May 2

Blackgate Community Center

12:45 PM

Venus Rinko

"We need to talk."

As soon as we came up to speak with Mr. Middleton, Chrysalis started the conversation the only way that she knew how to: by being blunt. Her hands were pressed together behind her back, and her eyes were narrowed in his direction, clearly not giving him the chance to run away even if he wanted to.

Mr. Middleton perked up at the sound of her voice, frowning gently at how harsh she sounded. "I didn't realize that you had arrived back here to continue your investigation," he remarked, glancing over the full group that had approached him. "Is there something the matter?"

"We were wondering about your relationship to the victim," Mr. Morix told him. "I get the feeling that there's more going on here that you haven't told us about. Why would the victim specifically trust you with her phone when she was performing? It seems odd that she would give you, a stranger, her phone if she didn't have some reason to think that you wouldn't betray her."

Mr. Middleton glanced over the group standing before him, and he let out a heavy sigh. "I see that you've gotten your hands on some new information then," he commented softly. "I understand. I'll tell you everything that you want to know. I did know the victim, as a matter of fact."

"What was your relationship with her like?" Yuri questioned, looking at Mr. Middleton with scrutiny in her gaze. "Something about this is strange to me."

"There was a case a while ago in which the victim of this case was a witness. She saw some type of back alley deal, and when the case went to court, she testified alongside some video footage," Mr. Middleton explained. "I was a family friend, so they wound up tasking me with taking on the case and doing what I could to find the truth behind what took place at the time. Because of this past history, she felt comfortable with giving me her phone at the time of the murder."

"You know, I think it's odd that the victim would want to pass off her phone for something like that at all," Prosecutor Lin confessed. When everyone turned to her in confusion, she let out a small shrug. "I don't know for sure about this, but... I always sort of got the impression that they were going to wind up recording the competition separately."

"What?" Mr. Morix asked, his eyes going wide at the mere implication.

"Like I said, I'm not sure. I haven't been able to scratch this itch, I must admit, but... I feel like there would have been other people who would have recorded the competition. After all, this is a pretty important competition, so I can't imagine that people wouldn't record it at all. There must have been someone interested in doing that," Prosecutor Lin told him. "That's just me though. I know that there's not exactly anything to back this up, but... It's something for us to think about, I suppose."

We turned back to Mr. Middleton with those words, and he wound up hesitating before shaking his head. "I'm afraid that the matter of a recording here has been... Difficult to navigate," he finally said, clearly choosing each word as carefully as possible. "I believe that there were originally intentions to record the competition, but something got in the way of that. No matter what happened, I'm confident that my recording wound up being the superior out of the ones that were done at the time of the murder."

"I don't know what we're supposed to do with this information," I couldn't help but mutter to Mr. Morix where he was standing right next to me. "I feel like this is important somehow, but I'm not sure where this could slot into the greater picture."

Mr. Morix must have felt the same way, but he did his best to shove it aside as he glanced up to Mr. Middleton once again. "I have to ask... What other details do you know about the back alley deal that took place in the past?" he questioned. "There must be something that you know about the case. Perhaps that could be important to what's happening right now."

Mr. Middleton shook his head. "I'm afraid that details on this case just so happened to be rather scarce," he explained. "I don't know anything beyond what I've already told you, and I'm not going to get your hopes up by saying something that we don't even know for sure. All that we had to go off in terms of that case could be found on the video footage that the victim had on her phone."

"Then why don't we look at that?" Prosecutor Bespoke suggested. "Surely we could at least glance over the footage and judge for ourselves if there's anything that could help us out on that front."

"About that... The video footage for the case was ultimately deleted from her phone at some point between that last case and now," Mr. Middleton explained with a shake of his head. "When I checked for it earlier this morning, it was gone."

"What?" I echoed, my eyes going wide. That was the last thing I expected to hear, and I had already decided that I hated having to hear it. We were going to have to go and try to find clues elsewhere, it seemed, because this wasn't going to be able to help us out the way that we were originally hoping.

"Thank you for talking to us, Mr. Middleton," Mr. Morix told him, his expression slipping into a frown. "We're going to continue our investigation, but I believe that what you've told us has ultimately been helpful to our case."

