**WARNING: Themes of depression, suicide, and self harm are discussed in this chapter. Please read with caution if your are sensitive to these topics. Written by: thesketchytepe**
"Oh. My. God." Hanji grabbed the plastic bag off the shelf. "You have not lived until you've had Nutter Butters."
Annie looked up at her, at the bag, and then back at Hanji. "Aren't you allergic to nuts?"
She huffed and then sluggishly tossed the bag onto a different shelf. "You sound like Levi."
Hanji switched her green handcart from her left hand to her right and continued sauntering down the aisle. Annie, with her own handcart in her lap, rolled after her.
It was pretty crowded for a Thursday afternoon in the grocery store. Hanji kind of forced Annie out of the office by dragging her along to pick up some sandwich stuff for the crew back at the station. It was lunchtime and Hanji wasn't feeling for fast-food. She needed to think aloud and she knew the only person who would tolerate her ranting was Annie—she didn't slap her to shut up like Levi or tried to correct her like Moblit. She just sat there like a log and Hanji needed that.
She rounded a kid in a green apron who was busy putting chips away (she instinctively grabbed the barbecue-flavored ones she liked and dropped it into her cart without so much as a second glance). She stopped at the end of the aisle and turned halfway, waiting for Annie. With the stressed-out employee out of earshot and the crippled policewoman wheeling up, Hanji entered her Sherlock Holmes persona.
"So, remember that girl you and Jean found in the barn four days ago? The blondie? Christa Lenz?"
Annie gave her a solemn look. The three long scars in her face made that solemn gaze look scarier. They were skinny and pale like little maggots and the one on her left cheekbone had permanently dragged down her eyelid a bit. She couldn't really blink her eyes at the same time unless she really thought about it. It took her a while to get used to eating solid foods shortly after they stitched the skin back together—Hanji remembered Petra, Levi's cute little wife with a surprisingly short temper, often visiting Annie in the hospital with milkshakes or smoothies. It was like trying to eat after your wisdom teeth removal, Hanji was told, except it was worse. The glass had completely shredded through her skin upon impact and, when scared-shitless Armin took out the pieces, thinking she was dead and it didn't matter anymore, his unsteady grip had widened the wound even more.
Hanji heard Jean call her a hobgoblin once. With the way her skin folded into the deep scars and how she couldn't keep her food in her mouth for nearly a month, Hanji would have to agree with that statement (but it also looked kinda cool).
"I only saw one dead body last week," Annie muttered, her said scar tugging at the edge of her lips.
Hanji waved the monotone comment away. "Whatever. Well, I visited Moblit in the lab this morning and he was looking like his usual stressed-self..."
She proceeded to tell Annie all about her morning, mentioning every detail like it was just as important as describing the state of a decomposing body. Hanji had once again surprised her trusty assistant at the lab (which he usually didn't like—he insisted on her calling ahead but she didn't find the point in such trifles), asking if she could see the body belonging to Christa Lenz, aka the third female to die in the Jaeger barn.
Moblit sighed and motioned her in, saying Magath and Onyankopon were already working on her. They walked into a brightly lit room with plain white walls and even plainer tile flooring. What basically looked like giant reflective cupboards surrounded the walls with large locks on the side of each drawer. Hanji could see the swirly reflections of her and Moblit as they rounded the corner and sauntered over to the turned backs of Magath and Onyankopon.
They loomed over the paper white body of Christa, now laid out on a long white examination table. Magath had his dissecting equipment out on a little silver cart that reminded Hanji of a dentist's cart, full of poking sticks and tiny knives for careful cutting. He was leaning over the girl's stomach and Onyankopon stood beside him, his gloved hands crossed over his chest.
Moblit made sure that she had her gloves on before she hopped over like a little kid on Christmas morning.
"How's it going, nerds?" she greeted, worming her way between the two.
Her wide eyes landed on Christa's open body. It was translucent and void of any bloodstains and little creepy-crawlies. Her tousled blonde hair, dry as straw, was combed neatly behind her head. She no longer stared at the ceiling with a loose awe expression, but instead had her enormous blue eyes and slender lips forever shut. Her lower stomach was a gaping hole and Magath was messing around with the surely damaged insides (Hanji could recognize the liver and the large and small intestines entangled together). A little piece of wiring was wrapped around her right big toe with a plastic card dangling from it, her key of identification.
Onyankopon grinned up at her. "Just doing some last-minute check-ups."
"Don't breathe on me, please," Magath answered back, not looking up from his work.
Hanji straightened up. "Fine, Frankenstein." She turned to Onyankopon. "And since you're the blood specialist, I guess that makes you Dracula."
He chuckled. "Are you Mister Hyde and Moblit is Doctor Jekyll?"
She beamed. "Oh my gosh, yes."
"No, don't call me that," Moblit piped up like the usual buzzkill he was.
