into the act by arguing with his wife about cheating and how strict the family's values should be enforced. Turns out that Mr. Gretzky realized that this was a setup by his fiancee.

The unknown woman wanted to ruin the marriage to inherit the cabin, take all of the Mondelo family's wealth, and marry Gretzky before Louise. She knew that she needs to kill all of the Mondelos before that happens. She then proceeded to pull her and Gretzky's pants off and they made love to each other. Right after continuous and stressful debate between the Mondelo couple, they finished their sexual activity. Lyle then prepared for combat, but Gretzky senselessly knocked him out cold and smashed the back of his head with firewood. I guess that is why gamers called it fatality. Gretzky felt relieved but he was not aware of what will come to him. She then clawed his chest and suffocated him with her strong arms."

"By now," Catherine interjected, "In Little Rock, Grissom is working on another scene, which is a jewelry-store robbery. Apparently this effeminate guy drove his blue Toyota Prius straight through the front window of a store on the curve, jumped out, grabbed what he could, and drove off from the parking lot. Not a real criminal mastermind. They have his plates and everything. His name is Malcolm Butt-cheeks. There's an APB out on his energy efficient car."

Catherine said: "Jacob and I have ten free minutes, so we decide to go crazy at the place next door. Halfway across the police department parking lot, we see the truck. Same plates, same color, the front all smashed in. All of a sudden, the black tuxedo man swooped down from the ceiling and jumped from one roof to another to land next to effeminate guy. The guy was carrying an M16 automatic rifle and he's aiming it at the tuxedo man. But the tuxedo man knocked the gun out of his hands and they fought in a hand-to-hand combat. Ultimately, the tuxedo man restrained him until LRPD forces make it to the crime scene. As soon as the Little Rock police arrive, officers found him restrained by rope and he was sent inside the police car for lockup. One of the officers saw the tuxedo figure. After looking back at the suspect, the officer does not see the man anymore, but he can remember what he looks like and his purpose in apprehending the young suspect.

Out goes the same man, only that he is average without the tuxedo, still a little taller than me. And it looked like somebody beaten him in the bar. His face biffed. Blood completely covering his shirt. He sees Jacob, walks to him, and says, 'I'm turning myself in. I killed the woman who calls herself Pam.'"

"But how could one of the most decent people murder a forty-two year-old Louise lookalike with just his bare hands? So that was the end of the story?" Amy asked. By now, Jacob was on a roll, informing his team about the story of how - even with murder - there can still be peace. Of course, it had been five years since the Mondelos moved to Southside, so the story was well-polished with appropriate use. But he was a truth-seeking Judeo-Christian, accustomed to memorizing details and accurately recounting them, effectively using his imagination, and applying anything he knows to real life. Strange as it was, the story was true as well as fictional.

"I sat down in interview room one with Darien Shields," Jacob said. "He is informing me that he killed Pam, 150 pounds of solid muscle. Now, Darien is about fifty to mostly 100 pounds - if he was soaking wet, considering that his pockets stacked with roses. Darien also carries his cane to fight any adversary with. He has two black eyes, a lip swollen, and his nose bleeds like a tomato. And it really looks like one as well. Somebody did beat the living heck out of him."

"Which matched the condition of Gretzky's private area," Nick pointed out. Jacob cleared his throat, but did not say anything. The girls were right with him.

"I listened in on the interview," Catherine said. "It's not unusual for underrepresented men to exaggerate when they talk about fights of any kind. He insisted that he killed Pam with his bare hands, in cold blood. It was astounding."

Jacob continued: "Not that it mattered often. Darien's story checked out. He is a match to the mysterious shadow found near the cabin window. He accurately described the scene. This guy informed me that he owed Pam an intimate relationship. It seems that Darien is a university student, he found himself heart-broken since February 8, 1997, and he wanted to hook his love interest up with something special. So he fell off the band wagon and into dating service."

Jacob shook his head. Besides, dating women other than his fiancee Serena Tsukino was unimaginable to him. "His colleague Trista had been a university student," he remembered. Trista is now a nurse. Jacob did not want to start thinking about miserable stuff, not on each morning since the year 2012 began. So he repetitively picked up the story.

