-Six months ago-
Jessikah Afton pulled up to the crime scene as Danny Messar was photographing the body. The body had been found in a car sitting in a ditch along the side of a road. As she walked up to the group, she eyed the body. It was a man in his thirties with curly, coal black hair. He was pale, had large lips, and thick brimmed glasses like Buddy Holly.
She put her hands to her hips, slowly studying the car. There were skid marks coming from off the road, a dent in the side, which was a sign that the man was run off the road. Glass from the windshield was all over the hood and the ground, and the man had a bullet hole in his forehead and his chest. As she walked around the car to look at the license plates, she saw the car was from Liberty Valley.
"He was visiting, I think." She jerked up at the voice of Mac Taylor, he was always scaring her out of her focus. He had his arms crossed and was glancing at the back of the car. "There's a bag of luggage in the backseat, as well as a receipt from The Palace." Lindsay Munroe walked over, punching something in on their mobile computer.
"Says here the victim has been living in Liberty Valley for the last eighteen years. He has a wife and three boys." If the victim was vacationing, then it was likely the family was here too. Her heart broke for those three kids that would now be without a dad. She made her way around to the front of the car and gazed at the victim, an aura of familiarity was overcoming her. This man looked extremely familiar. It dawned on her that she hadn't gathered the name.
She felt a hand upon her shoulder and looked back at Mac. "Good to see you made it, Jessikah. make it to the house all right?"
"Yeah, Thanks again Mac." He nodded and glanced to the victim. The rest of the team had already gathered up the majority of the findings, and the coroner was already on there with the police and paramedics. "Guess I got here a little too late."
"You're fine, Jessikah. I'll tell you the findings so far."
"Okay."
"Robert?" A female voice buzzed in her ear and she quickly spun around, frowning at a woman running up to the scene. Three boys were standing in the parking lot of a nearby motel. The boys varied from six to seventeen years of age. The youngest child was hugging the leg of the eldest. The woman had long brown hair and a frantic expression with tears drenching her cheeks. "Robert! No!"
"Shit…" She stepped forward, extending her arms and holding the frantic woman as she attempted to go for her husband. This wasn't the first time a relative appeared on the crime scene, and it wouldn't be the last. "I need you to calm down ma'am."
"My husband! I need to hold him! Please!" The woman cupped her hand over her mouth, weeping bitterly. They didn't allow for that, since it was a possibility for the bereaved to tamper with the evidence either intentionally or unintentionally. The woman stretched her arm out, collapsing to her knees. "Robert…"
It was a shame, Robert didn't get much farther than the hotel. That means whoever killed him may have wanted him to die in the vicinity of his family. "Ma'am, I'm sorry, we can't let you in the crime scene…but if you'll step over here with me, you can help us find the person that did this to him." The woman nodded and Jessikah led her a few feet away, ensuring that the man's bloodied body wasn't in view. She didn't want the woman's memory of her husband to be something like this. She reassured the woman with a smile and looked over as Stella walked over to them. "Okay, what can you tell us that will help us find your husband's killer? First…name?"
"Willow, Willow Shapiro."
"Okay M-" Jessikah froze up, tensing as the woman's last name struck her. Shapiro? As in Robbie Shapiro? No, it couldn't be. The woman was calling him Robert. Stella patted her arm, comforting her as Jessikah was trying to comfort Willow. The GSPO CSI team knew well the names of each of Tori's friends. She'd spoken of all of them a million times. "We need confirmation that Mr. Shapiro and your family live in Seattle?"
"That is correct. He's a seasoned ventriloquist and we were called to come to Lincon City. He had a job to do at the Gotham comedy club." Danny started writing down the information while Jessikah was slowly overcoming the shock that this might actually be Robbie. "We've lived in Liberty Valley all our lives, though he would travel sometimes."
"Did you by any chance ever live in Innsmouth?."
"No…He lived there over twenty years ago. He doesn't talk too much about his time there, so I never thought to ask…" Trina closed her eyes, slowly breathing in and making sure the woman didn't notice her own terror. "Robert was a good man, he didn't have any enemies."
"Did he get involved with anything lately? Moreover, how long have you been here in Lincon City?"
"About a week now." The woman looked over to the car, whimpering as she curled her fingers at her lips. She closed her eyes and shook her head. "Now that I think about it, he did get into a fight with this one man at the club two days ago…Gabriel Iglesias The man is a comedian, I think, he was trying to get Robert's spot so he could have more time in the show…I remember him saying something about how the Gotham is no place for a 'puppet lover'."
"I see…" Her heart clenched as her mind flashed back to twenty years ago. Robbie was one of the only ones of Tori's friends that didn't mock her all the time. Sure he had his times of joining in, but he was quiet most of the time. An honest man, apparently with a caring family. "Stella, can you continue to console the bereaved?"
"Yeah, go get some air," Stella replied with a subtle smile, "I'll take over from here."
Jessikah walked away, stepping beside Mac, who was looking at the body as Sheldon examined for any obvious signs of struggle. "I was wondering why Danny and Lindsay withheld his name when I first got here." Usually the first thing anyone said when someone arrived onto the scene after the others was the name of the victim, as well as other stats. "When did you know?"
"His wallet and drivers license was on the seat beside him. He had several hundred dollars in his wallet, there are no signs of burglary." Mac lifted his hand and pointed towards the car, "The shooter may have run him off the road. He has a bruise on his forehead, indicating he hit the steering wheel. We think the shooter stepped in front of the car and fired off two shots, hitting our victim in the forehead and the chest."
"The wife mentioned a name. Gabriel Iglesias , Comedian scheduled to perform at the night showing. Apparently he and Robert had a fairly heated argument two days ago about his spot in the show."
"All right, then I guess we'll be paying him a visit." Mac turned to her as she studied Robbie's body. There wasn't much else to say, she couldn't believe that twenty years later, he was sitting here as a murdered victim. A painful feeling was twisting her stomach like a knife. She swallowed down the bile in her throat and closed her eyes. "Will you be all right, Jessikah?"
"Yeah, I'm fine. I got this." She wasn't ever sickened by the job, that wasn't what was getting to her. The blood, she could handle, the death she dealt with, but this was literally the first time someone from her past was found. "You said Danny dealt with something like this several years ago?"
"Yeah, we all have dealt with seeing someone we have known personally. It's rough…but we're all here for you, Jessikah." So it was only a matter of time before she wound up seeing someone she knew? Why did that not make the pain any easier to deal with? She may not have liked Tori's friends, but she never wanted any of them dead.
Her hands clenched shut as a new passion rose in her chest. Vengeance, determination. She'd been passionate about solving cases before, but most of the ones she got truly passionate about were ones that involved young children or sexual assault victims. Now this one, she had to do without letting her emotions get the better of her.
"I'll handle this professionally, but I think you know to take me off the case if I can't." Mac nodded slowly and Jessikah took a step forward, gazing at Robbie's horrified expression. Why had he ever left LA in the first place? It didn't matter, that wasn't the part of his life she had to investigate. They needed to investigate just the last couple of weeks. "Mark my words, Robbie…I will find out who did this to you."
She gagged on the last bit of bile and let her forehead drop as tears stung her eyes. Her mind was flashing back to Tori's friends like wild fire rushing through a forest. Their hatred of her, the remarks they'd stabbed her with. They may as well have killed her, and they probably would have if she never left.
Or maybe Jade would have.