"I'll be rooting for you then," Mr. Middleton smiled, offering us a small wave as we retreated. Once again, the sensation of plastic on the tip of my tongue returned, and I resisted the urge to allow my upset from the lack of leads to get the better of me as I waved in return.

When our group retreated toward the center of the gymnasium, Cassidy shook her head. "What are we supposed to do now? Mr. Middleton doesn't know anything, and I don't know if this is going to be able to lead us in the right direction to solve this case."

"I think it's time for us to go back to the locker room," Chrysalis commented. "I want to go back and see if there's anything that could help us there."

"To be more accurate, you want to be able to look through the victim's possessions to see if there's anything that we'll be able to use in terms of evidence," Yuri said. Chrysalis nodded, not even bothering to try with hiding her intentions.

"I think that would be for the best," Mr. Morix agreed with a small nod. "We've looked around at everything that we think could be of note, so let's head into the locker room and see what we might be able to find. Maybe Ms. Rowland will be gone by now so that we can search the area for any signs of something out of the ordinary."

There were no objections to that suggestion, and we all began to make our way in the direction of the locker room. Chrysalis wound up being the first to get to the doors, and she gestured for us all to fall silent as she reached for the handle that would allow us to push inside. She crept in first with the rest of us trailing in her footsteps silently. I glanced around the area quietly, trying my best to find anything that might even slightly resemble a clue.

I didn't see anything, but I did hear something in the distance. It sounded like someone was muttering to themselves, and when I perked up, I could tell that it was likely Ms. Rowland. After all, we knew that she was in the locker room, and I didn't think that anybody had seen her leave the locker room during our previous conversations with others involved with the case. Chrysalis clearly picked up on it as well, and she gestured for us all to come closer quietly, not wanting to interrupt her in case this wound up being the crucial piece of evidence that we needed.

Ms. Rowland came into view soon afterward, and I was sure as could be that she was the one behind all of this. I glanced up and saw that she was pulling all of the victim's belongings out of her locker and desperately trying to sift through them in search of something. She wasn't even bothering to hide the fact that she was looking for something, not that she really needed to as long as she was supposedly alone in the locker room. She hadn't yet noticed us, and that meant that we were offered a full view of what it was that she was trying to find.

Ms. Rowland wasn't yielding anything in the way of clues, and after about a minute and a half of us just watching her, hearts pounding with anticipation and adrenaline, Chrysalis stepped out into full view. She raised one hand to her mouth and cleared her throat loudly, earning her the immediate attention of Ms. Rowland. The woman whirled around to face her, eyes wide and angry.

"Excuse me," Chrysalis began. "Are you looking for something? Perhaps we would be able to help you to search."

Ms. Rowland only returned the gesture with a barbed glare. "Don't you know how rude it is to watch people without consent? Then again, it's not as if I expected any of you people to understand what it means to be polite. All of you are the same, conducting illegal investigations and invading people's privacy without a beat of hesitation," she commented.

"We would like to ask you a few questions, if you don't mind," Mr. Morix interjected next, doing his best to keep his voice even despite the fact that he clearly wasn't too fond of Ms. Rowland either for the way that she had been treating us up to this point.

Ms. Rowland hesitated for a long moment before she crossed her arms over her chest. "I'm clearly not going to be able to get away from this, so fine. Go on and ask me whatever you want. You might as well get it over with," she remarked bitterly.

Mr. Morix nodded, not bothering to acknowledge her attitude as he continued to speak. "What do you know about the time of the crime?" he asked. "To be more specific, would you know anything in terms of recording the gymnastics competition? We've heard that perhaps there would have been others who may have wanted to record it, so we had to ask... Do you know anything on that subject?"

Ms. Rowland was silent for quite some time before she wound up sighing. "There were originally plans to record the gymnastics competition, yes. I don't think that it wound up actually happening though... Well, that's not exactly true. There was a recording made with an official camera, but the footage was destroyed," she explained. "I heard some people involved with the competition's setup talking about it. There was a recording made that would have shown what happened at the time of the murder, but the footage card was taken out of the camera at some point in the chaos."

"And you know that the footage was destroyed... How exactly did that happen?" Cassidy asked warily, clearly still not trusting everything that she was being told.

