July 7

Blocker Law

3:45 PM

Yuri Rinko

"Who in the world are you?" Mukuro asked, not taking a step closer to the woman but remaining stiff as the officers around her drew nearer to our suspect. "Why in the world were you hiding away in a closet? Don't you know this building is a crime scene?"

The woman barely seemed surprised by that, instead simply rubbing at her eyes and shaking her head. "I didn't realize there was an investigation going on here," she murmured. "Sorry. I didn't realize anyone was here at all aside from me. If you wouldn't mind, I should be on my way."

"We can't just let you go," Felicity reminded her with a frown. "You have to know at least something about what happened. Why in the world would you be hiding away in a closet if you didn't know something? Are you trying to hide from us?"

The woman shook her head, though I think she knew just as well as everyone else that it wasn't convincing in the slightest. "I didn't know there was anything going on. I came here because I needed a place to rest. That's all there is to it," she replied, shifting uncomfortably on the spot. "I couldn't stay elsewhere any longer, and nobody was using this building, so I saw no reason to not come back here and try to get some rest."

"I don't think that's how any of this works," Sky frowned. "You can't just walk into a building and sleep there, even if nobody is using it... Also, the fact remains that this building is a crime scene. Even if you had gone somewhere, I would have thought you would have chosen a different place from the building where an attempted murder took place not long ago."

The woman hesitated, trying to come up with a response, but she was cut off when Felicity raised her hand to get her attention. "First, we need your name. Who exactly are you?" she asked, and I realized that we had completely forgotten to ask for her name. We had been so caught up in the idea that she was the real culprit that it had completely slipped our minds.

The woman paused once again, and the fact that she was thinking about it for longer than just a few seconds sent a shiver up my spine. There was something for her to hide, and she knew it just as well as I did. "Jane," the woman answered. "Jane Doe."

"You can't be serious," I muttered under my breath. "Your name just so happens to line up with the name they give people in witness protection? I want to know what's really going on here." The taste of her lie was crimson and bloody on my tongue, and I narrowed my eyes at her with all the determination in the world. She wouldn't be able to get away with this forever, and she had to know it too. She just didn't want to have to admit it.

The woman shook her head. "You have no way of knowing if I was lying about that," she pointed out, though I had no idea if she was trying to be genuine or if she was hoping to rub it in my face. There was no way to tell much of anything when it came to her because of how passive and exhausted her expression was. Her shoulders were knit together tightly, and even if we didn't believe her, I knew she wasn't going to be giving us any information beyond what she already had. She simply didn't want to take that chance, and each of us was fully aware of it.

Aiden sighed, the breath coming out shaky. "I don't know what's going on here, Jane Doe, but we have a few questions for you," he told her. Around him, the officers didn't look away from the woman for even a moment, though they slowly dropped their guns. "Do you know anything about what happened here last night?"

Ms. Doe shook her head. "I believe I already made that abundantly clear," she said bluntly. "You know that I'm completely unaware of what's going on here. Why are you pushing it so hard when I've already told you that?"

"Because we have reason to believe that the one who tried to kill another person came up here at the time of the attack," Mukuro replied. "It's not something you want to hear, but we have to ask you as much as possible about the time of the attack. What exactly happened here last night?"

"I feel the need to point something out," James chimed in, speaking up for the first time the entire conversation. "Let's say for a moment that you really were hoping for a place to sleep for the night. I can believe that. But... A cabinet on the upper floor of a building? Why were you staying in there? Did you really mean to sleep there for so long?"

Ms. Doe fell silent for a long time before she simply shrugged. "I was trying to not get caught," she murmured. "You never know when a police officer is going to kick you out when you're staying in a place like this. Sometimes, you run out of options, and this is the only place you can hide out as you plan your next move. I couldn't take that chance, so I decided to hide myself in the one place I was sure nobody would look... A cabinet high up in the building."

I didn't buy it in the slightest that she had nothing to do with the crime, but I didn't say anything about it at first, instead just glancing over at everyone else to see what they thought. James was the one who wound up pressing the matter, narrowing his eyes at Ms. Doe. "I still don't know how much of this we can believe," he insisted. "After all, there were many better places to sleep here that wouldn't have been in a cabinet so high up. Even if you wanted to keep yourself from getting caught, there were other ways to go about it. I doubt anyone would have checked this building at all last night if not for the attempted murder. You should have been safe just about anywhere as long as you were out of direct view. Why did you choose a cabinet?"