"So, what did you find out?" Hanji asked Onyankopon, overlooking Moblit's pouting face.
"Well, blood was absolutely everywhere. On the walls, the floor, all over Miss Lenz. I had a lot to work with. There were several medium velocity blood spatters and some swipe patterns on the walls. The swiss army knife we found was drenched in her blood and her hand matched the prints on the swipe patterns. With the way the blood was angled, it would make sense that the wielder of the knife was purposefully flinging the blood everywhere."
Hanji squinted at him. "Purposefully?"
He nodded, understanding her confusion. "Yeah, it was like the killer wanted us to see the damage done. The blood, it was all for show; the killer, I believe, is trying to send a message."
"What kind of message? And to whom?"
He shrugged. "I'm not sure. I was actually going to talk to you about it and see what you found out about Miss Lenz. You know, who she was before she ended up on this table."
She nodded back, already very knowledgeable on Christa's depressing past. "I know who she was, but—"
"Alright." Magath uncurled his spine and turned to his tools. "I'm convinced. I'm sure on what happened to her."
Hanji whirled on the man in the starch white lab coat like he just grew two heads. "What? What is it?"
He pointed at Christa's open tummy with his small razor-sharp knife. "Turns out a tiny little swiss army knife can do a heck of a lot of damage. Her colon and her stomach got the most tears in them and I counted nine stab wounds, all in her abdomen. The killer wasn't particularly strong, but shit, they were determined. She wasn't sliced and diced like a cow, but the knife went in"—here he pretended to stab Christa with his little knife before withdrawing back to his chest—"and out with pained little struggles. They probably took a breath between each stab."
He looked up at Hanji. His eyes were sunk-in like Shadis's, heavy bags beneath his dark eyes and deep wrinkles zigzagging around his sockets. The man probably lived on black coffee and soda.
"She bled to death in that barn. I agree with Onyankopon—this was for show. The killer wasn't interested in Lenz herself, but rather the message left behind. The blood on the walls was probably more important than the body."
She heard Moblit flipping through the papers on his clipboard behind her. "Based on the larva we found on her body, she was in that barn for about seventy hours before she was discovered. Her DNA was all over that room—her blood, strains of hair, her fingerprints. There is no evidence that anyone else was in that room with her when she passed."
She turned to Moblit. "You mean…?"
He peered back at her with a somber expression. "She killed herself. It's written all over that barn."
Hanji's chest dropped in disappointment, weighing in her stomach like a stone. Of course, suicide was always a difficult and subdued topic, even in the homicide department (how can you stop a killer when it lived in your mind?), but something else tugged at her as if Christa herself had reached up and grabbed her wrist, telling her it wasn't true.
Her eyes fell on the dead girl once more. No, that couldn't be. This was all too uncanny to be ruled as a suicide case. There was something more; she'd have to dig a little deeper to find the real cause of Christa's death.
"No, she didn't kill herself," Hanji concluded with a firm nod of her head. "This was murder."
"Detective, the-the evidence is everywhere," Moblit persisted. "Her fingerprints were the only ones on that switchblade, and she dragged her own bloody hand across the walls. There wasn't any proof that someone else was there—"
"Just because she was the only one there doesn't mean there wasn't a killer at all."
"It was Lenz, Detective. Lenz was the killer and she committed murder on herself."
"Looks like we don't need you after all, Mister Hyde," Magath said more so to himself as he began sewing up the cut in Christa's abdomen. "No signs of rape or any other form of struggle from an outside force was found on her body. It's clear she did this to herself."
"Fuck you, Magath, and you too, Moblit. Someone did this to her and they're still out there. We can't just toss her to the side like some helpless basket case—"
"We're not tossing her anywhere. She really killed herself with a knife in the middle of the barn—"
"Look, what did you find out, Hanji?" Onyankopon interrupted, facing her fully. "What makes you think it was murder?"
She peered at the staring faces around her. She could understand why people would feel claustrophobic in this sense, bodies crowding around them, waiting for them to blow their minds away while wearing looks of dismay. But the sight only encouraged her more. She'd been called crazy all her life; like hell she'd wither over a few peering eyes now.
Her fists rested on her hips and she spoke in a fast yet sharp tone, presenting her case to the stiff-necked crowd enclosing her: "Christa Lenz has lived in Trost all her life and has been very active in all sorts of activities throughout her time here. She was attending Trost University for graphic design while working at a coffee shop across the street. Her friends, family members, and coworkers described her as stubborn yet outgoing, a hard-worker, always on her feet, bossy but meant well. She got good grades, went out often, and was always busy with something. She seemed to be enjoying her life, which was great considering she wasn't in a good state about a year ago."
"What happened a year ago?"
She chewed on the inside of her cheek before muttering out, "She checked herself into Erwin Smith's Rehabilitation Home for Young Adults."
"Ah, great," Moblit mumbled under his breath.