"The memory card was found on the ground at some point during the investigation. It had been stepped on and no longer could even hold its shape. It was likely run over multiple times in the course of the crowd's escape from the gymnasium, and nobody realized what it was as they were trying to get out. As such, the card has been completely destroyed, and there's nothing left that might be able to tell us what happened at the time of the murder," Ms. Rowland explained.

"We didn't even know about that part," Yuri confessed. "How did you manage to get your hands on that kind of information?"

"I'm part of the team organizing the competition like I already told you. It wasn't brought up to the police because it wasn't deemed relevant. After all, would the police really want to hear that their crucial evidence exists but was destroyed in the course of the chaos after the murder?" Ms. Rowland questioned. "It's easier to just say that there isn't anything that would have been able to help us figure out what happened at the time of the crime."

"I see," Chrysalis murmured under her breath before she shifted her attention back up to the lockers nearby. "Now, why don't we address the elephant in the room? What were you doing looking through the victim's locker? Why did you chase us out of the locker room earlier? Is there something going on here that you don't want us to know about?"

"You have nothing to do with anything that might happen here in the locker room," Ms. Rowland replied with a loose shrug. "It's nothing that you have to involve yourself with. The murder took place out on the mat in the main gymnasium. What in the world could the locker room have to do with it?"

"And yet, you were still rifling through the victim's things without any hesitation," Prosecutor Bespoke pointed out with a shake of his head. "I believe that's certainly suspicious. Why is it that you would want to go through everything that the victim owned without any issues? It bothers me that someone who was involved with the setup of such an important competition didn't seem to care at all for the privacy of the competitors."

"She's dead now. What does it matter?" Ms. Rowland questioned, her arms crossing over her chest. "I was curious, and I decided that I was going to my own little search of the area. That's all that really matters. You don't need to worry about it. Leave the subject alone already, would you? None of this has anything to do with any of you."

"The fact that you were going through the victim's belongings is most certainly involved with us as the investigators behind the case," Prosecutor Bespoke pressed. "I must ask you to tell us what your intentions were. Beyond that, you have to allow us to look through her things. As the prosecuting attorney on this case, I'm not offering you any other options on the matter."

Ms. Rowland glanced at the full group standing before her. Once she was finished, her eyes fell upon Prosecutor Bespoke. "You're the prosecutor? Fine then. You can look around at her things, but I don't want anyone involved with the defense doing this. They can't be trusted, but at least you understand that the defendant is the culprit behind this case," she declared, her arms crossing over her chest.

Prosecutor Bespoke's expression grew tight at those words, but he eventually sighed and nodded. "If you insist," he said simply, deciding to drop the subject before it could grow to be much more frustrating than it already was. He turned over his shoulder to acknowledge the rest of us before his expression grew firm. "I'll take care of this. You can all go off and take care of other things. Cassidy, Prosecutor Lin, you two can stay with me. As for the rest of you... I think that you already know what else you have left to do."

With that said, Prosecutor Bespoke took a step toward Ms. Rowland. That was our cue to retreat, and much to my surprise, Mr. Morix didn't protest in the slightest to the fact that we were being pushed out of the important space prematurely. He allowed us to be moved out into the main gymnasium, and once we were there, he glanced around the area carefully, waiting for all of us to come in closer.

"What are we going to do now?" Yuri questioned with a shrug. "I don't think that there's anything for us to do at this point, right? That was our one idea in terms of finding new clues for this case, and now, we aren't going to be able to do anything. What now?"

"We're going to head back to the detention center soon," Mr. Morix replied simply. "If you ask me, we have all of the clues that we're going to need in order to find the truth behind this case. I know that doesn't sound too promising right now, but you'll just have to trust me on that. I have a sneaking suspicion that even if we wanted to do more looking around, we wouldn't be able to figure everything out. We've done what we can, and that means that it's time for us to go and report back to KJ what we've figured out."

"I still don't understand how all of this is supposed to fit together," Yuri remarked as she crossed her arms. "It feels like we're missing just a little bit too much to actually figure out what's happening here, and it's frustrating that there are so many gaps in our story at the moment."