"According to Darien, he was dating for his life, and Pam was next to him without him seeing her. After a half-dozen complimentary refreshments, he found himself with a good hand on his shoulders and dozens of Dutch courage. He prepared his flowers and a box of chocolates for any lady wanting to date him. When Pam sat down on a chair next to a table and await his decision, Darien had to 'fess up: he did not want a relationship with another woman. In fact, he was living with his fiancee and is about to return to Japan to begin a new journey for themselves. With it being last Christmas, Pam gave Darien one week to make up his mind, or she was going to knock his teeth out with her fists."

"This was a week before he mysteriously appeared at the station as a tuxedo man," Catherine added. "The deadline was that same night. Pam had come to search for Darien, and when Darien did not make up his mind, Pam pounded him into the ground and threatened to kill one of Darien's closet friends unless he dates her at Batesville's golf course and kiss her by midnight, on your birthday."

"So, Darien came up with this bright idea," Jacob said. "He waited until the effeminate guy hit this jewelry store - literally, with his car, right through the window - and grabbed a Swatch worth far more than he owed to Pam."

"The Swatch Gretzky was wearing," Amy said, forgetting to clear her throat in all the excitement.

"The very one," Jacob agreed. "Darien said he tied it on the dead man to show he deeply cared about his first love and got himself off of Pam. So, definitely, there was some food for thought here. The timeline worked, the Swatch made sense.

Not everything made sense, though. For instance, I asked him why the dead man was wearing nothing, and where were his clothes. Darien could not answer that because he did not have any knowledge about Gretzky. I forgave him for his crime and decided to let him gather his thoughts in one of our holding cells."

Nick signaled for another beer. "Back at the forensics lab, we get a match on that fingerprint on the Swatch. Darien Shield's. So it seems like an obvious case, right? Except I go down to the morgue where Grissom and the coroner are preparing to remove Lyle's brain and boil the skull. They have been examining the wound. It seems like the head injury was dead serious, but inconclusive as to the cause of death."

"Hence boiling the skull," Catherine explained.

"Oh," Velma said. She was perspiring.

"Now everything's coming together," Nick said. "Tox panel comes back positive for Pam's blood. No surprises there. In addition, he's got high blood pressure and anxiety, which would account for his temper."

Jacob summed up: "It all fits. We got the gal, but the tux guy killed her, which is good because he's all over the 11 o'clock news by now: a local hero beats a punk on a crime spree. Two crimes ring a bell in my mind: robbery and murder."

"Except," Catherine said, "Jacob and I are back at ICPD, right? Congratulating ourselves on more or less solving a case in less than three hours. Maybe get home on time for once in our lives."

"Jinkies, there were blonde hair on the corpse!" Velma recalled, and this time cleared her throat after she spoke.

"I guess that the mystery has been solved," Jacob said. "At least for now."

They drank in silence for a minute. Both Velma and Amy needed to sort through the strange facts in this rare case. Jacob was thinking of people coming and going since then, and how his birthday always brought the family around for a visit somehow. Catherine was thinking of home.

Nick was wondering what Grissom was doing since their last encounter. He hoped his mentor had relaxed over the summer, for a change. It is possible, Nick thought, that even Gil could learn how to slow down with his new academic schedule. And his new wife. It had been almost four years and yet the idea of Mr. and Mrs. Grissom still surprised and delighted him to this day.

Jacob cleared his throat, realized he had done it, and experienced mild annoyance. It must be infectious. "Pam was Pamela Anderson, right?" he asked.

"No," Catherine said. "Just Pam." she corrected, because Jacob looked nonplussed.

Jacob waved the detail aside. "Her real identity is a mystery, anyway. I got nothing else to do, so I took Darien to the interview room and do it all over again. His story is still pretty good.

He says that Pam knocked the crap out of her fiancé, John Gretzky, and was going to kill him. Her sorority friends knew Gretzky and the fact that he was not bluffing. So, right away she went to the cabin, because he always stay inside the same living room for visits and he was easy to find. Loathe as she was to do it, Pam offered him her body in exchange for another couple days to date her. She knew that Darien was not worth the effort at having sexual intercourse with."

"Her body?" Velma said, as if he had never heard of a female body's commercial application before.

"The area between her cheek and the ground," Catherine clarified.

"She exhibited plenty of it," Jacob added. "Over here, over there, and up there. So it was not nearly a crazy idea. And it connects with the blood above both the victim's chest and shirt. Maybe even the business casual suit the victim was wearing."

