May 29

Blocker Law Offices

11:30 AM

Cotoli Morix

To put it nicely, the cellar was cramped.

I had never been particularly fond of tight spaces, and the cellar did not make me feel any better. Part of me was ready to throw up, but I didn't want to make a scene or anything big like that. Instead, I clenched my hands tightly into fists and walked inside, doing my best to focus on the important things around us as opposed to how small the room was.

There was a large refrigerator on one wall. It was wide open, and cold air assaulted us when we got into the room fully. There were countless cabinets around the room, most of them pressed against the wall. They were all painted a sleek black, but the tops were coated with thick dust, and I couldn't help but cringe at thinking of how horrible it would be to clean this place.

Aside from that, there wasn't much in the room. There was a body laid out against the floor, but there wasn't anything suspicious near it. A large bag was left nearby, and the inside of it was covered with blood near the center. There were many police officers gathered around the body, and if I hadn't been so tall, I wouldn't have been able to see it. I pointed it out for Victoria, who couldn't see much around the crowd. She nodded her thanks before we turned to Detective Erikson and Detective Hayes.

"The victim was stabbed in the chest once, and the blow was fatal since it got her in the heart right off the bat. Of course, you already knew that, but I'm sure you didn't know that the body was originally found inside a bag. If you look at the corpse now, you won't see it in its original environment. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to look at the body where it was found," Detective Erikson told us. "After all, it was found standing upright in the fridge. There's no blood in the fridge because the body was kept in a large plastic bag until the forensics team arrived and pulled it out. It's something that you wouldn't expect upon first arriving."

"Why is there a fridge here?" I asked, frowning. "There has to be a reason for that. I mean, it's not as if every building has a fridge just sitting underground."

"Here, there is some evidence that needs to be stored. It's sometimes required that they are placed in a cold space, and the fridge has adjustable temperatures to allow for the evidence to be kept frozen. The temperature can range greatly, meaning it can go down below freezing. I'm sure that you're seeing why this is a problem for the forensics team. It's impossible to determine the time of death when the body was found inside the fridge since it's difficult to figure out how long it was in there. This leaves us in a bit of a rut," Detective Erikson told us.

I let out a sigh and shook my head. "Hm... How peculiar," I murmured. "Who exactly has access to this underground cellar? Surely one of the people who can come down here had to do it. It's hard to get a body inside of a fridge if the killer doesn't have access to the cellar to begin with."

"The one person who has access to the cellar is the owner of the agency... However, she just so happens to be the victim in this case, meaning it's hard to say who could come down here. When she went missing, the key to the cellar disappeared, and it didn't resurface until recently. That was how we found the body in the first place," Detective Erikson replied.

"Where did the key resurface? How did it get here?" Victoria asked eagerly. "I don't understand... The person who got into the cellar couldn't have been the victim since the key would have been on her, and unless somebody wanted to make a replica key to get inside, it would be impossible to get in. It's a locked-room case... Sort of. If you really think about it."

"The key came around again after the previous case that your agency took on. I'm sure you remember that since you were arrested as the suspect," Detective Erikson said. "It was the murder of Cormous Arme. The key was found on his body after it was taken in for further investigation by the police force."

"Wait... Cormous?" I questioned, feeling my eyes go wider than saucers. "You can't be serious. How would he wind up with a key to the cellar? Even when he was alive, he never came here. If he knew the owner of this agency, it would be a different story, but I somehow doubt that's the case... He was far from being a good person while he was alive, and I simply don't find it in his nature to get involved with Blocker Law in this way."

"Regardless of what you would expect, it was on him. It wasn't found until after the body was taken in for the final examination, which was after the case had ended, but the key was there. Prosecutor Burke was the one who found it on him, as a matter of fact. She had been searching for Dee Fence for months, and she didn't have a breakthrough until after finding that key. She got down here using the key and opened the fridge, not seeing any other options, but she soon found herself in trouble because she discovered a body inside there by chance," Detective Erikson told us.

"The body was found in the plastic bag standing up inside the fridge. It wasn't wide enough for the victim's body to be placed laying down, so it was leaned up against the wall instead. I wish she hadn't been found in the fridge though... The time of death is a complete mystery because of this," Detective Hayes frowned.

