The very next morning...
A couple of the construction site workers informed Detective McLean of the event that had happened at their location. There were no workers present at the yard last night, however, due to the pile of cement blocks and the broken bulldozer, they knew something went wrong. So hearing about those two things, some policemen, including Chris, came to the construction site so that they can investigate.
Chris drives up in front of the trailer that was in nearby the cranes where Jo got crushed. The detective opens his door and stepped out. Once he was out, he looks around the construction site, before heading over to the pile of cement blocks. Chris took off his sunglasses than looks over to one of the workers who was coming over to him.
"I believe that an unfortunate accident happened here, huh?" Chris asked the worker.
"I'm afraid so, Detective McLean." The worker said, frowning at the sight of the detective. "We know it's probably nothing, but we're really worried about the pile that just appeared in the middle of the construction site. We're worried that it was caused by thieves." Chris raises an eyebrow, glaring at the worker nearby.
"You're worried about thieves? Look, man, I'm worried about this man who's going around attacking the residents of this town if you haven't noticed. The last thing I'm concerned about is a couple thieves who are going around stealing things from the construction site. Whatever they can steal here, they'd probably return it due to how petty it is to steal around a spot like this." Chris then points at the construction worker nearby. "One of you move all this cement blocks out of the way so that we can check out what's under this pile!" One worker approaches the detective rubbing his chin as he approached him.
"Uh...Detective McLean, sir...I'm afraid our bulldozer is...broken..." That worker said, kind of worried.
"God damn it, then tell one of those workers to get their asses and get somebody on this broken vehicle! We don't have all day!"
After Chris shouts that, the detective then looks over to the other police officers, who were staring at him. Chris then pulls out his phone, shaking his head. To him, it's crazy to him that he has to do everything himself. Especially when it comes to the police.
"Fine...I know somebody from my old college that knows how to fix machinery like that bulldozer..." Chris mutters to himself. "...I swear, you guys could literately pull your phones out and called a mechanic yourself before we got here." The other works rolled their eyes in unison hearing that.
It took a bit of time for the guy to finally get here, as well as some additional time for him to fix up the bulldozer's engines so that it can be working again. Once the bulldozer was fixed, one of the workers got into the vehicle, and then pushed the cement blocks out of the way so that they can see what was underneath the pile. What was underneath made the many workers and police officers sick to their stomached.
It was Jo. Or what's left of her anyway. She appeared to be completely stuck in the cement, and her body, it looked completely mangled after all of those blocks fell onto her. It was terrifying to say the least. One officer even went behind one of the cars to throw up after seeing that.
"By God...what has this psycho done?" Chris whispers under his breath. He looks behind himself to the rest of the police officers he was with. "Why Jo was even out here to begin with, we'll figure that out later. Whoever it is, he or she was here. What his plan was concerning both the crane and the bulldozer...it seemed ridiculous. But regardless, I want one of you to go to Jo's house and inform her parents of what has happened to her, one of you go to Mayor Hatchett and inform him of this, and a bunch of you to help me bring this body to the hospital. And MacArthur..."
"Yes, Detective McLean." MacArthur asked. Chris points at the police officer who was throwing up.
"Get that guy a paper bag."
"On it."
Chris walked over to the spot where Jo died, looking down at her with a disappointed stare. He crossed his arms, tapping his chin. Then he continued to look around, trying to find some sort of paper that was around this place, if there were any.
Looking around the construction site, Chris searched in places that he'd expect the psycho to be hiding when Jo died last night. He checked the trailer that was nearby the cranes. Nothing. He checked around the bulldozer, aside from the engine. Nothing. He then climbed up one of the crane that was above the spot where Jo got crushed. The man was a bit fearful, but it was the last spot around here that he didn't investigate yet. So it's time to stomach up the fear to not go up there, and do it anyway.
So Chris climbed up the ladder leading up to the top of the crane. He opens the door at the very top of the machine, checking the inside of the cranes driver seat. It doesn't look like anyone was inside of it, but he knew that the buttons have been pressed somehow.
This was when Chris noticed one of those notes Gwen's been founding around the town...
It was a bit of a dangerous reach. It was at the part of the crane where the string and hook was located at. So he decided to brave his balance, and tried to go towards that spot on the crane. He climbed his way onto the top of the bars, then made his way over to the hook spot. He stops at that spot, taking the paper that was stuck on the edge of the crane. He turns around, heading back to the ladder, then headed down to the ground.
