October 24
Defendant Lobby No. 6
11:40 AM
Deirdre Brigit
Arriving out in the defendant lobby was a breath of fresh air for all of us, and I was glad to see everyone's expressions melt into relief as soon as we were away from the courtroom. I glanced to Lily, Victoria, and Yuri, a silent question in my eyes: what were we going to do next? Our question about the victim had been answered when it came to his identity, and that meant we had a whole host of new questions to try and answer. I didn't know where we were meant to start when it came to filling in all those gaps even though everything made so much more sense now than ever before.
Pieter came out into the defendant lobby soon afterward, and he immediately began to pace near the couch. It was already getting dizzying to watch him dash back and forth after about half a minute, but before I could tell him to try and calm down, he spoke on his own. "I can't believe I didn't notice," he told us. "I've seen her face so many times before. If anything, I should have been able to pick her out in a crowd. How in the world did I not catch on to the fact that she was the one who had been killed?"
"The body was facedown on the ground," Yuri countered. "Even if you could see her face, you probably wouldn't have thought of her as being here. I mean, she's been arrested and put in jail twice now since you joined the agency. You wouldn't have expected her to be in the headquarters."
Pieter sighed. "I suppose so, but I just... I feel like I should have figured it out before it could get this far," he murmured. "If we had known that she was the one behind all of this, then maybe things would have changed."
"There's no point in dwelling on it now," Lily pointed out. "We've already done all we could, and we're going to have to just roll with it until this case is over."
"The revelation behind who the victim is presents a bit of a problem to us though," Victoria interjected. "As much as I hate to admit it... I feel like the fact that we know who the victim is will point us in an awful direction when it comes to a presumed motive for Pieter."
"I agree," I nodded. "Now that we know the victim was an Emsthorpe assassin-especially one that Pieter has had contact with on multiple occasions, we're in a bad spot. There are people who are going to use that as an excuse to say that he's the one behind the crime. He would have a motive if we use what we know now."
"In other worse, we just tightened the rope around all of our necks in trying to figure out who the victim was," Yuri frowned. "That's certainly a problem, but I don't know how we're going to fix it."
"Well, you're not going to be able to change anything if you stay so negative."
We all looked up and saw a few familiar faces walking into the defendant lobby. Sky and Felicity were at the front of the group with Mr. Morix and Chrysalis taking up the rear. Felicity was the one who had spoken. The latter two looked completely exhausted while the first pair was doing notably better compared to the day before. I could tell that the break from the investigation had made a massive difference in helping the twins to deal with the sudden influx of memories from Felicity. I was glad we had gotten them to step back from the case if this was the incredible outcome after just one day.
"I guess you're right," Lily agreed with a nod. "We're just going to have to figure out what to do with this information now that we have it. I don't think we would have been able to stop the truth from coming out no matter what we did, so we'll have to go along with it. After all, if Pieter has a motive for supposedly killing her, then there are probably other people out there who would have had a reason to lash out as well."
"I agree," I chimed in. "The fact that the victim is an Emsthorpe assassin makes a remarkable amount of sense given the circumstances, and it also means that there would be other people who have a reason to lash out at her."
"I have a bad feeling about all of this," Sky admitted. "I don't like how your assumptions about this being an Emsthorpe incident were right... And I especially don't like what it means if the victim is one of the assassins."
"It's one more problem off our plate," Yuri muttered, though she bit down on her lip as soon as she had finished saying it so nobody else in the lobby would look at her strangely for her dark remark. "It doesn't matter much what the assassins decide to get up to at this point. They're in our way, and we'll have to get rid of them."
"I am worried about one thing though," Pieter frowned. "The fact that the crime took place in the middle of the night makes defending me incredibly difficult. There wouldn't have been many people in this building so late at night, and everybody who we know was here would have been here because of the Emsthorpe incident. That means there must have been somebody else involved with all of it."
"If you ask me, I would say it was a co-conspirator to the crime that killed the victim," Mr. Morix commented. "Who would have known there was something happening there to begin with? If there was some sort of accomplice working with the victim, then they would have been aware there was a planned crime at the Council of Six headquarters. They could have either been there to help carry out the crime directly, or they could have shown up later with the intention of pushing the victim back."
