August 6

Lady Bird Studios

12:15 PM

Chrysalis Starr

The next few hours passed in a timeless blur, and I was barely aware of everything that was happening around me. Investigators arrived on the scene, but I couldn't bring myself to completely focus on what everyone was doing. Instead, I just stared at the ground, trying to block out the chaos surrounding me on every side. It was too loud, and if anyone spoke to me wrong, I knew that I was going to snap.

A hand came down on my shoulder, and I instinctively tensed in preparation to whirl around and see who it was. I had been far more jittery than I would have liked in the aftermath of the previous case where I was arrested for the murder of Saya. Everything had left me feeling nervous, and while I was getting better, this noise wasn't helping in the slightest. I just wanted it all to be over already.

However, I realized soon after turning around that I didn't need to worry. I was met with the gentle smile of Felicity, and a sigh pushed through my lips out of relief. "Ah... Felicity," I murmured. "Hey. Sorry for getting all nervous there. What are you doing here?"

"We got a call saying that somebody here was going to need defending," Felicity replied with a small shrug. "Judging by the fact that you're standing outside of the studios and there are more police cars than I can count, I would say that the tip that sent us here is beyond correct."

I nodded slowly. "Yeah... The director of the show was found dead in James Devine's dressing room," I said, not bothering to elaborate further. Felicity knew why I had come to the studios in the first place, so I figured that she would be able to put the rest of the pieces together.

Sure enough, Felicity let out a gasp, and her hands flew up to cover her mouth. "That's awful!" she cried out. "Do you know who was arrested for the crime? Maybe we'll be able to defend them!"

"I can tell you that much."

Mukuro appeared off to my left, and I turned to face her with a frown. We had been separated when the investigators arrived and decided to press us all for testimony. I didn't have anything notable to say that was different from the rest of the group, so they were more than happy to let me go. I had been sitting outside for quite some time, though I wasn't able to see the other five teens I had been spending my time with. Seeing Mukuro was far more relieving than I would have openly admitted, I must say.

"Mukuro," I breathed, taking a step closer to her. "What happened? Who was arrested for the crime?"

"James Devine," Mukuro replied. "The body was found in his dressing room, and everyone agreed that such was incredibly suspicious. He's supposedly being taken to the detention center right now. Niamh was let go around the time that he was arrested, and she said that she called your agency."

"That explains everything," I sighed. Of course Niamh would want to call and ask for help. She didn't know where I was, and the same likely applied to Yuri. She definitely believed in James' innocence just as much as the rest of us, and the agency would be the best way for her to find someone to look after him.

"There was a huge debate about who was going to be coming down here to defend the suspect, but I managed to get the upper hand in the end. Mr. Morix said that I could use some extra experience working with someone in the agency," Felicity told me. "I guess that means we're going to be a team for this case! How does that sound, Chrissy?"

I stared up at Felicity, my jaw slack in my silence. I managed to shake it off and correct my expression rather quickly, but I felt like Felicity had already seen more than enough. "Yeah... I suppose that's alright," I murmured.

"It sounds like you don't want to work with me," Felicity frowned, nudging me gently with her elbow. "You really don't need to worry about that, you know. I promise that I'm not scary or anything.

"It's not that," I immediately said. "I'm not exactly the best at working with new people. That's all." This was far more accurate than she could ever understand, to say the least. I didn't want to be dragged into anything unnecessarily when I had more than enough to stress over because of the Oracle project, but it seemed that I didn't have a choice. Besides, I had known Felicity loosely for quite some time now. Cotoli had trusted her enough to hire her, so it was surely fine for me to believe in her too.

At least, that's what I hoped.

"We'll figure it out then!" Felicity proclaimed, right back to her regular, chipper self. "What should we do first? Should we go and look at the body? I know that seeing the crime scene would be a great way to kick everything off."

"I think I would be able to get you two in," Mukuro said, crossing her arms as a frown festered on her features. "My father was able to pull a few strings, and I'm going to be acting as the lead detective for this case."

"They don't need you as a witness?" I questioned in surprise. "I would have expected them to want to hear your words in court..."