"I can see why. When you started explaining that the time of death couldn't be determined, I wasn't sure what it could mean. Now, it makes a lot of sense... We aren't just talking about something recent, like within the past few days. Instead, it's something much deeper. It's a matter of what day the victim could have been killed in the past few weeks, if not months, meaning it's nearly impossible to find without using some sort of outside clue... This certainly doesn't bode well for us. We need to know when the victim died if we want to find the culprit. Even if the specific time eludes us, the day the victim passed on is vital. I would say that's one of the most important parts of a murder case," I sighed, shaking my head.

"I don't know what we originally expected, but that wasn't it," Victoria murmured. "But we can't give up yet. People are counting on us to find the truth, and we're going to no matter what. I don't want anyone to be jailed for a crime they didn't commit. We'll just have to power through despite the limited clues until we stumble upon something big."

"If you're that determined, then feel free to look around. I had a feeling you would want to figure out the truth, but I'm glad to have assurance. Spend as much time in here as you need. The police won't mind sharing, and if they give you crap for it, I'll be able to straighten them out. Don't worry a bit," Detective Erikson said.

"Thank you for all your help. We really do appreciate it. I promise we won't let you down. We're going to find the truth no matter what, whether we know the time of death or not," Victoria told him firmly. I could tell that she was trying to hide her nerves, so I nudged her gently and gave her a smile as a silent vote of confidence.

"I have faith in you. If anyone is going to figure out the truth behind this case, it would be you. We don't have any witnesses at our disposal quite yet since the time of the crime is a mystery, but once we find some, we will send them over to you. Witness testimony is arguably even more important than the time of death. I'll let you decide which one is valued as higher on your list of importance, but the point is that we don't have anything yet. If something is discovered, we'll be sure to tell you immediately. Until then, take your time and look around as much as you need to. We'll check back in with you sooner or later to hear about what progress you have made in your investigation. Feel free to tell us whatever you learn. We aren't working with a prosecutor yet since none have been to assigned to the case. We'll tell you when we get an update on that," Detective Erikson told us.

"Thanks again," I smiled. "We'll tell you if we see anything particularly notable."

Detective Erikson nodded before walking away with Detective Hayes. I turned to Victoria and crossed my arms. "So, where do you think we should start?" I asked. "I want to give you as much of a chance to find your methods on this case. You won't get anywhere if you're just following others. It's important to make your own place in the world instead of living in the shadows of other people."

Victoria looked around the room for a few moments. "I-I don't know if I'm really the best person to decide on this... All I really have is my optimism, and I'm not even all that good at remaining positive," she said. "I do want to figure out how to solve cases on my own though, so... I guess I don't really have any other options here."

"I have faith in you. I think you can do it," I told her. "You deserve to have a bit more faith in yourself. I wouldn't have brought you into the agency if I didn't think you had potential. Go on. Look around the room. You can find somewhere to start, and I'm happy to guide you, but I don't want to give you all the answers. I believe in you."

Victoria flushed at the sudden praise. "You're far too kind to me, Mr. Morix... But I'll be sure to do my best," she said, nodding firmly to me. She spent another few seconds looking around before pointing to the body. "Let's see if we can find anything there. Maybe there will be something to point to who the killer is or when the crime took place on the corpse. I'm not exactly fond of rifling through a dead person's belongings, but I suppose we don't have any other options."

I nodded. "That's a fine place to start," I agreed. I took her hand gently and started to push through the police officers gently. Victoria followed me, and by some miracle, we managed to reach the body. We sat down next to the corpse to start looking it over. I made sure to stare at the body to ensure I didn't freak out or lose my mind thinking about how crowded the cellar still was. I silently wished that the police officers would leave and give us a little more space to work with.

"The knife has been removed from her chest," Victoria remarked. "There's blood all over her chest, but there's not any weapon in sight. It's clear to see that she was stabbed, but what happened to the blade?"