"Paranoia is a powerful thing, and I wasn't going to start a war against it," Ms. Doe answered with a shake of her head. She looked past us at the door, something longing but terrified in her eyes. "Will you let me leave now? I told you that I don't have the information you're looking for, and there's no reason to keep me trapped here as long as that's the case. I can't help you, so if you're trying to learn more about the case, you should just move on and look somewhere else."

"You should at least hear us out first," Mukuro told her, though it was abundantly clear based on her tone that it wasn't really an option for Ms. Doe at all. "You know something about this incident, and we need to hear about it as soon as possible. What can you tell us?"

Ms. Doe stared down at Mukuro, and I saw shame rise in her eyes even if she did her best to hide it. Eventually, Ms. Doe relented and shook her head. "I was here last night because I was hoping to hide myself from the eyes of the world," she returned. "I have a bit of a... Complex living situation, and I was hoping that I was going to be able to find a place here for at least the rest of the night. It didn't end up the way I was hoping though... Somebody got attacked here, you say?"

"Yes. An attack did take place here," Sky confirmed with a stiff nod. "And we have reason to believe that after the criminal attacked him, they fled deeper into the building to escape being caught. If there was any perfect place for the culprit to escape, it would have been the upper floors of this building. They could have waited for the police presence to clear out before trying to escape."

"We have seen no signs of the culprit's escape, so we had to come and investigate the top of this building. If the criminal didn't escape through a window or by using the front door, then they had to still be here," James went on. "And when we came up here... We found you. As much as I hate to say it, I'm afraid we'll have to regard you with suspicion until we can ensure that you really had nothing to do with this case."

"I... I understand," Ms. Doe said, something in her eyes growing downcast and impossible to read. I had no idea what was going through her head, but I could already tell easily enough that she wasn't going to be sharing the truth of it with us as easily as we would have liked. "I don't have anything to tell you though. I spent the entire night in this cabinet because I was hoping to avoid being caught."

"There are spare pieces of furniture hiding out here in other corners of the building. Surely you would have looked for something safe but a bit more comfortable before resorting to a cabinet," Sky commented. "It just doesn't make any sense that you would opt for a cabinet when the rest of the building should have been safe. If not for the murder attempt, nobody would have even looked twice at this place. The fact that you decided to use the cabinet is... Suspicious, to say the least."

"I can say it again and again that I don't know what was going on here that night. I still have no idea, and I'm going to tell you as many times as I need to for you to leave it alone and let me go," Ms. Doe frowned. "I couldn't tell you the truth even if I wanted to. I don't know the answers myself, and if I did, I would have said so already. Please, can you just let me leave?"

Nobody quite knew what to say in response to that, myself among them. I didn't know what we were supposed to say to all of that, but I was confident that there was more to this situation than met the eye. Ms. Doe couldn't have been the simple woman she was insisting to us that she was. I just knew there had to be more to it than that. Of course there had to be more to it than that. The details were just difficult to put together.

As the air fell tense and silent, James cleared his throat and looked up to Ms. Doe. "So... What exactly can you tell us about this complicated living situation of yours?" he asked carefully. It wasn't a direct attack about the case itself, but it was hopefully going to be a way to unravel the truth that we had been searching for through indirect means, and I prayed with everything I had that it worked the way he intended.

Ms. Doe paused before she shook her head. "Not much... Simply because there's not much to say," she answered. "My father and I haven't been getting along well recently, and I was hoping to find a new place in the world. I couldn't just stay at his side as long as he was going to maintain his..." She trailed off at that before shaking her head. "We've had a clash of ideals lately, I suppose you could say. I wanted a break from it all, and I needed some time to come out here and think. I decided to come somewhere that I knew nobody would bother me... Though I didn't think it was going to be the scene of an attempted murder. I don't think anyone could have seen that coming."

"What time did you come here last night?" I asked. "You must have arrived at some point late in the evening, yes?"