"I can't figure out for the life of me why a collaborator of the Emsthorpe family would possibly commit this crime though," Chrysalis pointed out. "It just doesn't make any sense to me. I understand there could be some friction between different members of the family, but this feels like an absolute disaster that could be solved by something else. I agree that knowledge that the crime was planned and slated to be carried out on that specific night is important to figuring out who was behind it, but I also get the impression there's a lot more to it than we've been led to believe up to this point."
"All the more reason for us to head back to the crime scene so we can try and learn just about as much as we can," Yuri smiled as she put her hands on her hips. "We've got a lot of information waiting for us, and we're going to start putting the pieces together this afternoon. After all, we've only got two more days left of the trial before we're going to have to come to a verdict, and we have to be ready for all of that."
"Two days until my fate is decided by force," Pieter murmured with a shake of his head. "I'm counting on all of you to figure out what really happened that night."
"I think our two main priorities should be to figure out if the victim was working with anyone that night and then to talk to others about the current missing figure that would make this case a lot easier," Lily said.
"Do you mean Niamh?" Chrysalis questioned with a frown. "Before you ask, nobody has figured out whare she is. She's still missing, and I don't know when we're going to find her."
"That's... Unfortunate," Lily muttered. "But I was actually referring to the person who sent our agency the phone call after phoning Pieter to say that he should go to the scene of the crime after the victim would have died."
"I agree. If we can get that person on the stand, then I bet all the smaller details will come together," Yuri nodded. "I mean, that would have been a person who was fully aware of the truth behind the murder even before it took place. They would have known there was going to be a case that night at all, and that person has a strong chance of being the one responsible for the crime as a result."
"Then we have a plan," Victoria concluded. She turned to Pieter before she threw her arms around him. He remained still for a moment before pulling her in a little bit closer, a smile on his face. "I'm going to come back and see you later in the afternoon. In the meantime, you should try and stay out of trouble."
"I don't really have much of a choice," Pieter laughed. "As long as I'm stuck in the detention center, I'm going to be about as trouble free as it gets."
"We'll see you later on if you need to head back to the agency. Remember that you can come to us to talk about details with the case any time you want an extra ear," Sky told us. He waved and started toward the door of the lobby with Felicity trailing after him.
As soon as the twins left, someone else came into the defendant lobby. Prosecutor Umber had his arms crossed over his chest and a frown dragging the corners of his lips down. "There you are," he remarked, and I realized a moment later he was staring at Chrysalis. "Come on. You're coming back to the scene of the crime so we can try to stimulate that memory of yours."
Chrysalis held back a wince at that, and she rubbed at one temple before nodding. "Fine," she muttered, though I could tell she wanted nothing more than to curl up and sleep until the trial the next day. She started to follow Prosecutor Umber a beat later, and Mr. Morix trailed after them, refusing to leave his sister unattended for any longer than necessary. Both siblings sent the rest of us small waves as they left, and those of us left in the defendant lobby returned the favor.
"There's another thing for us to try and take care of later in the day," Lily nodded. "We've got a lot on our hands, so we had better get started. Right now, I want to go and talk to the detectives on this case about the details of the person who had called us when the case first started."
"The man on the phone has to be out there somewhere, and we're going to figure out where," Yuri agreed with a nod. "Let's go and track him down. He won't know what hit him until it's too late. It's time for us to catch a killer."
Pieter paled at that phrasing, and he placed a hand on Victoria's shoulder. "Please stay safe," he instructed her. The words wouldn't necessarily keep her out of danger, but as long as he was being kept in the detention center, that was the best he could get.
"I'll be fine," Victoria assured him in return even though all of us knew we couldn't really make any promises at this point. "We'll be back to talk to you as soon as we've found something that could help us. See you then, Pieter."
Victoria and Pieter shared a quick kiss before pulling apart even though I could tell that was the last thing they wanted to do. Victoria smiled, the grin strained and fragile, as she approached the rest of the defense team. "Alright. Let's get to it."
October 24
Council of Six Headquarters
12:15 PM
Yuri Rinko
I really shouldn't have expected the Council of Six's headquarters to have calmed down at all during the trial. Maybe five percent of the officers from the day before had left, but that didn't mean much when there were so many other people gathered in the space around the building. I could only imagine that the truth of the victim's identity had brought a bunch of extra attention to the case.