"Since the five of us saw basically the same thing, not all of us need to testify," Mukuro replied. "Yuri and Anton were the first two the police interrogated, so they're going to be the ones who have to stand in court. You've surely realized that they didn't want to talk to you for too long, right? The same applies to Niamh and me. She's going to be acting as a prosecutor for this case too."

"Wow... A lot happened while I've been standing out here," I whispered with a shake of my head. "Still, I suppose there's nothing that we can do about it now. Is there anything else that we should know?"

"We should probably get all of ur talking out of the way before we go inside," Felicity commented. "It seems really loud in there, and I don't know if I'll be able to hear what you're saying once we get inside."

Mukuro nodded her understanding. "Prosecutor Lin is going to be working with Niamh on this case. Apparently, Niamh called her as soon as her questioning session finished, so she came right down to see what was going on. I bet that you just missed her," she explained. "You'll probably see her at some point later today anyways, so I'm not all that worried, and I don't think you should be either."

"That's good to hear," I remarked. "At least we know now that the prosecutor isn't going to be searching for a guilty verdict using any means necessary... I truly doubt that James would want to kill his director this way. You heard what he said while we were on the tour. He called the rest of the cast his family, and I don't think that he was lying. Every part of him seemed far too sincere for that."

"I agree," Mukuro nodded. "Unfortunately, that wasn't enough for the police looking into the case... They made the arrest without talking to me or any of the other detectives. They sure did jump to a lot of conclusions because of the location of the body..."

"The body was found in the defendant's dressing room as far as I'm aware... That doesn't exactly bode well for us," Felicity sighed. "Still, I suppose there's nothing we can do about it aside from pray that we're able to find something that makes it obvious that he didn't do it, right?"

"Yeah," I agreed. "I'm not sure where we're going to start... But I feel like we should certainly check out the dressing room. On top of that, I want to know what happened before all of us arrived at the scene of the crime."

"What do you mean?" Felicity questioned with a frown. "You're making it sound like something happened before the corpse was even discovered."

"You could say that," I shrugged. "You see, we all arrived here for the tour of set. You already knew that we were going to be looking around the studios as part of the radio lottery Yuri won, but... We were supposed to meet various members of the cast and crew. When we got here though, there wasn't anybody around. The only one who we were able to see was James, and he said that nobody else had showed up."

"That's certainly suspicious behavior," Felicity commented. "I feel like somebody is going to try and say that James kept everyone else from coming to see the set in case the body was discovered prematurely."

"Still, if that was the case, why was he keeping the body in his dressing room? That would have clearly incriminated him, and it doesn't make sense in the slightest. If you ask me, somebody did this to frame him. I just wish that I could say who would want to do something like this," I frowned. "We can ask James about that when we go by the detention center later on. If he knows everybody on the cast and crew as well as it seems, he has to have some inkling as to why the victim would be killed seemingly out of nowhere."

"He's going to be in questioning for quite some time, I'm afraid... And good luck getting into the detention center at all," Mukuro said. "You have no idea how many reporters are out there. I could barely squeeze my way inside, and once I did get in, I couldn't even talk to him. It's an absolute circus down there, and I suggest preparing yourself as much as possible before you even try to head inside."

"At the end of the day, he is a celebrity, so it would make sense why members of the press would be curious about what happened," Felicity commented. "I know that I would want to figure out what's going on if I was in their shoes. I love the show as a whole, and the idea that its star would commit murder... It's ridiculous."

"There's bound to be lots of gossip and rumors surrounding this case, but we're going to have to do our best to press through and ignore it," I shrugged. "For now, how about we go and see the crime scene? I want to see if there's anything suspicious that we missed the first time."

"All of us were really worried, so it's not like we were trying to pick up on any details," Mukuro admitted. "Chances are you'll stumble upon something that we were too distracted to see before. I mean, it's kind of hard to conduct an investigation when you're still dealing with the shock of finding a body in a place like that. We thought that today was going to be simple and fun, but that was far from being the case."

"We'll get right to it then," Felicity beamed. "Can you take us to the scene of the crime? I'm sure that we'll be able to take care of everything from there."