She whipped toward him. "Don't jump to conclusions, Moblit."
He stared back at her with wide eyes. "Don't jump?" He stuttered out a bunch of incoherent words before she heard him say, "What was she in there for? Suicidal thoughts?"
"Well, that would definitely explain these."
Magath had stopped sewing for a moment to peel back the dead white skin around her lower stomach. His gloved hand pointed out the small, faint scars crisscrossed around her hips and inner thighs. Hanji frowned. She had seen them at the crime scene, but she didn't want to say anything aloud, especially with the lack of information gathered. They matched the same grief-stricken lines that subtly poked out from the cuffs on Jean's leather jacket. Christa too believed she wasn't good enough.
She felt her shoulders slump. She knew too many kids who thought they weren't good enough.
"She was in for manic depression and suicidal tendencies." She heard Magath exhale loudly and saw Moblit shake his head, so she raised her voice, trying to sound higher than their doubts. "But I talked with Doctor Smith and he gave me her medical history there, which wasn't terribly long. They did some mediation, gave her some medicine, all that jazz, and then she was back in school within a month and a half. Erwin even said she befriended some other patients there—he said she came back to the home to visit a Thomas Wagner and Pieck Finger a week before her death."
"That's why she's dead, Detective," Moblit continued. "She was mentally disturbed. She wanted the pain to end and so she thought ending her life and going to the next would be better than staying here. She was sick—"
"She checked herself into Erwin's asylum." Hanji turned on him with the same wild snap as a rattlesnake. "Not her parents, not anyone else. Herself. She wanted to get better, so she took care of it. And, from the looks of it, she took her medication whenever she needed it and followed Erwin's instructions carefully."
"Depression doesn't just go away—"
"I know that! I'm saying her record is clean compared to other mentally ill kids I've met. She checked in once to Erwin's home and then was out; she only stopped by to talk with her friends in there. I also discovered that Christa was arrested a day before her death. She was brought into the police station for 'public indecency' when people found her walking around Trost park naked. They gave her a slap on the wrist and released her. Her next appearance was in the barn, dead."
Moblit shrugged his shoulders like she just explained the reason behind her untimely death. "Perhaps she was in a delirious state before she killed herself. People can react in such a way on the verge of death. Detective, I'm sorry, but everything you're saying is just proving the fact that this girl indeed killed herself. I don't see how you think she could be murdered, given her history."
She was losing the argument. Moblit and Magath weren't buying it and were stuck to the "another depressed teenager killed themselves again" case, but Hanji was too determined to let them sink in too deeply.
She zoomed in on Magath. "Erwin prescribed some anti-depressants to her. Did you find anything in her system that suggested she took medication regularly?"
Magath swiped his forehead across his inner elbow, clearly tired and annoyed. "When I ran a toxicology report the other day, nothing was found in her system. It also looked like she hadn't eaten for days by the time she killed herself."
"Well, what about…" She fished inside her trench coat, fumbling with the inner pockets. A bunch of things came flying out—binder clips, empty candy wrappers, lint, a couple pens—until her fingers finally grasped the two glossy photographs paperclipped together. She shoved them into Moblit's chest and continued firing away.
"Annie Leonhart told me that Christa looked exactly like Historia Reiss, the first victim of Eren Jaeger's massacre two years ago." She smirked to herself when she saw his eyebrows scrunch in confusion at the pictures. "And I'd have to agree with her."
Moblit stared at the pictures for a while before slowly handing them to Onyankopon who, in turn, peered at them like they were math equations he hadn't seen in years. One was of Historia Reiss's college ID—she was smiling and had her hair tied back in a ponytail and wore an expensive looking dress. The other was of Christa Lenz in front of a dull blue wall, the same color of Erwin's walls in his office. Her hair was shielding her face and her gloomy eyes stared into the camera. She wasn't smiling, but Hanji could spot the desperate cry for help in those wide blue eyes. Nevertheless, the two girls looked the same.
"Isn't it weird that Christa Lenz, a likely doppelganger to Historia Reiss, was found dead in the Jaeger barn? Not only that, but on the same date from two years ago—October seventeenth—the massacre occurred?" She stabbed her finger at Magath and Onyankopon. "You two stated to me just now that you both agree the blood on the walls was for show. The killer wasn't interested in Christa, but rather the mark she would leave behind. Isn't that exactly what happened to Historia? She died and served as a threat to the other kids in that house that they too would die."
"Are you suggesting that a ghost killed Christa, Detective?" Magath asked, peering at her over the photographs. "Eren Jaeger was fatally shot by that Jean kid."
"The thought is interesting, but no, it's not a ghost," she replied. "I think someone is trying to recreate the murders. If you remember, Historia was the first to die via bear traps and was stabbed by Eren himself. She bled to death, alone. Christa practically died the same way. If I'm right, then very soon, other kids will die."