"Alright... We should try to figure out the truth behind the case now," I declared, turning to the other members of the group. "There's got to be someone around here who would be able to talk to us about the investigation into the phone calls."
"If I had to guess, I would say that the main detectives on this case have been pulled away by the investigation into the body," Lily remarked. "We should try our luck with minor investigators to see if they've got anything for us."
"Mukuro and Aiden it is then," Deirdre nodded. "I hope they're going to have the time to talk to us at all. I know they've been busy trying to figure out where Prosecutor Wood disappeared to, and I would feel bad about pulling them away from that."
"I have a bad feeling about that entire situation," Victoria confessed. "I don't like that she's been gone for this long with no proof as to where she is. There has to be some reason for it, but I'm sure the logic is bad. Why in the world would she still be gone? There's no good reason for that."
We all shared a nervous look at that, and I wrapped one hand around my stomach instinctively. I didn't want to think about what could have happened if Niamh was really... Gone. She had been okay just a few days ago, but now, she was missing after having been caught up in a murder. If the Emsthorpe assassins were involved with the case, then they must have done something to her. They'd been holding a grudge against her family for ages now, and it would make sense for them to lash out when she was vulnerable. If she was dead though, then they would have just left her body in the Council of Six's headquarters... Right? Why go through this whole song and dance to try and keep the truth sealed away?
"Oh, there they are!" Lily suddenly declared, and I followed her pointed finger to see Mukuro and Aiden talking near the entrance of the building. We all happily surged toward the detectives, desperate to get away from the train of thought that revolved around Niamh potentially being hurt or worse. If anybody would be able to fill in the gaps for us about her, then it would be the two of them, and we could ask them about it once we arrived.
Mukuro and Aiden expectedly looked exhausted, and I could only assume that their investigation to find Niamh had kept them up all night. This case was a drain on everybody's energy, it seemed. I couldn't fix their lack of sleep, but I could at least try to lighten the mood a bit, so I pressed a smile on my face as I waved to them. "Hey there, you two!" I greeted.
Mukuro and Aiden looked up quickly with the sort of alertness that only came with an entire night of being on edge. As soon as he realized everything was safe, Aiden let out a heavy sigh and rubbed at his eyes. "Hey," he muttered softly. "I hope you're all doing well."
"I could say the same to you," I returned. "I know the case has been a bit difficult for you, but I'm still wishing you both the best. You've been giving it a lot ever since starting the investigation, and that means a lot to us."
"We'll be fine once all of this is over," Aiden told me with a loose shrug. "I think I already know what you're going to ask about, so you don't need to butter us up."
"We haven't found anything that could point us in the direction that would lead us to Niamh," Mukuro sighed. "We've been looking for just about everything we think could help, but it seems like there's always something to get in the way before we end up where we need to be. It's starting to get incredibly frustrating, though I suppose I shouldn't have ever expected anything less."
"The Emsthorpe assassins are the ones behind this, aren't they?" Lily asked. "We found out in court that the victim was one of them. She must have been partially responsible for what happened here on the night of the crime."
"That's the theory right now, at the very least," Aiden replied, though he didn't seem all that sure about it. "I think it would make a lot of sense for the Emsthorpe family to be the ones behind Niamh going missing, but until we can find something that will actually point us in the right direction... I don't know. We're just kind of going around in circles."
Before I had the chance to say anything, I was cut off by the sound of a phone ringing. I glanced around to everyone else in the group, and a moment later, Victoria pulled her phone out of her pocket. "I'm so sorry," she said sheepishly. "I really thought I had turned it off before the trial started... Let me just take this." She pressed the accept call button and pressed the phone up to her ear. "Hello?"
As soon as the person the other end of the line spoke, Victoria's eyes shot open, and she pulled her phone away from her face to press the speaker button. She pressed one finger to her lips to keep the rest of us quiet, but before I could ask why, I heard the reason. "I take it you are investigating the scene of the crime now," the voice on the other end said.
It was the same person who had called us in the past. I was sure of it. Judging by the look of recognition on Deirdre's face, she knew it too. She was the only one who had heard the voice up until now, and she definitely had heard it before. In other words, we were being visited by the mastermind once again... Or, at the very least, that was what it was starting to look like given the context of the investigation.