"I don't remember. Everything was a bit of a blur," Ms. Doe answered. "I just wanted to get away from the rest of the world, and it ended up leaving me here. I was exhausted, and almost as soon as I got up here, I fell asleep. You don't notice much about being curled up in a cabinet when there's so much in your head that you need to just get it all out through sleeping. How are you supposed to take stock of your surroundings when you're too tired to bother?"

Once again, she was skirting an important piece of information. She had to know at least something more than that, but I couldn't call her out on it. I knew it would just make me feel awful because even if she was the culprit, accusing her without any solid proof just didn't feel right. There had to be something in her words that would have made this easier, right? She was going to slip up and give us at least some clue along the way... Or so I was hoping.

"Why are you still keeping me here?" Ms. Doe asked with an antsy look around the room. She shifted anxiously back and forth between her feet, seemingly unable to keep still. "I told you that I don't have anything of note to tell you, and I think you should take that for what it is and just... Leave me be. If I knew something about the crime, I would have already brought it up. What reason would I have to keep crucial details about a crime secret from you?"

"If you were the culprit, you would have all the reasoning in the world," Felicity muttered under her breath. "I still find it odd that there's so much about this testimony of yours that doesn't make any sense. We should try to dissect it a little bit more so that we can learn more."

"What is this? Are you cross-examining me?" Ms. Doe questioned, her expression flickering to panic. "This isn't a courtroom. It's not a police interrogation either. You don't need to push it so hard. You're just looking around the building, so why bother with all of this?"

"It might not be a courtroom or an interrogation room, but we need to know your testimony so it doesn't come to that," Mukuro explained. "We're conducting a preliminary investigation to make sure that we have the right person on the defendant's seat when this goes to court. If you don't tell us the truth, then it's just going to get worse from here."

"The courtroom and the trial are probably just going to be harder than this," Aiden confirmed with a nod. "There's a lot we still don't understand, and the pressure is only going to cause problems in the near future. Please... Just be honest with us about everything you know."

Ms. Doe swallowed dryly before shaking her head. "If there was anything I could tell you, I would have said it already," she whispered, though she refused to meet eyes with any of us. Her anxiety was palpable, and while I didn't say it openly, I was taking it as a cue to her guilt. "I know you think all of this sounds awfully convenient on my end, but I'm going to stand by what I said. Everything I've told you has just been the truth. I was here for the same reason that I told you before. I was hoping to find a place to stay for the night until tension with my father blew over."

I shifted back and forth between my feet uncomfortably, wanting to say once again that I didn't believe a thing she was saying. Still, without any evidence, I knew I wasn't going to be able to get away with that the way I would have liked. Instead, I cast a sideways glance to the others in the room. It felt obvious that she had to know at least something about the situation at hand, especially if she was on the upper floor of the building hiding in the exact same area that we had thought we would find the culprit. If the criminal escaped, then that meant they had to have wound up on the upper floors of the law office, and since the other rooms had all been checked and come up short in the end, we were going to have to push it for better or worse, even if it earned us the ire of the witness.

"I think we should take her down to speak with the prosecutors behind the case," Mukuro suggested. "It wouldn't hurt for them to hear about what's going on, especially since it's seeming more and more like this case is going to have to go to court. They'll probably want to know as much as they can possibly get their hands on."

Ms. Doe went stiff at that, but she nodded. "Yes... If you insist," she said slowly. She seemed to want to avoid the prosecutors, but I couldn't quite put a finger on why. If she was the criminal, that would be one thing, but it really felt like there was a bit more to it than that, not that I had any hard evidence to back it up. That was just a gut instinct on my end, but I was still confident there was a lot more to this than met the eye.

"Then let's go," Sky announced. He started toward the door, and everyone else was quick to follow after him, though the other officers in the room had remained tense in the name of keeping Ms. Doe under control. I normally would have felt bad for someone who was being imprisoned like this without any evidence, but as long as the possibility existed that she was the criminal and had escaped to the upper floors of the law office, I couldn't shake my suspicion. She could have been involved with this, and the fear stuck around despite my wishes to get rid of it once and for all.

It was a relatively painless affair to descend to the lower floors and find Prosecutor Burke and her posse again. Okay, no, it was easy to find Chief Prosecutor Bespoke because of how overwhelmingly tall he was compared to just about everyone else involved with the investigation. From there, it was rather easy to figure out where the other prosecutors were, and Prosecutor Daegana was even with them. It was all so perfect that it brought a smile to my face as I waved to him to grab his attention.