"I think that we have the pieces that we need too... At least up to a certain degree," Chrysalis said. "I think that Ms. Rowland is hiding something of note, and while I don't think that we're going to be able to figure it out right now given her demeanor, we can drag it out of her in the trial tomorrow."

"Do you think that we're even going to be able to talk to her during the trial?" I questioned with an uncertain frown. "I don't know... I guess that I just haven't really seen anything that might prove that she could be helpful to us."

"I left Prosecutor Bespoke alone with Ms. Rowland because I knew that we would be able to trust him to force her to testify tomorrow. We might not be able to get the full truth out of her, but I know that he'll be able to figure that much out," Mr. Morix assured me. "We just have to have faith that he knows what he's doing, and as far as I'm concerned, he can handle this. If there's one person I trust on that matter, it would be him."

"Then why don't we go on and head down to the detention center to figure out what's going to be next for us?" Yuri questioned, though I could still tell that there was a degree of uncertainty behind her words. She still wanted to do a bit more to look around the immediate area but didn't know how to show that, especially given the circumstances that were trying to push us away so firmly.

"KJ is going to want an update on everything that we found, and if all goes well, we'll be able to hear at least a little something more about what he knows about Ms. Rowland while we're there," Chrysalis declared. She cleared her throat before she pointed in the direction of the door. "Let's go on and see him. We're going to figure out what's going on during the trial tomorrow. I'm choosing to have faith in that much regardless of how hopeless it might seem right now. We've already done a good job of proving that KJ wasn't the one who did it, so we just have to continue down the path that we've already established."

I nodded my agreement, but there was still a note of uncertainty at the edge of my mind. I had an awful feeling about this even though I knew that I was probably being a bit dramatic with my fears. If Mr. Morix and Chrysalis both thought that we had all the information that we were going to need, then I had faith in them. I might have been a bit nervous about it myself, but I was choosing to believe that they knew what they were doing. I would stay along for the ride regardless of my doubts as long as they had an idea of what was going to be next.

For the time being, I knew that our best option was going to be to head in the direction of the detention center to speak with KJ. We could see what came of that when the time was right, I supposed. I hoped that he would be able to tell us at least a little something helpful when it came to Ms. Rowland, though I supposed that I was just going to have to see what came of it all. Only time would tell, it seemed.

May 2

Blackgate Community Center

2:30 PM

Yuri Rinko

The detention center was the same as always, and I glanced around the area before settling down in one of the chairs sitting in front of the glass. I ran my finger absentmindedly along the table that ran between the two sides of the glass, tracing patterns on the wood as a way of passing the time quietly. I rocked my head back and forth as well, simply allowing myself to wait for KJ to finally arrive.

When he did show up, I could tell that he was just as tired as always with the way his shoulders slumped. Given the impact that the detention center was having on him, I could only assume that the place was hardly pleasant. I had already gotten that impression from Venus and Cassidy up to that point, but this was only further proof, as if I needed any in the first place.

"You guys are finished with your investigation now?" KJ questioned as he looked over the four of us. "What did you find? Is there anything that you think I should know about before the trial starts tomorrow?"

Mr. Morix offered a nod. "As a matter of fact, we did make significant progress. We've asked the detective on the case to conduct an investigation on the doors leading into the locker room to see if there were any fingerprints of yours left behind when you were leaving the area behind. We won't have the results for a while yet, but it's a step in the right direction as far as I'm concerned," he explained.

"On top of that, we were able to talk with a rather... Peculiar woman," Venus said, choosing her words carefully to keep from offending KJ. "Would you happen to be acquainted with one Eris Rowland? She claimed that she was part of the group looking over the community center to help the competition run as smoothly as possible, and if you know anything about her, we'll take it. We could use all the information that we could get."

KJ nodded at those words. "I do know her, as a matter of fact... I'm afraid that she's not exactly the most pleasant person to be around, but... She knows what she's doing when it comes to looking over these matters. I hadn't met her up until the competition started, and she tended to keep to herself. I don't think that we ever spoke to one another, as a matter of fact," he said. "I just heard her talking to others, and she seemed to be on the snappy side judging by what I heard from the other people that she engaged in conversation with."