"We are," Victoria said slowly. "Though I'm not entirely sure as to how you became aware of such a fact."
"You're worried about a friend who went missing at the start of this case," the man began. As he spoke, I noticed just how distorted his words were. Deirdre hadn't been kidding when she said she was sure he was using some kind of voice modifier. He definitely was, and the effects were beyond intense. "I can promise you right now that she is safe. She won't be returned to you until after the case is over and she is safe to be in public again, but right now, she is safe."
"Let us talk to her," Victoria cut in before Deirdre had the chance to reveal that the call was on speaker. "If she's really okay, then we need to hear that from her ourselves. I don't want you to come up with an excuse for why we can't do that either. You just said she was alright, didn't you?"
"She's asleep at the moment. The last few days have been incredibly strenuous, and she's exhausted," the man replied. "I cannot stay to talk for long anyway. The rest of this case awaits you, and the truth is closer than you think. I would advise you to stay on your guard and leave no stone unturned. Your enemies are dangerous, and they will not rest until you have failed. We will speak again."
The phone abruptly hung up before any of us could say anything else, and I let out a loud groan of irritation. "You've got to be kidding me!" I yelled. "What in the world are we supposed to do with information like that? It's not helping any of us!"
"Maybe not right now, but we know a few things," Lily pointed out. "He says that Niamh is safe, and we have no choice but to believe him. I don't like him ocming up with an excuse for us to not talk to her, but I suppose we should have known it wasn't going to be that easy. We're just going to have to come at this from a different angle."
"What I don't understand is how the criminal knew we were talking about Niamh right now," Deirdre frowned. "It matched up too perfectly to just be a matter of coincidence. He knew that we were talking about her and how we hadn't come up with any other evidence that could lead us to her location. That means the criminal really is closer than we think. That line may have been a literal hint rather than just the culprit being cryptic and vague."
Everyone immediately went on the defensive and glanced around the area for any signs of someone who didn't quite fit in. If the culprit really was somewhere nearby, then we had to find them as soon as possible. I scanned the area to try and pick out anything of note-such as the mysterious person from the day before who we hadn't been able to talk to-but I came up short. Judging by the way the others were only becoming more anxious and on edge as the seconds passed by, they were worried about it too. They were missing a lot of the clues they needed to find the person in question, and it was starting to scare them.
"Well... I suppose now is as good a time as any to talk to Mukuro and Aiden about that little problem," Victoria sighed. "Yesterday, we were looking around the building, and we ran into someone who definitely wasn't supposed to be there. We tried to talk to him, but he left before we had the chance. He didn't tell us his name, and he was trying his best to hide his face using a jacket's hood, so we don't even know how to point you in the right direction to start looking for him."
"He had black hair," Lily chimed in. "That's the main detail that stuck out to me. When I say black, I mean it was pitch black. I don't think I've ever seen anyone have darker hair."
"You know who that kind of reminds me of?" Aiden remarked as he dug one hand into his satchel. The rest of us glanced to one another before looking back to him. Soon afterward, he produced a photo, and I realized it was one thing we hadn't seen since the case had started: a direct picture of the crime scene. We hadn't been able to look around there the day before, but now, we were finally able to get a full description.
Sure enough, the woman sprawled out on the ground had dark black hair to the point of being a bit shiny. Even with the blood staining her body, her hair looked stunning. She was face down on the ground with her head tilted just barely off to the left. The stab wound in her back was massive and grievous, and I winced before looking away from the picture. Still, Aiden's point had been proved, and Deirdre took the picture in one hand with a heavy frown on her face.
"You know what I'm thinking?" Victoria questioned softly. "I remember during the case when Prosecutor Cruz was arrested that there was one person who we didn't quite understand yet. We've come to understand a lot about the Emsthorpe assassins since then, and we're missing one specific piece of evidence. I don't understand it at all, but..."
"You mean to say the Emsthorpe son," Deirdre concluded. "All this time, we've been trying to figure out more information about the case, and it led us to the daughters of the family, but never the son. We've encountered three daughters by this point, if I recall correctly, though it's a bit difficult to tell given the way they always disguise themselves."