It took much longer than I would have liked for him to notice, no doubt because of my lack of verticality, but he gestured for us to come over once he had spotted me. His expression twisted with confusion when he saw Ms. Doe. "Who exactly is this?" he asked, already going on the defensive in case she was the person he was already starting to think she was: the criminal.

"This is Jane Doe," Mukuro began, and Chief Prosecutor Bespoke's eyebrows raised with clear doubt. "We found her in a cabinet on one of the upper floors. She says that she was staying the night here at the time of the crime because she was trying to get away from the rest of her life."

Prosecutor Burke narrowed her eyes at Ms. Doe. "A likely story," she muttered under her breath."What were you really doing here? Did you just so happen to attack someone and wound up needing a place to wait until everything calmed down?"

"Maybe I'm just overly suspicious, but I think it's odd that you didn't even have a water bottle with you when you decided to hide out here. I would have thought that would be a priority," Felicity commented before she reached for her phone and checked the time. "Beyond that, why wait until four in the afternoon to come out? If you arrived here before the murder took place last night, then you would have been in that cabinet for almost eighteen hours."

"I'm inclined to ask the same question," Chief Prosecutor Bespoke asked, his eyes sharpening as he tried to glean as much information as possible from Ms. Doe. "Are you sure that's all you were doing here?"

"I've already said many times before now that I didn't shoot anyone," Ms. Doe frowned with a shake of her head. "I was here for unrelated reasons, and I just so happened to come here on the night of a crime. There must be someone else here that was involved with the crime and attacked him."

"Hold on a moment," James interjected, the gears in his head starting to turn and click into place. "You just said that you didn't shoot him, but... We never said anything about the way the victim was attacked. We said that an attack took place, but nobody ever said a thing about the method of assault involving a gun."

Ms. Doe's eyes went wide, and she seemed to notice that she had lost already. "I... I thought you had said..." she trailed off for a few beats before sighing and shaking her head. "I overheard someone say it on the way over here."

"We were walking with you all the way here though, and nobody said a thing about it the entire way down here," Sky pointed out. "It's not possible for you to have heard about something like that... But if that's the case, then how did you know how the victim was attacked?"

"Perhaps you figured it out because you were the one who attacked the victim in the first place," Prosecutor Burke declared. "I can't think of any other way you would be able to figure out how he was assaulted. He was shot with a gun, but if you heard of someone being attacked, I doubt that's the first idea of violence you would run to."

"We never said a word about how the victim was attacked, so that's the only method I can think of that would make all of this make sense," I agreed as we all looked over to Ms. Doe. "I want to know the truth now, Ms. Doe... What were you really doing in that cabinet all night?"

Nobody dared to say a word for a long time, Ms. Doe included. When the quiet was finally broken, it was with a light scoff and a shake of her head. "I suppose you found out the truth," she muttered under her breath. "It's all so simple for people like you, isn't it? The truth comes together in the blink of an eye, and nothing can ever quite stop you."

"Then... Y-You're confessing?" Anton asked, his eyes filled with fear. He instinctively took a step back, and Prosecutor Daegana was quick to cover for him by stepping between his brother and Ms. Doe.

Ms. Doe nodded, though she still didn't seem to want to have to admit to all of this. "I see no reason to hide it at this point... You already know the truth, and there's nothing I'll be able to say to stop you from figuring out more about what happened," she admitted simply. "Now, let's go on and get this over with."

"I have one more question for you," Sky said as he took a step forward, his eyes narrowed with hatred. The officers near Ms. Doe moved to restrain her. "We suspected earlier in this case that you were involved with the Emsthorpe assassins. Is this a correct assumption?"

Ms. Doe hesitated for a long time. "The culprit of this case was an assassin... You came to that conclusion long before you found me, and... Well, you would have been right about it," she confirmed. "It's incredible just how quickly a moment of weakness can destroy everything you've ever worked toward."

"Then the business with your father was all a lie," I concluded as I crossed my arms. Ms. Doe said nothing, instead simply staring a hole into the ground at her feet. "It doesn't matter now. We all know the truth about what you did here last night, and it's time for you to go off to the courtroom to be tried for your crimes."