"But who?" Onyankopon piped up. "Who would recreate them? Was Miss Lenz friends or had any connections with any of the kids who died in the Jaeger massacre? What exactly is the killer trying to tell us?"
"Annie said she never heard of a Christa Lenz, so I'd have to assume she didn't know any of them. I suggest the killer is taunting us, kind of like what Jack the Ripper did back in 1888. He left letters addressed from 'hell' and threw in his victims' kidney in a box for the fun of it and left it at the polices' feet. Our killer, this copycat, is probably doing the same thing." Hanji pursed her lips in thought. "As for who it is, I don't know, but I'll find out."
Moblit looked at her the same way he's looked at her for years. It was anxious and irritated and concentrated and loyal, but the anxiety and concentration were a bit more apparent here. It was like he was watching her hop from one rock to another in the middle of a lake of fire.
"You can have your thoughts, Detective, but you still don't have any physical proof. I have no choice but to rule her death as a suicide."
"No choice, huh?" Hanji finished as she grabbed a loaf of wheat bread and drop it in her handcart. "Wrong again—there's always a choice."
She wasn't really paying attention to Annie's reaction as she unleashed the whole story to her; her mind was solely focused on what happened earlier in the day. Magath, Moblit, and Onyankopon's faces swirled together in her mind like storm clouds, raining on her recreation theory. She understood why they didn't believe her, but all these unanswered questions drilled away like a jackhammer in her mind. Why was Christa Lenz killed in the Jaeger barn, of all places? Why did she smear her own blood around its walls and floors? Why was she found on the second anniversary of the Jaeger massacre? Why, why, why?
She decided to ignore Moblit and went ahead with treating the Lenz case as a murder case. If she was right about Christa acting as a backup or sacrificial offering for Historia Reiss, then that meant someone else would die via electrocution. Ymir Mularczyk was the next to die. Hanji made a mental note to look up girls with choppy brown hair, small dark eyes, and sprinkled with dozens of freckles who lived in the Trost area. It'd take time, but it could also save some innocent girl's life.
Her eyes scanned the shelves before asking Annie if she liked white bread. She shook her head, so she went with rye instead. She noticed a twelve-pack of water lying abandoned on the floor and shoved it out of Annie's way. She also loudly muttered "Excuse us" to two middle-aged women chatting by the cart of red apples, which also happened to be in Annie's way. She even scooted an employee's cart to the side, so Annie could maneuver through.
Hanji caught a flash of anger in her ice-blue eyes. "Can you stop that?"
Hanji halted at the sudden drop in her voice. It was low and sharp like the threatening growl of a tiger.
"Stop what?"
"Acting like I'm helpless."
Hanji studied the frustration in her eyebrows and lips—they pulled downwards and dragged her dagger-shaped scars along with them. She then looked around them, at the subtle obstacles that Annie would have to venture through every day.
"Look, hon, I know you don't like help, but you kinda need it. That's just the way it is, given your condition."
"That doesn't mean I can't take care of myself. I can manage just fine." She hesitated. "And stop looking at me like that."
She tilted her head. "Like what?"
Another bout of silence simmered from her lips before she sighed to herself. "Nothing, never mind." She glared at her. "Just treat me how you would with anybody else."
Hanji cracked a grin. "Alright, I'll race ya to the fish counter."
And, like a bumblebee on the race to the best flower in the garden, she darted between customers and aisleways until she reached the fish counter at the other end of the store. She spotted a mother and her boy looking at the chopped-up meat through the glass while a chubby man in a white apron and hairnet hovered over them, awaiting their order. She slammed herself onto the glass and waved her hand at the fish guy as if he were a mile away.
"Hello!" she called. "Sir? I need some help, please!"
"Can I help you?"
She turned to her right and saw another fish guy in an apron. He had a permanent frown creasing his lips and it showed in the downward wrinkles in his cheeks and forehead. She peered at the nametag on his collarbone: Nick.
"Hi, yes, Nick." She set her handcart atop the counter and pressed her body fully against the glass. "I need to ask you some questions before a girl in a wheelchair gets here."
She noticed the slight shift of his eyebrow—or lack of one really—and frowned at him. "Look, you don't know her, okay? She may be crippled, but holy shit, she packs a punch."
"Is it fish-related or can I direct you somewhere else?"
She pulled out her badge from the inside of her coat, flashing him her ID. "I'm Detective Hanji, and I need to ask you some questions regarding a case I'm working on." She smiled widely. "I hear something fishy is going on around here."
When Nick didn't crack a smile, she grumbled and stuffed the badge back in her pocket. Her eyes trailed to the side and noticed the serious lack of fish in the tuna section. Only a few slices were still out; everything from cod to flounder was fully stocked, but the tuna had clearly seen better days.
She pointed at it. "You guys got robbed last week, isn't that right? Someone damn near stole all your tuna."