"I bet the forensics team took it. If we ask Detective Erikson about it, he should be able to get us up to speed. I somehow think the knife will help us out since we don't have much outside of the weapon. No witnesses, no time of death, no clues as to who the killer is... We'll need to take everything we have and use it to its full potential," I told her.

"Hm... The knife... Do you think fingerprints are found on the surface? If so, maybe we could use that to find out another suspect. I bet the fingerprints are pretty old at this point. I suppose it depends on if the forensics team can pick up on prints from a long time ago. I'm sure we'll figure something out at some point," Victoria said. "Hm... I have to wonder why someone would want to kill her too. All that we have as far as why Prosecutor Burke was arrested is that she found the body."

"The corpse was discovered by her since she had the key to the cellar... She found the key by chance and wound up arrested for it. There's no motive in mind at the moment," I frowned. "It's all about a series of coincidences in this case, and that's how she found herself in jail."

"Well, I guess we'll just have to see how it goes," Victoria smiled, though I could tell how nervous she was underneath the surface. "The key might have fingerprints on it as well. It would be hard to say for sure who they belonged to, and there's a chance they were covered up or erased completely when it passed into Prosecutor Burke's hands. I don't think we should count on any prints being discovered on the key."

"That does make me wonder... Where is the key? I'm sure it was taken in by the police force, but I'm still curious about it. How would anyone know that it went with the cellar door? If it was just a guess, then Polly would have had to be insanely lucky," I murmured. "That's one reason we'll need to go down to the detention center and talk to her, I suppose. We need to know how she came to the conclusion that the cellar's key went with the door. After that, we can ask her if there's anything else she thinks will be important for our case. She probably knows much better than we do."

"Until then, let's explore this place... I don't see much of anything else on the body, as much as I hate to admit it," Victoria said. "Next, let's see what the cabinets around here are about. There must be something in all of these drawers. I somehow doubt all of these storage units would be here if they weren't storing something."

"If I had to guess, they keep other pieces of evidence here. If the fridge is used to keep some evidence cold, I bet the rest of the evidence is kept in the cabinets... If the key went missing for many months on end, then that would explain where the dust came from. Nothing could get in or out, so it would be impossible to clean everything off," I told her.

"I suppose the people who work here at the agency are lucky that they didn't need anything out of these cabinets... If they did, they would have been in a lot of trouble unless they wanted to call somebody to open the door. I don't know if they would be focused on something like that though. After all, the leader of their agency went missing, and that would be a much more pressing matter," Victoria remarked.

"That's true... I guess they put evidence from old cases in here. Stuff from newer cases is less of an issue since most of the lawyers involved would just keep the evidence in their offices. I still think they're lucky they didn't wind up needing anything. If they had, then I'm willing to get this murder would have turned out very different. The body would have been found much sooner, because I doubt people would just leave the fridge alone while looking around. If somebody didn't deliberately look around, the body would have been found by chance... In a way, I wish they had thought to look around in here sooner, even if it involved calling somebody in to undo the lock. At least then we would have an estimation as to when the victim died," I murmured.

"There's no point in thinking about how things could have been in a different situation though. After all, we aren't in that alternative timeline. It's time for us to focus on what's here and now," Victoria pointed out. "Now, what do you think we should do next? I don't think we'll be able to get into any of these cabinets unless they've all been unlocked. Even if they have been, I don't know if we'll need to search through them. I'm willing to get the police already covered that, and if something out of the ordinary was found in that initial sweep, Detective Erikson would have told us about it by now."

"Hm... I'm sure there has to be something around here that would indicate as to when the crime took place. All we have to do is search in the right areas. Granted, I have no idea what the right areas are, but it wouldn't hurt to try and look," I said. "Alright. How about you take one half of the room while I take the other one? This place is crowded enough as it is, and I don't think it's necessary for us to try and squeeze in and out of the clumps of people together when we could just split up."

Victoria nodded. "That sounds good to me. I'll call for you if I find anything suspicious," she told me.

With that, we both turned and went our separate ways. I looked all over the right half of the room, trying to find something, anything, that would tell us what was going on. However, nothing seemed to stick out. All that I could see were cabinets. They were all impossibly dusty, and I nearly sneezed each time I got too close to one.