Mukuro nodded and gestured for us to trail after her. I followed her through the many people that had crowded into the studios, cringing whenever the sound grew to be too much for me. All of a sudden, I longed to pull out my phone and shove my earbuds in. Maybe if I played my music loudly enough, I wouldn't have to listen to all of this chaos. As it was, I felt like I was going to fall apart if there wasn't at least an attempt to make everybody calm down.

We managed to weave our way in between the countless people to arrive at the place where the victim was found. When we finally did get to the dressing room, I let out a sigh. The body was still there, and the bloodstains on the ground made my stomach churn. No matter how many times I investigated murders, I would never be used to the appearance of death. Nobody deserved this, and seeing someone die always made me feel terrible.

Then again, I suppose that was also exactly why I did this. Nobody deserved to have their death go unsolved if something like this did happen, so it fell to me and the rest of the agency to find the truth. It unfortunately didn't help the dizziness that always hit me at the sight of so much blood in the slightest though.

The body looked just the same as it had before. There was far too much blood spread around the victim's head, but it also didn't seem like there was enough. Granted, it was enough to make me nauseous, but I would have expected to see more. The spilled makeup was still spread out along the floor, and the cracked mirror on the other side of the room made me wince. It didn't appear that there were signs of a struggle despite the mess. If the victim and culprit had fought, there would be far more spilled than some makeup. Plus, there would be more blood, and as it was, there was barely anything compared to what one would have thought would be present.

"If you ask me, the body had to have been moved," I said immediately, looking up to Felicity. "There's not enough blood for the victim to have been killed here, and the carpet would have made it impossible to clean up blood easily... Those stains aren't going to be coming out for quite some time."

Felicity nodded her agreement. "I wonder where he was killed though... Like you said, it couldn't have been around here, but... I guess that's going to be something for us to check out when we're finished up in here," she told me.

"What about the murder weapon?" I questioned, turning my attention to Mukuro. "It looks like the victim was shot to death, but I don't see a gun anywhere around here. Perhaps the culprit took it with them..."

Mukuro shrugged. "We've combed through nearly every room in this place, but we haven't found anything," she told us. "There's only one room that we haven't been able to get into, and that's the room of the director himself. It's locked, and we don't know what happened to the key that would let us get in. We're trying to have the lock opened somehow, but it's a slow process so far. Breaking down the door could risk disturbing the scene, so we're left to look at everything outside of the room until we're able to find a way inside."

"Hm... We need to get through that door if we want to figure out what's going on then," Felicity commented. "For all we know, the murder weapon could be in there, and if it is, we're going to need that extra evidence."

"We won't know for sure until after we can sneak our way inside," Mukuro remarked with another relaxed shrug. "I hope that we're able to figure everything out as soon as possible. Until then though, feel free to look around here. You have my full permission to look around the room."

I nodded my understanding and took a step further into the room. I looked down at the body first, cringing at the amount of blood that flooded my vision. There didn't seem to be anything odd about it aside from the lack of blood splatter, but that was more a problem with the floor around the body than anything else.

Felicity made her way over to the spilled makeup beside the corpse, and she pointed at a thin layer of pink powder on the ground with a frown. "Hey, look at this," she commented. The container of the powder had been knocked onto the floor sideways, and the lid had been sent flying across the room to land very close to the body. The lid was almost halfway tucked underneath the body in a way.

"The lid is underneath the body," I murmured. "But not completely. It's tucked under the victim's hip as if it was sliding and then came to a stop as soon as it ran into him, so that probably means that the body was here first. If the makeup was spilled after the body was put in place, then chances are that we can reliably say that it was an accident. It isn't a sign of a struggle, in other words."

"Then we're going to have to come up with an explanation for the tilted costume rack too," Felicity commented with a shrug. "Do you have any ideas as to why that thing would be thrown aside?"

I hesitated before looking over to the rack, frowning at the sight of the broken mirror beside it. "You know, I find it rather strange... James told us ahead of time that he didn't keep any costumes in the room. He said that they were all put away before the crew was finished filming for any given day. All of the clothes on the rack seem to be rather normal, but I don't think that any of them belong to James."

Felicity and I both walked over to the tilted rack, and she nodded from my side. "Yeah... I would say that you're right. None of these seem like they would fit him particularly well. He's a petite young man, and I doubt that he would regularly wear something so large. Then you have this jacket, which is obviously for a smaller girl, and he would never be able to fit into it," she agreed.