Once he was on the ground, Chris looked at the note...
'Looks like Jo is done for, after the damn second time I tried to get her. You tried to stop my plan once, but I expected you to be chased here. I have nothing against you, but keep out of this Gwen. You can't save everyone.' The note said.
"Gwen? Why is the note bringing her up into this?" Chris asked himself. "Does she know something that I don't?"
Looking at the nearby police cars, Chris places the note into his jacket, before walking over to his car. He whistles for MacArthur's attention, which led her to walk over to him. Once MacArthur was near Chris, the two began another conversation.
"So, I recently found this note, you see." Chris said, handing the police woman the note. "Gwen is mentioned in it. Apparently, this killer knows who Gwen is, but somehow, she is involved in this somehow. So what I want you to do is pick up Gwen from her house, and bring her over to the police station so that me and her can have a word about this note that I found." MacArthur hands Chris back the paper, then walks over to her police car, before Chris got back into his own car.
"Will do, sir." Chris and MacArthur started up their cars, then headed off to go to Gwen's house to pick her up.
Meanwhile...
Noah was holding up a couple of the photos that he found in one of the drawers of his house. Emma, Kitty, and Cody were following along, wondering where Noah was even going right now. The four of them were walking down the road, in complete silence, heading through the empty neighborhood. Nothing more but silence was what came out of all of them.
It was about an hour when they were walking together, and it was still nothing but silent. Emma finally broke the silence when they stopped at a random crosswalk at a random spot in a part of the neighborhood that none of them have been to before.
"So...where are we going, Noah? You never said where we're even heading to when you got all four of us together." Emma said. Noah finally spoke after a whole hour of walking through this neighborhood.
"Remember that talk me and you had yesterday?" Noah asked his new girlfriend. Emma nods her head. "I actually found one bit of a photo that had a missing part to it, and I had to see what this guy had any part of it." Noah looks at the photo in his hand. "This girl that me and Gwen saw on at the water tower. Her name is Zoey. She is dating this guy named Mike, who...I haven't exactly talked to him throughout the entirety of my college years, considering that I was always in the library, among many places there."
"Mike, huh? That guy who's dating Zoey?" Cody asked.
"That's what I just said."
"I know. I don't really know much about him either."
"Well...I gave Owen a call the other day about who this Mike guy is. He told me that Mike is, like Duncan, a bit of a lone wolf, in Owen's own words. He tends to be by himself for a majority of our college years. He also stated that Mike was often seen hanging out with the school's science class. How I never seen him walking around that class since I've been going to there classroom to study, I don't really know. But if we can ask him a couple questions about if he knows Duncan, and if there was any sort of rivalry between the two of them, then I think we'd be getting close to who this culprit is." Cody raises an eyebrow approaching Noah.
"Hey, dude, I don't mean to go against you on this one, but isn't telling me if incidents that happened like, a couple months back a bad idea?" Cody asked him. "It seems pretty insensitive to try to lay all that from the past in him out of nowhere. Especially when he might just be wanting to move on and forget about it."
"That I understand. But..." Noah stopped himself, not so certain how to respond to a few good points like that. He could really only say the more logical answer to all of what Cody said. "He might want to forget about it, but think about the rest of the town. We all have family and friends that we are wanting to protect. I bet if we told him what's been happening around the neighborhood, he'd be wanting to do a lot more for that Zoey girl he's with." Cody nods his head.
"Good point too." Kitty then jumps into the conversation, standing next to Cody as they walked.
"So, aside from Mike, who is this Zoey girl? Is she also a person who graduated college like the rest of you?" Kitty asked.
"Your guess is as good as mine, Kitty." Noah said to her. "I asked Izzy about her since Owen doesn't know, and...she was just as baffled as Owen was."
The four of them stopped in front of one of the houses that was in the block they were on. The house, as Noah mentioned, belongs to Mike, a student from his college. Looking down at the gate, Noah walks into the yard, allowing the other three in. Then they approached the door.
Noah approaches the door first, heading over to the welcome mat, that was just laying there in front of it. The boy then knocks on the door, waiting for some sort of response from the person inside, whether it would be Mike or Zoey. After a bit of a wait, the man himself finally answered.