Victoria shuffled over to me a few minutes later, sighing sadly and shaking her head. "I couldn't find anything. I'm unfortunately unsure as to if anything around here exists to tell us when the crime took place. It really hurts me to admit that, but I guess there's no other option. Maybe it's time for us to head out and look around. Maybe we'll be able to find something up in the victim's office. I'm sure it's open for investigation," she suggested.

"That sounds like a good idea," I nodded. "I don't see anything else around here that could help us, so we might as well go and see what we can find elsewhere. This is one of the most barren crime scenes I have ever seen... I was thinking about using the dust to find something that was used at the time, but I don't think that will do us much good."

"Using the dust?" Victoria echoed, tilting her head to one side with a small frown. "What do you mean by that?"

"There's dust all over these cabinets. If we could find one cabinet covered with less dust than the others, then we would know it was involved with the crime somehow. Unfortunately, that's not going to work as well as I was hoping, because there aren't any cabinets with less dust. All of these were abandoned at the same time, so if one was used in the crime, it would be impossible to tell it apart from the others," I explained.

"Darn... That would have probably worked if we had gotten lucky, but I guess it just wasn't meant to be. I suppose all we can do now is head up to the victim's office to look around there. Maybe we could get some lawyers here to talk about what they saw the day she went missing. I'm willing to bet that she died around the time she went missing, though that's only a theory at the moment. Regardless, it's the only lead I can think of us having at the moment, so we might as well follow it," Victoria told me.

"Of course," I said. I gestured for her to follow me as I headed towards the door. She trailed after me silently, and we left behind the cellar soon after. I could not have been more relieved to leave that place. It was far too boxed-in and cramped for my liking, and the overwhelming number of police officers in there with us didn't help the situation at all. Finally, we were going to be back above ground somewhere that didn't feel like it could suffocate you in an instant.

Victoria and I made our way into the crowded lobby. It was just as loud and aggravating as it had been before, but at least we were getting out of it now. I didn't exactly need a map in order to find the main office, so I gestured for Victoria to follow me into the elevator before pressing the button for the top floor.

"You sure do know this place well," Victoria remarked. "How did you know where her office was going to be? Have you come here before?"

"I have, as a matter of fact. It's been a while since I was last here, but I was friends with the old owner of this agency, Jackson Blocker. He was killed a few years ago, which was when the current owner took over, but I came by here every once in a while to talk with him," I told her. I didn't even think about explaining how I had met Jackson Blocker. I would have to tell her about Oracle and all the drama that entailed at some point, but I was not looking forward to it. Now wasn't the time to do so anyways. There were bigger fish to fry.

The elevator let us out at the top floor. "Wow. I never would have expected that... Then again, I suppose there is a lot I don't yet understand about the agency. I am the newest employee there, and the issues with Cormous held off my learning anything for a while," Victoria said with a small frown.

I shook my head. "Don't worry about it. You'll figure everything out soon enough, and until then, I'm happy to take things somewhat slowly with you. For now, though, it's time that we went into her office. We have some looking around to do."

I gestured for Victoria to follow me, and she did so silently. We approached the door to the victim's office, and I curled my fingers around the doorknob. I pushed the door open soon after. Part of me was nervous about what we would see inside, but I knew there was no other option but to look around. It was going to be odd to go inside and not see Jackson Blocker, as I hadn't been up here since he had died, but I swallowed my nerves and tried to drown them as we saw the room from the doorway.

The room was incredibly neat, I had to say. Much like the cabinets in the cellar, everything was coated with a layer of dust. It was clear that nobody had been in here in quite some time, and if they had been in the room, they hadn't disturbed anything along the way. In other words, it would be the perfect place to investigate, and I hoped that it gave us more information than the underground investigation had.

I walked up to the desk and started to look at what was on the surface. There were pens resting in a cup off to the side. A few blank pieces of paper were stacked up neatly. Next to the stack of papers, sitting just in front of the chair behind the desk, was an open planner. It was left open, showing off its differently colored boxes to the ceiling.