"Uh, yeah. It was pretty strange. People steal things all the time, but not an entire selection of tuna. Don't know why anyone would want to steal that of all things."
"Yeah, pretty weird." She looked back at him. "Were you here the day the fish were stolen?"
"Yes, ma'am."
The corner of her lips twitched slightly. She hated being called "ma'am". It made her sound old and pathetic; she much preferred "detective".
She plucked out a notepad and pencil from another pocket in her coat, writing down Nick's name and a vague description of what he looked like (she wrote "pale, old, looks like he wants to blow up the grocery store").
"Did you see anything suspicious or out of the ordinary that day?" she asked him.
He shrugged. "Not really. It was kind of an uneventful day. We didn't even realize the tuna was gone until the end of the night."
She wrote "unobservant" in her notes. "Were there any strange or suspicious customers you met that day?"
He rubbed his eye and looked at the tuna again. "Well, there was this one girl—"
She got in his face with wild eyes. "Really? What did she look like? Did she mention her name at all?"
Nick flinched back and the frown deepened on his face. "I didn't wait on her. One of my coworkers talked with her that day."
"Are they here?"
"No. Today's his day off."
"Mind if I get his name and phone number? I might need to ask him some questions."
Nick nodded and picked his phone out of one of his apron's pockets. She scribbled down the number as he read it off and then wrote "Oluo" above it.
"I caught a glimpse of her and her…friend before I went off to break," Nick continued. "She had red hair and was the loudest thing in the store that day. Rambling about everything and cursing up a storm. She even stomped her way over here like she wanted to create as much ruckus as possible."
"Was her friend acting the same way?"
"No. She looked normal, talked normal, walked normal. Oluo didn't mention anything strange to me after they left."
As she wrote down "crazy redhead and friend" in her notepad, she asked Nick, "Do you know what they were doing before you left?"
"I think they ordered some salmon or something." He then jutted his thumb behind him. "I can get you the security tape from the backroom."
Hanji gave him a deadpanned look as she dramatically threw her notepad and pencil over her shoulders. She paused for effect before muttering, "You have a security tape?"
"Yes…?"
"Well, that would've been nice to know before you made me write all this shit down!"
Nick paused. "Do you want it?"
She widened the madness in her eyes. "Yes, Nick. I would like to see it."
Once Nick nervously swallowed and stepped behind the swinging white doors, Hanji rapidly picked up her notepad and pencil from the floor and wrote down "security tape". She then glanced to the side and grabbed one of the few remaining packets of tuna left.
Hanji and Annie made it back to the station by one o'clock. Hanji had pushed open the door with her foot and held up the grocery bags in her hands. "We brought food!" she announced to the uniformed crowd, tapping away at their computers, dialing endlessly at their phones.
A few glanced up and responded either with a thumbs-up or a nod of the head, each too busy with their current work to break entirely away now. She peered down at Annie rolling in with a few bags in her lap.
"You wanna put the stuff in the breakroom? I'm gonna go get Levi."
Annie said nothing before wheeling away once again.
Hanji trotted her way past the littered desks of each policeman and curved down a hall to where her and Levi's offices were. She noticed Levi's door on the left was kept ajar which she found a little strange—he usually kept his door closed in a vain attempt to block out all sounds. She strolled over and shifted her bags around in her arms before tapping her knuckles on his door.
"Knock, knock," she said as she automatically stepped into the dark room. She never understood why Levi insisted on keeping the blinds closed and the door closed without turning on any sort of light. Whenever she came into his office, she usually found him sitting behind his desk (which made him look even smaller than he already was) with his disgruntled face peering at the bright light of his laptop as if he were a cat waking up from a long nap in the warm bath of the morning sun.
Except now his laptop wasn't turned on. He was just sitting in the dark with his fingers crossed, lost in thought.
"Hey, Annie and I are back from the grocery store and we got sandwich stuff to make if you want some. It's in the breakroom. Also, guess what I brought."
She fished out the VHS tape from one of the bags and wagged it in the air like a dog's chew toy.
Levi slowly peered up at her, looking just as fresh as Christa Lenz's dead body. Even in the dark, she could see the heavy bags under his eyes. The blackness of the room made his sickly pale skin even whiter like mushy snow that's been melting away in the sun for days. She wished he would take those sleeping pills his doctor prescribed for his insomnia, but it was impossible to get Levi to do anything medically. She figured Petra would somehow find a way to slip them into his morning coffee or something, but she wasn't sneaky like that. Levi was just a stubborn little asshole.
"What is that?" he asked.
"A VHS tape. C'mon, Levi. You were alive in the nineties—I'm frankly surprised some people still use these."
"I mean, what's on it, smartass?"
"Security footage from the fish counter at the grocery store. Last week someone stole, like, their whole inventory of tuna. The thief might be on here. Wanna watch?"
Levi didn't answer for a while. His gaze fell to his desk once more before he lifted himself from his chair. "I need to tell you something, Hanji."