The guy is rather skinny, with tan skin and black spiky hair. He wore a lime green shirt with a dark blue vest, and had jeans too. This was Mike, Noah remembers the photo he found, so this is him.
"Hello? Me and my girlfriend are busy watching a movie if you don't mind." Mike said. "What do you want?"
"Me and my friends have been searching the town for you and Zoey, hoping you can help us ask a couple questions." Noah said. "I hope you don't mind that." Confused, Mike looks behind the scrawny boy, and saw his other three friends.
"Are...you guys like, interns for Detective McLean or something? Because I don't think I've done anything wrong."
"No no no no, we are not accusing you of anything. We just need to talk." Emma said, stepping in. "You're...Mike, correct? We were just looking for you because...well...you and Zoey probably know about..." Feeling like that approach would have the door slam in their faces, Emma just didn't bring that up. "Look, why don't you just let us in so that we can talk? We'll explain everything once we're inside."
"If you say so." Mike looks inside his own house. "Zoey! A couple people came and they want to talk to us about a couple things! Is that alright?!"
"Sure. The more the merrier in this house!" Zoey shouts from the living room.
"Not why we are here. But okay." Noah said. The four walked into the house, as Mike closes the door behind them.
Meanwhile...
Gwen was sitting at her house, sitting at her kitchen counter. She had Trent over at her house, as she wanted to tell her all that she ended up seeing last night. It might've been a very bad idea to do so, considering that anything Gwen might say will be a totally bad idea, but she had to be honest with somebody. She sat there, drinking a random soda from her fridge, as Trent questioned her about the construction site incident.
"So...let me get this straight? You were walking around the streets, WHILE that psychopath is loose, and then you heard Jo screaming for help out in the construction site?" Trent asked her. Gwen nods her head.
"That's...basically what has happened." Gwen said.
She wasn't completely honest with her boyfriend on this one, knowing how over protective he is of her, and saying that she went out there with a crossbow would really make him even more anxious. So Gwen circled around the part where she chased a supposed 'culprit' into the construction site, and remained on the fact that she was out for a nice walk. It didn't look like it worked all that much, sadly enough.
"So now Jo's dead...that fucking sucks..." Trent said, leaning on the counter, rolling his eyes. "How does somebody like this even know about how to use stuff like a crane or a bulldozer anyway?" Gwen shrugs her shoulders.
"I honestly...don't know, all I know is that this culprit...whoever it is...he or she seems to be a complete genius, considering he knew how to send a metal pole flying at a fast speed, and somehow was able to operate a crane and bulldozer, I can only sit back and wonder who is even behind all of this." Gwen told him. "...Because now, there's probably a whole lot more people that could be the culprit in this..."
Before Gwen could finish her sentence, she heard the door being knocked on. She stood up, wondering who it was. She and Trent walked up to the door, opening it up, only to see that Chris and MacArthur were standing outside on her couch, staring at her with cold expressions on their faces.
"Uh...is there a problem, officer?" Trent asked the two of them.
"Officers, you mean?" MacArthur said, pointing at Trent. "Just because Chris is a detective, doesn't mean you can't refer him to 'officer', sir!" Trent held up his hands in defense.
"Jesus, take a chill pill, ma'am..."
"Anyways, what's going on?" Gwen asked the two officers at her house. "Me and Trent were busy talking to each other, and..." Chris didn't say anything, but stepped closer to Gwen. "...Something tells me this involves me, huh?" Chris silently nods his head, before handing her the paper so that she can read it to herself. Once Gwen saw her name on the note, she gasped in shock.
"Gwen...me and MacArthur need a long word with you at the police station, right now." Chris said.
"I-I...okay..." Gwen said, giving in.
"Pretty boy. Come along too, since you're her boyfriend, and you know her." MacArthur said, pointing at Trent again. "Also, because you disrespected both of us, by just saying 'officer', and not..."
"Okay, what the hell makes Chris even an officer? He's a detective, I think we..." Trent said, before being interrupted.
"IS THAT BACK TALK I HEAR!?"
"MacArthur, please." Chris said, glaring at the police woman. "Bring Trent, only because he knows Gwen personally. No need to go bad cop, and have the neighbors freaked out by this. We don't need more commotion already."
"Yes...sorry sir." MacArthur said calmly, before glaring at Trent. "But I still got my eye on you, pal." Trent held up his hands, before the four of them headed over to the police car so that they can bring Gwen to the police station.