Victoria gasped and nudged me with her elbow. "Mr. Morix, look! The planner is opened to February earlier this year! If I had to guess, that's the last time she was in this office, which means that she disappeared sometime in February. Granted, I'm sure anyone would be able to say that if they knew enough about her disappearance, but... It's still something. We said that she might have been killed around the time that she went missing, and if that's the case, she died in February. She was in the fridge for a long time if that's the case..." she murmured.

"Even if we suggest that, there's not really any proof. We can think it makes sense all that we want, but without evidence, I somehow doubt that the prosecution is going to want to accept it as the truth. It all depends on who we wind up facing off against. I haven't heard anything about a prosecutor yet, so I'm willing to guess it's going to be a mystery up until we go to the courtroom tomorrow," I said.

"Hm... That's unfortunate. If we got someone nice, then we could share information with them, but I guess it's kind of hard to exchange facts with somebody who doesn't seem to exist yet." Victoria paused for a moment. "Well, technically, they do exist right now, because we aren't going to be arguing with a newborn baby, but we haven't met them, nor have they been assigned yet, so... Oh, I think you know what you mean."

I let out a small laugh. "I understand fully, don't worry. I'm hope we'll be able to talk to the prosecutor before the trial tomorrow, but if not, then it's not the worst thing in the world. We'll be fine. I'm sure of it," I told her. "Now, let's think about this... Hm... We know that she went missing in February, but we don't have a specific day. Saying she probably died in February isn't enough to figure out the time of the crime. We can probably estimate when she died based off the day she disappeared, but that's not going to be enough. We need hard evidence in order to find victory in this case. Normally, that isn't a problem, but if we get lucky, we'll be able to find something... I guess it's all about if the universe is nice to us now."

"I wish this wasn't so dependent on luck, but until we can find out when the crime took place, we don't have anywhere to go. We can easily find out when she was last seen by people here at the agency, but that only tells us when she could have died. If she went missing in February, we have nearly three months of time to look through when somebody could have killed her, and that's far too vague. Hard proof or witness testimony is all that can help us now, but I don't know how to find either one," Victoria sighed.

"Since the police are here investigating, I'm sure it wouldn't hurt if we started to look around. Detective Erikson will give us the green light if we ask. First, I think we should check out the planner more. Let's see if anything important is written on it. If something of import is found, we can use it to try and figure out when she died," I suggested. I walked around the desk and stood behind the chair to get a better look at the planner sitting before me.

The planner had a few notes jotted down here and there. The victim's handwriting was incredibly neat, I had to say. I was glad we could read it easily, because it would be awful if we came so close to finding the truth behind when she died but couldn't due to messy handwriting.

I scanned the notes before finding one set on February eighth. "Look at this one. It says she needs to meet with a new applicant to work at the agency," I told Victoria, pointing to it. "I wonder if any of these papers will tell us who that new applicant was. Maybe they killed her for some reason. They could be a suspect if she went missing around that time."

Victoria frowned and started to look around, and her eyes eventually settled upon the stack of paper next to the planner. "Let's look through these. If it all turns up blank, then that's fine, but it wouldn't hurt to check," she pointed out.

"Sounds good to me," I agreed. I gently removed the top sheet from the stack before looking at what was under it. I started to pull the pages off one at a time, but they were all blank. A frown was starting to settle in my features when one of the papers turned out to have some writing on the surface.

In fact, there was quite a bit written on it. There were notes here and there around small print in a dignified, businesslike font. I checked what was typed in and let out a small gasp. "This is a resume! Maybe this is for the new person she wanted to hire. Why else would she keep it on her desk?" I asked.

"I don't see any other resumes in this stack, so it has to be the one," Victoria said excitedly, her face lighting up. "Let's see if there's a name written on it. We have to figure out who it was and talk to them, assuming the police haven't already done so."

I nodded and flipped to the front page of the resume. I stared at the collection of letters written up at the top of the paper before reading them out loud. My voice barely came out as louder than a whisper, but it was still loud enough for Victoria to hear.

"Marcus Moore," I said softly. "That's who the potential job applicant was. His name was Marcus Moore."

Since the story I regularly update on Tuesday (Alitia over on Fiction Press) is finished, this story is getting a few Tuesday updates. Neat.

-Digital