Author's note: Dear Lord, I screwed up.

First of all, Aaron Duvall is in no way related to Coraline Duvall. Somehow I must've subconsciously carried that name around and came with the decision to use that last name and attach it to Aaron. But it rings nicely. Aaron – Duvall – rings nicely.

Secondly, when I updated this story, we found out that one of our cats died. He fell from the tenth floor and somehow did not manage to land on his feet. I'm dedicating this chapter to him.

Thirdly, there is Alexander Hamilton High in Los Angeles. It is purely for inspirational purposes only that I use the name. Google it if you don't believe me. In this chapter I swapped the name around.

Last, but not least, thanks for following my little story. Those who are content to read and review, I applaud your tenacity. Those who are content to read, I adore you; however, please remember to review when the story ends :). Yes. It will end. Soon.

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To start an investigation with a name and a photo is never a way to start at all. Even the best there is agrees to that. I had to look for more than what Cynthia had given me: the Hamilton Alexander High School Yearbook, edition 1988. That alone presented another problem: school is only open in daytime. The sun is up in daytime. I am a vampire. You do the math.

Sometimes Josef would remind me that I should not become a private eye. The sun gets in the way too much, and most of the action happen under the sun. I would be happy to prove him wrong.

So to the school I went. I met up with the principal – a very chatty man, by the way – and asked him if I could see their student records because I was, after all, a head-hunter looking for eligible and deserving school-leavers to join my manager's budding company in a sophisticated management training. I looked the part, too: I wore a round-neck t-shirt topped with a long coat that effectively covered hands and neck from the sun. Shiny shoes, too.

Flattered as he was for Josef's branch company to have chosen the school, the headmaster still wanted some sort of a proof. I gave him the number Josef asked me to call should something of this manner crops up, and the headmaster did that.

"Well," Mr Daniels nodded, obviously satisfied, as he put down the handset, "everything is in order, and they are sending a fax of the letter that you have forgotten to bring, too. So, feel free to ask Mr Darby here, Mr Michaels, while I have to check on the school football team. It's their photo-taking sessions."

I met up with Mr Darby. With all the nightmares I've had with school clerks, he was not the typical school secretary. With horn-rimmed glasses and a sunny disposition, he was helpful to a fault. And turned out he knew the school better than Mr Daniels did. Plus, he had worked in the school for maybe thirteen years. Perhaps he might know the students – you know, seeing them outside of the principal's office, meeting them down the hallway, sending letters, showing them their schedules. He had to at least know the parents.

"That's Aaron Duvall," said Darby when I pointed out a photo of a football team, dated 1987. I had noticed earlier that the same face from the yearbook popped out from the ensemble. "Played an impressive game that year. Brought back the title for us. Did us proud, the young man did."

"Now that's the kind of man our company would be proud to have," I exclaimed. At that point Darby fell silent. "What, something wrong?"

Darby shrugged. "That boy. Got so much before him, and threw it away in a blink of an eye."

"He fought?"

"More than that. He injured another kid. Got into a nasty fight, got that other kid into ICU, got himself into juvenile." He shook his head. "I feel sorry, still."

That was something Cynthia failed to mention. It made me wonder. "He was, huh. What become of him nowadays? Heard from him anymore?"

"No, never."

How surprising. "What about his parents?"

"He's orphaned at birth. Goes in and out of the system like a needle in a cross-stitch. But I gotta tell you, he was not a problem student. Not until that final year."

"Peer pressure, was it?"

"I don't even think it was that, Mr Michaels." Darby bit his lips in deep thought. His eyes stared at me over his thick glasses. They were green and suddenly wary, and I thought I might have crossed some sort of a line here. I quickly checked myself as smoothly as possible and gave him an innocent smile. "And why are you so interested in this person, by the way?" he asked.

Was he getting suspicious? "Like you said, there was so much potential in him," I said, trying to look nonchalant. "It's sad to see kids go so high only to get wasted like this."

"They're just misguided, Mr Michaels," Darby said, his voice suddenly hardened. "Anyone can have a second chance if they wanted to."

"Yeah, if only you can just take their hand and put them back at where they should belong. The question is whether we get that second chance."

Somehow that made both of us fell silent. It was quite a while until either of us made a sound. I apologised to him, citing the heat that made me irritable, which it was. Excusing myself, I made the proper promises that I knew would not come true, and hurriedly left under the thankfully rather cloudy skies.

Now I had a photo, a name and a case that I could at least track down. For this I had to turn to a friend in the service. Maybe he had to break a few laws for me.

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"I am breaking about a dozen laws just by letting you see this dossier, you know," Sinclair whispered. He tried to look as relaxed as possible while drinking the coffee I had brought for him. Someone passed outside of the office and he stiffened. When the shadow passed, he released a sigh of relief.

"Oh, just relax, Sinc," I said as I went through the dossier. "It's not like I don't know when somebody's coming."

"Yeah," he said, sipping the coffee. "How do you do that, anyway?"

"Extra sensory powers," I said simply. Sinclair let out a long 'woah' like I was a new toy that just got pulled out of Santa's sack.

Sinclair's case was rather sad, and convenient for me. He got tangled in some very nasty feral vampire case I had been working since 1985. Sinclair was very nearly killed by the vampire, and I had to kill it the only way vampires can be killed – burning. I got very efficient in that, I realised, and that was rather scary. But Sinclair was thankful for that and he was the only human who knew my existence. Josef disapproved of this, but even with his riches, he could not get a good contact on the inside. No offense, man.

Sinclair never got over the fact that I had saved him from being vampire feed, and was always eager to help me in anything. He even accepted the position of a pencil-pusher in the precinct, even when he knew that the position was actually a demotion for running that serial murder case cold. He knew he could get inside the system without being spotted right away. Looking rather plain and not standing out also helped a lot. Although I have to say that Sinclair is no slouch in the looks department.

Most juvenile case files were not kept in the local police precinct; they were kept in the courthouse stores. Sinclair however got this down because Aaron Duvall was tried as an adult instead. It turned out that he was actually nineteen at that time of trial. (It was one of the curses of being an orphan – later I learnt that Duvall started going to school very late – age 9.) It was a very short trial; he was found guilty of misdemeanour assault and battery. His lawyer somehow managed to get him a year in prison.

"Aggravated assault and battery charges?" I remarked as I read the pages.

Sinclair nodded. "Uh-huh. Isn't that a bit too much?"

"Well, the victim did get admitted to the ICU so it had to be."

"For a day! I mean, was the victim made out of glass? Did he shatter? They had to glue him back together again or something?"

"Stand down, man! Why are you being emotional about this, anyway?" I asked him, smiling.

"I read that dossier a few times over while waiting for you, okay," Sinclair replied. "If I were the boy's lawyer, I'd scream the boy's statement was taken under duress, and that the victim was the son of someone very powerful in the society."

"Don't bring you conspiracy theory to town, Sinc. Everything here looks okay to me. He got off quite easy – one year in prison..."

"Oh, you missed the final page." Sinclair stood up, took the dossier from me without warning, and flipped it to the last page. "Read that," he said, looking down at me as I did so. What I read made my eyes bulge out.

JULY 10 1990 – PRISONER 1892301 found dead in cell presumed suicide.

Presumed suicide.

Should I rest my case?

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Any errors are mine. Please do review as I update this story!