"In other words, that's about what we were expecting," I sighed with a shake of my head. "You know, we saw her in the locker room when we went in there to look around. For some reason, she was digging through the victim's stuff. The locker that the victim was keeping her things in had been left ajar somehow, and we think that somebody must have interfered with it. We don't have any solid evidence on that, but... We can certainly assume it for the time being."

"Do you know why she might have been looking through all of that stuff?" Chrysalis asked, a frown heavy on her face. "We haven't found anything in terms of an explanation on that front, but there must be a reason for all of it. That behavior is most certainly suspicious, to say the least."

KJ paused for a long moment as he contemplated what he was going to be saying next. Eventually, he offered a loose shrug. "I'm not sure... But I don't think that she was ever all that intent on getting close with the performers of the competition. I couldn't even really tell you why. Everything about her felt like it was tense and uptight for some reason or another," he commented.

"That fits the description that we found to be accurate as well," Mr. Morix remarked to himself. "I believe that there's a reason for her peculiar behavior, but we haven't found anything that might point us in the right direction. I'm sure that there's evidence out there that could point us to the truth, but we haven't found anything that could show us what that is yet."

"However, we do know that the victim was apparently involved with testifying in another court case recently," Venus told KJ. "Apparently, she witnessed a back alley deal and caught it on video. Unfortunately, the case was left unresolved, so we aren't sure who could have been behind all of that. Only the people who were involved with that could have had much of a grudge against the victim as far as we're aware, and that means that we have the barest traces of something in terms of what we should be looking for."

KJ once again paused thoughtfully before he shrugged. "I wouldn't know anything about that. I didn't really associate all that much with the performers either. I could tell that they were nervous and wanted to focus as much as possible on what they were going to be doing that day, so I decided to give them the space that they needed. That was partially the reason that I allowed myself to hang back on cleaning up the locker room until after everyone had left to go and perform. That way, I wouldn't have to get in the way of anyone who was moving around in the locker room," he said.

"You know, we didn't see anyone who was in the area of the locker room at the time of the crime aside from KJ... Well, we haven't heard about anybody who fits that description," I commented with a small frown. "And yet, we did see Ms. Rowland back there, and she only seemed to be rummaging around through the victim's things. Granted, the other lockers were all shut tightly, so it makes sense that this would be the only one that would suffer interference."

"But the lockers aren't all that hard to shut," KJ commented with a small frown. "They're rather basic, as a matter of fact. I don't know how it is that the locker would have been left open for somebody to wind up getting into it after the fact anyway. The lockers function rather simply, so how could she have gotten into the locker...? Why would she want to be there in the first place?"

"As far as we can tell, she was searching for something specifically, but she didn't seem to find it," Chrysalis remarked as she glanced down at the ground. "She was looking through the clothing in the locker, but she didn't seem to take interest in any of it. There must have been something else that she was trying to get her hands on, and while I don't know what that thing could have been, I guess we're going to have to figure it out sooner or later."

"We didn't even see anything in the locker aside from her clothes that she changed out of to get into the leotard that she was wearing at the time of the murder," Venus said with a shake of her head. "None of this really makes any sense to me. "I guess that all we're going to be able to do is see what happens from here."

"If Prosecutor Bespoke is really able to get her to testify the way that Mr. Morix thinks that he'll be able to, then we'll have to take advantage of that to force her to talk," I declared. "Until then, all we're going to be able to do is theorize about what it is that she could have been searching for at the time of the crime."

"We'll figure it out. I'm sure that Prosecutor Bespoke will come through for us," Mr. Morix assured me when he placed one hand on my shoulder. "For now though, we can call our investigation complete there. We'll come back together at the courthouse tomorrow, and we'll see what we can find when court goes into session."

"Good luck to all of you," KJ announced. "I'll be counting on you."

We bid farewell to KJ from there, and I offered him a wave as we retreated. I still didn't know what in the world was going on with this case, but I was hoping that we would be able to figure it out sooner or later. All of this uncertainty was driving me up a wall, and if I was being honest, it felt like we had more questions than answers at this point. I just hoped that Mr. Morix was right about us having all of the pieces that we needed. I didn't know what was going to happen if he was wrong, but I could already tell that it wasn't going to be good in the slightest.

It's storming so loud here wow

-Digital