"I sat in on this interrogation, too," Catherine said. "Darien said John Gretzky told her he was going to do a lot more than she was offering - like smash her face in so he wouldn't recognize her. He came after her, she fought back, got a lucky shot, and he fell down and smashed his head. At the time she didn't know he was dead before Lyle, so she took his clothes and lay them somewhere in the background to make sure he couldn't come after her while she got out of the cabin."

"Was that plausible?" Amy asked.

"Not if it occurred to her he might have other clothes in the room with him," Catherine replied. "But who knows. People in extreme situations don't think clearly and precisely."

"We did get her personal narrative," Jacob said. "It was heart-warming, like acid reflux. Seems Darien was a gentle, polite guy when they first met. If you closely follow me, she was a female barber-turned-prostitute who had started getting extra work from the customers. They met, they fell in love. Both of them went direct. As long as they were together, am I right?"

"But along came my birthday," continued Jacob, "and they were both unsuccessful. She contemplated ratting herself out for a little redundant amount of chocolate and flowers – apparently the same kind of reasoning that got her prospective boyfriend into trouble at Tokyo. So Darien loses this pile of romantic gifts, confesses to her, and spends the remainder of the week trying to put together the date. As of the deadline, they had about only a box of chocolates – they could have had the whole amount put together by now to replace the flowers, if they had worked full-time since then."

"So I don't see how this is a peaceful day," Amy objected. "I mean Pam killed a man to keep the other one out of trouble? To be honest, I'm not feeling the love."

"You had to be there. I found it very emotional," Jacob said. "Anyone want another round from Catherine? No? Splendid, I think my card's about had it."

Catherine was staring into her beer glass and spoke as if in a dream, imagining the scene in the beer. "At the lab, they were in rare form down, so we were able to get provisional confirmation within twenty minutes that the hair we found in the victim's bright yellow chain was probably Pam's - but the blood above his chest was Darien's, like the blood on the watch. She directly punched Darien in the face."

"Don't forget," Nick interjected, "we took a second look at the tapes and found that Pam was upstairs and down from the living room, too. When she left, she had a laundry bag in her hands. This was about twenty minutes before Gretzky showed up."

"Before he showed up?" Velma was dazed by this news.

"Yep," Nick said. "She got there first."

"So she was the one who truly killed him?"

"That's about right where we were," Catherine said. "It didn't seem possible, but Darien apparently killed a 150 pound hooker with the heart and the mind of a serial killer. It was clear that Pam was covering for Gretzky. But we were all out of ideas as to what really happened. We put him in an interview room to see if we could get some conflicting stories going. We didn't tell him that we're next door, of course. Then Gil called."

Jacob chortled. "Grissom had a way of stepping in at just exactly the exact moment. This was one of those times he recently had. He dialed a phone call from the morgue. Lyle's skull displayed the blow that could have been fatal. But it was not. The coroner had a closer examination at the brain and figured out that John Gretzky died of a natural cause and high blood pressure."

"She didn't kill Gretzky?" Amy said. "Arteriovenous malformation hemorrhage," explained Nick. "Brain aneurism. Probably born with it - a twist in the blood vessel. Between the blood and the stress and God knows what else this guy overloaded himself up with on a daily basis, it put enough strain on it, it exploded and he was dead before his dome even hit the ladder then to the floor."

"Naturally, we told Darien about it," Catherine said. "That's when he told us the truth."

"Darien didn't have to change his story much. Pam went upstairs to his suite like he said. Saw John's clothes had blood on them, and knew it was his blood. She tried to wrangle. He took off his shirt and attacked her. She fought back with all she had, even at the sexual organ Jacob mentioned earlier, which wasn't much, but he fell down and hit his head. She figured she killed him. After that, she took his clothes, because they were completely covered in her boyfriend's blood. Then she ran for her life and guided the Mondelo family to their deaths later on."

"So far, so good," Jacob said. "Meanwhile, Darien was attempting to stop her from uniting with Gretzky by halting the failed efforts of an effeminate man to rob the jewelry-store. If the greedy guy will take the Swatch, maybe Pam can get out of town before he ever find out it is embezzled. Darien is not a rocket scientist, but his heart was in the right place. He disappeared into oblivion before the murder case went public.

Darien went to the cabin. He went to the living room and saw the open door. Darien went in and found the corpses. He saw something Pam did not - she lost her hair clip. It was on the floor near Gretzky. Darien recognized it because it was some inexpensive rhinestone object he brought to her fifteen years ago when he traveled to the United States of America to continue his studies.