"It's been three," Lily confirmed. "First off, there was the person behind the case here at the Council of Six headquarters, though we haven't seen her again. Next, there's the victim of this case. After that, we ran into the one who killed someone at Ashbrook and then attacked Albert. At least, that's what I'm thinking the divide is meant to be."
"And if we keep that in mind, it still doesn't point us to the son," I finished for her, my eyes going wide. "That would make a lot of sense for why he knows so much about this case too! He was aware of it because he's been involved with the Emsthorpe family ever since he was born!"
"What I can't figure out is why we haven't run into him yet," Victoria remarked. "It feels like we should have seen him before now, but we're still coming up short no matter where we turn. It's odd, isn't it?"
"That's something we're going to have to ask when we take him in," Mukuro declared. "If he really is involved with this crime, then we have to arrest him and make sure he answers all of our questions. He knows where Niamh is right now, and that means he's aware of the details of this case on a level far deeper than any of us could have ever expected. He's involved with this case heavily, and he could fill in the gaps when it comes to everything we don't understand yet."
"Good luck in finding him," Victoria said. "On that note, were you the ones who wound up studying the phone call logs to make sure the calls were actually real? I know that was a massive question during the trial today."
"You're going to want to go Vera for that," Aiden replied. "She looked over the defendant's phone, at the very least, and I think she found what she was looking for, but now that we have an extra phone call to work with, you should try to talk to her again."
"I didn't get a chance to check the number before I picked up. I was too distracted to look," Victoria admitted as she reached for her phone once again.
"You do realize that something like that is just going to get you bombarded with random telemarketer messages, right?" I remarked, raising an eyebrow in her direction.
"I'm normally more conscious of it, I can assure you," Victoria told me as she started to scroll through her recent calls. She found what she was looking for a moment later and let out a heavy sigh. "Tracking the call isn't going to work. The number is completely anonymous. I think that's how the one behind all of this is trying to make sure we don't figure out who they are. They're trying to deliver anonymous messages to us without having to get directly involved with the case, and this is their plan for it."
"That's beyond annoying," I sighed. "I guess I shouldn't have expected anything else though. I mean, if they just let us track their number to figure out who they were, then they would have been in a lot of trouble. That kind of defeats the point of anonymity, especially when it comes to a murder case."
"We can talk to Detective Wattson when we go into the headquarters. She might have an idea when it comes to what we're supposed to be doing with the phone calls," Lily nodded. "I don't know if she's going to be able to solve our specific problem of the number being redacted, but it's worth bringing it up to her, at the very least."
"Good luck in taking care of that," Mukuro smiled wearily. "Aiden and I are going to have to stay focused on our other matter. It's good that we can consider Niamh safe-at least to some degree, if we want to trust the voice on the phone-but we can't linger on that for long. Something else has to be happening, and the fact that we couldn't talk to Niamh is a bad sign. He could have been lying, and I need to figure out if he was telling the truth or not."
"If you come up with any updates on that, please tell us as soon as possible," Victoria pleaded. "I don't like having that extra bit of suspense hanging on our shoulders when there's so much else going on."
"We will," Aiden promised. "I would suggest that you go to the Prosecutor's Office whenever you get the chance too. We were able to get Prosecutor Lin to stay there since she was making herself anxious while she was staying here, so she's with the chief prosecutor elsewhere right now."
"We need to talk to Prosecutor Cruz too," Victoria concluded. "I think we need another look at that file about the Emsthorpe family. I want to hear more about this son of the family as soon as possible, and he's the best chance we have when it comes to finding the truth."
"You've got a lot of work ahead of you, and we know you can do it," Mukuro grinned. "If we find anything else, we'll be sure to tell you. We'll talk to you later, everyone!"
We waved farewell to Mukuro and Aiden with that, starting off toward the entrance of the building as a group. We were going to head up to talk to Detective Wattson first to see what we could do about the phone calls. It might not lead us somewhere of note right off the bat, but if we could get the investigation going, then we would be able to come back to it later. The sooner we could get it up and running, the soon we could come back and pick up the truth.
I didn't know if it was going to work that way, but trying was the best we could do. The case wouldn't solve itself without our best.
classes end for me tomorrow yippee
-Digital