"I have to wonder where the clothes could have come from if James didn't put them here though..." Mukuro commented. "Maybe the culprit was the one to scatter them around on the rack, but I don't know why that would be necessary. It's an absolute mess..."

I crouched down and started to rustle through the fallen clothes at the bottom of the rack. Some articles of clothing had been forced from the top of the rack when it made impact with the mirror. I pulled away a few pieces of fabric to look at the bottom of the rack, but I still didn't understand what was going on. In a way, the placing of the fabric seemed deliberate, as if someone pulled them free from the rack on purpose before throwing them around.

"I think that the clothing was put here on purpose," Felicity said suddenly, almost as if she could read my thoughts. I looked over my shoulder and offered her a nod as she continued speaking. "Maybe the clothing was placed here to try and hide something... I can't fathom why they would need to hide the bottom of the rack though. I don't think there's anything down there."

"Hey, Mukuro," I commented, rising to my full height once again. "Do you know where the costumes are regularly kept? Is there a specific storage area where they're meant to be stored overnight?"

"As a matter of fact, yes," Mukuro replied. "We were't able to get in there at first either, but we wound up getting lucky. The victim had a set of keys in his pocket, and one of them unlocked the costume area. I bet that the key that opens his room was discarded somewhere, though I don't know where it could be now."

I paused, placing one hand on my chin. I felt like I was starting to understand this case, but my mind was spinning as I tried to note all of the details. I pressed my eyes closed to block out all distractions, attempting to make heads or tails of everything whirring in the back of my mind.

"I think that the culprit brought this clothing here from other places," I commented. "If the culprit wanted to hide this segment of the rack, the first and most obvious answer would be to get into the costumes, but maybe they didn't know how to do that. Instead, they turned to the other dressing rooms. As far as I can tell, none of them were locked overnight, so they would have been able to run in and out collecting any stray pieces of clothing and bunching them up here."

"They probably didn't realize that one of the keys on the victim's keyring was meant to open the costume area, and even if they did know that, they wouldn't have had time to pull all of that together without running the risk of being caught whenever James showed up to start the tour of the set," Felicity agreed.

"They could have removed the key to the director's area if they knew which one it was though, and they could have hidden it on purpose to keep our investigation from continuing," Mukuro remarked with a nod. "There was only one other thing we found on the victim's person aside from the keyring, and that would be his phone. We don't know the password to it though, so it's not as if we can unlock it and see if there's anything hiding around there. I guess we'll just have to make do with everything else that we have at our disposal."

"If we could get into his phone, we would be able to see if there are any clues about how to get into the director's room," Felicity frowned with a heavy sigh. "Still, I suppose that there's not much for us to do about it at this point... We'll just have to keep looking around and pray that we get lucky enough to stumble upon something."

"I'm sure that something is going to turn up at some point... As of now, we don't know much, but we can say for sure that the person behind this crime didn't have access to the costume area. They were unfamiliar with the set," I murmured. "If a member of the cast or crew was given the keyring, chances are they would be fully aware of which key to use if they wanted to get into the costume area. They would have likely already done something like that as part of the cast or crew."

"In other words, the culprit must have been an outsider with too little time to actually look around the set," Felicity concluded. "I can't help but wonder about the tour though... If the tour was really cancelled, why did James show up? How was everything cancelled in the first place?"

"That's the sort of evidence that you would expect to find on the victim's phone, but we can't look at his emails, calls, or texts as long as the device remains locked," Mukuro told her with a sigh. "I know that it's far from being convenient, but we're going to have to make do with what little evidence we have elsewhere."

"I think there's one another thing that we can use to our advantage here," Felicity commented. "Let's go back over to look at the spilled makeup. There's something else that I noticed aside from the lid being propped up against the body."

I nodded my understanding before backing away from the costume rack. We made our way over to the spilled makeup, and I immediately realized exactly what Felicity was talking about. Just to add emphasis, she gestured to it, and I couldn't help but kick myself for not seeing it sooner.

There was a footprint in the spilled powder. There was only one, and I didn't even think that the culprit had realized that they had stepped in it at the time of the crime. The culprit had been wearing a shoe at the time, and the shoe seemed rather large.