Darien could not believe that skank could do this to charismatic Gretzky, but there it is. She clamped the watch on Gretzky's wrist. I thought maybe we may think that John stole the Swatch. It is a good thing that he did not have a watch from Croatia. It then would be named a Crotch. Then she got the punk out of there like the Devil was after her."

For a while, Nick had been silent enjoying the recital. But there was something others had left out. "This was the decent part, I thought. Seems like right about then. Pam went back to her apartment and turned the television on. And there was her effeminate man, who was up for robbery and murder."

"So she went to rescue him, until Darien disguised himself as Tuxedo Mask because of his masquerade party mask," Jacob concluded. "If that is not a peaceful day, I do not know what that is then."

Jacob leaned back on his bar stool, very pleased to have provided Amy and Velma with this revealing example of human kindness in a moment of hardship. They did not look floodlit; rather, Velma tied the straw from her drink into three knots, shaking her head.

"So what were the charges?" Velma asked. "Nobody else got hurt. Darien got a year for murder, but he was later off the hook when his motives justify his heroic actions not noticed much. This was not worth a bang for our buck.

We do not know if Pam was charged with fleeing the scene, tampering with evidence, and I think she wanted to say she stole the clothes, too, but that did not stick with the evidence provided. Sometimes people will do the wrong things for the right reason. And sometimes they do the right things for the wrong reasons. She left town as soon as Darien was out."

Jacob remembered something he had not put into the story, but he did not inform Amy and Velma about it. He was the only one present who had witnessed the moment, anyway. Jacob had been in the interrogation room with Darien, and because his stories were now objectively tallied up, he figured it was time to let this case work itself out. So Darien was sent out without handcuffs.

Right at that moment, something creepy broke out of the other interrogation room. It looked like a slimy blob and flew around the room. It threw its arms around food and ate it until there was none of it for everyone else. Unfortunately, even with best efforts, Jacob and the uniforms could not help but let it happen. Then they split up and searched every sector to find it. "For now on, we need professional ghost hunters to catch this thing. Who are we going to call?" Everyone shouted, "Ghostbusters!"

Catherine was on her feet. It was time to relax and go home. They exchanged goodbyes and good wishes of the kind co-workers always exchange, meaning as much or as miniscule as the recipient wanted. Before leaving work, they shook hands. Jacob's debit card (which was actually his mother's debit card) worked, and better yet, as he was signing the slip, Nick bloated his jacket pocket with a pair of twenties.

They went out into the parking lot and fanned out to their cars which included Jacob's mother's car. Amy and Velma fell beside Jacob and cleared their throats. "She was willing to sacrifice herself for her so-called date," Velma said.

"Yeah," Jacob replied. The Mystery Van arrived in front of Jacob and the girls. Velma said that she offered Jacob to help Mystery Incorporated solve more mysteries and they could use someone as intelligent as herself to accomplish this task. "Later, but we will see each other again someday." Velma nodded in approval and departed to the groovy van. Amy and Jacob both waved their hands and said their goodbyes.

After the van left, Amy's buzzer rang and she realized she needs to travel back to Little Rock airport to fly back to Japan and see her friends again. "Do you want to know what my secret identity is?" Amy asked. Jacob nodded his head to say yes. She whispered her alias to Jacob's right ear: Sailor Mercury. "I am a Sailor Scout of Water! Fighting for love, justice, wisdom, and exams!" Jacob was so exhilarated that he gave her a bear hug and kissed her on the lips. "I am a fan of you and the rest of the Sailor Scouts. You are all warriors who fight evil everyday with magical tools and powers, and look for love in the daylight. I have seen every episode and special since I was little." Jacob said. "It is nice to have a fan like you," complimented Amy.

"I believe your leader Sailor Moon is Serena. She was the princess of the moon. She may be a cry baby and an irresponsible wiener but she is mature now. She knows that she needs to save the world when duty calls. I love you, her, and every Sailor Scout!" Amy blushed at what Jacob said. "Why thank you. That is sweet. Hey, how would you like to assist the Sailor Scouts. We could use another hero like you to help defeat all kinds of evil." Jacob thought about her offer and he decided that he will whenever he can. "I'll see you soon. I am going to tell my friends everything I know about you." Amy said to Jacob. "Alright then. See you later!" Jacob said. She drove off to Little Rock while Jacob went to his mother's car and rode back to his apartment at the Wagon Wheel Estates. For now, Jacob wanted to get home to spend more time with his family. And he was home in time for his fourth year at the UACCB.

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