She picked up on the hesitancy in his voice. Something was up.
"Alright." Her hand lingered on the doorknob. "Is this an opened-door or closed-door conversation?"
He peeked at it. "You better shut it."
She did as he asked and then lumbered over to his desk, setting the plastic bags around his infinite piles of paper. Levi rolled up the sleeves of his button-down, crossed his arms, and then leaned against the edge of his desk. He paused again before he spoke: "It's about the Lenz case."
A wave of relief washed over her, making her breathe out as if she'd been underwater ever since she stepped into his little office. "Oh my gosh, I'm so glad you're bringing this up. I wanted to talk to you about it, too."
Levi worked his jaw around as if trying to decide what words to use. Yet Hanji hardly gave him enough time before she burst like a firecracker.
"I stopped by the lab today to talk to Moblit and I walked in on an autopsy and Magath—"
"Hanji, I need you to shut up for two seconds."
"I know, but this is important. Magath found nine stab wounds in her abdomen and said she wiped her own blood all over the walls of the Jaeger barn—"
"Hanji, I'm serious. Shut the—"
"Her fingerprints were all over the place and the switchblade we found. There were no signs of struggle nor any evidence that someone else was with her in there. She was in the barn for two days before we found her and—"
"Hanji—"
"And Magath said she bled to death. Moblit ruled it as a suicide."
A visible change shifted in Levi's tense features once he heard the word "suicide". It was small, yet still there like a breeze in the trees or the slight twitching of the hand on a clock. He suddenly lost interest in whatever it was he had to say and was now focused on Hanji's earlier experience.
"A suicide?" he breathed.
"Yeah. He said all the evidence was right there and when I told him about her time spent in Erwin's home, he said Christa was just another depressed kid who killed herself." She shook her head. "Can you believe it?"
Levi said nothing for a good while. She could see the gears turning in his head like a rebooting computer. His thumb gently twirled around the wedding band on his finger and he suddenly became very interested in an outlet on the wall by the door.
"Well, I don't. I'm sure she was murdered. Yes, I can see why he would think that she committed suicide, but there are so many questions that a suicide alone cannot answer."
He then frowned at her, glaring like she clipped her fingernails and left them there on his desk.
"Think about it: why was her body found in the Jaeger barn on the second anniversary of the massacre? Magath and Onyankopon pointed out that the killer put a lot of effort into putting all that blood on the wall. Why would Christa Lenz, a suicidal, depressed teen, continuously make herself suffer and then splash her own fluids all over that place? Also, she looks exactly like that Historia Reiss girl, the one who died—"
"No, Hanji. Stop."
She did, but only because of the sudden drop in her chest. He was using that tone of his that said that he had enough of her bickering and really just wanted her to leave the room. It was a tone of defeating silence and judgement that left you wondering what exactly you did wrong.
She felt her shoulders slump and her body sink down a little. "You don't believe me?"
Levi sighed and looked up at her. "Moblit said it was suicide, so leave it at that. She stabbed herself to death, no one else was there. Leave it alone. Just be glad we don't have to tell her family that she was kidnapped, raped, and slaughtered by some fat, perverted piece of shit who is still on the loose."
She stared at him, feeling a little betrayed. Of course, Levi didn't agree with her on everything and she knew she tired him out most of the time, but he still stood by her when no one else did. It hurt a little to see him shut her down so quickly that it was almost disbelieving.
Her eyes narrowed behind her round glasses. "Where is Jean?"
"At the house. Erwin and Petra are taking turns watching him."
"Is he okay?"
"No, but that's nothing new." His eyes strayed to the side, somewhere over her shoulder.
Her frown deepened. "You're not telling me something. What is it?"
He shrugged his shoulders. "Doesn't matter anymore."
"Bullshit. Everything matters. Every little goddamn detail. Tell me, Levi."
He merely stared at her. She knew he was on the verge of either keeping whatever it was he wanted to say a secret or just telling her and letting it all out. The fact that he hesitated infuriated her.
Without really thinking, she raised a fist and slammed it down on the desk. Everything vibrated at the least—some piles of paper collapsed in like a building, an empty coffee mug toppled over, and something metal clanked together. Her knuckles suffered a dull ache at the amount of force she drove into the wooden desk, but she ignored it. The incompetence of Levi hurt her even more.
"Don't you dare fucking hold back anything from me, Levi," she growled through her crooked teeth, spitting out each word as if it were the venom of a snake. "I don't have time for your shit. I am a homicide detective, Levi. Do you know what that means? That means I am responsible for everyone's lives in this city. And you're a fucking social worker. Your job is to look after poor, helpless kids who have nowhere else to go. If someone dies because you were too fucking stupid to not tell me vital information, then the blood is not on my hands, but yours." She pointed a finger at him. "Don't you fucking dare hold back anything from me."