"I don't think that shoe could possibly belong to James," Mukuro said conclusively a few seconds later. "Look at how large it is. We already said that James is a smaller person, and that shoe would be absolutely huge on him."

"The footstep is a firm one, and it doesn't look like the culprit slipped at all while making it," Felicity remarked. "If James had been wearing shoes that were that large, he would have undoubtedly tripped at some point, but this footprint is so confident, and there's nothing to suggest that the culprit would have lost their balance at the time."

"Besides, I don't see any shoes around here," I nodded in agreement. "I suppose that the shoes could have been hidden elsewhere, but... If the culprit had noticed that the footstep was there at all, then they certainly would have held back for a moment to clean up the powder. It seems rather incriminating, after all."

"I think that we've got a pretty good idea of what probably happened at the time of the crime," Felicity commented. "The culprit gathered miscellaneous clothing items from other rooms and threw them onto the rack to hide something, but we aren't sure of what that is quite yet. They stepped through the powder by accident, and a footprint was left behind. They probably didn't realize that it was there, and we can assume such because the footprint is still there. They would have cleaned it otherwise."

"On top of that, the culprit wasn't familiar with the set in the slightest. They were able to figure out which key went with the door to the director's room, but they didn't have any time to determine which key was set to unlock the costume area, hence why the clothing was used," I went on. "We need to find a way to get into the victim's phone if we want to find out why the tour could have been canceled for everyone aside from James."

"I don't know about you, but I certainly think that the cancellation of the tour was deliberate," Mukuro commented as she crossed her arms. "James was the only one to show up, and then the body was found in his dressing room. That seems like an attempt to frame him for the crime, reducing any interference as much as possible by getting rid of the rest of the cast. Everything was set up so that the crime would be discovered at the time that it was by the people that it was."

"The tour was recorded as well, and I'm willing to bet that the culprit was aware of such," I suggested. "After all, the body seemed to be set up perfectly to be captured on camera by Mr. Gassman as we were looking around backstage. We're looking for someone who knew the tour was happening, but they also couldn't have been involved as part of the cast or crew of the show."

"That doesn't exactly help us to figure out who could have been responsible for the crime though," Felicity sighed. "I mean, think about it. There were tons of people who knew the tour was happening at this time. You guys entered the contest and won it despite not being involved with the case. It was common public knowledge by the time that the tour had come around, so there are likely many people out there who were aware that it was happening. Our only idea of who the culprit could have been can be found in the footstep near the body."

"Is there anything else notable that you think we should hear about?" I questioned, turning to Mukuro. "Did you discover anything about the weapon? We know that it was a gun, but maybe we'll be able to find something out regarding the size."

"The gun was a small one. That's about all that we can say on the matter at the moment," Mukuro admitted. "In other words, it could easily be hidden anywhere on this set, and we would be none the wiser. We're searching high and low to try and find it, but we haven't found anything that could lead back to the weapon."

"Let's hope that we get lucky then," Felicity sighed. "Maybe we should call it good here. I don't think that I can think of anything else for us to look at around here, and there are other people who we might want to talk to along the way."

"I'll leave you to look around then," Mukuro said with a smile. "I should probably stay around here and make sure that nothing happens to the body. The forensics team is going to arrive soon to look at it and hopefully offer an autopsy. If all goes well, we'll have the file for it by the time the trial starts tomorrow."

"I suppose that we should go and find my sister and Niamh," I told Felicity. "They're going to be the prosecution on this case, so they could have something for us to be aware of. We won't know for sure until we go and see them. It would likely be the best next destination for us given that we likely can't talk to James yet, and it'll probably be a while before we have that chance."

"Good luck looking for them," Mukuro told us, shooting both me and Felicity a bright wave as we headed for the door. As we left the scene behind, I let out a heavy sigh. I didn't know what we could expect from here on out, but I somehow doubted that it was going to be good. This entire case was giving me a bad feeling, but I unfortunately couldn't quite place why. Felicity didn't seem to share my apprehension, so I didn't say anything about it. We had more important things to concentrate on than my random bad feelings, after all, and if we wanted to find the truth, we were going to have to get started.

Online classes kinda suck

-Digital