Ms. Doe simply nodded as she was escorted away, not even bothering with some last biting words about how she would get back at us for this. Instead, she simply stared at Chief Prosecutor Bespoke for a long time with something that looked a lot like guilt, though I somehow doubted it was guilt solely rooted in her situation. It was hard to put a finger on the strange look she gave Chief Prosecutor Bespoke, but I chose to not ask any questions about it, knowing that she probably wasn't going to be all that productive with it in the first place.

"I guess that solves that," Prosecutor Burke said as she looked down to Prosecutor Daegana. "The problem has been fixed now, Elec. You're going to be coming home with us tonight." She smiled gently at him, something warm breaking through her regular icy exterior.

Prosecutor Daegana smiled before he threw his arms around both Prosecutor Burke and Anton. Chief Prosecutor Bespoke was quick to join in on the embrace soon afterward, and the four simply stood there together for a long moment, just enjoying the fact that they were all together and safe. It was a sweet sight, I had to admit, and I couldn't help smiling back at them.

Beside me, James was smiling as well, and I nudged him with my elbow. "I would say that all ended fairly well," I told him. "I doubt we would have figured out some of the finer details without you though. Thank you for everything you helped us out with."

James blushed at that, and I got the impression that as long as someone was asking about something other than his regular stage persona, he struggled with taking compliments. "I-I wanted to do what I could to help Prosecutor Daegana and my brother," he replied carefully. "That's all there was to it."

"I think you could really make for a good lawyer one day... You know, if your performing career ever decides to flop on you, though I somehow doubt that's going to happen," I said with a light smirk. "I'm not praying on your downfall or anything, but you should come by and visit the agency a bit more often. I think we could all use the extra spice in our lives from having you around."

James smiled, but before he had the chance, a phone rang to break the silence. Aiden flushed from embarrassment as he pulled his phone out of his pocket. "I-I'm so sorry!" he yelped. He answered the call, pressing the phone to his ear. "Hello? This is Aiden... Oh, that's incredible! I'll tell everyone the good news! We're just finishing up with things here, so we should be back soon... Alright. We'll see you soon. Goodbye."

"Who was that?" Mukuro asked with a small tilt of her head.

"It was Vera," Aiden explained. "She's down at the hospital with your father right now, and she says that the victim of the attack is awake. He's still a bit out of it, but... He's awake again, and that's what matters most."

James' eyes shot open with shock. "Then we have to go see him!" he cried out. "We already figured out who was responsible for the crime, but I need to see Albert as soon as possible!"

"I'm sure he would be able to enlighten us on more than a few important details behind this case as well," Chief Prosecutor Bespoke pointed out with a nod. "Let's all get down there and see what he knows about the case."

James pressed one hand to his chest with relief, and I could tell that he was only barely managing to hold back his tears. "All's well that ends well... Though I think I would much rather not have to see a case like this ever again," he confessed. "I think we all deserve a bit of a break from that sort of thing."

I nodded my agreement. "You can say that again. But as long as your brother is awake, I think it's time for us to have the grand reunion of the decade," I smiled to him. "Finally, everything is coming together again."

James nodded with a nervous swallow, and he started toward the staircase that would take us to the ground floor, an everyone else trailed after him. This case had been a relatively simple one in the end, not that anyone was really complaining about it. This was everything we had been needing given the recent stress we had been under with our last few cases.

But that only made me wonder more just what was going on with Ms. Doe. There was definitely more to her than met the eye whether anyone wanted to admit it or not, and the fact that she had confessed so easily, while welcome, still caught me off guard. It didn't even seem like she was trying at all. There had to be some reason for that, but thinking about it made me feel sick to my stomach. Why would someone confess that simply to an attempted murder? It didn't make any sense.

But that would all be solved in her own trial when the time came. For the moment, we had much more important matters to attend to, like going to talk to Albert and hearing everything he could share with us about the case at hand and his previous investigations into the assassins. He would be able to fill in all the gaps for us, and he would be able to confirm for us if Ms. Doe was the criminal as well.

Everything was falling into place the way it should... Though I was still afraid of celebrating this as a victory.

fast case

-Digital