Not much shifted in his expression, but she knew she hurt him. Despite his grouchy face and no-shit kind of attitude, Levi genuinely cared about his cases and clients. She saw how damaged he was when they both flew into the Jaeger estate that fateful night two years ago—seeing Eren lying dead on the ground with a hole in his head, the kid with dead parents and a psycho of an older brother, the kid he was supposed to help stand back on his feet, with Jean Kirtstein and Armin Arlert standing over him nearly broke him. She remembered how he screamed at Jean and Armin to get on the ground, his throat nearly ripping in two at the volume he carried, pointing the gun at them like they were the mad ones and not Eren. Hanji had hurried over to two girls lying unconscious on the muddy ground—Annie Leonhart and Mikasa Ackerman—and was crying frantically into her cell for more backup. While she performed CPR on Annie, she could hear Levi barking orders as if they were miles away, telling two delirious teenagers that he would shoot if they so much as moved an inch.
Levi was probably in the worst shape she ever saw him. It was a hard scene; she felt it too. It almost made her feel as hopeless and fearful as the day she saw what happened to Erwin all those years ago. She didn't blame Levi on what happened to those kids, not in the slightest, but if certain knowledge hadn't been held back, then she felt like the situation could've been avoided entirely.
She continued to glare at him, and she did so for a while, for Levi waited until the very last second to whisper out into the darkness, "Jean says he's seeing Marco and that Marco supposedly lead him and Annie to where Lenz was."
Like a dying flower slowly raising back from the dead, Hanji uncurled her hunched spine and stared into space, letting Levi's words sink in. "He was looking at his bedside the entire time Erwin spoke with him like someone else was there. He said he could see him and hear him just fine. He also said that Marco told him there was a girl in the barn and that something was wrong."
Hanji could sense Levi's gaze on her, but his reaction was the last thing on her mind. Marco Bodt—Jean Kirtstein's boyfriend who had died in the Jaeger massacre. Erwin said that Jean suffered from vivid hallucinations of Marco and tried keeping his "existence" a secret, a coping mechanism for what happened to him. "Jean is refusing to let go or move on," Erwin had told her, "and this image of Marco he conjured up could be very dangerous, not only for him but for those around him. It could cause him to do harmful things."
"He said Marco told him that Lenz committed suicide," Levi went on. "Erwin and I left shortly after that but not before telling him to keep his mouth shut, which of course, he didn't do. Jean mentioned something about a 'second coming' and then explained his whole life story to the wall." He pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed lowly.
One by one, the pieces fell together, forming a picture Hanji hadn't considered before. She thought the final product would lead her somewhere unknown or drag her through a bunch of curvy, dangerous paths. But, turns out, it only led her a few streets down and into the mind of someone she thought she knew well.
"Jean could've killed Christa," Hanji mumbled.
"Hanji, no." That tone settled back in Levi's husky voice.
"It makes sense. Jean is still grieving the loss of Marco and no doubt wants to bring him back. Perhaps, as a way to do so, he figured he could recreate the murders as a sort of replacement for his friends. Replacing Marco with someone else could bring him back."
"Hanji, you're wrong. This isn't—"
"So, would he kill people until he got to Marco's place in the killing order? Or would he 'replace' all eight victims of the massacre in order for it to be complete in some way? Marco could be the one telling him to do this—I wonder if Annie has seen any strange behavior radiating from Jean. Well, besides the usual—" She swallowed a gasp. "Oh shit, what if Annie knew about it, but is deciding to look the other way—"
She felt herself getting yanked down to the floor and her chin knocked against something small yet brute. Her glasses had slipped dangerously down her nose and her outer vision instantly fogged up, but she could still see the tiny black beetles that were Levi's eyes drill into her stare with the force of a sledgehammer as he pulled down on her coat collar.
"Enough, Hanji," he hissed. "Jean didn't do it."
"He's a strong suspect, at the very least—"
"He's nothing but a fucked-up kid trying to find his place in the world. Moblit said it was suicide and that's exactly what it is. Don't twist something into what it's not. Take everyone's advice: stay out of it and leave those kids alone."
She frowned. "Levi—"
"Shut up, Hanji!"
The gentle creak of the door held back Levi's fist from ramming itself right into her nose. They both whipped toward the sound—there sat Annie with her hand on the doorknob. She had an apple in her other hand with a giant bite out of its side and she looked at them with unimpressed eyes.
"You guys okay?" she asked. "We heard things banging around."
Levi's grip on Hanji loosened, but the intensity in his forearms was still there. She straightened herself back, pushed her glasses back into place, and then looked at Annie with a cool expression.
"Yup, everything's alright. Just talking some stuff over." She then peered down at Levi. "Levi's gonna watch the security tape with us."
The daggers piercing into the side of her temple was extremely painful, but she ignored it. Instead she turned back to the groceries on Levi's desk, grabbed them, and then waddled after Annie.
"Meet you in my office," she called to Levi without turning back to glance at him.
Levi showed up with a single black coffee twenty minutes later.
Hanji had finished her handful of barbeque chips and her fingers left little grease stains on her keyboard as she transferred today's findings into a word document. Once she spotted his little emo head saunter into the room like a hungover sloth, she perked up as if nothing had happened between them.
"Hey, you're here!" She grabbed her tuna sandwich and wheeled her chair over to Annie's desk on the right side of the room. Annie was already sitting there, munching on her own sandwich with the same enthusiasm as a sleepy snail. Hanji grabbed one of the green chairs positioned in front of her own desk and dragged it next to her.
"Come, sit," she said as she lightly pushed the VHS tape into the old TV she stole from the breakroom.
Like a cat, he quietly dragged himself over and silently plopped down next to her, taking a ginger sip from his coffee as he did so.
"Alright, let's see who this crazy redhead chick is," she muttered to herself as she fast-forward the tape until the fish counter was crowded with blurry customers. The image showed more of the employees behind the counter than it did the customers, but they could see faces and torsos of various peoples walking by the glass counter. The entire screen was lighted in a dull blue color and the camera was neatly tucked in some high corner, overlooking everyone down below.
Nothing too suspicious happened for a while, so Hanji allowed herself to chew on her sandwich in thought. She watched an elderly couple stand talking to that Nick guy for at least fifteen minutes before not buying anything and wandering off. She saw Nick's coworker—most likely that Oluo guy—play on his phone when there were no customers in sight. She spotted a few women with dark hair that could've been red if it weren't for the dumb blue screen, but they either passed the fish counter or acted very normally, not loud and obnoxious like how Nick described her.
Just as she went to pop open her energy drink, she noticed two pairs of legs strut into view. One of them belonged to a girl with short wavy hair and she had on booty shorts despite the chilly October air. The other was doing all sorts of moving around—skipping, hopping, dancing in place. When her face appeared, Hanji noticed her dark crazy hair tied into two short pigtails and her mouth was moving fast as if she were talking a million words a minute. She had on a big black backpack which bounced against her back every time she moved.
She also noticed how the two young girls were holding hands and leaning into each other. The girl with the booty shorts kissed the nose of the energetic shortie.
She rolled her eyes and snorted. "Really, Nick? Friends? Ah, you homophobic moron."
Annie and Levi ignored Hanji and scooted closer to the screen.
They watched the pair split up. Pigtails went to the shelves next to the counter (where the tuna was stored) while Booty Shorts greeted Oluo. She scanned the chopped-up fish within the glass barrier, snaking around to the other side of the counter. She pointed to something and asked Oluo a question. He answered and she asked another. Oluo eventually crossed his arms and leaned atop the counter while he chatted away with Booty Shorts.
Once Oluo did this, Pigtails whipped her backpack off and began shoving the tuna in by the handful.
"Gotcha," Hanji sang under her breath. "I'll let the grocery store know we caught their fish thief."
The three silently watched Pigtails continue to shovel in as much tuna as her backpack could hold. When she was done, she zipped it back up and jogged away.
Levi leaned in close to the screen (maybe a little too closely) before he asked Hanji to replay the tape. She did as he said and when he told her to pause the video, she complied. With curious eyes, she watched him peer at Pigtails with an intense interest as if he were watching the last few seconds of a tense soccer game.
"You see something?" she eventually asked.
His slender, pale finger poked crazy Pigtails. "I think I know her."
Hanji leaned forward in her seat, the chair squeaking under her weight. "Wait, seriously? Who is she?"
Levi sat back, his eyes never leaving the screen. He rubbed his jaw as he muttered out, "She looks exactly like this girl I knew back in the projects. She was a kid then—well, like a kid kid—but she looks the same." He paused. "I think her name is Isabel. Isabel Magnolia."
"Whoa…" Hanji looked back at Pigtails, aka Isabel. "Talk about a blast from the past." Her eyes fell on Levi again. "I don't remember you mentioning an Isabel from your childhood."
"We weren't friends or anything. She's probably Jean and Annie's age now. I just remember her being a little shit around the place—throwing baseballs through people's windows, screaming bloody-murder at passing cars. Pretty sure my mom caught her trying to light a homemade firecracker once."
"That does sound like a little shit to me." She shifted her weight in her chair. "Hey, this might be asking too much, but if I find out where she lives currently, can you talk to her about this? Pull out your social worker skills and see if she needs help with anything?" She shrugged. "She is just a kid, after all. I'd hate to have her arrested and go through all sorts of paperwork if I can avoid it."
Levi stared at Isabel for a long time. Hanji wasn't sure what was swimming through his mind right now. Hurt? Shock? Maybe just some weird nostalgia? Whatever he was feeling, he shoved it back in that little fragile box of his between his ribs and looked up at Hanji.
"Yeah, sure."